Good morning, Good morning, good morning. I'm welcome Wilton's time now for
our community connection right here on Kay one one you trust, brought to you
in part by called Grassmotors, gat Real Ministries at Arnold Moore and Knee Camp
Funeral Home and Boy School's kind of been on the tip of my tongue lately,
closing or distance learning. How do we do in check mccaulley with Bartelsville
Public Schools doing great, tom It's good to be here, and I'm sure,
like I told you earlier, I went to be excited. Then the
bruins will be back in school tomorrow, all right, No more bruins on
ice. That's that's yeah, that's why it's been quite a cold sub.
Yeah, we're be glad to have everybody back back in action tomorrow, and
I will uh uh, we'll keep preparing it or make sure our buildings are
ready for our kids and staff to attend. And in fact, we'll have
quite a bit of staff up up on site today. But yeah, we're
back in back in person, ready for tomorrow. And appreciate our buns making
their flexibility working through these challenging times. It's sure was quite quite a cold
snap. But we'll see how these next few weeks ago. You know,
it's interesting year to year. You know, a year ago we didn't have
any inclement weather, and then here we go this year starting twenty twenty four
off with a bang. But I brought to Anthony Tucker. I did,
I did. I brought Anthony Tucker with us. He works at the high
school and he does several things for us, but the biggest part of his
job, he's our internship director. And Anthony. I known Anthony since he
was in high school. He's a two thousand and seven uh graduate, when
I was a high school principal, and then Anthony was an excellent student for
US, and he was a great soccer player, played football for US and
Lincoln journalism as well, if I remember correctly. It's been a bit yeah,
thank you, thank you. Yeah, but he's back for us,
and he's done a really fantastic job with our internship program. Uh. You
know, we've had a talking about our long range planning for the district.
We know that where we need to do better is kind of getting our kids
career ready better career ready, Uh, you know, our kids that are
going to college. We feel like we do a good job of getting them
prepared for that. But we want to make sure and those kids need that
that career experience as well. But we really want to make sure we're getting
our kids ready for the next step in their lives. There's lots of opportunities
out there. You don't necessarily have to be a college graduate to do real
well. I mean, there's lots right here in Bartlesville. So anyway,
I want Anthony kind of talked a little bit about the program and where it
is and kind of the vision for the future, and then how the community
can help us. All Right, I don't know if we're going to have
enough time for this because tell me, give me the short scrap. Dads
were like, give us the success story, young man. H success success
story would definitely be, you know, following and Chuck's footsteps that you know,
he puts forward on our service learning commitment and making our kids career ready
and internships through our over forty community partners, you know, plays a huge
role in that. The big thing that we try to give our kids is
access, knowledge, and mentorship through our internship program. So we have kids
serving throughout you know, for profit within our fortune one hundred companies, you
know Knicco, Phillips, P sixty six and ABB as well as smaller companies
throughout our community and nonprofits. They get to see the total e system that
keeps our economy going here in barnswol Wow. We my goodness, you got
quite a network of people that you work with and like you just mentioned,
you have some pretty heavy hitters there. But it goes beyond that. It
goes a little bit beyond you know this. Yeah, I would say the
biggest thing for me is being able to open doors right to give kids those
practice reps who might not have a parent or a media relative that went to
college or maybe that they have a career, so they need they need to
see it so they can dream it. We have a great partnership with Chick
fil A down the road with Chase Chase Alcott, and it opens doors for
leadership development so those individuals can see themselves. It's not just a future employee
with an organization, but a potential owner. There's a pathway. They learn
about financing, they learn about HR like Chuck's previous position at BPS, which
is a key role. Right. They get that total viewpoint which you don't
just get when you look at a specific task a role with an organization.
It goes back to the same you only know what you know and broadening those
horizons you get to know a little bit more. Yeah, that's right.
And Anthony, we have how many kids we have in the program now and
kind of what does their day look like? Yeah, you know, we
have roughly about seventy kids within our program and the great thing about our schedule
with the high school is that they can serve about two hours a day anytime
throughout their seven hour class period that we have at BHS. So we have
kids that are still able to take ap classes they take in current classes at
Roger State or Oklahoma Westland, and they play sports. Right, we have
plenty of football players that are in the program, speaking of football and soccer.
So we're able to give kids that diversity of experience without compromising their academic
integrity that they have within our schools. Well, this is really amazing.
You know, I think Bruins do it better. And that might be in
the little tagline that we could use internally here, but when we have something
like this, not every school has a position that you have. Yeah,
I feel very blessed to be in position you know my background is eight percent
of my life I've been in the private sector as a head of strategy or
head of marketing. So I feel like I bring those experiences to the kids
and when I'm negotiating with our partners in the community, so it makes it
a little bit easier to ask for a little bit more of our friends out
there so we can open more doors for our kids. Now I understand you're
off to a little bit of a cool thing coming up here on Valentine.
Yeah, so we're actually working with Blair Ellis and the Barstool Public Schools Foundation.
Good lady to team up with. Yes, she's just a stone throw
away from me and my part of the block. So Blair and I have
kickstarted Fast Food Valentines is a program that was launched in Oklahoma City by BHS
grad also from the class of two thousand and seven. And we just had
Taylor back for a ted talk for all of our juniors and seniors in October
last year. And so what we do is we put together a care package
and we take it out to women that are working with in fast food and
convenience store establishments in our community. It's a kindness project which is part of
the bigger initiative that we've been leading within our school district. And and you
know, Valentine's is a difficult day, right, especially if you're having to
work on it. So a little bit of kindness and more from the givers
standpoint, from the kids and showing them what it really means to be an
active taking an active role in your community and to put your heart into your
community. Wow, you taught this kid. It's been good. He's yeah,
Anthony's doing great. I'm so glad to have It's always special when you
can have your former Bruins come back and serve serve the community that they grew
up in and have his children come up and become Bruins as well. And
so just to community members out there, So we have a you know Anthony
talked about we have around seventy kids or so that seniors that are spending time
in the community from a from a pretty wide variety of jobs. So if
there are businesses out there that are interested that think that might be something they
would be interested in, they could contact Anthony at the high school have a
conversation. It's typical their full year progres, but typically we do we do
have some some half or half year programs in partnerships, but what we like
to do is we like to get those we like to have them partnered up.
So like we have two kids starting with the Washington County Sheriff's Department.
Uh, they'll spend about half their semester of this spring with them and then
they'll rotate over to Mason Law, so they'll see both sides. They both
have interest in criminal justice. Bring yes, and that was probably one of
the reasons one of those kids wanted to do it. Actually, if I
think back to the why I want to do this internship, but it's really
great when we bring all those partners together and we're completely transparent and they could
be part of that process from the get go, so they know that they're
syncing up and providing that behind the scenes perspective. Maybe from a different angle,
but to Check's point, you know rtt Eves who stepped in and play
quarterback for the Bruins very successfully this past fall. You know he serves with
doctor Manley. He was in surgery on day one, so let alone,
he was learning the playbook from a quarterback perspective and not wide receiver. He
was in the in the surgery room, he's been there. We have another
person at the VET. So we have so many people that are within medical,
within business, you know, within trade based internships, that it opens
a lot of doors for kids. And then, let's be honest, what
happens is a lot of kids will realize this may be not what I want
to do, and they'll switch a semester. But at least they didn't go
down this career path and didn't sink a lot of money into an academic career
path, you know, at college at a university, so they get that
experience now to know I don't want to do it, or yeah, I'm
resolute that this is what I want to do and moving forward. Well,
you know, I went to college in the seventies and interesting enough, but
we had a lot of folks who just well they didn't have an internship in
high school, and by golly, they hit the books. They were going
to do this, they were going to do that, and all of a
sudden it's like, oh, I don't like this, and then it started
all over again and they didn't get out of school. It took them six
years instead of four, and going year round two, it cost a lot
of money. It's good to get that taste, is it? It is?
I think. I think for our kids to have that experience, that
work experience and seeing what it's like and that communication is so important, especially
in today's you know, the social media or or the or the phone world
that we live in. Uh, people aren't used to communicating face to face
and having that interaction. And you know that's still that's still a skill that's
needed and desired by employers. And so for our kids to have that experience
where they can see how valuable that is and hopefully make some connections for them
for the future. But I also want to mention anthe I think on the
on the manufacturing side, we took some kids. Was that yes, So
in October, the National Association Manufacturers celebrates Manufacturing Day. So National Manufacturing Day
was the first Friday of last October, and we took kids out to abb
for a plant tour to learn about the multiple entry points for you to start
a career of manufacturing. I cut my teeth of manufacturing, so I'm very
biased. I started down the road of Lucas Metalworks in oceanleda through an internship
they set up by doctor Risa Roger, Saint Clairmore. They're really empowered me
moving forward. So manufacturing has home may different pathways, and a lot of
times kids will get into manufacturing, they'll start, you know, at a
lower hourly paying position and they'll help pay for the books intuition going forward,
so reduces their their debt when they get out of school. And you're always
going to give somebody internally a chance to be promoted first, right, so
they promote from within, and that's ever present with the manufacturing. In my
experience. I got it to do a little bit too when I was younger,
but little tool and die and metal fabrication stuff like that. That is
an education in and of itself. And if you think that you don't have
to hit the books in high school to do that, think again. There's
math involved, that's that's yeah, that's a little bit of chemistry, a
whole lot of physics, that's right. That's right, and you know,
but I really think those well, that's that academic piece is very important.
We feel we do a good job, you know, at the high school
preparing them for that. But you know, those soft skills that go along
with being out into the world and really being able to see some different options
for yourself and have some sets, some goals to strive for and hopefully opening
some doors for our kiddos to help them think about how they can do that
and also do that right here in Bartlesville. So, Tom, I did
have just a couple of things I wanted to mention, kind of back back
on some normal, kind of just normal updates. First of all, our
board meeting that was scheduled for Monday, we rescheduled it for tomorrow, which
is Thursday at noon. Have a special board meeting at that time to take
care of Monday's business. It'll be a short meeting, but one highlight,
just a spotlight. Trudy Education Foundation. They're going to be donating fifty thousand
dollars to the Public School Foundation, with the majority of those funds to help
with our school resource officer program forty thousand dollars of it, and then ten
thousand dollars for our bruins on the run. So really thankful for our friends
there. You know, a year ago they donated over one hundred thousand dollars
to go towards our school resource officer program. We got our second resource officer
start at the High School Michelle McKinley. So that we have ten school resource
officers in the district, two now at Bartlesville High School. So very very
thankful for our community support and it's been a rousing success for everyone. I
think for our parents, you know, our staff feels comfortable having those having
that there, and also our kids been growing up with the having the officers
of the building and all the support that they can bring as well. And
then just one quick highlight on winter kind of winter activities, just wanted to
share this weekend, we're on the swim side. Griffin Craig, who's a
senior at the high school, is going to the University of Missouri to continue
to swim. He's a great kid. He serves on my advisory council.
He broke a pool record at Phillips City six pool record I think he has.
I think that's his third one he has. Uh And so in case
people aren't familiar with that, there's been Olympias come through and swim at that
pool. Hyghe bar, Yeah, there's been. Yeah, college athletes come
and swim there every year, and he set a pool record. I want
to mention that. And then last week at our conference swim meet. Our
girls swim team won the won the conference meet. I heard coach Inglehart,
our outstanding swim coach, mentioned that he thinks this team has the opportunity to
score over five hundred points at the state swim meet, and to put that
into perspective, in twenty sixteen, I think we had eight Division one swimmers
on that team are girls, and they scored about four hundred and sixty points.
So this is really a talented group of kids that have They have that
culture of just working hard. You know, they don't miss a day,
whatever day, whatever day that comes, and so I really appreciate all their
work and they're going to work real hard to bring us home our forty first
state championship in swimming. So want to highlight those things as well. I
got to give the credit to the swimmers. As a guy who played to
basketball, football, baseball, I'm sort of going, Wow, that must
be cool just playing in the pool. And then I saw them do the
weight training. Then I realized these guys were in the water at six am
every day and I watched them work and it was like, oh, oh,
we just play around. You are the guys that's in goals that are
really doing the work. Those are physically fit individual. Yeah, it's really
a neat I think it's another thing for our size of town to have that
level of a program like swim and gymnastics, you know, dance opportunities.
For the level of instruction that our kids are able to get here is really
it's really world class. It's a really fortunate to have it here in Barlsville.
I want to thank you both for dropping by today and I want you
to stay warm, and by the way, thank you for taking time to
talk with our newest reporter. Miss Yeah. Of course. You know a
lot of people just take it for granted. You show up for school,
you go to class, you come home, and mister McCauley gave the whole
rundown of just about what it takes to open the doors in the morning,
and I was exhausted for ten minutes. Ye, Giane's here. She'll do
a great job for you, and she will. She's a bruined all right,
Thank you very much. We've been watching and listening to