Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome
any time now for our community connection, and we're talking with Martinlsville, Superintendent
of Public Schools, and Chuck McCauley, and we're off to a great start
here with schools. Seemed like we just opened the doors. We got homecoming
and all that stuff coming up and everything. Yeah, has been flying for
you. Sure, I agree, it has been flying. And I'm just
so glad the weather is much better now than it was last time I was
here. Oh yeah, yeah, one hundred and seven, I believe.
So we got a lot cooking we do. We did a lot of things
we do. Yeah, we're are. We're about six and a half weeks
into the school year and we're off to a really good start. We had
our our September school board meeting and we were able to start that this week
by recognizing some students, which is always fun. The College Board, which
administers the Advanced Placement Program and National Merit Score competition, they recognize students annually
and we had eight kids that were recognized, eight students, one of which
Lauren Lee, was named a National Merit semifinalist, and then we had seven
other students that qualified, they're recognized from. They had to have a certain
GPA, but to qualify, they had to either score very well in their
PSAT or score three year better on two or more of their AP Advanced Placement
test. And so I just went to visit just a little bit, share
a little bit about our AP program Advanced Placement program. That is kids that
take the course. Typically it's juniors and seniors in high school. It's a
college level course. The College Board has to audit. They audit the curriculum,
make sure it's taught at the college level, and then at the end
of the course, kids take a test and if they pass, they score
three, four or five, then typically they at college credit. And so
that program is continuing to flourish. We shared with our board on Monday night
that this past this year we had more students score a three year better than
that even took an AP class before the pandemics. So those numbers continue to
increase. Kids continue to perform well. So really proud of them. It's
always fun to start that meeting, you know, with our kids. But
we are yeah, we are definitely into the into the school year with all
the different fall activities, and I appreciate you having on We've got our first
play coming up here next week. I know you had Miss Roddy and some
kids on that's coming up. We do have homecoming you mentioned earlier. That's
coming up here and it's the first week in October. Oh yeah, yeah,
so that's coming up, and we're having a parade that's gonna be on
that Thursday night. I think that's the Thursday night, the fifth. The
parade will be at six pm and it's and people if they're interested in being
in the parade, they can go to our website. There's a Google form
they can fill out. That deadline is Friday, So if anyone's interesting being
in that that parade, it's going to be on Thursday, that Thursday night
before the game. So it's really going to be really look forward to that.
That's gonna be our next home game as well. We should have our
We've got a new videoboard at our stadium that hopefully will be operational for that
that game, which our kids are really excited about. I meet with I
have a student advisory committee of four juniors and four seniors, and that was
one of the things they were really excited about. With homecoming and a matter
of fact, they're planning to do I think a movie night sometime that week
Homecoming week, Yeah, which will be fun, you know October and it's
really it's really a fun time of year. But yeah, fall activities are
going well. Uh. I mentioned the play. I mentioned homecoming. Obviously,
we're in the kind of just starting in district play with our on football
and then our Bruin brigade. Our band is doing great. Really proud of
them, Chris and Heather Keane's leadership. They had a contest Saturday and more
at more More High School and they finished third, the highest finish they've had
in years, and so really pleased with I'm not surprised with how hard they
work. They've been going at it for months now and so I'm glad to
see there to receive that recognition for all the work that they're putting in and
so really representing us, really representing us well, you know, other fall
activities on the over on the athletic front, I mentioned football is going on,
starting district play this week. Volleyball is having a great season. They
are they had you know, they lost the number one team Jinks last night.
I think we won our first set, but ended up losing the match.
But they're ranked I think tenth or eleventh and six A and coach war
has done a great job. We have a lot of girls throughout the community
that are involved in volleyball lead leading up to that program, so they're doing
really well. Softball is in mid season and then cross country those kids are
They're seasons a little different because they run, you know, each run once
a week and they travel and they get a later start on their actual competitions.
But they're doing really well. Our girls, i think have won their
first two meets. Gentry Turners a senior, and she's won every race she's
ran in and she does a She's a tremendous athlete for US. Our boys
are having a real good year. I noticed we had Will Bolding, one
of our seniors who's a great student. We good tennis player for US,
is out for cross country and kind of leaving that team, which is exciting.
So those kids I think will really have a chance to be successful here
at the end of the year as well. So a lot of activities,
a lot of stuff going on, and we uh, it's just been it's
been fun y'all sharing with you earlier, just thinking about what's going on at
school. I do a drawing for our teachers at the beginning of the year
where I will give a free vacation day, and so I do one elementary
teacher and one secondary teacher. So I went and substituted on Friday over at
Madison in an eighth grade English class, and let me just tell you,
of course, and you know, I schedule that, and then that week
week, that day gets closer, I'm thinking, why did that schedule this?
I've got too much to do, But I'm so glad that I did.
I mean, those kids are great. They came in teachers obviously got
them well trained. Uh you know, we were doing some they were reading
The Outsiders, which I hadn't read since I was in eighth grade, which
has been a minute. So that was fun to kind of go back and
think about those things. And I was really impressed with how well kids are
behaved and talking to the other teachers out of there. So it's really a
lot of fun. I'm going to be in a fifth grade classroom over Wilson
Elementary here I think in November, and they've told me I need to make
sure I'm up to speed on Harry Potter. So I think I've got some
work to do on that, but it's really yeah, it's really really really
fun times and so so it's going really well. It's good to have all
those kind of you know, talking about homecoming and events and you know,
all these kind of normal activities that kids need to be involved in. And
so especially as we've as we're getting further and further away from COVID and all
the different types of things that we're challenging to do just normal activities and those
are those are well in our rearview mirror, and so our kids are really
I can see the maturity level with them as improving each year and getting them
where where they need to be. And then to I'm also mentioned just on
the construction side. You know, we have a lot going on. Our
Our agg facility continues to progress very well. We meet with Manhattan Construction every
other week and we had our meeting yesterday and they're on schedule. It's almost
completely dried in that building. So case you're not familiar, overrun by the
high School off of Shawnee by the Pathfinder entrance, and I know are people
that live downtown that use a pathfinder. Are aware of this, but make
sure everybody knows there is a parking lot that there is access to the pathfinder.
So if maybe folks don't use that very often, that still is available
for people to use. But that facility is on pace we're looking at should
be hopefully be finished right around spring break. So we're hoping we're in that
building and using it in the fourth quarter. I went up a couple of
weeks ago at the Washington County Free Fair and and our kids were showing cattle,
and so I'm just so glad that we have a marbles well has an
FFA program and were able to participate Lexi Vick. I don't took a picture
with our whiles there too, but anyway, I was really glad to see
our kids have the opportunity to participate in the program. And then over at
Wayside Elementary, you know, to address our growth, we've got we've got
an expansion project going on. It's going very well to a very aggressive timeline.
You know, we plan to be in that building when school starts next
year. And just as reminder of what that entails, we're going to have
building a new pre kindergarten and kindergarten wings, so that'll be five pre K
and five kindergarten classes over on the north side of the building. And there'll
also be a new art and music room a well as additional bathrooms. And
so that's the first phase of it, which is going on right now and
it's been so be I encourage everyone, if you have friends that teach at
Wayside, be nice to them because they're living in a renovation. The miss
station is doing a great job all they can get, yeah, and doing
a really good job with their pick up and drop off, and thankful for
our parents. But so they'll work on that addition phase first, and that
phase is scheduled to be finished right around spring break. And then the next
phase of it, which will go out to bid. Hopefully our board will
award that bid in December. The next phase will be the renovation project,
and so that will entail renovating, for example, in our pre K and
K classrooms moving into their new sites. We're going to renovate those spaces and
so those are going to be exciting. Those those pods in front of the
building. One will be a library, which is going to be great.
So I have a library that will really fit the meet the needs for that
number of students that we have at Wayside, and then the other pod will
be renovated into an office space. You know, we have additional adults there
because their enrollment has grown. You know, we have additional office staff as
well as a school resource officer and full time nurse and they are crammed into
some tiny, tiny spaces and we have lots of parent volunteers as well.
So we'll work on renovating renovating those existing spaces that we're moving out of,
and that's going to be a race getting that done fourth quarter and also all
summer, so when we get started, get started in August, and then
over at Ranch Heights Elementary, which we haven't started yet, we'll follow a
very similar timeline as Wayside, and that we our plan is to get started
on that in the summer of twenty four, which we would open up a
new building in the August of twenty twenty five. So quite a bit going
on working working through that, but it's all good stuff. These were all
good you know, when you have a when you're student pipe relation has grown
and meeting the needs of your kids, and obviously what we want to do
when to make sure our class sizes are good, we have a good ratio
of student teacher ratio, and the bottom line is to make for us to
make that happen, we need some more space. And so we felt like
this was the best plan for us because we can do that without having to
add you know, some of those administrative functions like that you have to do
when you add add a new school. So anyway, exciting times, a
lot of a lot of a lot of good stuff going on, and we're
just glad to I'm just I know, I'm so thankful thinking today. I
did give a presentation down at the State school Board Association conference last month,
and I think there was there was standing room only. We talked about building
district culture. There was one hundred and fifty people there, but we were
talking about all the different things and really that we've accomplished here in the last
few years from new programs like AGG and our nationally recognized STEM program, you
know, aviation. You know, we're now in the early stage is talking
about adding a construction class and you know, with different bond issues, being
successful in building. But just really thankful for our community. No, Bartlesville
is a really special place. Because we've been able to do a lot,
especially during challenge, even during these challenging times with the pandemic. And it
all goes back to having, you know, living in a great community that
really supports our kids. So really just thankful to be here. Oh indeed,
I'll tell you what, winning just spawns more winning and that's how the
culture is going to go. And thanks for your hard work. Thanks Tom.
All right, we've been speaking with Czech McCauley, president of Bartlesville Public
Schools, right here on K one. How does Tim Howell at Arnold Moore