Good morning, good morning, good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time now for community connection right here on KAY one, the one you trust stand there. We're visiting with the Bartlesville Public Schools so Superintendent Chuck McCauley, and also we have Blair ls in with the foundation today.
Good morning, we're all in attendance. Good morning, Tom. Yeah, thanks for having us. I think I think we're all ped up today. Blair has a few things upcoming events to share.
Sure, sure, let's do it.
Happy to do it. So, first, we've got Homecoming coming up, which is just in a few weeks. We're going to be well, there's the homecoming parade that's going to be downtown on October the third, so we're excited for participation in that. And then we have the homecoming game is on October the fourth, from four to six pm. Before the game, we're going to be hosting an all alumni so any Bartlesville alum can come to Cooper and Mill from four to six and hang out together and get
ready for our bruins to take the field. So we're excited to host that. Then we'll have a table at the event to just do some alumni engagement kind of stuff. So we just this morning on our Facebook page released a great video that Anthony Tucker and our broadcasting teacher Scott fromire put together. I'm welcoming all of our alumni back home for homecoming.
That is really a nice touch.
We're excited to have everybody back, and we have a lot of alumni and attendance every year, but it's nice to kind of focus on them and highlight them this year.
Yeah, that'd like the Metion two on the parade, which is that Thursday evening August October third. If folks are interested, if there's community folks that are interested in being involved in the parade, if they want to have a float, there is registration they can do. That's on our website, so front page of our website, there's a way where they can submit an application to do that.
Well. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
Yeah wow.
Yeah.
And then following that October the twelfth, you hopefully have heard, but we're having our first ever Bruin eight k and fun run. So this year you might remember Bruin's on the Run always does an eight k. It's typically a supporting run the streets. That's kind of our season end race. That's what all of our kids are training for, is
that very hilly eight k race with their teacher mentors. Unfortunately, this year it is over fall break, which conflicts with our fifth graders, our teachers, and the rest of the Bartlesville Public School staff. So we're hosting our own event the week before fall break on that Saturday, starting and
finishing at Madison Middle School. It's going to be an ak and a fun run starts at eight thirty and our superintendent, as part of his staff wellness initiative, is sponsoring the race so that all of our BPS staff can enter for just the cost of our T shirts.
Nice. Yeah, those shirts really turned out. They treat great. Yeah, I know that. I think the deadline to register to get your shirt is upcoming. I think it's on Sunday, maybe the twenty.
Second that you have to register, and you can find the registration on our foundation website or just googling bruin eightk, but registered by Sunday to guarantee that T shirt, which is a great long sleeve tech shirt, and then we have a lot of fun events, so we're hoping that a lot of our elementary school kids will come out and see our bruins on the run fifth graders participating
in this race. But we're going to have some events like we had last year, which is Beat the Soup, So any student that beats our superintendent in the ak will get a Beat the Soup t shirt, which they take a lot of pride in wearing.
I understand the sup training extra heart, I.
Hope, so I have that I have been, I have been.
And then this year, just to add some fun to it, we're going to have it past the Principal, so all of our elementary school students who run in the fun run and past their principal will get some sort of a prize.
Great, this is fun. Yeah, it's exciting. We're really looking forward to having the event. Obviously it's going to be we'll start and end over at Madison Middle School and kind of run through some neighborhood over there as well as on the Pathfinder run by Past Independence as well kind of a turnaround spot. And it's gonna be a
lot of fun to be in October. Like Blair said on October of the twelfth, and I know there's a lot of folks out there that are like me that have college football is a big part of their saturdays. They should know that. I'll clombon State. That's a bye week for them. Uh, and then the Sooners play Texas, but they don't kick off till two thirty, so there's plenty of time to come out.
Uh.
There is an opportunity to sign up just to walk, just to walk a mile, or also if they just want to volunteer, if they can contact Blair. You know, we always need people out to help direct traffic, point people to go which direction. And it's really going to be a great event. A lot of kids, a lot of teachers, a lot of staff, it's a lot of it's it's gonna be it's gonna be fun. And you typically that time of year it's the best weather and the best best weather of the year, you know that
mid October, So really really excited about that. And then I want to mention this a couple of things. Also at that same week, that homecoming week, we'll have different dress up days like we always do, but we'll also
our elementaries will have the Bruin Mile. It's on that Wednesday, October second, which is really a fun event, uh for all of our kids, all of our well typically it is third, fourth, and fifth, but I think now they kind of open it up to a lot of any elementary kid that wants to come, which is kind of really I think philosophically how a cross country program runs, and we have tons of kids that anticipate and I
think that's just David Air's leadership. He wants kids to be there and to come be a part of something. I know they took I think two buses to Muscogie the other day because they had so many kids that were running in the event, which is really fun. But that's kind of a good it's a good event for them to be a part of, to run, get used to, and it's a recruiting tool as well for mister Ayers
in terms of that bruined mile. And then of course I mentioned the homecoming parade, which would be on that Thursday, October third, So that's just two weeks away. We finally have a home game, home football game this week, the way our schedule fell, and then well yeah, finally, no kidding, yeah, and then you know, roild the road next week and then back again at home and that's when we start
opening up. Next week, we open up district play, which is that's when those games count towards playoff seedings and so forth. Kind of continuing on the fall sports, Uh, you know, I talked a little bit about you obviously, we got football that's going on as well across country.
They start up on their events having a very successful season again, but our volleyball and softball areolleyball girls they're up to number six in the state and our softball girls, I think they're up to they won they had a sweep last night and they've won twenty games as well. You know, those two programs collectively, it's probably the best start we've had, and I mean it's been a long time, probably twenty years in terms of those two teams together. So
they're really a lot of a lot of fun. They're a lot of fun to watch. Hopefully, I know our volleyball girls will hopefully to be able to host a regional here in a couple of weeks. And it's really not just at the high school level, but their feeder programs they're they're you know, they're junior varsity and junior high. I know, continue to see especially volleyball them continuing to win tournaments and have very successful years. Just a lot
of kids participating and that's what we're after. Whatever. I really don't care what kids are involved in, but they do need to be involved in additional things. I know that our band program, they have their first contest is coming up Saturday. I anticipate they'll be very successful there. They've been working really, really hard. You know, we talked about we had our AG open house this past Sunday. Had a great we had. I didn't know how many
people were there. It seemed like there was several, but then, of course, knowing our AG staff, they kept tracking. They had about two hundred and fifty people attend our open house on Sunday, which was really a lot of fun just to show that off. I served on the excuse me, the our best board of directors and we had our board meeting there yesterday. It was able to show that off to different folks around the community too, which is
always a fun, fun thing. So yeah, so things are going, you know, just kind of a typical false start to the school year. A lot going on. I did want to mention also, we had our board meeting this Monday, which is pretty routine meeting that we do this time of year, but we continued our discussion on the book study The Anxious Generation. We've done that now if at the board level for two months in a row. We
continue to talk that with our administrators. I know there's a community book study that the Eatery is hosting tonight. I know Jennifer and I are participating in. So this is the book is The Anxious Generation. And what A'm talking about is the impact of cell phones and social media on all of us. And there's some recommendations in the book and I'll repeat those that come out because it's really impacting. It's not just kids, it's impacting adults,
it's impacting all of us. One would be, you know, kids don't need a smartphone before they're in high school. Secondly would be, you know, they don't need to be on social media until they're sixteen. I could probably argue you'd be okay to be that even older than that. And then third in terms of not having access to their cell phone at school, and we're working on that at the district level. And then fourth is just far more childhood independence, thinking about when kids start to do things.
I know at our administrator meeting last week we had over thirty of us and we were talking about this that factor about when you know, when were you first allowed to play un supervised and many of us there was no one in the room that was beyond seven or eight years old, where now a lot of time you're talking about kids are in middle school. I mean we're they're just doing things, you know, kind of that
doing things later and later. Even their their interest level and getting a driver's license seems to be later and later. Yeah it is, and so yeah, it's it's just a it's a uh, you know, kids need to uh you know, we need to help them along and get them ready for the real world. We're so tight to them because it's so convenient to have that constant communication with them, and that's not necessarily healthy. So we're we're having that,
continuing to have that conversation. I know, next week we've got our big meeting we have with our district Parents Support Group leaders, so we'll have over fifty parents and we're going to continue this conversation to get feedback from them. I think our parents are looking for help with this because it's a new world. You know, we're growing up with, you know, what what people can do with their cell phone,
the social media and it's really not healthy. Uh, you know kids in terms of adults also just kind of losing that ability to be present with one another. And so when you look at some of the research that's in the book that Anxious Generation, I want encourage everyone to read it. We'll continue that because it's something that it's it's impacting everyone across the world, and we can do better, and we know that one way to do better is to bring awareness to the matter. So I think, Tom,
I think I got through my list. I will mention one other thing too. Over at Wayside Elementary, I know we've obviously been in their expanded building. They are finishing up the playground out front after I was by there this morning, and we'll be you know, kids are excited to be able to they still have their own playground in terms of a new space for their playground, but
they'll be using that as well. And then I'll also mention with that additional space, you know, we have our elementary teacher to student ratio in terms of their grade level is now one to twenty. Yeah, it is. We've had to you know, we've had to add some space because we've had increased enrollment. And so now that we've had that we've been able to add more staff so that we have that better student teacher ratio. I know several folks, I'm going to use Wayside as an example,
just because they're large enrollment and limited space. Several teachers that I've talked to the last few weeks talking about having you know, eighteen nineteen kids in their class, which has been a relief, the lowest class they've ever had. You know, some of them might have had twenty six or more in the past, and that's a big, huge difference. So it's really really glad that we've been able to provide that space so the wee can staff those appropriately.
So yeah, once again, So it's it's September, off to a great school year and looking forward to homecoming in a couple of weeks.
So I need to ask you this question about every year when we come back to school, there's always something in the air, and sometimes it's a sneezer, a sniffle, but this year, unfortunately, it's a cup. Right. What's our status?
Yeah, so we've had we've released that information. You know, I don't know the exact number, Tom, I know that we had basically had a case at least one case at age school, and so we just make sure all of our parents are aware of that and give them the resources that they need. It's interesting, you know, I know that I saw Saturday there was a I think it was South Dakota and Portland State college football game was canceled because of an outbreak of whooping coughs. So it's interesting.
I don't know why.
I don't know, you know, I'm not a medical person, but yeah, but we have that here. I saw the DOE. He had reported yesterday that they had that, So in our area, that's something that is, unfortunately that's going around.
Yeah, I thought that was one of those things that had been all but eradicated to. And I know, I know there was a big surprise when you well.
Yeah, exactly. I haven't heard that that in a long time. Yeah, you know, but I do, I know that we've I know, I got my flu shot the other day. I'm hoping this year is a mild year for flu as well, but we'll see how We're all kind of hoping for that. That would be like, that'd be great for everybody.
Well, thanks for telling us what you can on that, and remember homecoming is coming. It's a big deal, especially alumni, and you know, be prepared because you're going to be celebrated, folks, and it is going to be a great time. It's going to be great to have folks coming back and who might not have been year.
So many great changes and so many improvements around the district.
So except working with an alumni association.
Yes, so it's the Alumni Association, which is a program of the Public School Foundation that's kind of posting this and we're actually hoping the class of nineteen seventy four will be back for their fiftieth nion that same weekend, so they're getting a whole tour of the high school and everything. So it'll be great.
Well I am, but it kind of reinforced it. Thanks for being here today, appreciated. Thank you,