BARTLESVILLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

he knew previously. He was an assistant from before us for years and had been to Canne Valley High School principal and you know, Athletic Director of Thad dill Beck, And like I said, all of our site principals really just good people that really care. They work hard. You know, stuff happens every day. I mean I'll just talking to a yeahs, you got sixty two hundred kids and you know,

over four hundred teachers and three hundred staff. I mean there's a lot going on, but they really are just here to serve and so it really helps for helps us just back the day to day great and it's really off to a good start. Probably the thing that the one thing that's the biggest difference for us this year has been that all of our kids can eat

for free breakfast and lunch. And it's really does my heart well to see it the first three days of school compared to the first three days of school last year. Our our child Anutrition department, Kimberly Carter, who also does a great job for us, they have on the lunch side, we had we ate two thousands, seven hundred and ninety four more lunches than we did the previous year the first three days, and then over seven hundred more breakfast

than we did. So you know, that just tells to me tells me that, you know, our kids are more kids needed to eat. I mean, they weren't getting access to that too, So that's really a good thing. I know. I was on a I did a little podcast with

Anthony Tucker yesterday. He does our internships at the high school counselor and Anthony was one of our students and matter of fact, I had him when I was in high school principle, and he talked about, you know, he was a kid that qualified for free RENEWSD lunch and kind of the stigma that comes along with that and how that just gone and so so now that all the kids have access to the to the food, so we're really excited about that. That's one of the biggest

changes that we've had. And then of course we were into a you know, facility wise, you know, construction wise, we've been working on facilitating our growth, and we moved into that Wayside School, which has been great really command Manhattan Construction, our architect and all of our team of course, our staff on making all of that happen. So we're using that facility. Wayside was one that where we were

on our class sizes. We were because of the number of kids that were there, we were out of space, and so therefore our teacher student ratio wasn't what we wanted it to be, so we were hiring like extra

teacher assistance and things to be in there. But now that we have space, we added three with about the same enrollment, actually a few less kids this year at the Wayside, and then we added three additional grade level teachers this year, so that just enables us to spread those classes out, and so their teacher student ratio is dropped by almost three kids per teacher. So yeah, there

are class sizes. Which is our overall elementary district class size, so from pre k to fifth grade, our average class size is twenty one. So that's we've been working hard at that and so and that doesn't conclude like our specials or counselors or any of those kind of things too. That's just our grade level class sizes. So really proud to do that. Glad we've been able to do that out.

I appreciate everyone's flexibility. On overt Wayside, we still have you know, we're using that facility, but you know, we're still finishing up the playground out front, and then we've you know, just so happened. Someone's building a house right next to the school that they've started to site. I guess the poor concrete this week which created some other issues for us, but we're just working through it. So but that's that's kind of the price of progress. Ranch Heights,

that construction project is underway. We'll be doing the same thing, same thing over there, and we're gonna open up in August of twenty twenty five. And then of course, you know our agriculture facility or ag facility, we're gonna have an open house on Sunday, September fifteenth at two o'clock. So Sunday, September fifteenth, at two o'clock, we'll be there for an hour. We'll have a you know, we'll have a little say, a couple of words, and mainly just want people to come in and see it and take

tours see the facility. It's really amazing. I know Blair's foundation board we met in there last week and they're able to take a sneak peek at it. But you know, in terms of the it's really a world class facility. You know, the indoor arena, classroom spaces, a commercial kitchen, a vet vet place, a couple of barns, one of which is air conditioned, you know, and then the two largest greenhouses of any school in the state of Oklahoma. So it's really a great facility. So glad our kids

are going to get to use it. And we've got the great leadership there as well, you know, with Marty Jones and his team. So that's a fun, fun thing. We encourage people to come. I know a lot of people asked about that, so it's a great opportunity to come see it, like on that Sunday, September fifteenth. And then I also wanted to mention something new. You know, we added a construction class at the high school and

kind of how that enrollment shook out. We have over ninety kids enroll enrolled in that class kind of spread out throughout the day and it's on campus at the high school. Doug Boudreau is teaching that course for us, and so we're pleased to be able to offer that to our to our kids. I could really think there's a need there no matter what you're going to do.

That's a good that's some good skills to learn. And we've they've been focusing a lot on safety right now, but they will be building things this year, so we're we're excited about that as well. And they also wanted to mention at our board meeting this week. Two things. One, we recognize some students, you know, Tom, which you've seen us do that before, which is always fun. Our Technology

Student Association have had a tremendous, tremendous year. Probably shouldn't try this by their name to say, Jonathan Laie, Andrew pan Addie Koonts. Let's see Isabelle Thorson. I think that's right. Yeah, that's true. Yes, I think I got them all to and uh and I'm forgetting one more, but it'll come to me here in just a just a minute. There's a fifth and I'm forgetting. But anyway that we were able to recognize them and Lollie Williams, she's the teacher

for their work. They went to the national convention, the Technology Student Association convention last week where they were all all on stage and and and recognized and they were considered a group of them were considered a national champion and their tour and a couple of them did did some things on their own as well. And then lastly at our board meeting, Carstad Proctor. That's it. I knew. Aunt to me, I could think of that kid's name

driving me crazy. Yeah, Margo's grandmother's gonna kill me if I can't get that right. So anyway, I also just wanted to mention that we are. We talked in our board meeting. We had a discussion item related to a book that we're doing a book study on. It's called The Anxious Generation, and we are. I talked about it at our State of the Schools, We've talked about it at our Back to School rally. I talked to both rotary groups about it this last couple of weeks as

well as our Best Friday Forum. And really what it is, It's a book. Jane Sears, a former colleague of mine, recommended it to me. I read it this summer and and quickly realizes that something that I needed to we

needed to dig deeper into. And we're talking about you know, cell phone use and social media and the impact that it's having on our kid really the impact that it's having on all of us, because it's something that obviously that has changed over the years in terms of what a cell phone the capability can do, as well as you know, social media also has changed, you know, going from something where maybe initially, you know, it's kind of nice to be able to see what your high school

friends did, or to kind of keep keep track of some first day of school picks, where now the impact that's having on our children and it's not good, and so we can do better. And so I know that Andy Saltzman's doing a community book study, She's hosting a couple at the Eatery next month. But because it's going to be something that not only you know, school we're a big part of it, but you know, our parents, you know, I think government, tech companies as well. It's

something that we all need to be talking about. And because I think we can do better for our kids, you know. And some of the recommendations that came out from the book, and I'll just share them here for people to be thinking about. One is, you know, kids, there's really no reason for them to have a smartphone before they're in high school. Two be no social media

before you're sixteen years old. Third one would be no access to a phone while you're in school, which obviously that falls on our end, and we're talking about different

options there. And then four is just some more child and independence and thinking about those things and thinking about how kids are growing out now and how easy it is to not interact with others, how easy it is to you know, to stay in your bedroom and play video games, and if you don't like something, you can easily unfriend somebody or not interact with them or and it's really I feel like we've got a generation of folks,

and not just kids, I'm talking about adults as well. Yeah, that they have really lost the ability to be present and so people are really thinking about other things about what's going on in the social media world, and that's that's that's not great and a lot of times that's not positive. So anyway, we talked about that, we're going to be continue to talking about that the school board level.

All of our administrative team. We're doing a book study on it, uh and we're looking at making some recommendations as something that I think that we need to It's I think it's one of the biggest challenges that we have as a society, and I think we can do better and I know that we can do better here in so anyway, I just wanted to share those things before I turned it over.

Hearing from our superintendent thinking through at the beginning of the year ways that they can get more involved, whether it's hosting interns or volunteering it. Just when you leave, you can just tell the energy is great. Everybody is ready to start the school year as a community. So we're just grateful that we have the opportunity to host an event like that for Bartlesville.

running next week, so it's a quick turnaround. They'll get out on the path and around their schools running with their teachers next week. We've got some great volunteer doctors Go Paul, Doctor Kyle Craig, and doctor high Tower are going to come in and do some sports physicals for us to make sure those kids are ready to go, and then we're gonna be doing some shoe fits, getting them brand new shoes. So next week's a really busy

week for that program. But the program usually ends with the Wool of Rock eight K. This year that falls over fall break, so that doesn't work out really well for our kids and our teachers and then our Bartlesvill Public School staff. So we are hosting our own brewin eight K and fun run October twelfth. So that's what we're gearing up for now. Is this new eight K that we're starting, probably going to start an end over at Madison Middle School, but it's going to be something

the whole community can participate in. We're going to try to highlight a lot of our teams, our SROs, our school nurses, and then our superintendent is of course going to sponsor that for us. Do you want to talk about your sponsorship for your staff?

about it. Then the last year, you know they started that, I beat the superintendent race, which I didn't really think much about at the time, but I ran into a kid yesterday. I was at band practice or maybe that was Monday morning, and he came up to me and said, so, do you remember me. I said, no, you have to help me with your name, you know. He says, well, I beat you last year, and you.

in there that surprised you, but surprised me. But you know, when you think about the number of kids that we have, and just overall thinking about our you know, our adolescence and the rate of self harm, how much that's improved, how much that has gone, how much that has gotten worse since from twenty ten to twenty twenty has tripled. And thinking about our boys, how much many of them are withdrawing from things and really kind of a failure

to launch. You know, think about the more and more think about you know, I can think of growing up, you know, when to get your driver's license, for example. People would I mean that happened on the first chance you could.