001Welcome USD264 family, friends, staff, community members, and anybody joining us on uh YouTube. This is our uh Clearwater Clarity Volume 27 for May of 2026. Um this is kind of an important announcement and so we want to really just jump right into it is we understand that sometimes reading uh can take a backseat during this techn uh technological age where people will just want to jump on their phones or their tablets or play video games or watch TV. but we're going to institute our Clearwater Community Summer Reading Challenge and it's going to uh get started here pretty soon. So, we want to make sure and get the details out to you uh to all of our community members, to all of our students, and to all of our parents. So, what we're going to be
002able to do is on the left here of this screen, you're going to be able to see that um there is a sheet and that sheet can be printed off of the school website or it can actually be picked up at the school library or the city library or the district office. So, this is a reading log sheet. And so, what you'll be able to do with this is uh check out a book from the uh school library, check out a book from the city library, read it, take it back in after you're done reading it, um you're going to have that opportunity to confer with the librarian about what the book was about, and once you answer some of those questions at the bottom, just a verbal answer that you're going to give to
003them, they're going to sign off on it, and you're going to be able to say, "I completed a summer reading challenge uh book." uh for students that are non-readers yet, if a book is read to them uh by the parents, we're going to work with the city library on having this. So for students that are prek uh as non-readers, we're going to be able to have them if you read the book to them and then talk to them about the book and the students can understand it and you're checking it out of a school library or a city library um then confer with the librarian about the book and how you read it to them and they'll sign off on it as well too. So, the school libraries are going to be open all summer
004long starting June 1st through July 31st on Mondays from 8:00 a.m. to noon. So, the high school library will be open, the Sims library will be open, and the EW library will be open. You can enter the buildings through the main doors. We'll have those unlocked for you from 8:00 a.m. to noon. Go right into the library, check out a book, uh take them out. And then the city library due to them being closed on Mondays, you can go to the city library um between on between Tuesday and Friday during their regular operating hours to be able to uh check out books and confer with the librarian at that time. So, after every 10 books that are read by a student or read from a parent to a non-reader, um, and they confer on it,
005and we have the 10 signatures, you will turn that sheet into the district office. And our office hours are from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30, uh, p.m. Monday through Thursday in the summer. So, you can turn that in at any time, and we'll have some prizes for them to be able to take at that point in time. There will be some gift certificates to the snow cone shack here in town to be able to get some snow cones for reading those books, plus some other trinket prizes that they'll be able to have. Every sheet that's turned in will also be enrolled into a process for a grand prize. And we're going to draw four uh winners at the end of the summer. Uh so four different sheets that are drawn out. So every sheet is a
006chance to win a prize uh for uh gift cards for school supplies. So, we'll have two $100 winners and two $50 winners to help uh support some uh classroom supplies for back to school next year. And then the last little piece of an incentive is every one of those sheets that's turned in. Uh parents, you'll get a 5% discount on enrollment fees. Now, that only applies for kindergarten through. We won't have an uh discount for preK, but for kindergarten on up, we will have an enrollment discount of 5% for every sheet that's turned in. And so, that's quite an incentive uh for your students to be able if you're sitting at home in an evening, uh it's raining a little bit, they're waking up in the morning or taking the opportunity to just take 20
007minutes, 30 minutes each night to read um before they go to bed, take that opportunity. Your parent, you're getting at a discount on enrollment. So, we think this is an all-around winning situation to help our students read during the summer and continue reading so that when they come back to school in August, they have been reading and gaining some background knowledge as well as practicing those reading skills they learned during the year. This is open for any incoming kindergartener through senior um and be able to have that opportunity. So, again, to recap, libraries, the school libraries will be open Mondays 8 through noon. City libraries open Tuesday through Friday. Every 10 books that a kid reads when they turn in a sheet, they'll be getting some snow cone gift certificates as well as some trinket
008prizes as well as being entered in for grand prizes drawing at the end of the summer and the enrollment discount for parents. This will start on Monday, June 1st will be the start of when these u checkout sheets will be available and to be able to start checking out books from the libraries and checking them back in as well as conferencing uh with the librarians during that time. And then we will end on Friday, July 31st. that's when we will actually take our last one um and be able to have our drawings the next week and a and award our prize winners. So again, this is an exciting time for us and we're hopefully a lot of people take advantage of this and continue reading throughout the summer as again to finish out our school
009year. It's been a great year and we want to make sure that we're focused in being in the arena with each other and supporting each other and having a collaborative environment and we appreciate all the work that parents do, staff do, and the community does to help our students be successful. And lastly, just like I do every month, take that opportunity if you want to reach out and have a discussion about anything, especially the summer reading challenge, please reach out and uh have those opportunities. And here's my contact information. If not, have a great day and have a great summer. And we'll join you again for our next Clearwater Clarity in August.