Good morning, good morning, good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome here.
It's time now for our community connection right here on K one, the
one you try, and we're going to talk with Bartlos Hill Public Schools Superintendent
Chuck McCauley. And you brought friends I did. Good morning Tom. I
got Blair Ellis here, our executive director of the Public School Foundation. Good
morning one and all. It's kind of a chilli went out there, but
hey, we'll take it. You bet, yeah, you bet. Thank
you for having us. I know it's an incredibly busy time and I know
you guys got a lot going on here at the station. Well you got
a lot going on at the school. You know we do here, Yeah,
we do, we do. So just a couple of things. I'll
give you an update. We had our school board meeting on Monday. We
had it a week earlier because of the holiday schedule. I had a short
meeting, but we did have a We spotlighted a few things, which is
always fun time. You know, you've been to a lot of our school
board meetings and a couple of new things. Actually they're all new things that
we spotlighted. First off, we had cade winters, one of our senior.
He received an award from the Oklahoma Council for Indian Education. He was
named their Student of the Year. So Eric Harp and the two sponsors from
the high school teachers nominated, nominated Caid, and Caid received that award.
You think he's in Oklhoma City last weekend, so we had him this first
time we've had a student received that recognition. He's a great young man.
He's on my advisory council. He's the third Winters that's going to graduate from
Bartlesville. We wish, we wish Robin Tamoud had some more kids, but
we're really proud of Caid and and he's going to go on and do some
great things. And then uh then we secondly, we had Lauren Lee who
Lauren's been up there before. Lauren's a national mayor of Semifinalists for US,
but she was recently this fall was named a Coca Cola Semifinalist, which is
the first time we've had anybody received that recognition in years. And she's a
great kid. She's president of her student body and plans to get into medicine.
And she's also on my advisory council. And one thing I'll share they
shared at the meeting the other day that Lauren and Kate both have been instrumental
in we are at Bartlesvielle High School. They're going to host a state student
Council convention next fall and which is a really big deal. We'll have literally
thousands of kids leaders, young leaders from across the state of Oklahoma will come
and spend the weekend in Bartlesville and we'll be hosting and at the high school
for our hotels will be full and we'll have a lot going on. But
those kiddos, they we've we've taken leadership roles are kids, which is not
a surprise to anyone, but at the state level. And so those two
are big, big piece of that. And then lastly, our Bruins on
the Run kiddos we had they did something new this year, Blair. Obviously
the foundation has been involved in but Tasha Posch, who's a teacher over at
Wilson Elementary UH, she is our teacher sponsor that kind of helps run the
program, UH, and she had an idea to do something new this year
for all of our kids that were that ran that wool Rock AKU they did.
I beat the superintendent shirt. So if they beat me, uh they
were they were eligible to receive a shirt. And uh, you know that
program, we had over hundred and fifth graders participate and I can't remember actually
how many fifth graders that out that that outran me. I always think about
my friend from Cain, Tucker Symes, who was a fifth grader, and
he ran right behind He had never ran that far before, and during that
race, he ran behind me and we had a conversation the whole time,
and then about the last quarter mile and he just buzzed right past me and
left me in the dust. And so really proud of Tucker and he and
it was really amazing because he said, I, mister mcleod've never ran this
far before. He telling me all about it. I was like, Tucker,
let's just be quiet and run a little bit. But anyway, we
had several I think of the fifth graders, I think we had twelve or
fifteen. I was gonna say they were probably about eight fifth graders, and
then there was one third grader, one fourth grader, sorry, and a
few high school and middle school students. Yeah, it was fun. So
they all came and they had a short form and so we're able to do
that and well, and Oliver, Oliver is a second grader, right,
he's a third grader. Oliver the third grader. Okay, yes, yeah,
so I had a third grader. Of course he was in front of
me the whole time too, so yes, I was fine too. We
had we had them show up and so that was a lot of fun to
be able to recognize them as well. And in terms of things that are
actually approved during the board meeting, we had a light agend. We approved
our board meeting calendar dates for the upcoming year. We always do that at
the end of the year, which lower main on the third Monday at five
point thirty, and then we approved our academic calendar we had. We revised
our school calendar for next year, made some slight revisions to that. The
big takeaway is we're going to start school a week later than we did this
year. We'll still get out there right up leading up to Memorial Day breaks
for this basically this, I think we changed the date of our fall break,
but they're posted online so people. I know, I appreciate families when
they're when they're making travel plans and vacation plans to work around our school calendar.
We really need those kids to be in school. And then we also
approved our the twenty five twenty six academic calendar, which really mirrors mirrors of
twenty four to twenty five calendar. So those are the items from our board
meeting Monday at a pretty short meeting, but got but we're able to get
a lot done. We do plan and have a special school board meeting on
Tuesday the nineteenth at nine am. We are, as you know, we've
got a lot of construction going on and kind of the next phase over at
Wayside Elementary. The renovation piece of that. We just opened bids yesterday and
so we plan to ask our board to approve the guaranteed maximum price for the
renovation at Wayside. So that's just to keep that project on schedule so that
we can open school with those additional spaces at Wayside in August, which is
really pretty amazing considering, you know, our community just past that bond isshow
in February, and then here we are working through that. Yeah, and
also mentioned too in our construction update that we are at facility which is really
coming along beautifully. It's right on schedule. You know, we were just
talking about we did our kind of our kickoff a program for that at the
end of the last school year in May, and we're on schedule for that
project to be complete right at spring break, so in March of twenty twenty
four, so you know that fourth nine weeks of school, our kids will
be able to you know, be in that facility and be able to use
that. I also mentioned on the board meeting, reminded them that the Lion
Foundation they are helping us with a they approved a half a million dollar grant
to help fund the greenhouses for that. You know, because when we passed
the approved the election for that act facility, obviously construction costs have gone up
and the facility costs more than what we plan for in twenty twenty one,
and so the Lion Foundation stepped up. They've already received half of that donation.
We've got that to come in last week, and we'll get the other
half next year. So anyway, a lot of exciting things going on.
I know, at the end of the calendar year, I always think back
of all the accomplishments that we've had and you know, just thinking about for
our community to be proud of. In addition to all the academic things and
opportunities that we talk about with our kids. But you know, just as
you're making a drive around town, looking at Christmas lights and looking at our
school facilities, you can really see the things rooms that we made, whether
it's at Richard Kine or Wilson Elementary. I've talked about Wilson, and you
know the agg facility, and of course all the things we've done at the
High School. So I wish much more things to come, more things on
the horizon. So really really proud of our thankful for our community support and
able to invest in our kids. Blair, you know you had that book
thing a few weeks ago. I'm just dying to find out how well did
that go to Cooper and mill Oh, the art auction, it went great.
We sold the remaining pieces of art for the illustrations from our book.
I knew they would go fast. They did. And then we introduced this
was kind of a surprise hit as note cards. So now we have a
set of nine note cards. You can bite at Moxie or buy it on
our foundation website. But it's a set of note cards turning in some of
those illustrations into note cards, and they're just they're just beautiful and they're a
great Christmas gift, and of course we still have the book for sale.
Also at Moxie, I was able to Jennifer and I were able to win
the silent auction or actually the live auction piece, because they auctioned off some
art and so there was a some art that Stephen Graham, who's an art
teacher at Canamentry, very talented. He had done some art from the Pathfinder
as actually off of a picture that Grainger Metter had taken, and so Jennifer
Ier tickled to death. That was a goal going in. Hopefully we go
forward to get that and so we've recently moved into our home that we built,
and so that's the I think that's the one piece of art we have
on the wall picture and so it's really neat. It's really neat to be
able to see, you know, I see that picture of the Pathfinder every
day because I've spent miles and miles with the singing that very thing that's familiar
scenery at you. That was really neat. My office is looking much more
bare now that I don't have beautiful pieces of art art in but that's okay.
They've all gone to good homes. Well else we got cooking on the
foundation site. Well, just you know, the end of the year is
coming up in just a few short weeks. I don't know where November and
December have gone, but of course I know. But of course, so
we're focused on year in giving. So if donors want to make a contribution
to the School Foundation, this is really we do our big annual giving push.
So we're in the middle of that. Obviously, if you want to
get if you still itemize your taxes and want to get a cheeritable deduction,
you can do that by making a get to the foundation. But of course,
and I've come in a couple of different times to talk about this,
but because of that change in tax legislation last fall, donors who have any
sort of Oklahoma state income tax liability can get a tax credit so they can
make donations to the School Foundation and actually get up to seventy five percent of
that donation back in the form of a tax credit. So it sounds it
sounds too good to be true, but it truly does work. We just
launched it last year and we had about fifty donors take advantage of it.
On their taxes for twenty twenty two. My husband and I were one that
did that, and I can tell you it was really easy to see that
that donation come back off in the form of a tax credit. What we
did is we deter and what our state income tax liability would roughly be,
and then we made a donation to the school foundation that would offset that liability
and it worked. And this is again a statewide legislation. The funds are
set aside and earmarked for this purpose at the state level, and if Bartlesville's
not taking advantage of it, other school districts, private schools, they are
taking advantage of it. So what we're trying to really push this year is
just making sure that we're maximizing the benefit of this program for Bartlesville. So
often, a lot of our donors last year, if they were used to
making a two hundred and fifty dollars donation to the school foundation, they would
increase that to one thousand dollars donation, but it would still only cost them
two hundred and fifty dollars because they were getting seven hundred and fifty dollars of
that donation back on their taxes. That's making your money work for everybody.
It really is. It's a great way to just I mean, what you're
doing is you're redirecting tax dollars directly to Bartlesville Public Schools, and all those
dollars that come in under that credit, they are all earmarked for our teacher
grant program. Nice, yeah, Tom, And so I hope people will
consider that if they're thinking about their end of the year giving and so these
dollars obviously go right into the classroom when you think about those classroom grant grants.
But related, I also just wanted to mention just briefly on the safety
or school resource officer front, that's going really well in terms of having a
school resource officer at every school, and we are going to be adding our
second officer at the high school. You that's something that the department felt like,
just what the sheer size of the size and numbers, felt like it
was best for us to have two resource officers at the high school. And
so that's going to be start being staffed in January. And so that's something
else that the Foundation has helped us with offset the cost last year. You
know, if you'll remember, yeah, they've tru to Education Foundation last year
donated one hundred thousand dollars to help us offset that cost. We'll soon be
announcing some other donations that are coming into all to further help offset that for
the future. So that's gone so well. I can't tell you how what
a comfort it is to our families, you know, our staff, our
kiddos, just to see them there on a daily basis and all the support
that they're able to give. I recently told the story. I know last
spring, State Superintendent Walters was in town and we were over Richard Kine Elementary
and he came and read to one of our classes, one of our first
grade classes, I believe it was Aaron Perry's, and when it was over,
he asked the kids. He asked a handful of them what they wanted
to be when they grew up, and of the five that answered, I
think two of them said they wanted to be teachers, and the other two
or three so they wanted to be police officers. So I just think that
having them around and having that relationship is nothing going that helps not only them
currently but also going to help our community in the future. That building that
relationship. Being at Keen a few times, you know, the kids in
the SRO. I mean they're tight, Yeah, they really are. They
have fun together. He obviously have a role of la unfortunate, but they're
doing so much more than that. I mean that right going to the schools.
They're doing something with the kids, you know, proactive. So it's
great. Yeah, it's it's really good and really just. And this is
another reason why this is such a great place to live, to have those
type of supports, you know, thinking about our our foundation and so even
those out there, because I occasionally get those questions about what, you know,
what can I do to help? Uh? And I was asked that
question recently and I didn't answer as well as I should. But I can
tell you one specifically, Uh, you know, if you can by making
donations to our foundation, if there's a thing specifically that you want to uh
your heart speaks to in terms of aut the schools, a specific program,
whether it's safety, whether it's STEM or just the classroom grants or just overall
just unrestricted funds. Those those things go directly into helping our kids. So
I want to encourage people to consider making that donation as we end up this
calendar year. Alright, anything else we need to cover. I think that's
it. That's a lot, that's quite quite a bit of information. I
just wish your budyrry Christmas and a happy New Year. Oh you as well.
I was really afraid I missed something, but thank you very much for
being here to flash dismissed. As they say, we've got more govern up
right here on K one.