001[Music] all [Music] good evening everyone thanks for joining us for live with the superintendent I'm Christa Stockman the director of communication and marketing for Fort Wayne Community Schools and of course we have superintendent Dr Mark Daniel with us also on the show tonight will be Elementary director Haley SAU secondary director car Froning and executive director of College and Career Readiness Shen Bolton so welcome everyone it's good to have you on tonight um Dr Daniel you want to kick things off uh oh I should mention not only are we on Facebook live uh we are also on X and YouTube so we're uh TRC casting tonight if anybody has questions uh just drop them in the chat and we should get those yeah first of all I want to say hey I love this format so
002kudos to Steve Armstrong and Christa your crew as well for putting this format together so we're going to start off this evening with some discussion of the schools of success and specifically what's happening with our freshman that is our current eighth graders to be freshman and very pleased with what's been happening in regards to The Freshman orientations I think they've been well received I think also our teachers and our administrators did an excellent job of presenting what they are planning in their buildings and hopefully there will be consistency across our district again schools of success is about how to create smaller learning communities with focus on life skills those life skills are transferable to anything after high school and why are they so important well when you talk about teamwork you talk about collaboration uh
003communication skills you talk about creative and critical thinking you talk about how to work with folks of diversity I don't know of anything else that's more important matter of fact it's not just what we're talking about it's about what our community leaders businesses and organizations in Northeast Indiana have been saying they so desperately need so we've taken that to heart and we've said let's make this happen let's make this so but it begins in Pre kindergarten all the way through 12th grade graduation and quite frankly we don't think it stops there but also what are we doing to assist students as they're going into either their jobs After High School maybe they're going into some type of post-secondary training that be at a college University or apprenticeship or the enlist so I'm very proud of
004where we are today and you see the keys to success on your screens right now we have broken them down into the following grade levels we have a really prek to fifth grade focus and that's the Explorer section then we have keys to success for our Middle School 6 through 8 and then we have 9 through interestingly we're combining this with rather we're we're looking at merging several different influences one would be Junior Achievement which we have a tremendous partnership with matter of fact people don't realize this Junior Achievement in Northeast Indiana is one of the second largest well it is the second largest Junior Achievement in entire country as far as a number of students it connects with on a on an annual basis we have one of the top Junior Achievement programs the
005entire country so what have they done well theyve brought with us 3de which is again is a way for our students to have mentoring coaching in regards to those six competencies I just mentioned those life skills so it doesn't matter whether they're partnering with a corporation be might be an advanced manufacturer or might be a retailer it might be a uh trades company that doesn't matter because they're all talking about the same life skills and I think that's been somewhat of a confusion but again we want more and more external influencers in our buildings to assist not just our teachers in regards to influencing how they can work with them to support this life's these life skills but also present experiences for our students so they can start to create a network so they can
006be in businesses like Franklin electric they can be in businesses like SDI they can be at Parkview uh Regional hospital they can be at Fort Wayne medals yes they can even have a nationwide company like Delta involved so anyway I'll just say what is happening in this space is second to none and to me it's not just something we're doing for the sake of doing it's transformational in what we're doing because never have we reached out so openly to have outside organizations within our classrooms within our buildings connecting to our students and then our students being mentored and coached never have we taken these types of steps but it doesn't happen without fantastic staff that are start that truly understand this process and can support the professional learning that we need the staff development that
007we need but also can connect with those outside organizations so I have a person in regards to uh shenita Bolton and chenita is the one who's primarily now leading our schools of success and shenita you know tell us what you experienced regards the open house tell us a little bit about that I know Cara you're you've been part of that too but also next year what is next year what is really going to be the difference for next year for us what do you think shenita sure so next year it's really exciting um as Dr Daniel spoke about our orientations and open houses you saw excitement in the rooms and a moment for students to begin to engage and envision themselves in each of the high schools next year as students are going to be
008taking the Freshman seminar which is called our principles of business management students will have the opportunity to one engage in learning about business we know regardless of what pathway a student chooses they need a foundation of business knowledge they're also going to engage in 3de um and Dr Daniel just spoke to that of really partnering with businesses organizations both locally and nationally to solve real world problems and then last but not least those students are going to be introduced to the pathways that they'll have opportunities to connect with whether that is our health and human services manufacturing engineering technology and the trades or business in the others but most of all they're going to have a time for collaboration connected Fitness and coordination with the framework of that class and experience of small learning communities
009so when you start to see those things happen really I think Christa you just you you said this or we heard this from our partners with Ford NGL by the way Ford Next Generation learning they're sponsoring coming alongside districts not just in the United States but now even in Ireland uh and who knows where this may lead but again we're making this Fort Wayne Community School schools of success and that I think is what the power is the power is this is now being driven by us we're owning it and uh I just think when I hear students speak to CEOs and the CEOs walk away and say we need to do this in our business or we want to continue doing this because we're seeing the impact we're having by the mentoring we know
010we've hit something something that is very very valuable not just for our kids but also for our staff as they connect more and more with our kids form deeper relationships as we create more relevancy in what we do on a daily basis and we just had a k112 Insight with student data in our school engagement survey student School engagement survey in we need we have a tremendous growth opportunity in that area where students are connecting with this is why I'm learning what I'm learning because it's relevant and it's connecting the curriculum with relevancy when that happens students start to ramp up engagement and they become passionate and that's what really if I would have my wish I would love to see our graduates I guess it's going to be the class of 2028 will be
011the first to go through the schools of success so the 2028 graduation class I would love to see them graduate with a passion of what they're going to do after high school because they've seen it they've lived it so we hope our schools are going to feel different they're going to look different and they're going to sound very different and I think when that starts to happen we're going to see a very different graduate um a graduate that again has the motivation but also has the plan and so give us a few years uh we'll we'll make this continue we'll make this happen and some of the people some questions have been well is there a curriculum no there's no curriculum we're not going to change curriculum math is math English is English however we
012would like to see more real world connections within that curriculum and that's what we're after so Cara do you have anything to add about that actually we do have a couple of questions um and maybe you can you can address these and Haley you might want to jump in as well but uh the questions we have are uh one end of the spectrum is you know what are we doing for high ability students and students who um need a little extra and also what are we doing for students who have other special needs um how will this affect them and what kind of resources are we going to have available let me start with secondary first um go ahead so a lot of our conversation for high ability students obviously we have our current course
013selections where students are in some of those advanced classes but our push to for AP and dual credit that's aligned to our schools of success is our one of our main focuses as we work with our principles to not only identify those students but identify teachers who are licensed um within those schools of success and those Pathways to um earning those dual credits for college in regards to our um special ed population maybe or with students with IEPs um we will continue to meet with families and meet those individual needs within each School of success I think Dr Daniel summs this up for high ability students special education students any student in our district we are trying to make their experience meaningful and relevant to them in ways we have not done before so we
014may be having conversations in I P meetings that we have not had before because we are continuing to talk about that day after graduation and setting that plan in place the element level so with Elementary um you know we want to make sure that it's not just a student that has been identified through testing as high ability but for students that have just High interest in maybe a topic or a Content area the building itself is responsible for how they program and how they provide uh the enrichment and sometimes this includes book clubs if it's for literacy it could include some of our other experiences such as math bowl spell bowl and they have different after school clubs at certain you know a building is really responsible for providing that extra for um High ability
015students so I encourage you if your child has been identified High ability if you feel that they need challenged in a certain area or have a specific interest to get a hold of your school to see what kind of opportunities are there um because our teachers do a great job of remediating when they need to remediate and enriching when they need to enrich based on the students ability and interest great anything else that anyone wants to add on that okay well we will move to our next topic and it does um it it aligns with what we're already talking about we want students to be successful um safety has become a a pretty big Topic in our community so Dr Daniel do you want to talk about where we've been with the referendum and what
016we're seeing today and and where we're at well again I can't thank the community more than I I can't thank them enough for supporting the referendum I think it becomes more and more obvious as what we're seeing in our community and actually seeing across our country how important it is to have a safety and wellness initiative from both mental health side of things physical health as well as how do we control or at least uh I will say how can we influence our community from inside out instead of the community outside in in regards the negative influences and ours being very positive so you know as because a referendum has afforded us the ability to hire security supervisors which has happened we're now in the process of hiring student Advocates at our buildings we hope
017to have those folks in place as soon as possible but Maybe by fourth quarter for the high schools and some of the middle schools and then working on the elementary schools um certainly having everyone in place by the beginning of the 2425 school year but I also will say as we've looked at the mental health side of things I don't know if people truly understand this we've been fortunate to have a grant that has allowed us to compensate mental health therapists in their internship so we have those folks already in our buildings but they're only paid through this grant what we like to what we're able to do now though with referendum is then hire them and place them now in our buildings permanently so it's not just the phenomenon of how do you handle
018Behavior it's how you create a learning environment where students feel safe Staff feel safe and they have a way to move into either be a mental health therapist within a building and then maybe how do you reach out to organizations like Parkview or other places such as that but we could not have done this without the referendum so again we're very grateful thankful I'd also like to say this we're now able to also expand peacemakers and if you've been reading any of the paper the last well this entire past month of January and just recently we know peacemakers are more and more in need we have to figure out as a school district how do we continue to promote peace and I think that's something you have to teach you have to teach your students
019you have to teach your staff you have to believe in this and you have to create a culture of kindness of caring and a culture of love to do that though it takes outside it takes us to organizations like the peacemakers seeing the results at Southside high school and how do we expand that to more and more of our high schools and maybe even the future our middle schools so we're in that process now as well I know that organization the peacemakers are working on that we'll continue to implement but again we have to do these things and it's glar ly obvious if we don't do this who will I'd also like to say how do we bring other organizations to bear I haven't had the conversation with parkvi regional hospital but I do serve
020on their board and I know we're all struggling with behavior that is inappropriate I don't care what organization you are it could be your church it could be a hospital it could be a school it could be a workplace so what are we doing collectively and I'd like to hopefully see us come together with organizations like Fort Wayne Community Schools like our city goov like our police force police leadership like our organizations and certainly extend an invitation for organizations like Parkfield hospital and other organizations that' be willing to sit down and let's start thinking of ways to impact what's happening in our communities and I'm talking about violence I'm talking about shootings I'm talking about how are we going to respond to study me this to to to prevent this so another thing we have
021added and we call it the open Gates but that is we've added that in regards to weapon detectors and we're bringing those on board we've already piloted them at we pilot them during our co-curricular events this past fall and winter we also have pilot at Southside It's seems pretty seamless and you know we've had some our day data is very good in regards to the usage um but again these are things that 10 years ago we wouldn't have we wouldn't have this discussion now we have to have this discussion we have to do something about it and and I know as I talked to Cara and we Haley what's happening our elementaries in our secondary buildings you know I'm very very very pleased with where we're heading so hey if any of you would like
022to talk about this as well Cara Haley um please feel free because as we look at our goals of fwcs we've said things such as literacy highest priority literacy highest priority so we support much much of what our legislators are saying happens or would like to happen in the in the current um session as they're working on bills we can talk about retention a bit we're in a little bit leery of the retention piece but we know that we need to do something with intentionality in regards of reading and we're about that in fwcs we've embraced the science of reading we've embraced the framework and we've Embrace training of our teachers so it's happening but along with literacy yes there's numeracy but as important as well-being and that well-being is about mental health physical health
023as well as how do we create a learning environment in every one of our classrooms and that is so critical and quite frankly we are not sticking our heads in the St say we are we are WI awake and we are being as proactive as possible in this stance but again it takes it takes all of us to really come together as a collective group to do something of this nature it can't just rely we cannot just rely on the teachers in our classrooms and the principles in our buildings it takes also influences from our greater community and so we've been welcoming that our arms have been open and we've said come join us in this in this fight this fight to have environment every one of our classrooms to sty violence to create a
024culture of caring and kindness and what that can do for a greater community so again Cara uh Haley if you'd like to add anything please do well I think even some of this extends past our beyond our classrooms and I'm just thinking even this week where we've had some events in the community and the forign police department Allen County um Sheriff's Department have even partnered with us um to keep grounds the school grounds safe or even um a dismissal where we have lots of different families in and out um cars are people we might not be familiar with and um our security department reached out to them in Partnership and said hey if you have um officers on the street that are nearby uh please have them swing by our our schools and um just
025be an extra presence for our students and staff um at dismissal or other times and they're always willing to help too so I think um just that conversation of us reaching out but also the community even reaching out to us and how they can support our students has been overwhelming um in buildings I've even had students share with me um just the added level of comfort knowing that um staff and students even at South that's where my office is I watch the students um utilizing those the weapons detectors every day and just that added feeling of safety as they enter our buildings where they're are they're free of distractions from the outside world so what I again in elementary you know daily I'm in four or five buildings and I think building that culture of
026Safety and Security as well as you know we talk about the academics and social emotional learning and we start with our students that are in as young as pre3 classrooms prek4 and so having these extra uh Staffing to have adult touch points with our kids is so important because the teachers can't do it alone and they need that care for their well-being as well as the students and so I think that our f focus with our support staff and our teachers when it comes to programs such as conscious discipline and our PBIS um to really have kids work together and so that they see that the adults are just so much a part of it obviously um as much as their peers are and so everything that we're building in the classrooms and then as
027a school is one where we're creating that collaboration and teamwork and making sure that they have someone to talk to to if something isn't you know going well or they're struggling and we encourage our parents to do the same thing that if they you know know something about their child that they're struggling with to give us a call um we are more than open we have case managers Administrative Assistant adding the student Advocate um in the 20 uh 25 school year is going to be just that one more piece to make sure students all have an adult um that they can work with talk to and just kind of in you know sure that we're there for them um so that they have the best environment for them to learn in as well so this
028goes for our families too if you need support or help give us a call call the main office of your child school and there will be someone that can speak with you and support you as well you know Haley you brought a a point point there I think as we look at each of our schools each school has its own community and we're really trying to work with each community in creating a an environment that is conducive to learning and that varies that varies based on the community it varies based where the school and and where the school is located what the neighborhood association where are they in this in this process but I think that is so important to bring the community along I.E parents and you mentioned conscious discipline you know even as
029we're working with three-year-olds and foury olds how do we help parents with well this is what we're doing at school how can we help you understand what conscious discipline is so maybe you could reinforce what we're doing when we have your little one which is eight hours of the day and you have them the other eight hours a day and they sleep the other eight so all those things are so important and I think that's part of the solution that we really dial it down to each individual Community one community at a time and I know we're doing that in some of this in some of our space with our love Fort Wayne Group which is part of love your schools and again that's just one example but how could we do that throughout the
030entire District how can you make that something that's uh spread throughout and I that's what I I'll go back to schools of success because again when we looked at portrait of a graduate the portrait of a graduate is all really it's about life skills and I always like to even boil it down to you know Margaret CER used to always tell me this when she's my uh when she was a principal of the school that I was the assistant principal Mark I know we're in a high school but everything you ever needed to learn you learned in kindergarten and part of that was how do you play together in the sandbox without you know you're going to have frustrations you're going to have conflicts but how do you resolve those and come to a place
031where you can still play together so I love that I I love where we're heading the direction we're heading I just wish we could accelerate it but this is something that's going to take time and uh you know that por of a graduate as it weav with schools of success and as it goes down all the way to prek I think it's going to be extremely powerful and the end result is why wouldn't you want to employ fwcs graduates why wouldn't you want them to have be your intern and why wouldn't you want them to enter your colleges and universities um so that's the ultimate goal that's the ultimate that's the ultimate uh reason we're doing this because I think it's it's something that is going to truly transform and assist our students so what
032else do we have Christa so we just heard from an employee who would like to hear a little bit more about the child care uh grant that we recently received I know we don't have a lot of information yet um but what can you tell us about that well we're very fortunate about $750,000 we received from the state of Indiana specifically in regards to child care of our employees so if you're an employee fwcs and you're at a state licensed and you may have to correct me on this Christa but a Indiana has recognized that daycare or provider as a state licensed facility then you'll be part of you have the potential of having some of your child care expenses reimbursed now we received about $750,000 so we have roughly between February 1st till December
03331st to reimburse employees for those expenses and we're trying to do this we're trying to devise a process where yes you have to show us your your expenses you have to show us invoiced and then you'll be reimbursed based on on that as long as it's an approved site by the state of Indiana so we hope to have that coming on board in the next within the next 30 days um and we're working because we believe one of the things that are deterring others for deterring people of entering the workforce is the cost of child care so we would love to be part of that solution and we as a district we need teachers we need food service workers we need bus drivers we need instructional assistance we need all these workers and how can
034we be an institution an organization that supports workers in regards to their child care expenses so this is a perfect process for us to learn of the need of our workers and then perhaps we can continue something can't guarantee that because it'll take funding but how do we do something in that space to show that yes we acknowledge that cost we acknowledge that burden and how can we hopefully lift that a bit for our amilies in regards to our employee because again teacher retention is very difficult finding teachers is very difficult and it's not just fwcs it's it's over the entire it's cross the entire country so that's it in nutshell Christa do you have anything else to add to that no I think just what you said that we expect to have additional information
035maybe some more guidelines uh very soon soon hopefully uh the portal will open up um maybe this week maybe next week um so that we can start getting those applications in and once we have those applications in we'll have a better idea of how far that money will go so I will add this so we are moving forward on our Early Learning Center we have uh I'll say approximately $4 million that's about a $17 million project but that Early Learning Center it's in Comin it's in coordination or partnership with East Allen County Schools as well and what we're asking that uh that program to do is this first of all it's focusing on our current teenage mothers teenage mothers that have no daycare so therefore they don't enter the they don't return to school so
036they become dropouts well we don't want that to happen we want to figure that out we want to we want to reverse that process so while we're opening up that facility we're also training right now we train about 15 to 20 students at our Career Center at the anthis career center we'd like to increase that to about 60 students that are trained why is that important because there's a very limited amount of Workforce available to provide daycare or early learning in our community so how do we assist our community so this is not just about fwcs it's about overall throughout Northeast Indiana how can we have an impact in providing this service at least trained people and we've been talking to state legislators it sounds like this there is some um movement on a bill
037that would also assist this process so again very pleased with this but the same time you can see how this is not just the $750,000 it's also how do you train future daycare providers and how do we make that happen specifically within Fort Wayne Community Schools and partnering with East Island County Schools all right so another topic uh Cara this one's for you um this is a question we got before uh this evening began someone to posted it um but it's one that I see from time to time on Facebook um Cara why do schools lock bathrooms during the school day sure I've seen this question on let's talk also and it's interesting we were having a conversation ahead of time some of our schools don't have doors on their bathrooms and as we've remodeled
038some of our class um buildings some of those entrances off of the hallway are recessed but um there's no actual door in some cases in our high schools and middle schools and I can't um speak to Elementary if that is occurring there but um we have busier times of the day like arrival and dismissal where we may limit access to certain sets of restrooms in this in the school because we only have so many adults there to help supervise those areas we have the rare occurrences where we have um a malfunction of a toilet or a sink or the sewer in a particular bathroom we sometimes lock those bathroom doors before a uh scheduled fire drill or a drill of some nature so we know where our students are at at that time when we're
039exiting the building um we do have uh maybe an example of a middle school that um has two classrooms or two restrooms I'm sorry close in vicinity to each other and so at different times of the day they do lock one um over the other other maybe prior to a lunch period or different times where we're trying to get students into an area and sometimes we do um couple years ago and ticktock challenges there were some instances where we had students vandalize the bathroom and we did have to shut those down for a period of time to repair a soap dispenser or um actually investigate what had occurred in the restroom so multiple reasons but there's always a rest room open and available it just may be not the one closest to students at that
040time um I did have one high school mention the last few minutes of the school day they do lock the doors to get everyone out of the restroom doors to get everyone out of the building so it's really crowd management for the most part I would say as most of our high schools have many many many restrooms all right thank you for that um another question that we just got is why is it difficult to hire and retain teachers and Dr Daniel I think you might have some different Insight on this than um people might expect um what I heard this morning is we have just a handful of teacher openings um where we are actively looking for someone to hire um so do you want to talk about that a little bit sure so
041in regards to the shortage of teachers as we are attempting to provide opportunities for our high school students through and we all have an education pathway that will be one of the schools of success and that will be in the Health and Human Services pathway or School of success will be a pathway within that school of success the point is this we have to grow our own more and more and that's provid providing experiences for our students such as Juniors and seniors to go into either the elementary schools or middle schools and W the interns there so that is that is one solution but that takes a number of years to get there the other has been transition to teaching so if you have a bachelor's degree where are now programs one's through try also
042PFW has that similar program uh we're even looking internally or eles of providing some of this this this type of a process but basically you become an apprentice if you have a bachelor's degree you'll be working while taking courses on the job and we have worked out that transition to teaching there are some State dollars that have been reallocated to support this type of program and and I think we were very fortunate to sit to talk with legislators and legislators said well is there new money that you're asking for and it was not new money it was money that was not being spent that they could then allocate to this so we've had approximately I would say 10 to 15 transition to teachers in our buildings and we found out that they've been very successful
043and so we're going to try to move that forward again next year we're also as I said looking internally but this problem of lack of teachers and lack of Administrators this is across the entire country and I can speak from the state of Michigan I can speak from the state of Illinois and I can even speak from my own child who's a teacher at Chicago public schools and I see some of the comments about you know how are we Supply or mean the needs of our students we all struggle with this because again we're asked to truly we're asked to do so much and we have only resources so again what can we truly provide what can we truly do and I'll always say I wish you know a high a college graduate coming out
044of the school of Ed that's making in our district I believe right now we're about 47,000 48,000 salary yes you receive benefits but you compare that to a school person coming out of the School of Business that is making 75 to 80,000 in benefits so there's there's definitely a a huge gap in salaries I think that's an influence but I Al also have said this you know there are many people who go into the field of Education or the field of Human Services and we know that quite frankly this is going to be your salary range but we do it because it's also part of our passion our mission our vision of what we see and how we're going to impact our greater community and how we're going to impact kids but at the same
045time this is not going to become less and less of a problem I'm afraid I'm afraid it's going to become more and more of a problem and thus why we're trying to think of different ways to if you do have a bachelor's we can actually and you're wanting to move into the field of Education we're re we're very receptive to you and we're very interested so we may have 47 postings open but we filled them with either long-term sub positions or we filled them with with with others in that area so now we're down to I think Christa what was it this morning like five because some PE some positions aren't even I think we're down to approximately five five to seven positions so I'm very pleased with that movement but at the same time
046we need to start thinking a little bit differently as well so let's talk about that for a second let's talk about we have a teacher who's certified let's say it's in anatomy physiology that's a very rare certification and yet in each of our high schools we have a school of success pathway called what health and human services and one of the health would be the medical so we use project Le the way biomedical well that's a unique certification we don't have that in every building so how do that how does that one teacher or or several teachers how do they perhaps use some hybrid of remote learning within-person learning and so how do we honor that teacher who is doing a more above and beyond what a teacher would do if they have the traditional
047setting with a student sitting in front of them every day and they have more students in the Stu than that particular teacher so again we're having that discussion I think we should have that discussion we should bring in our teacher leadership to have that discussion because I think that's one way we're going to solve a continuous shortage of teachers and let's be honest it is more difficult in urban setting than it is in other settings an urb uh well specifically a Suburban but I'll say it it's also the shortages happen in Rural America as well because I've been in all three and I can tell you I rarely had a problem in the subur urban districts except for some very unique special ad's always going to be a difficult one but never I always had
048it in the rural or the urban so so that's what I can say about that all right well Haley um I know you've been wanting to talk about something that's coming up next month and that is our passport to prek event you want to talk a a little bit about um what we're doing and when that is and how people can start to get their youngest kids registered sure so um when we move to online registration starting in I think it's March 1 is that right Christa and uh that will be for everyone but we moved our kindergarten and prek registration online during those covid years and we had really a lot of success with that and one thing that they started last year and this is Katie Ziggler and Kim Brooks um they started
049the passport to prek to make that registration process a little bit easier have it in one location and that way anything that's needed items if you're even finding out which school your child would attend for prek it's a great event to attend and it's going to be grabbing my calendar here Thursday May 21st and that's at Northside High School again and that's from 5: to 7 and for our prek programs you would need to be um you can't turn five until uh after August 1 or after so you need to be uh four as of August 1 uh to enroll in one of our programs and it's been great this year we've added a couple of more prek classrooms um across the district and the plan is to add a couple more but we make
050sure that all of our families have access to prek whether it's their neighborhood school and if they do not have a prek site there then we will find one that would be your satellite service for prek so I do encourage you tell your neighbors tell your friends family members if you have a student that is eligible for prek get there and she just put it up on the screen awesome thank you Christa and um it gives all those little details on there and that's for our four-year-olds and it's just a really great way to meet the principals meet teachers and get everything accomplished that night for your registration and then in May schools will then be able to invite personally those that belong um in specific and it's not by program it's by attendance area
051but they will then invite uh those enrolled to a May orientation those dates are to be announced here soon and that would also include kindergarten orientation I saw there was a question about that date uh for registration but Kindergarten orientation will be the same in may as well and then we also have our kindergarten transition day in August so we're really making sure to get our kids in get familiar with their school that they're going to be a part of and that's going to be their new community so we want them to feel comfortable um you know in those settings and ready to go so join us March uh 21st 5 to 7 tell all your friends we want to fill up all of those classrooms and PRK is so important to ready them for
052those kindergarten through 12 years and they do a lot in prek it's very educational very social so we want them to all be a part of it and the passport to prek is a lot of fun last year was the first year we did it and I was able to attend and um there's lots of giveaways there's um activities um lots of Community Partners are there so it's definitely a fun evening and when your child goes home they will will be ready to sleep all night so come out have some fun um Cara you have uh also an exciting event coming up on March 5th you want to talk about what's special about that day sure it's not just my event it's gonna involve all Juniors uh within fortway Community Schools that is our um
053sat school day experience all Juniors will be um involved in taking the SAT test at school and because of the restrictions with the College Board and how we administer that test and this is what we've done the last couple of years so if you've had a junior in the past um you're familiar with this but our ninth 10th and 12th graders will experience a day of remote learning that day and as Dr Daniel mentioned early on in our broadcast tonight we have a partnership with Junior Achievement Junior Achievement partners with us on that day so that we can have a remote learning day where our students engage with Volunteers in the community online and through ja so that all of our staff are available to give the SAT test or be in a test site
054because there's a student to adult ratio um that is expected there's also um in a school it's very difficult to run a normal school day without bells or passing periods and the College Board requires us to have those type of things in place uh we will have some students who are in grades nine and 10 um for example at class Nebraska those students will be in school on that day and we have a special program at North rup that will be in school that day but other than that all our n9th 10th and 12th graders will be online with ja in a day they will get counted for attendance whether or not they participate in the ja activities that day we'll be sending schools will be sending more specific information home about how long that
055test lasts what students do after the test um students will be given lunch at school that day um it is a full school day but there are some options after the test that might look a little different for each student depending on the parents needs for that day all right thank you cara um here's some other important dates coming up um in March students have uh a few days off um we have the third quarter day that's what we're calling it um Friday March 15th there's no school all of our building will be closed and then we have another staff training day so just like yesterday students are not in session and that is Monday March 18th spring break starts on Good Friday which is March 29th and then the entire following week and when
056we come back on April 8th will be the total eclipse and so we will be in session that day um we have plans uh students will be learning about the Eclipse we have special glasses that they'll be able to wear uh to view the eclipse uh safely so expect to hear more about that from your children and shenita uh there's another thing that we should talk about um if people are paying attention to the news they've maybe and they have a senior they've maybe heard that Fafa is um well it's been in the news quite a bit and for students in indana there's a different reason why maybe it's in the news do you want to talk about what our expectations are and what students should be doing absolutely so beginning this year the state
057is now requiring that all seniors complete the Fasto which is the free application for federal student aid and we want to let you know that all your schools as well as the College and Career Readiness department at the family and Community engagement Center will assist you with that it's very important that all Indiana seniors complete that by April 15th if you do not complete by that deadline you will not be able to receive state funding it's also very important to know that now the majority of colleges and universities require that students complete the FASA also in order to get scholarship dollars so we just want to strongly encourage families if you need assistance do not hesitate to reach out to either your school or the family and Community engagement Center and we'll be glad to
058assist you and even though there have been some delays in FAFSA and processing FAFSA applications and getting that information to colleges it's still important that they meet that April 15th deadline right that is correct they have not changed the deadline okay all right um well I think we have addressed the questions that I'm seeing here on Facebook um and that we received in advance so anything that anybody would like to add before we go all right well our next Facebook live session will be I believe it's Tuesday May 7th uh that sounds right uh it's that first Tuesday in May um so we will see you then have a good night everyone and stay safe thank you Krista thank you for everyone being here [Music] today