Dr. Sue Woltanski, board member for Monroe County School District, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about our schools.
Kindergarten kick off week is upon us.
Woltanski said, “The kids are going to be able to get into the classrooms, the parents will be able to meet the teachers. They’re going to see not just what happens in kindergarten, but they’ll get a taste of what the feel of the whole school is like. And in most of the schools, they get to take a little bus ride around the block so they see what the school bus is like. But new this year is this board game that’s very Keys specific. It’s a simple board game based on the kindergarten garden readiness standards that families will be able to take home and play with their kids and feel confident that their kids are ready to go on day one. We have health care clinics, and beautiful facilities that the community has provided. I think people are really happy to make the public schools their number one choice here.”
There has been declining enrollment in schools in other parts of the state.
Woltanski said, “There was a surprise meeting in January up in Tallahassee and they predict how many students are going to come and districts are paid per student, all schools are and when they did the actual counts in October, there were 46,000 fewer students in Florida than predicted. Florida’s economic model is based on growth, and the number of students has not declined as long as I’ve lived here, and I don’t think anyone can remember a year where there were fewer students one year after another. This was across the board, there were fewer charter school students, fewer public school students, fewer home schooled students, fewer private school students than predicted. So the state at the time in January, said that there were 17,000 fewer English language learners. So they suggested that some of the decline was based on immigration policies. But we also know there’s been a tremendous decline in birth rate. So kindergarten is low across the state. The number of students in kindergarten is lower than it has been before and we’re a K through 12 school district. Everyone leaves after 12 and new students come in in kindergarten. And if there aren’t kindergarten students to come in, everyone will have fewer students. In the Keys, I think we had about 200 fewer students counted than we had predicted we would have.”
EKGs are now going to be required for student athletes.
Woltanski said, “For the upcoming spring year, they’re rolling this in, where it’s a state mandate. Part of the sports physical is to have an EKG, and that’s where they put those little stickers on your chest, and they look at your heart rhythm, and those EKGs through AHEC will be read by pediatric cardiologists. If it’s abnormal, then the student will be referred to pediatric cardiologist of their choice, basically, but every new student playing sports next year in high school, so that means all this year’s eighth graders who want to play sports, and any student currently in high school that has not played sports before will need these EKGs evaluated before they play sports. So Keys AHEC is offering the free heart screening, and that will be at the end of May in Marathon and beginning of June at Coral Shores High School in Key West, and they’re asking people to make appointments for those. If you don’t have a school physical on file, you can get that at the same time. But if there is what we would call a false positive, not every abnormal EKG means there’s something wrong with the student’s heart, and that’s why they have to get it evaluated. It could take weeks for that to be cleared up, and we don’t want kids to miss the beginning of their sports seasons.”
A school board meeting will be held tomorrow at Coral Shores High School at five o’clock.
Woltanski said, “We’re going to see a report from Champions for Change at Marathon High School. This is a great leadership group and they put together a leadership meeting for all of the high schools to come up, and we’re going to get a review on how that went. But we’re really grateful for them and for the leadership that they have shown in creating the leadership pathway for students. So that is great, and then we have some policies on there, and our health care benefits package, the company that we had announced to us that they would be going out of business as of June. So we put together a school district community wide committee, and they went through a RFP process, and have chosen FBMC, who had been previously, when I first came on, was our benefits manager, so we’re bringing them back in.”
A time capsule from 1976 was unearthed recently.
Woltanski said, “It was great because one of the students, a fourth or fifth grade student from 50 years ago, was able to come down from Miami, and she was the one who actually pulled the items out of the mayonnaise jar that had been encased in concrete. Unfortunately, it had a metal lid, which had corroded a little bit, some water did get in, but they had an entire edition of the Miami Herald and they had also put in what they thought the really cool TVs were, which, if you can imagine, it was wooden and it was gigantic wood around a small screen, and what the really cool cars were. They had a list of what were currently endangered species, with the hope that those animals would still be here. And as far as I could tell, they all were, although I don’t think we really have sandhill cranes down here very much, but they’re still on the planet. So that’s good.”
Another time capsule could be done.
Woltanski said, “They started collecting things, but the idea is to get students from Key West to put things in. We started collecting, but it was mostly adults. We really want to put in what the students’ view of the community is, so we’re going to still be collecting those, and we will be burying it to come back at a later date. We hope today’s students that were there will come back when it’s dug up in the future.”
The end of the school year is upon us.
Woltanski said, “It’s the end of high school sports district track finals this week, and kids will be moving on from there. Marathon just won its second in a row baseball district championship. So that’s real exciting. That program is really developed, and we’re happy to see where that takes kids. Graduation will be the week after Memorial Day, because Memorial Day is particularly early this year.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keysschools.com/