Stacey Parks took over as superintendent of Peabody-Burns^↗ET USD 398 on July 1, 2026, after leading the Marion County Special Education Cooperative. Parks confirmed the date in a written response to The KSEdTribune and said she stepped into the role after Antoinette Root retired. The Marion County Record reported her appointment in February.

Parks described an unusually long connection to the district. She said she has lived in the community for more than 20 years, provided speech-language services to the district for many years as a speech-language pathologist, served on the board of education, and most recently oversaw special education services for the district as director of Marion County Special Education.

“I feel like getting to see the district through so many different lenses will help me tremendously,” Parks wrote.

She called the first weeks a whirlwind. She did not set out a first-year agenda, and the sections that follow describe the enrollment record she inherits rather than any plan she has announced for it.

Parks' arrival comes as Peabody-Burns manages a smaller enrollment base than it had a decade ago. The published Kansas State Department of Education district totals show 203 students in 2025-26, down from 272 in 2014-15, a loss of 69 students, or 25.4%. Kansas statewide enrollment fell 4.4% over the same endpoints.

The change was not a straight annual slide. Peabody-Burns grew from 259 students in 2015-16 to 262 in 2016-17, then reached 219 in 2021-22 after the missing headcount file. It held at 219 in 2022-23 before falling to 208 in 2023-24, 206 in 2024-25, and 203 in 2025-26. The latest published year brought a decline of three students, or 1.5%.

Kansas did not publish a district headcount file for 2019-20 in the available window. That means the 34-student difference between 2018-19 and 2020-21 describes a two-year gap in the published files, not an annual loss.

The current student mix adds another piece of context. In 2025-26, 111 of the district's 203 students were counted in the free- or reduced-price lunch category, or 54.7% when divided by the published district total. Kansas does not publish a usable current grade-level total for Peabody-Burns in these files, and suppressed categories are not treated as zero.

The Marion County Record reported that Parks planned to listen and learn, and the district's July live feed shows her communicating as its new leader. The Kansas education directory lists Parks as superintendent of USD 398, replacing Root. That directory is the source of the personnel listing.

Parks therefore begins with two facts that are easy to hold at once: Peabody-Burns is small enough that every staffing and program decision is personal, and its published enrollment is substantially below its 2014-15 level. The lenses she described, from therapy room to board table to central office, are the ones she will be reading that decline through.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.