001Thank you, Madame President, and members of the board, those who are joining us in person and remote. We're really excited uh to make sure that everyone is aware that we're now uh having enrollment open to three and four year olds. I'll wait just a second while they pull up the superintendence report so we're all together. There we go. really excited to open that enrollment to families of three and four-year-olds for all of our preschool programs. This includes our new neighborhood preschool programs at Sunflower and Woodlon elementary schools. And these folks are building on the amazing work in our established programs at Kennedy Early Childhood Center as well as um at uh New York Monastery. Our prek programs are free uh to families who meet state eligibility guidelines. We welcome all children. So families who do
002not meet those eligibility guidelines may enroll for a fee that we have researched and is low for preschool and even daycare in our community. That fee is $660 a month. So, we invite everyone to register your preschooler on our website just as you do for any of our other K12 student programs. I will uh share an email and a place in our update this week with all of our families so that folks may email with questions. We want to remind all of our returning families that we sincerely appreciate uh folks going on to complete the annual registration. I know everyone's really busy with lots of items to attend to. This is uh helpful for all of us in terms of uh getting our staffing and our enrollment and our proper planning in place for a
003successful 2526 and being ready on that first day of school come August. Our elementary schools proudly welcomed 523 incoming uh kindergarteners at their kinder orientation events uh during uh April and some of March. Uh members uh director Rob Roersonson put place some materials on your desk so you have some of that to share uh as you move forward. Each school created a welcoming, engaging, and informative experience that really celebrated the transition into kindergarten and be and we're beginning right away to build strong connections with families. I just want to give a shout out to our students, our staff, our families for the strong show up last Monday on our inclement weather makeup day. I know we're moving fast and that's old news by now, but I'm not sure that folks realize that we were right
004at 91% daily attendance at elementary, 85% at middle, and 77% at high schools. All three of those percentages, and and by the way, I should have had it on there, uh, at 80 between 85 and 86% overall in the district. So, all attendance percentages were within 3% up or down of attendance rates both for the prior Monday this year, April 14th, and also for the third Monday in April a year ago. Um, and that uh we were right in line with all of those comparison attendance rates. Um, I take it very seriously uh that our community, our staff, our students, our parents really take school seriously and show up even on those inclement weather makeup days. We're going to share as we have on recent superintendent reports. In fact, throughout this year, we're going to
005share a student safety update. And members, I'll do that more in depth at the end of this superintendent report, but I just wanted to show the link to our safety uh portion of our website. Uh I appreciate uh that folks can give us safe safety tips on our safety tip line. We use those tips to inform our work at school each day. And just a reminder that that report can be anonymous, which is important sometimes for folks. Uh safety will always be our top priority uh when concerns arise. I just wanted to highlight some of our students recent achievements. Can you help me with that? Thank you. Um, and these students uh uh recently achieved perfect uh ACT scores. That's a rare uh thing to achieve. Just want to give a shout out to Katherine
006Stansel at Free State, Emma Ryan at Lawrence Virtual, and Eli Klet and James Gasman at Lawrence High School. They did not miss the response on even a single question on the ACT. So, congratulations uh to these guys. Uh moving on, uh Lawrence High came back this week from the National High School Journalism Convention in Seattle with the absolute highest honor, the Pacemaker Award for its Red and Black yearbook. Editors of the year were alumni Maya Smith and Maybel Hamlin, members of the class of 2024. Just an amazing recognition. Additionally, the budget student newspaper received fifth place and the yearbook eighth place in best of show recognition. Lawrence High also celebrated getting to watch Zana Kennedy receive her Kansas Student Journalist of the Year award. So, just a great day and congratulations to these Lawrence High
007School students and their advisor Barbara Tholan. We also want to congratulate these eight students who've been so successful during the speech and debate season that they've qualified for the National Speech and Debate Association tournament. They have our best wishes for continued success. Um, and really special thanks and congrats to their coaches, Jeff Plinsky at Lawrence High and Parker Hopkins at Free State. Our middle school students from West and Southwest placed second at Kansas History Day in their respective categories and have earned the chance to compete at National History Day competition. This is an amazing competition. I've uh seen uh this work before. Their teachers are Jessica Misher Learner and Danny Lton Barker. Congratulations, N National History Day qualifiers. Uh Andrew Benson, here's a photo of him. Uh one of our talented Free State journalist has
008earned the Kansas Scholastic Press Association Student Photographer of the Year Award. Uh congrats to Anders. Additionally, the Free State Free Press and Free Press Online earned all Kansas award rec awards recognizing the best in student journalism. Their teachers, Mr. Jared Schuff, won KSPA Sunflower Award given to the best new journalism advisor. We're so proud of both of our excellent student uh journalism programs. I just want to give uh Free State a shout out. I was just over there a week ago to do an interview uh with that team and they shared with me several copies of their publication this year. They're just an extraordinary team. Also, uh I want to thank the director of nutrition and wellness, Julie Henry, for engaging LHS students in a competition to create a new menu item for school lunches.
009Chef Rose Berry's culinary classes learned about the federal meal requirements. They wrote the recipes and made dishes. A panel of judges and the student chefs ranked the items. The top dish from each class will face off to win the prize of a spot on the menu for lunch at Lawrence High School. I'm excited to hear which dish wins, and I'll be back to advise you all to try it. Um, students from our career tech, here they are. And I'm sorry I missed this event. Um, but I know several members were there. Uh, students from our career and teched classes demonstrated their work for the community during Lawrence High's annual CTE Innovation Expo. It featured a little bit of everything from art, medical research to engineering prototypes, culinary, and robotics. Uh just a really exciting evening
010in the district. Speaking of showcases, we just had a great turnout of guests, including several uh school district teams from around the state that visited Southwest Middle and Sunflower Elementary last week to hear about our AVID journey. I really appreciated uh Bob Buyers and Anne Castello for joining us there to learn on that day. We were delighted to welcome everyone and to hear from AVID director Dr. Sherah Hoffetler and principles Dr. Carissa Miles and Amanda Green about their successes teaching college readiness skills, including writing, inquiry, collaboration, uh, organization, and reading. After those opening presentations, the students took over and they really shared their AVID experiences and the uh, day ended with the middle school student panel. Just want to share a few things that our students shared about their AVID experiences. One of them said,
011"AVID is very studentled. Your teacher is going to be there for you and you're going to have tutors there for you. But it is really studentled. As a student, if you want to get the most out of it, you have to listen to your peers. You have to interact with them. You have to take their advice. And you also have to collaborate with them." Another student shared, "I never really felt out of place in AVID. I felt like I always had a place where I belonged. I felt like everyone was really welcoming. Everyone has to put themselves out there and everyone is really good about making everyone else feel comfortable in the AVID space. The panel discussion ended with this student comment. AVID is very diverse. There's not going to be just one group of
012kids. You get students who are interested in the arts. You get the athletes. You get the people who are really focused on school. You all bond as a family. And then by the end of the year, you are all interacting with each other, listening, and everybody becomes good friends. We'll share more about AVID in Lawrence public schools at our next meeting when we have an AVID update planned uh for the board. Um Sunflower families Oops, I'm supposed to turn this. Sunflower families enjoyed learning about one another's cultures uh last week at their international night. This included a sampling from dish of dishes from a variety of nations uh during the evening. There are so many school activities this weekend. It was just impossible to get them all into the schedule, but I just want to
013shout out on a couple of them that I was lucky to get to attend. Uh we had just a tremendous crowd, traffic jam, the city of Lawrence downtown and it was all stemming from the Lawrence Arts Center and how many families were headed down there to see our student art. I just want to share with you a few of the highlights. Those three photos on the left are kinder and first grade emergent artist. And I have to say they were among my favorite pieces of art in the entire show uh from kinder and first grade. And then on the right, it's a large a photo that has a large number of pieces of artwork, but you can see how impressive. And that was just one wall of the high school art. And there's a lot
014more. I don't want to say the exact date because I'll get it wrong, but that artwork will be hung for a few more days. And in our newsletter, I'll note the date. Um, it's it's up for a few more days. I plan to go back uh when there aren't so many hundred people running around and enjoy it again. It's worth a second look. Um, also out at Lawrence High School, I had to put this photo in. Uh, Showtime was a variety show at Lawrence High this weekend. Just a wide spectrum of talent, uh, hard work and so much fun all the way around. I I really appreciated the opportunity uh, Dr. Ingle and I to join in at Prairie Park on Saturday afternoon. You can see here Lori Greenfield in the back. They're helping students
015to plant uh seeds in their own little planter that they took home with them. So they will have corn or peas or beans sprouting at home soon uh on the windowill or wherever they stuck it. So really it was a delight to see so many parents uh students and the staff showed up to make it all happen. There were activities in every corner of the school. Uh just a great event. I understand that there were several other carnivals and school events that we were unable to get out to. Um and then also Hillrest held their first pow-wow, which I'm sorry I didn't get to. I hope some of the members did. So I hope uh everyone is watching their calendar. every day now for uh now through Memorial Day will be a sprint with so
016many activities uh throughout our Lawrence Public Schools community. Uh going back just a week or 10 days or so, Lawrence Schools Foundation celebrated their 40th anniversary, 40 years of success with Lawrence Schools Foundation in our Lawrence community. They celebrated nearly 200 school champions. And we are so fortunate students, staff, parents, and community to benefit from the donation of funds, in kind goods, volunteer services, all of it coordinated through our amazing foundation. Several individuals and organizations were honored specifically, and they've got all that up on their website. I'll link it in to my message tomorrow. in case folks want to join and congratulate uh members of our community who have truly supported our schools. Uh we wanted to end by just sharing uh that the Boys and Girls Club is now enrolling for their fall program.
017One of the parents I got to visit with at Prairie Park was sharing with me on Saturday what a gift and what a blessing uh Boys and Girls Club has meant for their family. Um, so, uh, two public information sessions coming up on May 13th and 14th, and we invite our families to check that out.