Dr. Sue Woltanski, Monroe County School Board Member, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in our schools.
Graduation is upon us and the graduation rates have increased over the years.
Woltanski said, “I think they’re going to be higher this year because of the superintendent’s One Team, One Goal project that he brought in. Every administrator at Central Office who had a teaching credential, went out and did small group tutoring with students who had attained all their graduation requirements, except usually it’s passing the English language test, which is tricky, the 10th grade test, and so we’ve added some new options for those kids to get concordant scores, and kids are being more successful than ever, and they even have June 17, a date for kids to take, and if they can pass that, then they can all graduate in time. Our business model is to take five year olds and have them graduate high school.”
The administrators really helped students.
Woltanski said, “They were assigned, based on their comfort level of age groups, and also whatever the teacher needed, so in some cases the teacher had the administrator lead the regular classroom, and what they were doing, while the teacher helped a smaller group, but basically it was a shocking time. I mean, that in a really good way, where administrators went into the classroom and asked what they could do to help, and then helped.”
The school district recently received $3 million to get affordable housing going.
Woltanski said, “The older Reynolds School had been destroyed basically in Irma. It took in a lot of water and had a lot of damage, and so since they’re historic buildings, you can’t just destroy them. So this will be great for that area of the community. That will be converted into an adult Education Center and Maintenance Department. The maintenance department is currently in Bruce Hall, which is another beautiful building. That will become the administration building. It was great. There was a long effort to get the money, earmarked from Congressmen Gimenez, not because it was difficult, he was on board right away, but if you’re in Washington, they’ve had a lot of continuing resolutions, and they haven’t passed a new budget in a long time, so our earmark had been in the proposed budget for several years and it finally stayed in. So that was $3 million to renovate the Reynolds School. The other thing that happened that week is Thursday of that week we did the final approval of the project at Trumbo. So now they’re just pulling the permits for the demolition, they’re going to be able to take down on the barracks that our administration building is not in, and start building affordable housing now. They don’t have to wait for the Reynolds School renovation.”
Major congratulations to the Lady Conchs.
Woltanski said, “The final four of the state championship coming up. If you saw that game, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure those are seven inning games, and then I think they went into overtime and they won with a double play, so very exciting, and not the end of the season into that series.”
The Take Stock in Children graduation happened on Saturday.
Woltanski said, “Take Stock is the flagship program of the Monroe County Education Foundation, which really owes everything to I want to call him our patriarch John Padgett, who started that project and brought Take Stock to Monroe. Take Stock is a statewide program, but Monroe easily has the best program with the most per student enrollees and graduates, and our students are able to go on. Most of the Take Stock programs require you to go to State College in two years at a four year college, but in Monroe they allow kids to go straight into four year colleges. I want to say 60% of the Take Stock graduates this time are going to four year colleges. The other ones are going to two year colleges with the ability to go on for two more years. And there was one who was going to the Miami School of Barber, which is fantastic. This year there were 69 graduates and that reflects mentors that have been with these students since sixth grade, and so if you add all that up, there’s over 350, I think, mentors in the community that are volunteering that are helping make this a successful program, and so we’re super grateful to that, because without the mentors it would just be a scholarship program. It really improves lives.”
It really is an all hands on deck supportive community for our school district.
Woltanski said, “It is the Monroe County School District superpower, and we couldn’t do what we do without the support of the community, so we’re so grateful for that.”
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