001[Music] Hello and welcome to this week's weekly wrap-up. Uh there's a buzz in the air. Um I am here at Philrest School, the one and only school, special school in town. And um I'm here with Miss Bravo. And there's a buzz in the room because we just finished uh a fantastic celebration of work study and uh thanking partners that are opening the doors and having our students in their businesses and they all got recognized. But you are the person who leads all this phenomenal work behind the scenes. coordinated not just the breakfast but but the thanks and I know it's a lot of work but it really filled my bucket and I just I cannot be more grateful on behalf of of our whole district and our students but can you share the the thinking
002behind this breakfast and the opportunity that you get to say thank you to the community? Absolutely. We take this opportunity and we've been doing it for over 27 years. We take this opportunity to invite our businesses into our school. We serve them breakfast and we have awards for our students and then we get to show our appreciation for them opening up their businesses to us to come in and learn job skills on site at their business. Yes. Fantastic. So, the students were recognized today. They get to share their learning which I thought was fantastic. Um, and also we got to hear about some of the incredible uh donors in town and how they're giving um not just financially but by resources that they're providing to you so our students can be successful and learn those
003jobs. Anything you'd like to share and add about that? Well, we just appreciate we do have a donor that um donates money to our work study program. And so our students at the end of the year because of their generosity get to go shopping and they get to buy a few things. They buy some clothes, they buy um some some hats and belts and things that they like to wear. Um they're just regular teenagers and they enjoy shopping. So because of the generosities, we get to do that. We also have lunch and um we just show them that uh the students are learning job skills and what's so neat about it is that they perhaps may have a job or perhaps they can just be great members of their household. So they're learning all kinds
004of skills like that. And I was just thinking as you were talking about um like all teenagers who want those kinds of things and be involved. Can you share more about what work study really is for those who we we know how incredibly important it is, but can you share for others who may not be familiar with what work study really looks like in our Okay, sure. These are our students that have graduated and so they're staying in school until the age of 22, their 22nd birthday, they get to stay in school. So they move into what we call a transition program and we try to prepare them for realw world situations being work or living in a household or hopefully maybe even living on their own. So all of these things that they learn
005out in the businesses and here at school enable them just to be just to be happier people and be useful and get have a reason to get up every morning. Happy and productive citizens. That's right. Absolutely. And if you didn't make that possible, those opportunities might not exist here in our community. And I I just again want to say thank you so much for leading the way for them to be happy, productive citizens. And um I want to also comment on everyone else in the room, all the other adults who have been part of this and how much it's meant to all of us and to the the business community at large and the the joy that comes from the other side of being able to help and pour into our students that are and
006you you heard a lot of people here saying from the businesses what it does for their heart. It's almost uh means as much to them as it does to the students. So it's a win-win situation for everybody. We actually had a student come back that graduated come back and tell us about a job that he has now and he's bagging and he learned that during his years in work study so he was able to get a job and now he works four days a week. So we're very proud of him. That was a that was a testament right there of how that works, what you're doing to prepare him and now he has a a full-time job and on his own. It works. It works. Absolutely. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you for
007everything. Thank you for coming. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] down. Heat. [Music] Down. [Music] Down. [Music] Down. [Music] down. Hey [Music]