Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. Here's a time now for our community connection right here on K one, little one you trust and Claire Bartley is with us here with pants Independence, and that means that race is coming up very very soon. Now you're doing, young, lady, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's always great to have you in here, neighbor. We've got a
great event coming up. It happens every year about this time. Out this time, Yes, people start stretching, getting limbered up and ready to run a lot. Hopefully they've been training for a while so they're ready and walking a little bit too. You can do that too. Tell everybody about Light
it Up Blue. Okay, well, light it Up Blue. We started in the month of April because we're trying to promote autism awareness, autism advocacy and autism acceptance, so we usually have it at close to the end of April, and this year it's on April twenty second, which is this Saturday. The fun run the five k starts at eight o'clock am and the fun run at eight fifteen and it's a lot of fun just to go to Pantsy Independence right there the old Will Rogers School and very nice facility by the way.
Yeah, it's getting better all the time, making all kinds of little tweaks and improvements there. I see, yes, And we've got new windows in and we're looking forward to the summer getting bathrooms and flooring and all kinds of stuff. Very good, very good. Now, now when we do the light up the Blue, this is a great way to raise awareness. But it does a lot of other things too, doesn't it. Right, So the funds that come in from lat that Blue help us with our summer
programs. We do a seven week summer program for our students and it helps with scholarships and paying for field trips and just general supplies for the summer. Oh gosh, I gotta tell you. There are people who have who have moved to our town simply because as to independents exist, and that's that's really remarkable. It is. We're pretty unique in the state and that we take
children with all different levels of autism. It makes a big difference for a lot of families because they can hold their jobs and their children um start to succeed, and so that it's a big draw. Those little successes every day it's whether it's what it's really all about. You know, when all of a sudden the aha comes on. We'll look at that. Oh I got it. There's a victory, and those victories are pretty commonplace there, and that's a great thing. Right. Yes, we we live for those days
where someone makes a little progress and moves forward. Oh yeah, it's great. And this is a way you can move forward, one foot at a time. Now, can people still sign up for the race? Yes, they can sign up all the way until race days. Oh so, well, we usually close maybe the website. Sometimes we close the website the night before. But you can register when you get there. Okay, good,
What is registration? What's the fee? Um? For the five case thirty dollars for the fun runs twenty five and then for um if you just want a T shirt, it is twenty. Oh there you go. We have something new this year that oh gosh, yes, she brought the visual leads. How's this going? The ladies were talking about that last week. They've been kind of danced around from yard to yard. They have been a little
bit so this year. One of our committee members had the idea of putting pinwheels in people's yards and then having people go online and they can donate to get a move to someone else's yard. But they've been pretty popular and they're actually really eye catching, so I've been leaving them a while, so we've got the kind of spread all over we'll be picking up starting to pick them
up later this week. So well, I've been seeing them, yes, and there's several people waiting for theirs, and they'll go out hopefully today, and then we'll probably pick them up Thursday because then we're gonna line Frank Phillips with the pinwheels and the signs and it'll be you know, really really cool looking for them races, It really will. And now this race is great. I don't think you've ever had a really rainy, rainy, rainy day.
You have for that, we've had cancel one time, but the rest usually been kind of like this, you know, cool in the morning, a little hotter in the afternoon, just ideal for the racers. They like it when it's just that in between right right, when it's just cool. They don't want to sweat too much. But yeah, I don't want no, no, you don't want to pull a muscle. That's never a good thing. So pans the independence. How long have we been in our community
here, Well, it'll be eleven years in June. We're really I know, you went from new kid on the block to establish just like that till eleven years and down. Now we've got a new building. More of the new building, a newly renovated building like that. Everything you got, those computers moved down to the other end of town. There's a lot more room. Oh yeah, yeah, we spread out. Oh that is really cool. You know. It's a just a neat little facility that you have there.
It's right there on Frank Phillips Boulevard about what the forty seven, forty six twenty right there by the little creek, right and you can't miss it. I am please, folks, for the love of all things good, slow down when you're in the neighborhood. That's all I ask YEA. Yeah, because we get folks thinking that that's the drag strip sometimes and can't do that. Yeah. We've actually asked the city recently to slow the slow the speed down for the whole day because we just it's not worth it. You
have too many little kids it might like to run. So yeah, and you know, if you put in thirty they think it's still fifty right, and I don't know why that is, but we're just we've just been lucky so far, Yes we haven't. We like to stay lucky, they too now past the independence is that like she had been around for eleven years, and we are a special school that it deals with the children in the spectrum
of autism and we kind of meet him where they are. Yes, we start from where they are and we take the baby steps that they need to take and they can go at their own pace and make progress as they as they're able. We have a lot of students who who really do well. We have several applying for trick any Tech this year, and we have kids that are working in the community. So it's this is this is please with everything. This is something eleven years ago our community probably couldn't wrap their arms
around. No, it was I mean we started, you know, with one student, so it's definitely gone yeah. Yeah, from one student in a little daycare room to a big building indeed, and a lot of success stories too. And this is a great way folks to kind of get introduced to all the different ways that pats to independence lead others to independence. By participating in the race or the walk. The walk is a hoot, you
know, by your house sometimes. Yeah, we can see them anyway right there on the path fighter and they have fun and and this is just a really good fun exercise in order to show you support. Now you're you're not doing that virtual thing where everybody you know, we're not doing that anymore. We don't have to anymore. Yeah, that's a good thing. The racers
are thankful for that time. Sure they are. I mean, people can race virtually if they want to, and they can post it to our Facebook page, but it won't be part of the No, it won't be counted as part of the race. The racers have their own kind of community and and they're always looking to meet new people. But it's it's one of those things where everybody shows up and the gang's all here, Oh hey, we
got a new one, and they're very welcoming. And the foot racing community is just really something else because they're not competing against each other, they're competing against their own times. But they sure welcome the company. Oh yeah, we have a lot of people that have come back year after year, and so that's that's fun because you get to see them. A lot of them are collecting the T shirts. T shirt and speaking of light up there right day, I love that. You definitely want to get a T shirt.
You do. If you don't like to run, you can still get a T shirt. Or maybe you got a hammy, or you got a little tingle in the ankle, or you just want to come out and to say watch the runner. If you're welcome to do that. You know something I'm good at that. Yeah, there's something at which I can excel is to watch people run right comment, well, cheer them on, cheer them on. At sixty three, my running days are done and in some but my
goodness sakes, it's always great to have you here. What's the website so folks can take a look www. Dot paths to Independence dot org, dot org dot org and you'll see la that blew the race and you can go register. You can get pinwheels, T shirts, whatever you want to do. Can they call the school? Yes, you can call the school nine one night through three, six ninety three zero two. I don't think that's right, but we'll find it. You'll get sorry about that, you'll get
it. Claire Brantley, thank you for being with us. Shake, shake the finwheels. There you go. You can have those into your yard and then you can pay somebody to take them away. That's right, he'll come and get them. That's right there on the website too. Thank you, thank you,