Dr. Sue Woltanski, Monroe County Board Member for District 5, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in our schools.
This time of year is the Florida School Board Association’s annual joint conference with the school superintendents conference.
Dr. Woltanski said, “Our superintendent, Mrs. Axford, along with our chair, Mindy Conn and our new board member Yvette Mira-Talbott, all came, we all went to Tampa for four days of workshops and presentations and networking, and they also provide school board instruction for chairs, which I believe Miss Conn went to, and for new school board members. So they have a whole day worth of presentations for them to get everybody on the right path. Some of it is about the legislative session coming up and what to expect, and other things are, how to be a better school board member, things your district should be looking for. But one thing that came up in kind of all the realms, was the epidemic of misinformation and false reporting of threats around schools. We use text tips and Fortify Florida, they are two apps that you can anonymously report any kind of threat. Lately, across the state of Florida and maybe elsewhere, there’s been a lot of false threats, which then, of course, take a lot of resources, and sometimes they’re serious enough that they put a school in lockdown, or people don’t show up, and then it turns out to be a hoax. It is against the law to do a false threat and sharing a false threat, there is some contemplation that simply sharing another threat without verifying whether it’s true or not may become against the law as well, and they may start coming after parents if their students share false threats. These are things that they were hearing about for the upcoming legislative session. So it’s a good time for people to have those conversations. We’re having them with the kids at school, and we have sent letters home to families, but it is a felony, a second degree felony, and it can cause a big problem. It’s not a joke.”
The holidays are certainly a good time for students in the district.
Dr. Woltanski said, “Every night there’s a family friendly event. It’s really fantastic.”
Has there been any word on assessments?
Dr. Woltanski said, “I think things are going really well. We do have a second progress monitoring testing, which sort of gives an idea of where we need to put our efforts, and that’s happening now. So we’ll be getting those results. The board will see those, probably in January, but the teachers will start seeing those, they’ll be working on the results of that and how that’s going to alter their teaching plan. When they come back, they come back a day early than the students. I’m sure data will be part of that conversation.”
A school board meeting is also coming up.
Dr. Woltanski said, “We’re having a workshop on the timeline for a new superintendent search. The plan right now is we’re going to be going through that timeline and what kind of activities need to be done so we can figure out, get the community involved in talking about what we want to see in a new superintendent, and then also sending up interviews, schedules, and we have to get all our ducks in a row. The plan now is around the beginning of March to post the job and to be interviewing in person by the end of April, beginning May, with the start time projected at the first of July, which will overlap a month with the current superintendent, so they can get kind of an onboarding sort of situation. It’ll be posted nationwide. I definitely want external candidates. I think we’ve got great people internally and I think they can go up against the best, but I honestly have no idea who’s going to apply internally yet, but I know there’s some outside candidates that are looking.”
Superintendent Theresa Axford will be retiring.
Dr. Woltanski said, “I think it’ll be interesting. It’s really the second time since we got an appointed superintendent back that the board will be choosing someone from a nationwide search. So it should be a good experience for us all.
The board will also hear an update on career and technical education programs in the district during the meeting.
Dr. Woltanski said, “That’s what used to be called vocational education. I think people would be surprised if they look at the agenda and the number of programs that we have. We even have career and technical programs in elementary school, which teach kids digital literacy, how to be safe and to behave properly online. But we have middle school programs in culinary and robotics, and there’s a program called medical detectives that inspires kids to maybe want to enter the health field. That’s in middle school. Then the high schools have auto mechanics. Coral Shores has outboard marine engine repair. All the schools have digital video productions, Marathon High School’s culinary just knocks it out of the park. There’s fire academy in Marathon. There’s so many different programs that kids can get into to try out careers and to also get certified in things so that they’re ready to work when they graduate. The high school programs that have approved certifications give college credit when you get those certifications. We have an information technology also, and that gets you college credit that kids are learning how to set up websites, and they’re learning different computer languages. It’s really impressive the number of certifications that the kids get. I think this last year, there were over 1,600 certifications earned by the kids in Monroe County. There’s 9,000 kids total, and that includes kindergarten who’s not really earning certifications these days.”
The semester will end on December 20.
Dr. Woltanski said, “We’ll get back to work on the seventh of January. That’s a Tuesday. I just want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and I hope the perfect weather keeps up for us.”