Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust. Chuck mccalling. Yeah, Bartlesville Public Schools Superintendent, Bravo, great show, what a wonderful graduation.
You know, the Good Lord helped us on that weather that week. You know, oh my goodness, boy, you must have called in every markt not crying going on there, but you know, thinking about that day that week and that day and oh my gosh's got a good downpour that afternoon. But yeah, we had a beautiful as we were talking before on air, and uh, you know, I've done about twenty five of those now here in Bartlesville, and that might have been the best weather we ended up happening.
Just nobody would have guessed. It was great.
Yeah, So yeah, I know your daughter was involved in that group too, So just a great night.
It was really really special.
It's always a nice it's so beautiful that setting. It's so nice to be able to do that outdoors. But yeah, it was a good night. So yeah, So we wrapped up the school year. Obviously, graduations kind of the big highlight there at the end, and we had our June school board meeting Monday just start and it was pretty routine meeting, but there are a few things I just wanted to update everyone about. First of all, we have a new school board member. Jason Sower had resigned last
month or last month's meeting. He and his wife Corey, they it's good for Bartlesville. They're staying in town, but they just happened to move to a different ward. So we opened that position up and had two great candidates for that.
Really thankful for that.
But the board appointed Mandy Johnston, and we have information about that on our website. But Mandy is a manager with Phillip sixty six. She's a chemical engineer. She and her husband, her family have been in Bartlesville around twenty years now.
They have two kids in school.
They've got air Their son will be a sophomore, and a daughter that just finished at Ranch Heights.
She'll be over at Madison.
So yeah, so Mandy has been appointed to that term to Jason Sower's seats. Are really thankful to have her
and appreciate the interest. And I know she just wants to get back and serve, you know, help serve the community and district that has helped her, helped her children along the way, and obviously she's a chemical engineer and her husband also flies in terms of his day job, and so obviously with our STEM program and aviation, I mean, she's the real invested in and that's really thankful for Mandy. Appreciate Jason Sowers service as well. Jason was an excellent
school board member for us. He was on the board for about two and a half years. And really appreciate him and for his.
Service to the school board. So that was kind of our first thing.
We have a new school board member, Mandy Johnson, welcome her to the board. And then secondly wanted to mention we talked about this a little bit last month, but we revised our academic calendars, our school calendars for this upcoming year and the next year, and really the only changes are we had on.
Our previous calendars.
As you know or might remember, we had three scheduled distance learning days that we use for professional development basically so our teachers could collaborate during those times. But we have removed those from our calendar, so we have no scheduled distance.
Learning days on our calendar.
We're still starting the same day and ending the same time, but that's the only change that was made. We also and that information is on our website in terms of our academic calendars. And then also we indicated on the calendar that we will have because we have a couple of days that we traditionally for example, like Good Friday in the spring is not a school day. And then also we typically end try to end on it's generally the Thursday before Memorial Day, and then we have Friday.
Our teachers work that day, but kids aren't there. We have graduation Day like this year, and so kind of our inclement inclement weather plan or you know, whatever reason, if we have to.
Cancel school during the day too.
Previously we've had scheduled virtual day, we have some distance virtual days. We won't be scheduling any virtual days for inclement weather. Our inclement weather plan will include we have about five days built into our calendar, so if we if we're out, if we're out during the school year, it'll just be a we'll just be out of school.
We have five days built in. If we happen to go beyond those five days, which sometimes that happens in our state, what we would do is the first thing we would do is we would be add a day on that Friday before memorl Day that would be an in person class day. We'd make up that six day on that day, which we've done that before over the years, and then if it happened to be seven days, we would add that Good Friday would become a school day,
which I'm not sure when that. I think it's late March this next year, but so that's our plan for that. If we do have extended inclement weather days, we've got five days built into the calendar. We'll have an additional two days that we can change to in person duction if necessary for that. And then lastly, if it happens to go beyond that, what we would do is we would add some minutes to our calendar in the spring so that we would be sure and get out before
Memorial Day. We've you know, I know we all have stories about going to school after Memorial Day as a teacher, as an administrator, as a student, but just that's the world has changed and people are people have their plans and schedules and what that looks like, and so we want to make.
Sure we're out by that date. So I wanted to just.
Mention that revised academic calendar. Big takeaway is we won't have any distance learning days period we had We've previously had three on the schedule. We don't have any of those anymore, so I want to make sure people were aware of that. And then lastly, we had our we approved a renewed agreement with the City of Bartlesville for school resource officers. So that's and really no change to that agreement, just kind of clarified some things on the
funding of it. But we'll continue to have ten school resource officers in the district. We'll have two at Bartlesville High School just because of the size, and then we have one at every other school. And you know the intent of the program is that we have the same officer at that school all year just for relationship building and they try not to make any changes unless they absolutely have to. But that's been We're going to continue with that. I think we just clarified the funding a
little bit. Basically, the school district is responsible for an average of seventy five percent of the teachers the excuse me, the resource officer's salary, you know, the other twenty five percent, like this time of year when they're not in school, they're out working directly out in the city doing whatever needs to be done. They do assign one of us one resource officer in the summer for us for summer school,
but really that's really a special agreement. I know that was mentioned during the meeting talking about we've be kind of the model in the state for that, how we have utilized that program. I know I've spoken at several state state conferences that Kerry Auckleberry has as well, and it's just the.
Way the world has changed. It's just one of those things.
That I view that that resource officer program.
You know, I view that as a need, not.
A want anymore. So we're really thankful to have that in bartis Will. Thankful for the support to make that happen. So yeah, so those big three things would be Mandy Johnston joining the school board. We revised our academic calendar so no more virtual learning days, and then thirdly that approved that city bar agreement with the City of bartles Will. Thankful for our city council as well as city manager and their leadership and police chief to continue our school
resource officer program. So we'll have ten resource officers again, two at the high school and one at every other school, and then time's got a couple of other things, a few other things I'll mention. So we also talked briefly about we didn't have any policy change on cell phones. We've discussed it, you know, I've talked about the Anxious
Generation now for almost a year. I really encourage everybody to read that if they haven't all ready, which really just has the research now about the impact of cell phones and social media on all of us, not just kids, but all of us. And so we are going to be making a change in our cell phone policy in July.
We've talked about that the last two months. But really the big change is we're gonna make that at the high school level to make it where it matches the rest of our schools, where basically kids won't be able to have their school during the day period we have at the high school. They haven't used school lockers the last few years, and so now we will. We have lockers for all of them. Will be just like we have in our middle schools. We have lockers for them.
We'll check every kid will have a locker and if they have to bring their phone to school, they can put it in there before school starts and they can get it on the way out. So that's kind of how that's gonna work. And so which I'm really I know there's going to be some people get addicted to their phone. I think a lot of people do. And I hope that this will give us our kids a break during the day where they hope fun. It's going to be an adjustment for some of them. I hope
that some families will take advantage of that. Over the summer. I know, I hear more and more families talking about what their children and their cell phone, their smartphone, you know, just because I know your kid tells you that every
other kid has this, Well that's not true. You know, there's some families they want to make sure that they kids don't have access, they don't have just free reign on their phone, and you know when they have that free time, because boy just can just eat up your time. And so we were seeing the impact on that school. I think we're all seeing it across the world about the impact and so I know that's gonna be hard for some folks, but we were completely prepared for that.
I just you know, I know, just a convenience of texting, I know when I talked to for example, my school, my kids on my advisory council I visit to and when I visit with them about well, who do you hear from? And what do you do on your phone? If it's during the day, what is it? Well, A lot of times are hearing from the parents, and a lot of times it's not necessarily that relevant. I mean it's maybe you know, what's for dinner or whatever. I mean,
things that could be done outside of the school. It's convenient. I mean I understand that we I do, you know, I text my uh my family as well.
It's convenient thing to do.
But hopefully we can get into some better routines and better habits with that. And so I know that our parents, we received a great deal of support for that change. I know our staff has been involved in this too, because uh, you know, it's kind of like Tom, think about folks that are our age.
You know, if we were to.
Go when we went to school, if we were allowed to take you know, a guitar or radio or uh you know, uh uh.
If you didn't blow your class, you didn't go down class.
If you had all the things that you could bring in with you and had access to that during the day, it would be really hard to pay attention in class. And the reality is those phones, that's they have everything right there. I mean, it's it's it's it's computer more powerful than anything that we had. And so just the distractions that come along with that, just trying to remove that and so hopefully'll be able to give our kids and we don't give our kids a break. And we've
have made changes at the lower grades. You know, our middle schools, elementaries have done a.
Really good job with it.
Obviously, the age is different when kids having access to their phones, and so I think it'll be just a transition as kids grow, as they move it into the high school and this just makes sense for us to make it.
Do you have any metrics and show that you know things improved grade wise?
Well, no, I can't give you specific metrics. I can tell you just anecdotally. I know, like at Madison Middle School maybe when your daughter was there, it might have been after that.
I know that they made a change during.
The school year where kids basically if you had a phone put in your locker kind of thing. Uh, and it was it changed in terms of what their office referrals were in terms of what you're dealing with in the behavior, no doubt, Yes, yeah, no doubt too. I know that I substituted. I do a drawing and do a substitute day. And I was over at Madison last year. I think it was in a seventh grade English class all day and I was so tickled. I didn't even
realize that until the day was over about second. You know, I didn't see a kid looking out a phone on which I'm sure they're all threatened with their lives before I got there. Superintendents and so but you know, that's what a wonderful thing. I mean, you know, because it's so even right now, you go anywhere, just watch people driving down the road and they're looking at her phone, you know, and so we can do better, and so we can do better. Yeah, So we're I just want
to talk about that, be upfront with folks too. So I know we have we're completely prepared on the safety end. You know, we have a we we have a phone in every classroom, an actual phone like you have on your.
Desk, I plug into the wall. Yeah, it's interesting, you know talking to people about that.
You know, we're having our administrator's meeting the other day and one of our administrators our son will be a seventh grader, and was talking about, uh, you know. They had him practice using a phone and had to actually know his mom's cell phone number.
And that's another thing. People don't remember their numbers because it's all on your phone exactly.
Yeah, and so the kid had to remember the number, had the the phone, and then called mom on her cell phone and that was the first time he'd ever made a call that wasn't on a cell phone, which why would you, I mean, you know, there's no people don't have phones in their houses anymore too. So I think also for our parents is to be aware. We just can't assume things because you know, kids, it's a new world for them, so they actually practice that this summer.
It's like, well, that's probably a smart idea. But anyway, I'll.
Just mention a couple of things tome. But so those are kind of big things that are coming. But we'll change that policy in July and make sure everyone's aware of that too. If people are interested, we have new students enrollment they can they can enroll online.
That's where that process starts.
I also mentioned you know, because we've got a lot of folks that are enrolling with us. But our class sizes continue to improve, especially at our lower grade levels. I mean it's it's an average of one to twenty at the elementary level. Our AG program we added our fourth AG teacher and so we have a full time acteach at each middle school and two at the high school or Aviation project lead the way. Our STEM program
and construction continues to flourish. We have a job fare coming up next month July eighth, at four o'clock, and that's really for all o our hourly positions we'll need like teacher systems, special education systems. We can always use bus drivers, so it's a great opportunity to come. We'll have all of our people there as well. We should hopefully certified teaching wise, will be completely staffed at that point.
And then lastly, I'll just mention we're kind of closing out the big projects from our most recent bond issue twenty twenty three bond issue.
The two big projects.
For the expansion the renovation expansion and renovation of Wayside Elementary, which we've been in that for over a year. And then we are finishing up Ranch heis next month, and so it's on schedule and just beautiful. I walked through that this week and it's really walking through. I think
they're probably one of the biggest change. Like their library and their music and their art rooms are just beautiful and so really thankful for the community support because those are things that our kids really can learn and grow from.
Very good trip. Thank you very much for being with us. You bet, thanks, sir. Is it time to