Three six. Yeah, Mondy, good morning, good morning, welcome, welcome, welcome in this time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you try stand we have with this year our friends from Bartisville Public Schools we have are Superintendent Chuck McCauley. And we also have probably the best cheerleader for any program I have ever met, in my wife, the FFA Marty Jones. Hey, guys doing, gentlemen, Hey, we're doing great. Thank you for having us. And I brought mister Jones along
with us. It's National ff A week and so we they presented at our board meeting, and I want to give mister Jones an opportunity just to brag about what we've got going on with our f FA program right here in Boultlesville. Well that that's going to be a long list, so we could be here. How are you doing, Martin, I'll try to keep it. Oh, you're doing. We're doing great. Things are really awesome. We're excited this week to celebrate National off of a Week. You know, I
always like to look up a little bit of history. The very first National off Fay Week was celebrated in nineteen forty eight by the Board of Trustees at the national level, and so ever since then, local programs have been celebrating nationalf Fay Week, highlighting the success of their students and their involvement in the community. So we're excited that we get to celebrate that here in Bartlesville.
You know, we started our program in twenty nineteen, and so this week is all about celebrating some of those successes from our students and then giving back to the community. We did the board meeting on Monday night, got to celebrate with our school board, and yesterday we got to interact with some members of our community. We stopped by a local nursing home and had some succulent plants so we could give away and hopefully just be able to spread some positivity
with some happy grams and some words of encouragement to them. We're doing our staff appreciation day to day and so excited that we could to celebrate, you know, together with our community there in the school system, of our staff and all those support groups that help us with our students every single day and allow them to be successful. Thursday, we've got our Chupter meeting. We're doing a riveting game of dodgeball. Our students are very excited about some dodgeball,
so I love it. Most of them are very excited. They're warming up their arms already, but they're excited and we get a chance to come together as a chapter and celebrate this week and then Friday, we're encouraging everybody community and our school staff to wear blue or gold or a combination of both. If you've got some old FFA shirts or something like that that you can wear. But we'd love to just be able to have lots of blue gold
in our community and be able to celebrate this National Affair Week. This is great, This is really awesome. You know, there were two highly coveted jackets when I went to school. One was the varsity jacket. The other one was the big blue FFA jacket, and there are a lot of lucky Cusses who had both. Absolutely absolutely, man, you're sat In Chack. This has been a great program and a great addition to our school. There's
no doubt. It's pretty incredible when you think about this is our fifth year of the program and it all starts with leadership, and Marty was our you know, we hired Marty in the spring, and prior to that year,
and we knew that we had some interest in the program. I personally didn't know if we would ever be to a place where we would need three teachers, but we quickly got there and that was really I know, talking to mister Jones when we hired and we got started, a lot of the decisions that we're making regarding the program were fifty year decisions, really long term when
you think about it, and it just has obviously exploded. You know, we quickly recognize that we need to hire a second teacher, Cameron Dale, that came in and has done a great job, and then this year Ashley Darso started with us. So we have three full time teachers working with kids eighth grade and above and providing some great opportunities for students, which that's what we're all about. I know that we're making some tremendous strides on the workforce,
get our kids ready to go to work. You know, we want our kids to be college and career ready, and we really think that this opportunity for kids helps in both of those areas. I know the kids that go through that program, I know just interacting with them Monday night before the board meeting, kids are very well spoken. Their communication skills are strong. I mean they have that, they have the type of skills that anybody would
want to hire them. And so I'm just so pleased that we have this this program for our kids, and so thankful for our community because part of that. We started the program with just mister Jones in a classroom, and so I mean literally that's what that's what we did, and things quickly. You know, there was strong interest in it. I know that we had lots of community members. I had lots of former students or uh, you know, mister mcaulay, why didn't you start to us We're in school and
so uh, but we we got it started. And so obviously we have this part of a couple of bond issue packages, and we built a classroom and shop space right next to our indoor facility next on Bartsville High School's campus. Uh. And then now obviously our outdoor facility agriculture facility that is by along Shawnee, which we're substantial completion is scheduled for right around first of April,
which they are working on the greenhouses right now. So if you happen to drive down drive by the facility, you can see that and so that all the weather looks great and we have all they have all the materials that they need to finish the building. So then we think our kids are going to be in that by the end of the school year. And it's really really exciting about what our kids will have the opportunity to do now and also
in the future. Wow, that is tremendous. And to think, you know, they hurried in and then you had to get two buildings, I mean a lot of space. I guess it is. Mister McCaulay said, you know best, I think this job is. I tell people all the time, I have the best job in the world. We get to interact with the best community in our state and our country. The community has been
so supportive of our ACT program. We have phenomenal students, and honestly, I'm really blessed to have two fantastic teaching partners that keep me corralled and keep us focused every single day and working with students. We hope that we can just continue to instill some of these really good life left of students. We
hope that they, you know, take some knowledge of agriculture. We know most of them aren't going to go into production agriculture, but we want to give them as many experiences as we can so they can ultimately become informed consumers in our community and be a great, you know, invested citizens here in Bartleschooll. That's important to us, and we're going to continue to grow our
program in those aspects as well. One thing is really nice is that I have to cover the junior livestock shows that's coming here in a little bit and also the County Fair. And you know, you're always going to see Copin, You're always going to see Dewey, You're always going to see Candy Valley. But shows Ziam, here's Bartlesville right there making the appearance and representing and it really looks good. It looks good seeing all those kids from all those
different schools. And the thing is there's quite a camaraderie once once they get out there in the paragraund It's like, hey, what are you doing? How's this working for you? You know, they compare notes and then I realized that, you know, when you get into business or even in agriculture, everybody shares a little bit about what they know in order to make the product stronger for everyone. Absolutely, you know, we really try to teach
our students about being informed consumers. We want them to know where their food comes from. That's important. We hope that we can develop some of those communication skills, being able to have a conversation with somebody who they may or may not know. That's that's important. Those are important skills that our students. We hope that they learn from our program and we give a unique opportunity for them. Students found a home in our ACT program, and so that
was the need for more facilities, bigger and better. It is because the need continues to grow and that home that our students are part of continues to grow. I know we do a big student spotlight, but I understand we got some swimmers that did anything. Yeah, we do. I think this week is really it's a great example of what our schools have to offer for our kids. You know, we're talking about our national FFA week and that's a nationally recognized program now, so proud of mister Jones and his team.
You know, on the athletic side, that's right, our swim teams. I've heard of debate that we won forty one or forty two state championships and swimming, So I'll just say over forty. But our girls won. Our girls won the state championship, which is not a surprise. They look, we're a half point from winning it last year and they have two the two returning individual state champions from the team. They had two girls win two events
you can only could meet in two individual events. We had a freshman and a sophomore that both won both events that they were in set state records and so they'll be very good for years to come. Our boys team finished second
their runners up, so really proud of that. Over on the athletic side, fine arts wise, we recognized our all state music students Monday night, and so we have kids in our vocal music program, our instrumental band, and also an orchestra, very strong programs that are big parts of what we do and so really proud to recognize them as well and give you good and lass. Kids are involved in multiple things. I know our Luke Olsen one
of our all state orchestra students. You know, he's one of our outstanding swimmers, and I know on they over in our FFA program, I mean we have our kids that are also rules you know, big parts of our football program or all part of it too, so really together. Yeah, I'm really proud of that. And then I'm also continuing on the academic side as well. Our Madison kids, our Math Counts program. They won their
regional competition. Actually they weren't unable to compete last year. They won this area's region, but this year they had to go to the Southwest because it conflicted with our district Science fair. Yeah, so the kids they went over there and won that, and so now they'll qualify for the state competition. And we just found out in the last couple of days too, we have two Academic all Stators. There's only one hundred of those in the state of
Oklahoma. We've got to that's right, Lauren Lee and John Ortiz, a couple of seniors. And we have multiple kids that have the academic qualifications to qualify, but we had two that were selected, and there's only a handful of schools that have more than one kid selected, and a lot of schools don't have anybody selected as academic all Stators. So it's really been a great week, I think, just to kind of show all the different opportunities for
our kids on kind of whichever direction you want to go. And I did want to update just a couple of things to moving along. There is next week we are hosting our two big things. But one I want to mention specifically is our pre kindergarten and kindergarten roundup that's on Tuesday and also on Tuesday from five thirty to six thirty at all of each of our elementaries and we
have six. I know it's a big decision for parents on when to start school, and so if you have a kiddo that is going to turn forward before September first, and you're not sure or you are sure, either way, we encourage you to go to the school. There's an opportunity to visit with the principal, the teachers to really see what school is like. So we offer full day pre k at all of our schools, and so it's from five thirty to six thirty on Tuesday. Parents will have the opportunity they
can enroll right then. We also know that some families they choose to keep their kids home and maybe they start in kindergarten, which is fine, and so they'll have the opportunity to see what that's like. And some kids even choose to wait until they're in first grade. But we're opening up our elementaries on Tuesday because we know there's lots of families that really can use that resource. They need that additional support being at school and make sure they've got good
meals for our kids and transportation, all those different types of things. And really it's a good start for them getting ready to print their elementary school because you know they're going to be there for seven years, and really good academic preparation for them. Also wanted to mention on Monday, Conical Phillips is hosting a they're putting on a math and science night for middle school kids. It's called hands On, hands On, minds On Event, and this is the
first time they've offered it after COVID. We've got this started a few years ago, but it's over at Madison Middle School at six point thirty for every middle school and even if you're a kid that doesn't go to Bartlesville, you're a go to a private school or your homeschool, or you're in the area
that's come on over. Conical Phillips is a great job. They feed everyone, they provide pizza, They have drawings for kid I think they end up giving up two or three laptops at the end, but they bring in their folks that are in their young engineers or those folks that are doing some really neat things to interact with kids parents and so really encourage folks, any middle school age family. We encourage them to come on Monday at six point thirty.
And then also just wanted to share just a couple of things if we have time, just a couple of things too. So thinking about this is an exciting time. We have a lot of things going on that we've talked about right now as it's gonna be a spring break here before you know it. But obviously speaking of the pre k in kindergarten role that we're preparing for next year, and so as we think, we think about those things too.
You know, I think our FFA program, our AG program has been by any measure, has been a great success and we're so proud to have that part of our school. We've also provided additional opportunities for kids. We've also always had the Fine Arts program, but over on the STEMS side and in career tech ready side, you know, thinking about it, we have our AG program was within Bartlesville School. Our STEM program, which you know
is nationally recognized. We have four different levels of computer science. We are adding UH in terms we have green architecture, Civil engineering we're we're adding at Bartlesville High School on campus UH and now all of those in pre engineering that's all gonna be housing our campus. Students will not be going over to Track County Tech for part of that. They're gonna be housed at Bartlesville High School.
So we'll make sure that as people are making choices, especially I I was meeting yesterday, even at the middle school level, to be able to offer these courses, whether they're computer science or architecture or civil engineering, kids can get exposed to that right here at Central and Madison Middle School. So
as they're making choices on enrollment, to think about that. You know, till we talked about our construction course we're going to offer that, We've we've kind of the first thing we did was we put it together a course description and and shared that with our kids as part of the enrollment PROSS. We've had over eighty kids select that, so that's enough to say we're going to offer. It's at Bartlesville High School. So we're gonna start with a construction
course it's going to be housed on our campus. You know, our long term vision for that program is eventually we'd like to have a program excuse me, where our k kids are building a home a year. That's going to take us a while to get there, but we're getting started. We felt like carpentry was a place to start because they'll get exposed to several different trades, and we really think that program has a lot of promise and that's all
gonna be housed on our campus at Bartlesville High School. Or aviation program has gone from actually high tower excuse me. We went from a year ago she taught a part time schedule. This year she's teaching full time aviation. Next year, we're going to need more than one teacher to teach the class because we're gonna it's grown and it's developed, and we're seeing that there's a need
for kids that are interested in being a pilot or drones. But then secondly, also over on the mechanics side, and so we're going to open up a pathway for kids to take that over on the canon side. You know, there's such a it's such a viable job opportunities for kids in that career right here, especially with American Airlines right down the road that we can provide for our kids. So anyways, want to share all those different opportunities that
we have that are you know, right here on our campus. And uh, we'll continue to obviously hit on the academic sides as well. You know, we had over two we had two hundred and eight kids last year that that scored three or better on an AP test on their so that's a college level test that they took and passed it to get college credit. For those
are our students. So I know a lot of times we sit here we talk about all these new opportunities for kids, but we have obviously, we know a very strong option for many of our kids is going on that college, that college bound route, and we want to make sure they're ready for that as well. Alrighty, I want to thank you both for coming in today.