Good morning, good morning, good morning, welcome, welcome, welcome you
to this time now for community connection. Right here on K one, the
one you dressed him. We're talking with Bartlesville Public School Superintendent Chuck McCauley and
a happy break. Yeah, thanks, yeah, thanks Tom. It is
a happy spring break to you as well. Yeah. Yeah, I'm seeing
more and more my child, like I've not seen her really since about Christmas.
A lot of activity. You got a lot of fun stuff at school.
That's all I got is Yeah, that's exactly right. It's you know,
now that we are in spring break, it truly is you we're into
the fourth quarter of the school year. I think we have seven weeks of
school after the break. Yeah, you know, good Fridays a little bit
early this year, which is a Friday after spring break, and then we'll
be all those spring kind of fun activities. We'll be finishing up the year,
you know, prom and graduation. I think our last day of school
is May sixteenth, which is a Thursday, and then we'll have graduation on
the seventeenth, weather permitting. Always. That's exactly right too, But a
lot a lot of fun stuff, you know. Switching over to our spring
spring activities are over on the foundation side. They'll have a couple of other
events in April, the Teacher Hall of Fame event it's coming up, and
then a little bit later in April we'll have the Bruins of the Year,
which is our Teacher of the Air program and support Person of the Air Program,
which is the end of April. That's that's housed out at Dungeon Stadium.
So those are always a lot of fun. And of course you know
prom probably coming up here next month as well, and then all the different
spring activities. But yeah, a lot, there's a lot, a lot
going on, but it's a fun time. Uh. I did want to
mention to kind of start with I think we've know if I've talked about it
on the on air, but I know you guys have shared some information related
to our discount for our teachers in terms of daycare. You know, daycare.
Childcare is a challenge, it's a challenge for workforce overall, and we've
been working with Tri County Tech and our Best Foundation has helped us uh so
that we could have a discount for one to prioritize our teachers to get into
the Tri County Tech childcare program. They've got a great childcare program that they
use to train kids and adults to work in childcares, and so they have
set our teachers up as a higher priority to get into the program. And
then secondly, we started off this past year, they had a twenty percent
discount. This upcoming school year, the twenty four to twenty five school year,
with some help from the Our Best Foundation, our teachers will get a
fifty percent discount, So which is significant. You know, that's in terms
of I know that from just walking the halls from we made that announcement the
last couple of weeks before spring break, and I had three different teachers stop
me and share with me, you know, just that's that's enabling them to
stay in the classroom. You know, that's those are real dollars. So
one, I'm thankful for Tri County on working with us for that. They've
adjusted their program a little bit as well, where for example, like our
teachers, that program is basically from August through May. So you know,
the words were previously a lot of daycares they would have to pay like in
June and July even when they didn't necessarily need daycare every day. So a
ten month program and then plus at fifty percent discount. So that's really really
helpful to our teachers and so that really helps us from a recruiting standpoint and
also retention, you know, because teachers, if you think about it,
just a high cost of daycare, if they had one or you start looking
more than one kid in daycare, it doesn't there goes their check and so
a lot of them choose to stay home and then they choose up doing other
options. So thankful for Trey County the RvEs Foundation. We'll be announcing that's
probably at our next board meeting, but they've they donated fifteen thousand dollars to
us last year and they're doing that again this year to help offset that cost.
There's still going to be some additional cost to the district if we don't
have additional private funds. The district will cover that, but real thankful for
that that opportunity for our teachers, and we think that's going to help us
keep teachers in the classroom. We had our job fair right before spring break
the other day. I know we had some people come from surrounding areas because
of that. Because of that reason, so that we've we've been able to
able to amount support for our teacher, so it's thankful for that. So
also mentioned just a couple of things that's going on. Our last board meeting.
On our student spotlight, we highlighted our two We had two academic All
State kids. There's only one hundred of those in the state of Oklahoma,
and we had two, Lauren Lee and Jonathan Ortiz. We have several kids
that meet the qualifications for that, but they were selected and so real thanks.
We'll pretty proud of them to continue that. I mean, there's only
you think about it, there's only one hundred in the state of Oklahoma,
and there's over five hundred districts, so it's pretty it's very very competitive.
And then also wanted to mention just kind of an update I think I talked
about last time that in terms of student opportunities. I talked about us adding
a carpentry class or construction class at Bartlesville High School. So our kids have
gone through the enrollment process to pay classes for next year, and we had
one hundred and nineteen kids select construction class. So and this is something just
wanted to remind folks we're not competing with Tri County. We have kids that
want to go to Try County and get into their carpentry program or construction program,
they're going to go. But there's more of a demand for that than
could get into that program. So we're going to start teaching that at Bartlesville
High School. Doug Boudreau I was going to teach the course. Doug's a
Arshon Native Varshon and he has a teacher at Ranch Heights this past year,
but he's also has a mechanical engineer background. He worked with Vasus Group before
too, so he's going to be the teacher for the program. It's going
to be housed at the high school. We're going to focus on carpentry because
it kind of touches all the trades, but really glad our kids are going
to have that opportunity to get that started. So that's kind of our newest
thing that we've added, and I wanted just to share that with folks too.
That progress and that kind of our long term goal. We'd love to
be in a position where we could build a house every year. It's been
years and years since I was done in Bardsley, it was done in Bartlesville.
We'd like to get back to that. But we're kind of we got
to get started somewhere, and so we're excited about getting started with that as
well. And then I just want to remind people this year we've had a
really successful years on some national recognitions. First of all, our project lead
the Way our STEM program has been a Distinguished District one of seventeen districts in
the country. We've submitted our application again for that this year we meet those
qualifications, so we're hopeful, well we'll meet that again. So from our
STEM STEM program, it continues to expand with our aviation is tied into our
STEM program and those those enrollment numbers continue to grow. Also mentioned over on
the Advanced Placement or College Board side, we've been recognized by them nationally.
There's only a handful of schools in Oklahoma. I received that number one for
our performance last year. We had two hundred and eight kids past the Advanced
Placement test, two hundred and eight. Also, they recognized us for access
to the program because our kids that are actually enrolled in AP continues to grow.
And then lastly, from from a diversity side, we receive the Female
Diversity Award for Computer Science because of our strong female enrollment in computer science and
so that's really where we think we can make a difference in our kids,
especially our girls are underrepresented in STEM fields and there's no reason for that.
We think we can getting them, have them have success in school when they're
young, will help them want to continue to choose that. And then lastly,
you know the national recognition received for our AG program. You know,
they won the award for the Emerging Leaders Program at the National FFA Conference.
And so those are three things that we want to make sure we talk about
that we share about, I think our whole community because none of those things
would happen without our strong, strong community support. And then I'll mention a
couple other things too. As we're finishing up some big facility projects. I
know I could ask about the AGG facility a lot. Yeah, it's great.
I encourage people to drive by. They're putting landscaping in and planting trees.
I mean they're getting the substantial completion of schedule for April fifth. April
fifth is soon, yeah, so we'll be into that program by the end
of the school year too, So really really excited about that. You know,
there's an indoor arena, there are there's gonna be a kitchen. There
are a couple of barns. There are a couple of greenhouses. Thankful for
our Lion Foundation made a large donation to help us with some construction inflation,
we could get those greenhouses done. But that's gonna be finished up on April
fifth. Another larger project force is over at Wayside Elementary. We're expanding and
renovating and we're going to be in that new facility on August one. We're
gonna have five right now, they have our largest enrollment. They need some
more space and so we're making that happen. So we're going to be that's
they're going to have a brand new early childhood wing for pre k in kindergarten.
Also there art and music rooms will be brand new, and then we'll
have some renovated spaces for additional for a larger cafeteria, library, office space.
All those areas will be new and we're going to be in August first.
And then at Ranch Heights Elementary, we'll be opening bids the end of
April or first of May to do a similar expansion over there, So that
will get started this summer with an opening date of August of twenty twenty five,
so one to share those things. And there's a couple of other quick
things as well. Our school resource officer program continues to go real well.
It's wildly successful. We'll continue to invest in that. We have nine resource
officers. We've briefly had ten. We had two at the high school as
our goal that we want to have. We had one of our officers had
to leave from so we had to cover for that. So we have nine
resource officers and we're planning to have ten there once we're fully fully staffed there
too. But that's going really well. And then lastly, just wanted to
wanted to mention our just in terms of student enrollment we have from this time
from spring break this year compared to spring bank break last year, we've got
about ninety more students than we did a year ago. So that's the kind
of growth that's nice because it's not too fast, because sometimes you can grow
too fast. So we're at a nice pace with that. We'll just continue
to add add staff as needed. And we really think some of these programs
that we have and opportunities for kids because are really helping draw folks. And
also the flexibility that we've offered we continue to offer virtual options where some folks,
some families choose to maybe they're coming in from a homeschool environment and still
want to have that oversight and be around their over kids a lot, but
maybe they want them to experience the high quality electives that we have to offer.
So we offer those all the way from the elementary level, which is
hous that Caine Elementary, all the way up through high school. So if
folks are interested in rolling with us next year, that process starts online.
They can go to our website. We have help at our Education Service Center
if people needs help that need some devices to do that as well. So
anyway, so Tom a lot of information, but we've got a lot going
on. Indeed, you do, and I want to thank you very much
for coming in and talking to us today. Ja. We're calling you Superintendent
of Schools, Barlatill Public Schools