001I'm not sure All right, we're going to go ahead and call our special meeting of the Wayne County Board of Education to order. It is 402. And if you'll stand, we'll say the pledge. I'll lead us this evening. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Let the record show that all board members are present in person except for Miss Johnny the Jackson. She's going to join us by phone here. She is not feeling well this evening. We'll get her on the phone here quickly and then we'll begin with our local school improvement council presentation from from Crown PreK8. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to put you on speaker so you can
002hear. Okay. Okay, we're ready to go. Okay. The screen up here. The screen's behind you. We want to welcome everyone tonight. Um, our first slide of the night is to highlight our basketball team. Uh, they did come out county champions this year. That's the first time in some time. So, we're very proud of all the work and time that was spent with our with our team preparing for that. Um, this is our LSIC meeting note from back in September. One of our goals for some time has been to do more of an outreach with our LSIC. We wanted to build an increase. So, one of the things that we did was to plan some meetings outside of the school. Sometimes people are not real likely to come into your school. So, we actually planned one
003at Silver Creek up at the church and it fell through because they had some mechanical problems. So we scheduled a bill life event at Dunlow and we did meet out there that night and were able to have a meeting at at Dunlow and we wanted to you know welcome our Dunlow folks in and have them be part in it. Our attendance was not real good but you know we're just getting started with it and we do intend to do more of this in the future. Um again in in trying to get um increase the involvement in our school we purchased an app last year. we custom design that with the company. Um, and we do plan in future to to go more toward that. This year, it's just been kind of a trial and error
004getting used to it. And so, we would like like to begin using this more and Facebook less because it has two-way communication. Of course, uh, we say on a regular basis that Facebook is not a secure format and we don't want to use that to discuss student business. Um, this is so this is one of the things that we're currently using, but we do plan on using more in the future. I do want to talk about rankings and I'm going to pull my notes here. Um, in preparing for this, I started pulling some data and anybody that knows anything about our school knows that we do a lot of work with that. And so, if you'll notice the little star, and I know that's hard to see from a distance, you'll see that our middle
005school side is currently ninth in the state. We've done a lot of hard work and we've seen uh the results of our progress. We are still working on the elementary side and we're growing and we're making progress there. We're getting teachers that are are firm in those positions. You all heard me say before that we've had more turnover on the elementary side and that's starting to slow down and so uh we're going to see more on the elementary side as well, but this is our current ranking for the um middle school. And then this one I'm particularly proud of. Um we're number nine in the state in middle school, but we're number one when it comes to our low SCES students in comparison with uh all students as a whole. We've ranked number one in
006the state. So that's a fabulous accomplishment. Um data will show you that sometimes low students don't score as well and in in our case they're showing that they're fully capable and and showing what they're capable of. So we're very proud of that. Um, attendance, we are the attendance has changed just a little bit from this. We're at 216 as a school. And then when we look at absenteeism, and this is one of the big problems that we have, and we'll talk about that more as we go along, I've left the last three years, and I kind of tend to use the old data and add the new. And our data currently, we we've shown a little bit of increase. It's not been a huge increase since last year, but we have shown a little bit
007of increase in the scores that we want to increase and a little bit of decrease where we want to decrease. So, we're on a we're on a good place there. Um, but we definitely want to work on attendance because that's that's one of our biggest issues. And this is um some information from our middle school side. Miss Dawson, Miss Gerald, do you want to share this? This is just a little clip from um the beginning of the school year. We had a nice little display um as the students came in. Yeah, just um this is our English data for the middle school side. And so this is really just my department. Um I'm the only one I have. And so a lot of that is uh is pretty tough because you know they just get
00840 minutes a day of English and that's the reading, the writing, everything. And so this is kind of where that everyone fell uh for the fall benchmark. Um sixth grade was 47% proficient. Um and when we took it again in the winter it was 68% proficient. So they had grown. uh they were in first place both times. So we're extremely proud of them. Seventh grade was 50% proficient uh at first place in the county and they grew to 56% uh by the time they took it again in January, again still first place in the county. Um 8th grade was 30% proficient in the fall and they ranked third. By the time they took it again in the winter, they were 48% proficient and they had moved up to first place among the the middle schools
009in the county. And so I'm [Applause] um at the conclusion of last year, they all three grades were first in the county. So, um, I'm extremely proud of that and we want to hang on to that and and keep keep on that that growth. Um, you know, I I I don't know how we get up though, but we're going to keep doing whatever we're doing. Hard work. So, uh, this is uh something that I have implemented over the last uh couple of years since I only had very few limited minutes, but I had them. Um, I've started using LL um as a supplement for some of the standards that I um struggle getting time in to reach. And I just wanted to point out that over the course of this year, my students have answered
01092,722 questions. And so when I looked at that, I was like, that is a ton of questions. But I'm very proud of them. Um, they put the effort in and they've put the work in. And I think that our rank in the county shows that we are doing great things here. And so there's there's no complaints in in that area. Gerald, do you want to talk about some math? Miss J. So you can see our math data for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. At the beginning of the year, and in the winter, we're also first place. Um, but you know, at the beginning year, the sixth grade was at 12% and then we elevated up to 43 at winter. Obviously, we want to be 60, 70, 80 and above. uh by the end of the
011year. So that's the goal. We work we're working really hard in all the classes. Um sixth grade started out the lowest um and and eighth usually we have a lot of trouble out of eighth, but since we've implemented the Ron Clark and the behavior issues and with the behavior program, our our eighth graders have really elevated their game. And I feel like just making them more responsible and attentive to their actions and their their habits, their attendance and their their good student habits has really helped with that with our card program. Uh but we're, you know, hoping to finish first again this year and keep I don't want to be ninth at the end of this year in the state. I want to be we want to be number one. So there's eight in some
012but the things that we do in the math program we you can see our projects out here it's it's rigorous and we intend for it to be we start out with all these projects with the numbers just computing just the numbers what does the numbers look like when I calculate the area when I multiply 86 * 124 what does that look like numerically then we transfer that into their books with the Carnegie program that the county purchased where they will do word problems with, you know, ranging from DK levels one through four and we push them into the four just to um make sure that their critical thinking skills are up to par. And then we pull in the projects at the end and it pulls it all together. So these these projects that you
013see have a huge amount of skills that compile together uh for the culminating activity for them to to work through. And I was just going to talk about a few of them. Um the if when you look at the surface area boxes is the wrapping paper. We start out by um teaching them how to measure to the half, the fourth and the eighth of an inch because that's you know that's a real that's a real world skill. We transfer that to them bringing in pantry boxes and they have to measure the the front, the back, the top, the bottom, the left and right of those pantry boxes to calculate then the surface area because I remember doing surface area when I was young but and I knew the formula and I could plug in the
014numbers but totally understanding what was going on didn't happen you know till later. So I we wanted to put this these pantry boxes into their hands so they could measure that and understand the front and the back are the same. So that's why I have two of the length times the width. You know, the top and the bottom are the same. So that's why I have two of the width times the height and so on and so forth. So then they learn how to calculate the surface area. Then we bring in Christmas wrapping paper where they see the back of it has the grid on it. What does that mean? That's one square inch. What does one square inch look like? So pulling all those skills together. So there's and then also is multiplying and
015dividing decimals and fractions. So they will convert 3 and 12 inches into 3.5. and we teach how to do that. So there, you know, that's just an example of just that one project there and how much is involved in pulling all that together after we do the numbers after we do the word problems and then we pull it into a project. Um, another one that we want to talk about is how much stuff's in an Oreo, which is very one of our most popular projects um where they have to calculate using the algorithm part of our whole percent of 100, which comes from their Carnegie book. and they we we don't tell them to begin with, but the double stuff's not really double. It's 1.89. And so we do we sit back and we watch
016that happen. Um and then so they calculate the percentage of stuff in each of the there six of them I think six of them all the way up to the most. And the triple they used to have a triple but there's the triple's not triple either. So you know that discovery becomes exciting. Of course, then we eat all of the Oreos as we do the math. Um, so that everybody usually is less hungry at lunch because that's a morning class. Then we have the zoo animals and the volume animals and the castles where they design an animal in the eighth grade based on those geometric solids of sphere um should I say sphere cones rectangular prisms uh cylinders and pyramids uh that's with the eighth grade they design that and then they have to perform
017the calculations to come up with the total total volume for those and then the the castles are the seventh grade which is the same same aspect where they have to design and calculate that and they put that on grid paper and do the designs and and stuff. So if you look uh there's a we're currently doing a potato chip variety activity with the sixth grade where they're calculating uh you know how you have the variety boxes you get at Sam's. So they're calculating the percentage of Ruffles in that box, the percentage of Cheetos in that box. So they're understanding that. And then we we use double number lines and stuff like that to show like if I bought one box, what was the price? If I bought two boxes, what was the price? And just
018there's just a lot of skills involved. If you look at them, you can see a lot of it. But these projects are worth 500 points each. And you know, we with the sixth grade especially, we've had more trouble, more problems this year with attendance because when you do these projects, attendance is critical when you have a partner. On most of them, you have a partner. So, you know, that's been, you know, an issue that we've had because if you're not here to complete the project, if you have a partner, that's a problem. So, but just having them understand being here and being a part of your team, it's been an issue, right? And at the end of the year, we have Miss Mome and a bunch of other people come in and we do like
019like a social studies fair thing where they have all of their projects and they present them again as a review before we take the test. So, you know, we found we were doing these projects and then we they would see surface area or uh circumference of circles on the test. That was one of the first things that we did. So, we revisit all of them again with just, you know, it's just a little presentation where they go in, they talk to Miss New, Miss Banks, and other adults that we get to come in to do that. Um, so they can go back and review all of the concepts and the skills that we've done throughout the year. So, we we we started that last year, right? because we found and I really feel like that
020helped. So then with the projects the first year we did this we didn't get to do a one on expressions with the sixth grade. So the some of the data that we pulled with Miss Doss was um that was the only huge skill that we did that we did not do a project. So uh we pulled the data from the year where we didn't do the project with the next year when we did an expression project and they doubled pretty much doubled their score on expressions without the project and with the project. So pulling all of that together and that real world aspect of pulling that together and and um doing the projects we feel like has had a huge impact on our overall scores and you know the excitement of math like I said
021just understanding what a square inch is looking at that paper and and being able wrapping that box. They have to come up with an estimate before they wrap it and then they decide on what size of a rectangle do I need to cut out. What would the length and the width be? Yeah, we're also doing a Barbie zipline right now for the tri staggering theorem for triangles and they have to calculate the A leg the height off the bleachers and the B leg on the ground and then they zipline Barbie and they calculate that in the Pythagorean theorem. So Mr. Wall was out enjoying that with us the other day. It's pretty exciting, wasn't it? Um but just understanding that then you know how much is involved in each project. So that's why we have
022them displayed out here so you can get a look at them and and see and and just this we wanted this as a testament of the rigor that we go through just in the math program and you know everyone else is rigorous with what we do and the expectations. I feel like that's a huge part of the number nine in the state and the number one scores here you know just not teachers come in and we give our all and we ask our students to give their all. We're not about the bare minimum. We're not about middle in the middle. It's about maximum here. So, just we just wanted to illustrate that with all these projects and show that these are part of a big part of what's going on there. Plus, you know, our
023behavior program and uh you know, insistence on attendance and helping the kids the different day at Christmas. Was that Christmas? Yeah. Christmas where they got to do problems and that was all with um factoring. Is that GCF? We had several I mean three or four three issues. Yeah. Three middle school. Three out of the 12 middle school. But our team plays first, right? Our team plays first, but we had three individuals that place. Mr. Mr. very often to allow me to talk about his math. So um I guess I'm the least um shy person here. I don't know. Um but this is the science data from the uh the eighth grade test that they took. And so you can see in the fall they were 38% proficient. They ranked first. And then when they took
024it again in the winter they were also first. They had grown to 48%. And I don't know if you know anything about science test, but it is incredibly difficult. So, and here is his robotics team. They made it to state this year. [Applause] Not just one. Three. Sorry. Three. If I might intervene there, too. Mr. Ross and I walked down. He had not toured the school and he wanted to see, you know, to get a little tour around. And I showed him the science lab. And if you go in there, this the test is the smallest piece of what they do in science. They learn to code, they learn to do robotics, they have a graphic design program, they have a 3D printing program. And next year and this is a math science uh continuum.
025We are looking at adding one um just one segment of building construction so that students are learning slope and different math score math skills as part of that building construction course. Car is going to head that up for us as well. uh because there's so much math involved in the trades and so we want to we want to provide for all of our kids not just those that are looking at college as an outcome. Okay. Um I included some pictures of some different activities that happened that has happened throughout the year. Here we have some um some trips that our band has went on like honors band and things like that. Um, and so you can see they went to Marshall. Um, and then I can't remember what this one on the right was. Ratings.
026And they did exceptionally well at that. Best ratings they had in a while. Best they've had in a while. They had a perfect score according to Miss Sanders. They got a perfect score this year. Yeah. And then the agriculture class took the field trip up here to Kermit um to the country. It's an aquaponics. And uh here are some pictures of what they were able to see and learn about there. Looks familiar. Just on a large scale. And now we get to social studies fair. Yeah, you're right. Beta club. I I've spent a lot on this beta club. It's a busy place. Yeah. So, um this was at um yeah, the state convention. And so, these were some of our middle schoolers um that placed. And then these are our state winners. So, we are
027very proud of them. They actually won um these are our social studies fair winners for um the state social studies fair. So, we had a bunch of state winners for Beta and we had um state winners for the social studies fair. Now, this is middle school. We also had some elementary students. I know Kira Stevens played second at state. This was the middle school besides presenting this. So, I just want to make sure that we're going to leave her out. Yeah. No, we definitely had um Lily and Bryley and Alana play. We had two teams play second and this team would play first. And if you notice the wonderful little sprite there, this sixth, seventh, and eighth grade first place winner at social studies fair. And then we had a team, an individual that placed
028in the top eight. Yes. So we had all four teams that went, all four teams. We love our social studies here. We had reality store here. So, they get to learn what it's like to um buy a car and have a job and try to budget and have kids and get divorced and and all those things. So, but it's funny when they come to you and tell you that they got divorced and now they have twins and they don't have any money left. just don't go there. We do a lot of things to reward students here. And so with good behavior, with good attendance, um we like to celebrate. So here are a few of the reward trips that we have done throughout the year for the middle school side. Um we went to Malibu
029Jacks. That was the latest one that we did. Um, we have done Habachi. We have done the, um, East Kentucky Science Center, the Marshall University Rec Center at Dining Hall. As you just saw, we did Malibu Jacks. Um, I think we're getting ready to do Cabo Lingo Park and then we're going to end up doing a Matia trip to Kings Island. Here's some pictures from the science center. That's a hurricane simulator. This is some pictures from the Marshall Rec Center of them swimming. The Rays trip. I am the personal sponsor for Rays and I don't know what I was thinking this year, but I decided to take 70 kids to Charleston to the capital and that was overwhelming. But it went amazing. And you know, you only have, you know, a handful of adults with
030you, but I've got to say, our kids were so well behaved. We did not have a single problem. Um, and you know, that's a lot of people. And when you're trying to usher them into the Capitol and trying to keep them quiet, it can be a little difficult. But, you know, we have such a good family here that, you know, when when they see us, when we raise our hand, they know, hey, I need to stop. I need to listen. It's important. And so, we were able to get us in all the way up the stairs, um, and go through everything and come back down and we had no problems. So, I am very proud of that. Um, and you know, we can't do that without an expectation of we're going to be behaved, we're
031going to listen, um, you know, we're going to represent ourselves in a way that would make everyone proud. And so, I'm going to turn it over to whoever is going to do this. You all want to speak? We talk about middle school a lot because there are a lot of opportunities for middle school kids. They get to do a lot of sports and things that aren't available to younger kids. Uh but in our preK2, we have had a lot of activities this year. This is some of our Christmas activities. Uh they've had their Christmas program and I I was tickled when I started looking at the pictures cuz I have grandkids. Trying to get the kids turned in one direction, paying attention. And I've got kids yawning and they're they're out there performing and they
032have some of the finished expressions. Uh but these are some of their Christmas activities. They did their turkey trot. Um and I'm I'm not even sure when I put the activities up. I may have some of the Christmas and the turkey trot uh confused. But this is one of the activities activities that they do for Thanksgiving. Um our prek2 team is fantastic. We were able to um we had some changes this year. Our prek teacher of course was very sick last year and we lost her and that was very detrimental to us because we loved her. We're so thankful we have Miss Britney Mar with us this year. And Miss Chelsea Atkins is also she comes in here and we did um Carnegie walkthroughs last week and Jack Crone, you know, he's a he's tough
033customer and he went into her classroom and watched her math activity and he was like we walked out the door and he said, "Are you going to keep her?" And I said, "I'm doing everything I can. You know, we're going to keep her." So, um, some fabulous things going on in K K2. Um, a lot of reading activities. We're working on foundational literacy. When you look at our strategic plans, uh, we have, um, goals for literacy, numeracy, and for positive behavior interventions and supports. And we definitely see activities going on in the K2 program that are supporting that. And one of the biggest things is, again, I said in kindergarten, we've had turnover of like six teachers in in eight years. and Miss Atkins has pledged to me that she's here to stay. So, I'm
034very enthusiastic about that because once you get people in who are veterans, knowledgeable, um you can you can build you can build more, you can build faster. And so, that is definitely an asset to our school to have both of these ladies. And then our teachers that are already here, Miss Anna Stevens and uh we have Miss Robera Start and Miss Patty Murphy who was our interventionist. They do a wonderful job with their kids. We're very thankful to have all of them. Miss Sardin is retiring this year. You notice the smile on her face. It changes a little bit when we start mentioning retirement. Uh but we're thankful for all of them. They do a wonderful job in our K2 program. Um we had we're talking about some of the activities that we did. One
035of the things that um we were able to do is an Easter egg hunt for all the kids in the school that was hosted by Starting Points. Unfortunately, that day it poured rain. So, we loaded our parents in the bleachers and the kids hit the floor and they had just as much fun and we did it with a lot less mud. Um, so Starting Points is one of our sponsoring agencies. They're very good to us here and they do a lot of activities. They work with us through our grandparents day and they do the do this and they've done several reward programs with us in the past. So, we're very thankful to have them. Um, three through five, we kind of work in departments because we're spread out all over the place. You have to
036understand in the school we have 10 grades under one roof. So we have kids here from the ages of three to 15 and so we have departmentalized somewhat and three through five is um they're just a wonderful department and one of the things that they're doing more of this year is project based learning. Now you heard our math department from the middle school say they do a lot of project based learning and they do. We just started a new math curriculum this year and it's very rigorous as well. was Carnegie. And so one of the things that they recommended is this year you get your hands on the program and you figure it out, next year we can start adding more project based. So next year we have plans for a lot more project based
037activity in math. Um but ELA has taken off with it. Miss U we have Miss Stra and Miss Markham who are ELA department for that grade continuum and across this year they've done some fabulous activities. Uh this was do you want to you want to shout out what you were doing there for the last few years? So the third, fourth and fifth even at the end of their um Friday they have like a huge activity and they've done wax museums, they've done um life cycles, um they've done biomes. Today they did they're working on the narrative. So, one class had like a red um a red carpet event and then the other class had a author's tea party. So, every time they finish up a writing um which they do a lot of other things
038with it. They create their project, they do a speech, um they do shout outs to each other, you know, a lot of other things goes with it. But then at the end, each class has an activity that they present and other students or other teachers come in and they they watch them and then they read their speech and they just kind of share what they've done with others. Do you all want to speak to your department? All right. I was I was able to go down yesterday. They at the end of the day they had the author's tea party and I I can tell you, you know, sometimes getting kids to write is a very difficult pursuit. um they don't always want to invest the time that it takes because writing could be tedious. It's
039a very difficult thing to do sometimes. Um but when you're following it up with a tea party and they're having a snack and it just brings some fun to something that might otherwise be difficult for kids and so they've done a fabulous job with that this year and the kids were very excited about it. I went around and they were telling me what they were doing and the subjects of their their writing pieces and this is some of the pictures that I was able to take. They were working diligently um and uh seemed to be enjoying it. You can see some of the writing pieces there at the top. No misbehavior. I mean, they were very much on task and so it was wonderful. Um we go then into some scores and I always make
040notes and then I start talking about all the good things we're doing and I just pay attention to that. Um, so our ELA data, and there's all kinds of data through here, and some of it, you know, is a little harder to see than others, but if you'll look at where we were at, we were at 38 um% in the beginning, and we're now at 51. And so this was um from last year to 19 and 24 to 25 and 25. So you can see the increase. We went from 38 to 51 from one to the next. Um, I'm I'm on time limit so I'm not going to be able to cover every individual grade. I put it in here and I'd be glad to share that if you want it. Um, but I I
041don't want to make you late if you're told submitting. Uh, for the math scores last year we were at 18 for those grades and this year on the benchmarks we were at 33. Um, of course, when you look at this, these are benchmarks. And one of the things that you have to realize with math is that different grades cover completely different subjects. They they're completely different math topics from grade to grade. So, they'll start lower because it may be something they've never seen before. And you'll see great growth across the year with instruction. And that's why instruction is so important. Um our science when you look at the science 126 24 so this was um last year we had a 23 this year 41. So you can see growth across the board in these these
042areas. Um let's look at reading proficiency. This is third grade reading proficiency and this is something we look at particularly because with the reading by third I mean we know the importance we know what the data says and so I look at this and I'm really glad to see all the green and blue you know and then I start to see the red and yellow and we look at you know where are we at how do we increase and I started doing data on that and almost all of our kids who are in red and yellow not all there were I think two that were not were not but uh in these kids most of them we're at about 20 days of absenteeism. And so attendance is is so important when you're learning to read,
043when you're learning those foundational skills. That's a big deal for us. And so it's something we really need to work on. Um, but you can see where we're at and what we're doing. Some of the kids are well above their benchmark and then for some we still have work to do. And so again, I've got quite a bit of data here, but I'm not going to have time to get it all up. Where am I at on time? Am I got about 10 more minutes? Okay. Um I'm going to I'll be glad to share this with you if you guys want. You can look. I mean, this is our kindergarten early lit, and you can see what a great place they're in. Um this is early lit first grade. Again, really good scores there. um
044second grade you start to see it becomes a little more difficult as you go along and you start to see your scores change a little bit but this is an area of focus for us with strategic plan we're working on foundational literacy so to us this is a big deal um let's let's look at this one we created this I I love data and I drive our staff crazy with it I think but I think that's the only way you know the direction that you're headed and so I did a comparative chart and I looked at fall to winter, where we were ranked in the county, how much growth, and then where we're at by district and state. And if you look at the green in all areas that were green, we're district and state.
045We have a couple areas of red uh that we're working on. Um particularly fifth grade. The trade has been a tough grade, but we have um several kids that have plans and um so that one across, you know, across time has always been a little more of a focus. Um but for the most part, we are well above if you look at like some of the you look at the math, we're like 28 points above county and 25 above state. 24 and 21, 15 and 11. So you see quite a bit of uh above county and state there. Um we are focused with a lot of support. In fifth grade, we're using our intervention title one to work with that. And then our third grade, we do have we are one point behind state there
046and we need to work on that and we have been this this data was done a while back. We've already put title one and our intervention in place there. But we use this to guide our instructional decisions. Okay. Um if you'll look at this one really closely, this is our WBGSA. This is our end of year test. Um, and when you look at it, this is across time. 2021, 21, 22, 22, 23, and then last year's scores. And you can see how much growth we've had across time. So, we're very proud of that. It's a lot of hard work. It represents a lot of hard work. Um, educators handbook. This is our data on discipline. Last year we had by this time and we always do it comparatively by this time we had 113 write
047ups for the year. Right now we have 96. And so that's that's good. You have to remember too we've been out of school a little bit more this year because we had a really good year last year. Last year as far as discipline was concerned was fabulous. Um so they're in the ballpark of one another but we we've had a good year. We've had a very good year. Um let's see. I've got a couple screens different than my notes. I move things around a little bit. Student supports, interventions, and mental health supports. We have two title one uh teachers and one interventionist. We have morning and evening tutoring Monday through Thursday. We have no zero for grades three through eight counseling two to three days per week. A social worker three days a week and
048we have guidance um daily. Um our strategic plan goals. This is our strategic plan from this year and you can see the markings on it. When we do leadership, we mark up where we're at with it. And so this is a working document for us for the last this will this upcoming year will be the third year. We've kind of maintained our goals change a little bit, but it's literacy, numeracy, and PBIS. We want to make sure that our kids are well behaved, they present themselves well, and that they know how to read and that they know how to do math. And so that will continue with a a a different a little bit of a different focus, but it's it's always something similar. Um, one of the things that we have implemented, I think
049Miss Gerald's alluded to it, is our house system. And this has been difficult this year with all of the in and out of weather and all the things that have happened. It's been hard to keep it on track. And so we're working on kind of um redeveloping it, but we have every student in the school and every teacher, every everybody, every service personnel, everybody spins for a house and we compete. And so those are our four houses. If you notice, the red house is in the lead and that would be my house. So there's there's no no funny business though. It's always hard work. We have an app and our kids earn points through the app if we see them do something that is above and beyond. Now, this is not general expectations. This is
050above and beyond. They get points for that. We do things like we do our canned food drive. There's a lot of different things across the year that we do that are part of this and the kids earn points and so this changes up. So, when we do our meetings, one of the things is the big reveal of the app and they get to see where their house is at and they love it. Um it's it's almost like homecoming uh all year long, but it doesn't interfere with what we do. What it does is it creates pride in school and the kids they seeing the older kids mentor the younger kids. It's it's just been a really good program and we think it's been a good addition to our school. Yeah, my house last year. That's
051right. But that was still that was last year today. This is a new year. Um but we're very competitive. I don't know if you all can tell that or not. Um, we're very competitive about our houses. We were able to send, I think we had six teachers go to the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta for training and it was a wonderful experience. Uh, Mr. Alexander reached out to us, Ron Clark is going to be speaking on May the 5th and they said, you know, do you have two middle school teachers and like they were climbing over top of one another saying, I want to go. I want to go. And then the elementary teachers said, well, what about us? And so I sent him a message and I said, well, what about them? And so
052we were able to take advantage of some seats that other schools were not using and we have quite some teachers that are wanting to go and hear him speak. But this is a big part of what we're doing part of our PBIS. And if you're not familiar with PBIS, I'm not a principal that enjoys punishment. I don't think that punishment works in 90% of situations. I think if we teach expectations and we teach kids what what we want to see, they want to please you. Kids want to please you. And so we use our if you look back on the wall the essential 55. I don't know if you've heard your kids reference this at home. Um but this is um 55 kind of guidance to live by and it's things like you know look
053people in the eye when they speak to you. And I always tell kids kids that are not real confident don't always look people in the eye. And I say it's not about how you feel about yourself. It's how you feel about them. If you look someone in the eye it shows that you you value what they have to say. And so we try to teach kids these skills. and Mr. Alexander came out here the first year we started it and he said, "What's going on with your kids?" And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "They're shaking my hand." And I said, "Yeah, it's Ron Clark." And so, uh, this is u this will be our third year that we've been doing it and we definitely see seeing our kids improvement. Uh, I mentioned
054Jack Crumb earlier. He was out here last week and he said, "When I go and visit other schools," he said, "Kids walk around like this." He said, "Your kids don't." So they have their chins up and they greet me and they they always speak and so you know it's it's it's ongoing but we're very proud of what we've accomplished with that. Um, we do our mountaineer of the month and so this is something that teachers uh recommend kids for and they get certific excuse me certificates for we do um this was the state social studies fair I don't know it's out of order but we did get our here in there and so there were more but those were the pictures I grabbed from Facebook homecoming we try to do a lot of social events
055for our kids and give them opportunities to do things uh communication and the weather got us on this, but Mrs. Chun has done a fabulous job with these uh mountaineer newsletters that she has been creating. This has been one of the most difficult years trying to get in and get continuity because of weather and flooding and all the crazy stuff that goes on, but we are getting ready to pick these back up. And I don't think you would find a professional graphic artist anywhere that would produce anything any nicer. Uh so we want to thank Mrs. change for all the extra work that she's put into these, but I think they're they're fabulous and they help keep our community up to date on what's going on in our school uh events that we've had this
056year. Um we wanted after co we wanted to open our doors back up and get our our parents and our families back in. So we have schedule these were just off the top of my head and you guys may have some more that I've left out here, but we start the year with our back to school bash. We have grandparents day. We have veterans day. We have Christmas program. We also added Christmas tree lighting last year. We have Santa come out. We do pictures. We have our Easter egg hunt. We have trunk or treat. And if there's something I'm forgetting, the music concerts, we have two of those. Uh awards days and our we have a sports banquet and we have our AAA banquet. So, there's some things beyond that. Uh but these are community
057events like the trunk or treat. We set up out in the parking lot and last year we had a parking lot full. Actually, we've been doing this about four years now and I think it's gotten bigger each year. So, we're real proud to host those. Um the ABC fashion show. That was something that the kindergarten class did. It was awesome. And the back to school bash, we had all kinds of community organizations come out and join us for that. So, it's it's always looked forward to. Um this is grandparents day. Um, so we have our grandparents come out and starting points, uh, Lisa Joe there, they, uh, give a gift for our grandparents usually and they'll usually bring cake and maybe coffee or something and they come in and have lunch with their grandchild and
058they do recess and usually what I hear is um, we we call it a sock hop. We say we're having a sock hop in the gym and one of the younger teachers said to me one time, she said this, "What's a sock cop?" I said, "Oh, bless your heart." And I explained to her what a sock was, but uh it's not actually a sock. It's more like madness as they run around in circles in the gym. And the grandparents mostly go out and they say, you know, it's a little loud. Um but they get to do that with the kids. And most often you'll hear, you know, maybe some of the kids their grandparents don't come and so one of the grandparents will sit at the table and they'll say, "Look, I'll be your grandparent
059today." Um so it's a wonderful event that we get to coach for our kids. Our Veterans Day program uh is something we've done probably like 15 years or better now. And so we're able to do a lunchon for our veterans. It's a very very good program and it's one that as long as I'm able will always be part of our school. Our kids take part in it. They sign people in, they speak. Uh Tulsa's band comes up at JOTC. So it's a joint effort between schools. Uh these are some pictures from our Christmas program. It was wonderful. We had just a wonderful time. Miss Sandra did a really great job with that and know we enjoyed it. This is our Easter celebration. Got a few pictures in here. This was our Christmas tree lighting. And
060I'll tell you the the craziness behind our Christmas tree. Uh about three years ago, I spent $100 on a Christmas tree. We're going to plant the tiny tree out here in the front and it's going to grow. And I looked at the statistics how big it would get and I said, "This thing will grow and we're going to build on the future." And what I found out is that when you put concrete in dirt and you run a roller over it to make sure your foundation doesn't settle that roots for trees do not grow. And so the tiny tree remained about that big. And then this year with the drought it died. So the tiny tree is no more. So we invested in this uh 20t tall um flag pole tree and were able to
061be our Christmas tree lighting. But this has become one of my new favorites. I enjoy uh see kids get to visit with Santa Claus and it's a good one. This was new this year. We purchased four small trees. They're like five foot trees from the dollar store. And this is part of our house program. Each house decorated their own tree. We put pictures on Facebook and we put it out to a vote for our community. So, we've got I don't know how many people on our school Facebook and they got to vote on it and vote for the winner. Now, in all honesty, and I hate to say this, I might keep my mouth shut. I thought the blue tree was pretty fabulous. I think the blue treatment was absolutely fab. I thought they were
062all good. The blue treatment topper was just wonderful, but the red treatment went and I She put us in a Christmas competition against a red house, you know. Festive that was it was a challenge. They they rose to the challenge. So, that was something that the community took part in and it was a lot of fun. Our county basketball champions, so proud of our boys. They did a fantastic job this year. all of our sports teams and I don't have pictures of all the sports teams um because I I just wasn't able to get a hold of all of them but our archery team which were one of the few schools around that has an archery team so we're very proud of that. Um football is back and and running wild wide open. I I
063love that our little league teams are preparing our kids for you know their their high school sports. So we threw those our volleyball and we were able to do a volleyball camp this year. Um, this was when I actually took the list from last year's slideshow for um, what we've accomplished and what we need. We're still working on getting the dressing rooms and the concession stand out there on the field. Uh, we want to finish our fencing. We were able to check off the lights and scoreboards. So, that's fabulous and we're very thankful for your help with that. Uh, and electricity was run to the field this year. So, we're really excited about that. We still had we had the pipes burst out in the front entrance and so we've got to stain that. I
064don't know how we're going to fix that, but that's something we would like to see done because our school's beautiful. That front entry is beautiful and that that's just thrown in my side. We want to work on getting that outdoor basketball court. We are in need of some paint. I don't know if you noticed. We do a really um good job. of our custodians here are fabulous and they do a good job of things like this, but it's just normal wear and tear when you have, you know, almost 300 people a day going in and out of the school. So, we do need a little bit of paint and um we're doing some playground dirt work. Matt and I have talked about that because we are so excited, but we're getting ready to do our
065playground. Uh so, these are kind of some things that are on the horizon and we ask that you keep us in mind. We did want to thank the county for all the help that they've given us. We are thankful for our maintenance guys that came out and um worked on getting that scoreboard in and and all the folks involved in doing that. Um this is huge. This is huge. This is our playground goal. Uh we have been working for years and years trying to get money for our playground goal. And one of the things that I did, I'm a little bit of a haggler. And so um I price matched and price matched and price matched. They were pricing it to us at like $36,000 for um doing the playground and I was able to
066get that down to like what I end up getting it down to I think it was 21,000 with installation. Wow. How good am I? Uh none of that could have happened though without some of our guests here. And I want to make sure I get everybody's names right. So give me just a second here. But um I was in my office one day and I was told that we had visitors and so I get up to go out here just a minute. Um let's get some things I think here but give me just a second. Um I was introduced uh to Mr. Michael Pennington who's here with us. Mington if you don't mind coming up. And you have a guest with Kitty. You want to bring them with you? But Mr. Pennington came up. He
067was starting a business here in the community and he is part of Modern Woodman and it's a financial group and he said, "Does your school have needs?" And I said, "Yeah, we've got needs." And he said, "What can I help with?" And I said, "The playground." And so he has been instrumental. Would you would you like to introduce This is Yeah. Playground. Yeah. He's actually from Alahim. He's a couple hours away. And to be able to do this, we put a couple different chapters together. And of course, I use my local chapter. Uh, but Blake being a couple wires away, he said, "Well, I want to be a part of that, too." So, yeah. So, he was actually able to help with that as well. Well, these gentlemen were instrumental. They donated $10,000 to our
068cause between their different groups. [Applause] We are so appreciative of everything for us and our kids that is going to be part of our community from here on. So we're very very thankful. Um but uh he has an office up here by physical therapy just up the road. So, you know, just know that they've been very supportive of our school and and we want to thank you and we want you to know that we appreciate that. Appreciate you guys. Well, and I'm going to show you if you want to look. This was our goal board and we didn't know if we'd ever reach it and took it straight to the I took him out in the hall as come out here and let me show you and we were able to show him you know
069where we're at. This is the piece that is on order. It's not those same colors. It's gold and gold. It's on order. And I was told this week that we'll be here uh the Janu or I'm sorry, not January, June, like the first week of June to the middle of June. So, uh that's with installation. They're going to come and put it in. And so, your kids are going to have a playground. [Music] [Applause] Okay, I know that it's been a little, you know, long, but and we, as you can see, we have a lot of academic successes here. We have a lot of athletic success, but I am so fortunate to be able to be a part of a lot of the student support and outreach things that happen here. And I think that
070honestly I would venture to say that I don't know of another I've been involved in a lot of different schools and I don't know of another school in the surrounding areas that has as many outreach and student support things in place as we do here. And that's what is the most gratifying when you can help these children with basic needs and things that that uh that they just need uh individually or as a family. So uh the first thing I have is the backpack program. in the school uh and school supply distribution or the backpack back to school back and they had what happened here is we had sponsors come in. She talked about that and helped supply the kids with um things to help them throughout their academic success throughout the year and you
071can see one of our students won a little fire tablet that day from one of the sponsors. So that was a wonderful day for helping our kids with uh school supplies. Uh we have literacy events. Starting points is a wonderful absolute wonderful uh community organization and they do literacy events monthly here. They do paint parties and the and when they come in they we read a book out loud. We do a oral reading of a book. They do a painting based upon that book and then when they leave they get to take those books home with them to enjoy. So they always make sure that they have some kind of literacy component or they have sometimes crafts or things like that that they'll do after school as a literacy event. Uh student hygiene supply services.
072I take I take pride in this especially because through the B Toyota group they gave us $1,500 they give to every school in our county and we use that to make um hygiene stations in our bathroom so that the kids can get hygiene supplies discreetly that they don't have to come to someone to get them. Miss Newsome had mentioned a few years ago that she had watched something about students in Africa and girls, you know, one week a month they had to stay home and couldn't be educated because of of things that that their body, you know, they didn't have they didn't have the products they needed to be in public. So, they would have to stay home. And us being in a rural area, she wanted to make sure that we had a way
073to also have products for females available at times. So, we have these hygiene stations that they're usually always supplied with deodorant and toiletries, toothpaste, shampoo, and they're in the middle school bathrooms. We also do stations in the locker rooms. We do like um the boys have those dude wipes so that if they arrest after recess, they can wipe off a little bit. There's deodorant there if they need to take deodorant home. And then this year we knew that there we've had times here where we and we've had showers available at times whenever we don't have water or people's electrics been off. But I took some of that ball Toyota money and I went to Miss N. I said, "I got a good idea. We have a a classroom down there that has a private classroom.
074We need a station that the kids can just go use whenever they need it." So she gave me the go-ahad. I went and got towels, you know, little towel rack, things like that. have it fully stocked so that the kids can come if they need to take a shower. A lot of times they'll come during intervals so other kids don't know and they can go help themselves. They can take their shower and a place by themselves and nobody even has to know. And and guess Donetta helps me with that here. Donetta helps me with that too. Making sure that the laundry is done and that kind of stuff. We wash the towels and stuff to have them ready for the kids. We actually had um not just one family, but one family in particular from
075Dunlow. Their water had been out for like a week or two and so it was going to affect their ability to work and to attend school. So they came down, they were able to run a couple loads of laundry and they their whole family was able to shower. We met them down here on the weekend and so our school is not just about school, it's also about family support and so that Miss Miss Chain had a wonderful idea there and we're glad to be part of that. I think a lot of times people don't realize how much we actually do for the kids and for the community and things like that that nobody has any idea about. This is the Bob Lester pancake breakfast. Bob Lester was an alumni here and he always hosted a
076pancake breakfast. He passed away last year. So, but and so some of his friends are still doing that pancake breakfast to make sure that we can buy coats for kids. So, they give me the money, I buy the coats. Anybody who needs a coat wants a coat, they're free to take a coat. And also I've been buying gloves and hats and things like that too. So this is just some of the participants who grab the coat off the rack. So I always make sure that that we that they he that was one of his missions is to make sure that the kids had something warm in the cold. And this is not this is not we don't check anybody's income. If we have a first coat, we give them a coat. So it's not this
077is not about you know your income level or anything. It's just providing coach and sometimes a kid just might not have one on that morning or a kids lose them here, you know, our lost and found this one full of coats and we and it was getting cold and I'm like they said, "Well, I have one at home." I'm like, "Just take it." You know, we have an extra coat. Take it. So, we're pleased that shoes for kids. We have a First Baptist Church of Cerrito that that donates shoes every year annually for kids. And they come in and get a shoe list, shoe sizes, and some of the ladies come in and they they take the kids get to put on their new shoes and and go home, you know, with new pair of
078shoes. At Children's, Inc., currently I have 33 children enrolled in Children's Inc. I take care of this sponsorship program and these sponsored children um they're sponsored from through the Children's Inc. corporation and they receive around $20 a month per child. And so usually like three or four times a year, I'll take that money and I'll shop for specific things that they need. It's basic needs like clothes, educational needs, shoes. Sometimes they will get extra money for Christmas, birthdays, and things like that. And we've actually in the last year we've helped um like one of the kids, he got $1,000 from his sponsor and we were able to get carpet for his bedroom. That was one of the things that he told me he needed. He was tired of waking up and having cold feet. We
079were able to get carpet for his bedroom. We were able to get paint for his walls. We were able to make sure that the banisters was fixed for him going in that up and down his steps. Like when these kids come to you and I say, "If you can have anything, what would you like?" and he said, "I really don't like getting up in the morning and my feet get cold. I would like to have a rug in my bedroom." I mean, and those are things that are reality for some of our students. And um so we all we provide that kind of stuff year round. Shoes. I have a shoe closet. I have a clothes closet. We have um school supplies. Anytime they need something, they'll run me down and let me know, hey,
080I need this. Even kids, I have I think six at the high school. One little boy told me he needed uh he found me here one day and he said, "Miss Chuck, can you order me a mouthpiece for football?" And I make sure we order that. And this year with extra nominations, we received some extra money for kids who were whose family were impacted by the flooding. And I was able to buy them all new bedding for all the kids in the household. And then we also had them sponsor one of our children who needed eyeglasses and I was able to order him prescription eyeglasses online because we had taped his five or six times. and I just went to them and said, "We have a kid who needs glasses." And they were more than
081willing to help. And they're actually going to give me another uh thing of money next month to order him a second pair of glasses to make sure that he's taking care of it. The backpack program, we have the hope youth group and D Collins and they make sure that these bags every weekend that the kids if that it's not by income or anything like that, if they come and say we need a bag or signing up for a bag, they get to take food bags home on the weekends and then on school breaks as well. And then we have testing incentives. Miss Harvey's mom has been wonderful. Last year she through the Wayne County Community Service Organization, they got two oculuses, some uh Kindle Fire, some AirPods as testing incentives for the three through five.
082And this year they're going to do all three through eight. They're going to give a a prize for the top score in math and ELA in every grade this year as testing incentives. and that's through the Wayne County Community Service Organization. All right, I'm sorry. I know we've probably taken too much time that we could talk about our school all night, but uh just so much work that goes on here and I I would like to take a moment to recognize the staff here because I would no longer work anywhere else. This is the most wonderful group of men and women for the work that they do maintaining the school, making sure that our kids are fed. They level the playing field. That's why our our low SCES are ran number one because they're teaching
083them. They're also leveling the playing field to make sure they have what they need when they come into the classroom. Uh so I would like to take a moment to say that I appreciate them. Very proud of what they've accomplished in our students. Our students have worked their heels off and I'm so proud of of each and every accomplishment that they made. We appreciate your support and we thank you for coming out tonight. Thank you. Thank you for our parents too. Our parents work hard making sure that our our children are supported and and so we appreciate them as well. Thank you. No, no, before we recess, uh the you had a a screenshot of some facility needs. Yes. Is there anything beyond what was on that screenshot? Um the biggest thing interiorwise is paint.
084This cream color paint, but we've not had a full paint since we've been here. This is year eight. Uh we've had some, you know, kind of touch-up painting through the summer. That's to me the biggest thing about making our school look clean. We actually had a site visit from the school building authority last week. And I made an announcement. I told the teachers, I said, "Make sure that you know we clean up and have everything ready." And the gentleman came in and I said, "Now we, you know, we try to make sure that it was all cleaned up. Our custodians do a great job." And he said, "Well, I can tell you now." He said, "Your your school looks great." And he was very complimentary. So I think, you know, as far as things like
085that, we're good. would just need, you know, those general repairs like painting. Um, am I missing anything inside? That's Yeah, that's on William Thompson has worked his tail off. He's out here almost daily. But it seems like they get one section up and some goes down. But it's not for lack of effort. They've been really good about coming out and trying to help us. Um, they I think you said they had to get somebody out of Virginia or somewhere. Yeah, we've got a new company that's coming in providing support. So, it it should get better. So, it's um you know, that's an ongoing thing, but a lot of it is outside facility, the fencing and things like that. We'll probably need some fencing around the playground equipment when we get that up and and get
086it rolling. Um but I think that was that was our primary list right now. Let's not forget. Trust me, if I forgot it, they'll remind me and you'll get an email tomorrow. Okay. Um but we're what is it? That was on my list. That on the list. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think um the staff and Nona will tell you we pay a lot of attention to that at the county office as well. And uh we consistently talk to uh folks about the performance of the school here. And to be in the top 10 in the state of West Virginia in middle school performance is absolutely fantastic. But what was even more more impressive than that top 10 finish was we saw a significant increase in the elementary schools as well. We have what I when
087we look at the district as a whole, we have three schools that are really high performing on a consistent basis and you guys are in that group and uh so the [Applause] the uh the data that you that uh you are uh producing each and every year that student academic data you can't make that up. So you you guys are doing fantastic and we appreciate everything that you do and your focus in the classroom. Uh I've told the story several times Tammy Gerald is in here. Um, was it a ye was it one year or two years ago you were at Heritage Farms for the week? That was last year. So last year, Audi Perry at Heritage Farms gave us the opportunity to send a group of uh students to Heritage Farms for an entire
088week, but we had to have a staff member that was willing to stay overnight and stay for the week. And who who would have volunteered for that? Tammy volunteered for that. I know she volunteered or she was like [Music] but my favorite story is I went out to visit him midweek and Audi Perry had me in a side by side. So we we were going out through the woods looking for him and we came through uh came through some trees and entered into a clearing and there they were. The students were there and Tammy was teaching a math lesson. And I asked the guy from Heritage Farms. I said I said, "What what or I'm sorry, it was a guy from WVU who was there as part of the program." I said, "What's going on?"
089And he said, "Well, we had a break and uh she decided she'd get in a math lesson real quick." And so that's just the type of intentionality that it's it's um impressive the scores that you're producing. So we really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you. We appreciate you all coming out tonight. Thank you for having us. It's all very, very good news and we really appreciate all the hard work and it obviously is is showing. So, keep it up. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? All right. We will recess. Recess. And I need a motion. Motion. Motion to recess. Motion. Second by Dennis. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries 5 to zero. It is 510. Who made the motion? And those that have joined us online, we are on the way to Tulsa High School now.
090So, we will start a new stream at Tulsa High School. Thank you. We would ask that you all grab some food to go. I'm sure Tulsa Thank you.