Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Welcome uncome weunkan.
It is time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust, and we have a truck mcquality and here from Bartlesville Public Schools. Wow, that school year went fast.
I got blink.
It's amazing. Yeah we are, Yeah, we're it's it's upon us. You're right, and you know tomorrow is our last day of school and then of course Friday night we're gonna have graduation. And uh, you know, Tom, I know your family came here. I think your youngest was in middle school and so yeah, she started out seventh grade at mentone message. Yeah, so I hope we served your family well and kind of helped her on the attorney Yeah, good deal.
She actually started really like going to school once we got out of Illinois and here, well good and she's thrived at National Honor Society and just a whole lot of things. And thank you very much for uh, your staff and your your your instructors, and just the welcoming atmosphere because there are a lot of people who move into town each and every years. I guess they're kind of used to that.
Yeah, they do.
We try to, you know, we're here to serve families, and just like I'm glad your daughter had a good experience and looking forward to I know she graduated from Track County last night and they did a great program out there. It's another opportunity for kids. And so yeah, so graduation is gonna be Friday night, seven o'clock, Custer Stadium o'clock, seven o'clock, we play the wind play.
Well, that's that's our plan. That's our plan, and uh.
Uh we encourage everybody to just be aware. Obviously this time of year, weather's always a concern when you have an outdoor graduation. But we will have an outdoor graduation. It is scheduled to start at seven pm. Uh, we may shift the time just depending on the weather. Uh, you know, and so uh we've had times where we've we've moved it up an hour or we maybe started a little bit later, and we want to do everything we can to try to have it on Friday night.
We know families are coming in and they've got reception schedule kind of all weekend, So probably the latest we start it would be probably nine o'clock, but obviously we're hoping we can start at seven o'clock. The whole ceremony takes about an hour and twenty minutes. We don't bring in a big speaker or anything because we know so you know, people are there to see their kid walk across the stage. You know, they're not they're not here to they're not here to hear from some some someone
come in speak to them. We do have some kids speak during the uh you know what, Yeah, it is.
We will have our senior class president and student body president. They'll give it. They'll give a short speech.
But yeah, So Friday night, seven o'clock, Custer Stadium. Hopefully the weather will be uh will be beautiful for us, but if not, we'll find a window in there. We'll find it to our window. We can have that ceremony. Worst case, if it is a complete washout on Friday, we'll find a window on Saturday and have it on Saturday. So yeah, but we were planning. We're really excited about It's always a fun night.
It's not like this is your first rodeo.
We've done this a bit.
That's exactly right.
You know, I've been I've been to a lot of graduations here. I guess this'll be my twenty fourth in Bartlesville. Yeah, and so we did have a in twenty nineteen. People think back back when we had all the flooding that year, we did have graduation indoors. Uh, And I decided during that time we're not going to do that again. And so you know, and the main reason is there are a lot of people who are with you on now
that's that's right. Yeah, I mean people you know, we don't want to have because we have to limit the number of people that can attend, and we don't want to do that. So we just decided it's better off for us to have it outdoors. And if we need to shift the time a little bit or even the date, we will do that. But yeah, we're have an outdoor graduation Custer Stadium Friday at seven o'clock and to stay We'll inform folks if we need to shift that time any keep.
It right here over most of this very same station.
That's exactly right.
K One's always a big supporter and always broadcasts that forest as well. They'll be the first ones to know if we make that, if we need to make some sort of a shift. Tom also was wanted to mention found out yesterday we got an update from our some
of our kids. You know, we're heavily invested in in STEM education, science, technology, engineering and math, and we had a handful of students for kiddos go to the International Science and Engineering Fair and we send kids every year that attend that.
Uh and so really excited to report.
That Jonathan Lie he actually finished third in Environmental Engineering, which is.
A really big deal we had.
There are over we have information on our website about the award and on social media, but there's over thirteen hundred students participate from sixty three countries, so it's truly an international event. So really proud of Jonathan for him to finish third place. And like I said, we had four other students also compete that performed well and had a great experience. Our science teachers travel with them. You know, science is a big part of our school. It's a
big part of our community. You know, there's a lot of retired engineers right here in Bartlesville and a big part of fabric in Bartlesville. So really continue to invest in that. You know, we also found out last week we were a project lead the Way Distinguished District. Continue to invest there where that's a sixth year in a row. We're the only one in the state of Oklahoma. There's
only nineteen in the country. So we continue to just make that part of what we do in terms of our STEM education and really proud of our kids being able to have that opportunity. You know, we were skied would have a ward meeting Monday night the weather. We ended up shifting it. We're gonna have a special bar meeting tomorrow at noon just to take care of that business. But typically that meeting we spotlight a lot of kids, you know, like our Science Fair kids I just talked about,
but like our spring sports. So we had a tremendous, tremendous spring and lots of different activities and I kind of want I want to.
Mention soccer specifically.
One that's a beautiful story.
Oh my gosh, it's unbelievable.
Yeah, our boys' soccer team made it to the semifinals and lost a heartbreaker, won to nothing. That was a fun night. I got to go down and see them play at Broken Arrow. I think it's been thirty years since we went to the semifinals, And.
Just a little perspective on that.
You know, we complete and we compete in the largest class in the state of Oklahoma, and that's based off of your student enrollment at the high school level. Football splits that up between six A one and two, but all of other sports are that's just the top that just six A. There's thirty two schools in it. And just to give you an idea on the enrollment discrepancy, our boys team in the first round, they went and played at Union and played Tulsa Union, and they have
an union. If you look at how many students they have at the high school compared to us, they have almost three thousand more kids than we do, and so we compete against them regularly, which obviously that can create some challenges. But our you know, our kids went and beat them and then one again in the quarterfinals and then played lost to Broken Earrol won the zero in the semifinals and Broken Earrol has four three hundred more students than to the high school students.
That we do too.
Yeah, it's pretty incredible when you think about put it in that sort of perspective. So really proud of our We have a ton of kids playing soccer in our community. Soccer is obviously a worldwide sport, but it's really.
Town you can't find an open soccer building.
That's exactly right.
It's really awesome, you know, and to see our kids, boys and girls. But our boys team, I think this is their fifth year in a row to make the playoffs. This is the furthest run they've had in thirty years. A really strong group of seniors kind of led the charge with that, and so that was really they really represented us well. And of course our other spring sports have done really well as well. You know, I think our girls tennis team was probably the next best finish.
They finished fourth in the state of Oklahoma. Emma Shelley, who's a sophomore, as a state runner up. She lost in three sets, so she's and she's the last of the Shelley girls. There's been three of them. One of them is playing tennis at Washburn and the oldest was a golfer. Actually she played golf at UCO. But they had a tremendous, tremendous season. Our boys finished, our boys tennis team last week finished ninth in the state. Our boys golf team boys tennis finished eighth in the state.
Boys golf finished ninth in the state. You know, they Jay wass Miller or sophomore. He won the six A East Regional down at Bailey and Golf and he shot a sixty six in the first sixty five in the first round tour.
He we just mind, that's really a fun group. They've got it.
He's a sophomore and there's three other freshmen that competed, so they've got a really chance to really be competitive in terms that you know that golf, tennis. Our softball team continues to have success. Coach Men's do a tremendous job. They once the state tournament, were quarter finalist in slow pitch softball. They went fast pitch in the fall, and last year they were also in slow pitch too, So
really track just finished up. Wesley Turner finished second in the pole vault, he's a sophomore, lost by six inches. And then Michael Murphy I think he was I came if he was fifth or seventh in the in the discus, he's a sophomore. And then Russell Miller senior, great great young man. He finished fifth and the eight hundred. Uh he ran that eight hundred which in I think you ran in the minute fifty five seconds, which that's pretty quick for two laps around that track. So anyway, uh,
spring sports really went well. Obviously had a tremendous, tremendous athletic season there, and I know also our I hope people got to see the spring production that lame is.
That was something that was really out.
I mean, it's incredible, it's it's it's it always blows me away. I'm always, I always when I watch our kids perform, I'm also reminded. I'm always reminded of how little talent that I have because it just blows me away the things that they can do.
It's really incredible. But they are so young.
Yeah, it's yeah, it's like I can't believe this is happening. But anyway, just really proud of them. It's really fun and it does my heart well to see them do all those wonderful things. And then lastly, just want to mention you know, I've continue I've talked about the book The Anxious Generation on here about every month since for a year, since I kind of brought this forward to our community.
It's important.
Yeah, last started that last summer with the State of the schools, and we've done book studies with our school board, with all of our administrators.
We've shared we've shared with parents.
I've done a couple of community book studies, just really trying to share talking about cell phones and social media and the impact on our kids and really not just our kids, on all of us. I mean, it's it's it's not healthy, and so kind of what some of the next steps in then. I mean, there's been discussion and legislation about talking about cell phones and schools. But I wanted to mention from that book, there's four recommendations
really for parents to be thinking of. I think it's empowered to parents to give them a comfort to say, you know, you, your kid doesn't have to have everything they're asking for about a cell phone, and so some of those recommendations are good, I think. I think the first one is kids don't need to have a smartphone before they're in high school. You know, they'll live without it and they can. Number two, they don't need to
be on social media until they're sixteen years old. I would argue even later than that, and that's a minimum. There's really no reason for them. There's really no reason for it. Third, kids don't need to have access to their cell phone during the school day, which I'll mention I want to follow up on that here in just a second and fourth. They need more. They need to get outside and have more unsupervised play. They need to get outside and and be with their friends and and
be with others and play and do that. It's important not just be thinking about the amount of time they can get if you're addicted to your social media phone where you're inside scrolling when you need to be outside, interacting with others, living life. But so kind of on our schools end, we've we have been working on this with our schools, kind of with.
Our elementary middle schools. We really like a good handle on that.
High school is a big is a little bit more challenging just because there's a lot of moving parts. But uh uh, you know, we're going to be moving forward to this upcoming school year. We're going to ban cell phones from schools period. So I mean, if they have them, we're gonna expect them, just like we do in our middle schools to be in their lockers. There's no reason for them to have them even at lunchtime between classes at all. I mean, they can they can pick up
their phone on their way out of the building. If they're going to track. County tech or going to an internship and they need to have their phone then, but other than that, they don't need to have it. So, uh, you know, families are thinking about when to get their kid a phone, just know that don't think they need to have one when they go to school because they don't. You know, we have a We have got a telephone
in every classroom. We do have you know, we we we've got you know, we've got all the safety precautions set out for that too.
So I just wanted to just mention.
That we'll be our board will be we'll be updating our school policy for the upcoming school year, but just wanted to share that with people as well. And then also next year, we're not going to have any virtual days where everything will be either in person or not, so we'll have we we've you know, that kind of started back during the pandemic and we had some scheduled days and then we've reduced those numbers that we've had so that we did some teacher training during that time,
we did some professional development. But we're going to we'll be probably next month will be taken that to our school, our school board to update that we all of our days will be in person instruction days and even when we have bad weather, so those are going to be those are all going to be in person days as well. And then I'll just highlight a couple of other things too. Staffing wise, we'll be feeling we're kind of rounded out our leadership team. We've had a couple of assistant principles
that we've hired. Gretchen Watson, who's going to be a new assistant principal at the high school. She's taught for the district. She's a math teacher since twenty fourteen. This year she worked as a counselor former Barnsville High School Teacher of the Year. She'll be assistant principal there at Bartlesville High School. And then Sharon Southwick. Sharon is going to go back to Madison as an assistant principal. She was in that role previously and kind of stepped back.
She had a granddaughter, I had some some health issues, and so now that that's going well, she's ready to kind of get back in some leadership roles. So really fortunate to have them. And then we've hired our fourth ad teacher is going to We've got that person that position filled as well. What's really excited about that our project over at Ranch Heights is our new edition is complete.
We're in the process.
As soon as the kids and teachers go home this sleek, we're gonna start doing some renovations over there and we'll be in those those new spaces. And then lastly, just wanted to mention the folks too on pre K you know, for our four year old enrollment. If kids are we really want to know if you're coming, so we encourage it'll please let us know. We have expanded and renovated, you know, a couple of our largest elementaries, you know
Wayside we're in. We're just finishing up Ranch Heights too, so that's enabled us to hire more staff.
So our class sizes are really good. I know I was looking at.
Waystside and Ranch Heights specifically with those four year olds. Their class size currently the campus twenty, but they're currently they're between fifteen and nineteen. Is as class size for our four year old programs at Waystside and Ranch Heights, and those positions all have a full time teacher, a
full time assistant. And also just remind people we have you know, we'll have free meals for all kids for breakfast and lunch too, so so really, if they're interesting, if they think they're coming, we encourage them to contact the school because we need make sure we're staffed appropriately. But once again, Friday night, graduation, Custer Stadium, seven o'clock.
All right, be there, B Square. Thank you very much, mister maccaule. I appreciate you being here with