001uh members of the board, staff and community. Uh and we're just looking down miday and we're just really grateful to our um to our students, our teachers and staff, our parents and community. Everybody's focused on a strong finish to this school year. It's going to happen the end of next week. Um and May is a time both for reflection and for celebration of the things that have gone well. I have just a few updates on our work. Uh the first chart is really an item that we keep an eye on. Members, as you know, is our substitute fill rates. We're always working to openly share the data that represents our daily work to improve our schools and our district operations. This year we've had the goal of improving the rates at which we are able
002to consistently fill substitute positions and tonight I'm sharing a fourth quarter update on our fill rates so far. You can see this uh wider chart that really dissects the number of subs needed as opposed to just the absence rate. Um, I want to go to the second chart that that really simplifies it to so that you can see week by week over the eight weeks so far of this fourth quarter uh the rate at which we were able to place substitutes when uh a a teaching position uh has an absence. So you can see that overall we are averaging right at 93% coverage. Uh that is a tremendous increase uh over the past years. And I just want to give everybody a shout out and especially appreciate all of our team who uh digs in
003to help when that sub rate doesn't exactly match 100%. Uh secondly, we announced just about a month ago uh about our preschool enrollment in two elementary classrooms, one at Woodlon and one at Sunflower. Uh we are working uh through a variety of details as you might imagine, but I just want to give you an update that we have more than 26 students who've already applied to be a part of this new program across two classrooms. Of course, we will manage those class sizes to keep them small because they are three and four year olds. Uh but really exciting on top of Kennedy Early Childhood Learning Center to really start our work um with uh having preschool classrooms out in the elementary classrooms. I wanted to uh just spend a few minutes tonight uh talking about
004uh some streamlining of the organization uh that we've been busy with and board members, you've been briefed and updated over the on this over previous months. Uh but since our community conversation, we've discussed our intention to align and streamline the organization to push uh limited resources out into the classrooms and to prioritize compensation for our employees. So, uh, this is our last board meeting, uh, uh, during this school year, and I wanted to revisit this topic to let folks know that we continue that work to flatten the organization. We will continue a meticulous review of every area in the district operations to achieve greater efficiencies. It really is our ability to innovate uh that will help us to align the organization to get the very most opportunities for students uh classroom support and compensation for
005our employees. I want to just reiterate to the community that the board is supportive and we are all committed to this effort. [snorts] I do want to say this evening because there are some steps uh covered in the HR report this evening. I want to just say to the community that um these changes are in no way a reflection of any individual who has served in one of the positions that's being reorganized. Uh those are awesome and wonderful professionals. Um but this is a time to step forward to lean into a redesign of the organization and to ensure that we push every resource into our classroom and into compensation for our staff. So, as a part of this redesign, you uh recall back in November, the assistant director teaching and learning position was reduced. And
006this evening, you may notice the executive director teaching and learning also reduced. And there are several other positions that will be coming forward over the coming weeks. As a part of this redesign, we will post over the coming days an assistant superintendent of teaching and learning and then really flatten that organization so that we transition to a design where that assistant superintendent will work directly with a network of active practicing teacher leaders and we will deploy a teacher leader model to read instruction. In doing so, we will re leverage an asset that we have in Lawrence public schools and that asset is remarkable and strong teacher leadership. So the vision is of teachers by teachers for teachers and really flattening out the organization. This will amplify the opportunity to lead for teachers and help us
007to direct resources to the classroom level. At this point, there will be far more questions than answers and we recognize that we are early in this process. It is important to me though to share that that is our theory of action, our theory of leadership as we move forward toward school year 2526. Wanted to share some updates on our work. I have had just the incredible opportunity to visit with members of the class of 2025. I'll be seeing more this week. This was our conversation last week at Lawrence. high school. Um, and uh, students talked about what they were involved in at school, the profound memories that they have. I asked them for their top one, two or three memories from their time in Lawrence public schools, appreciation for their teachers. They told me about
008their exciting plans uh, after graduation. And then I also asked them to give me some work to do and that is to name some things that we need to get fixed. And uh they speak from a position of experience having lived in our system. Many of them for the entire 13 years. But was also excited to have a few students in that group who have joined us since their uh seventh grade year or since their ninth grade year. Last week we celebrated uh and I noticed that uh that Miss Johnson has put uh one a cookie on your place, but we were excited to celebrate um 123 Whoops, I may have passed it up. 123 graduates, Lawrence Public Schools educators from Letters Training with uh they celebrated last week with remarks from Lorie Curtis, the
009Kansas State Department of Education's early literacy and dyslexia program manager. She commended our teachers for their commitment to education, their training in the science of reading, and their efforts to improve student reading proficiency and engagement. Uh Lawrence, parents as teachers, welcomed a special guest to Wednesday's play group. You can see it here. Kansas State representative uh Suzanne Wickley uh visited with our parent educators, met families, and enjoyed a hands-on observation of our littlest learners. Several staff honors. It was wonderful to be out last week on teacher appreciation week. I got to be in so many schools to really thank and also to award our teachers. A quality teacher we know makes all the difference in student growth and learning. Um and our students benefit tremendously from their learning experience in the classroom with our 900
010extraordinary Lawrence Public Schools teachers. Uh here are some of the teachers we got to recognize last week. this uh for building relationships and solving challenges to fostering communication and placing student success above everything else. This is the Woodlon uh elementary intervention team. They were uh recipients of the Rick Doll teamwork award uh last week. It was so great to ex to present to these five educators. And as one of our master Lawrence education achievement partners, Trudy Credit Union joined us over there and awarded this team $1,000 to assist with their continued efforts to support students. We also got to be out to see Amanda Carlson, Cordley third grade teacher, who is our Lawrence Elementary teacher of the year. Uh, so exciting. We had a tremendous assembly at Cordley celebrating Amanda Carlson. And then uh it
011was also just a great honor to be out uh with Connie Mertz, Billy Mills Middle School science teacher who is our Lawrence Secondary Teacher of the Year. We received high praise in their nominations from their principles, colleagues, parents, and even some of their students. Trity Credit Union presented both teachers with checks for $1,000. We look forward to nominating these teachers on up through the Kansas teacher of the year program in the fall. On Friday, we announced that Jenny Hberg, a beloved Deerfield kindergarten teacher, is this year's Lawrence Master Teacher and our nominee next fall to Emporia State University's Kansas Master Teacher Program. We appreciate Trudy who awarded Miss Hamburgg $2500. The audience for that presentation was Miss Hberg's kindergarten classroom. And I have to say to you, they were fully engaged and understood every minute
012of it and also wanted to contribute to her application uh [snorts] with their own reflections on what it's like to be in her amazing classroom. just happened to be when we were there Friday afternoon that there were three parent volunteers also working in the classroom. So, there was just lots of joy uh there at Deerfield on Friday afternoon. Jefferson's Restaurant of Lawrence honored Katherine Brooks, a science teacher at West Middle School. Here she is with its 2025 Jefferson's Lawrence Teacher of the Year. Miss Brooks will receive a $500 gift card to Jefferson's. And we're really fortunate to benefit from the strong support of our partners, businesses, and organizations like Jefferson's in our community who value and champion the teaching profession. Let's look at some of our student honors. Uh we just were delighted to hear
013that 60 students from Lawrence High and Free State uh earned their uh their seal of by literacy this year. This is a really big deal uh in Kansas and across the country. The state award of biiteracy recognizes students who have studied and attained proficiency in two or more languages by high school graduation. To achieve the seal of biiteracy, students must perform at or above a designated level on speaking, writing, reading, and listening exams. there. This accomplishment recognizes student readiness for college and careers and their engagement as global citizens. Congratulations to these students and all of our world language teachers who have supported them. Congratulations to Free State for defending its title to become yes the sixtime uh Ksh AA6A state speech champions. The team also captured three individual state championships. You may recall from January
014that the Firebird Firebirds also captured the state debate championship this year. So this is only the seventh time in 43 years that a school has united the crowns, winning both debate and speech titles at the same school. Free State is the only school in the state to have achieved this level twice. in 2019 and now this year in 2025. Congratulations to all these students speech and debate champions and to their coaches. Really delighted to share that two of our students, two of our seniors earned $2500 in national merit scholarships last week. We congratulate them and are excited to see them pursue their chosen fields of study in environmental science and mechanical engineering. These three LVS teams performed well in the state e cyber mission competition placing first and second at 9th grade as well as
015first among sixth graders. Their projects involved AI, solar pathways, and diagnosing Parkinson's disease. Two Lawrence High School wrestlers uh competed at the Kansas State Freestyle and Greco tournament in Witchah. Jaden Herell finished in second place, qualifying for the national tournament in July in Fargo, North Dakota. He also will represent team Kansas at the junior duels in June in Milwaukee. 12 of our high school students were given the opportunity uh last weekend to perform with Black Violin, the two-time Grammy nominated group during his performance at the Lead Center. What an honor for our student musicians. You can see them here. Nutrition and Wellness Director Julie Henry has announced the winning recipe from Chef Rose Berry's culinary 2 class at Lawrence High School. We talked about this a little bit la at our last meeting. Three students
016learned about food nutrition standards and came up with the cheesy chicken fajita wrap which will be served at LHS May 15th. So that's coming up in 3 days. And this will also be added to the lunch menu at both high schools in the fall. So it sounds delicious and you can pick that up at a high school near you uh here in the fall. Some special events coming. Cans for the community is a special local organization that encourages communitywide recycling of aluminum cans. This group takes that earth friendly practice a step further by donating the money received from the sale of the aluminum to local nonprofits and worthy causes. So each day, each April, Cans for the Community issues an Earth Day challenge to recycle 5,000 pounds of aluminum cans. Our schools are the annual
017beneficiary of this April challenge. So we want to thank everyone, all our neighbors who recycled their cans. Lawrence exceeded that goal, resulting in what what would have been $500 donations to each of our elementary schools. Boilo of the 12th and Haskell Recycling Center stepped in and generously matched the donation. So, Cans for the Community volunteers visited all of our elementary schools last week to present $1,000 donations to each school. Next year, our secondary schools will reap the benefits of these recycling rewards. I want to thank Mr. Killow, Linda Clink Clinker, who is a affectionately known as the can lady. You may know her by that name. all the cans for community volunteers in our community for recycling. It was such an honor to attend the Haskell Indian Nations University commencement on Friday and I especially
018valued the references of the speakers. They referenced very powerfully the importance of leadership and warriorship. I took that with me all week and it was so inspiring. It was a special delight to witness the graduation of member Kadu Blackwood's son. Congratulations to the Haskell class of 2025. Now, speaking of commencements and commencement season, uh we are starting Thursday morning over at uh in recognition of our young adults in the community transition and project search programs at Community Connections at Pinkney. And from Thursday morning, then over to Saturday, we'll be at Lawrence uh virtual school out at Free State High School. And then next week, uh, two in a row, uh, Lawrence High on the 20th and Free State on the 21st. And then our adult education, college, and career, um, closes us out on May
01929th following Memorial Day. As we wrap up this school year next week, I just want to extend my deepest appreciation and gratitude to everyone, our students and teachers, staff and leaders, our parents and community. We've done uh this school year together. Uh and thank everyone for your contributions to make this a successful 2425 school year. We have a lot of work ahead of us, a lot more work to do. Uh but we wish everyone all of our students a safe and peaceful summer as they uh leave us next week. Thank you members for the opportunity to share this report and for the honor of serving the Lawrence public schools. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Swift.