Dr. Sue Woltanski, chair of the Monroe County School Board, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s happening in the district.
The state STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fair was a huge success for Monroe County.
Dr. Woltanski said, “I think every student who went to the state fair got some kind of recognition. There’s lots of really creative projects that the kids are coming up with and then they’re being very successful with them. They call it STEM fair, because it includes technology and engineering. If you’ve ever been to even a local one, or if you’ve gone to the state one, you realize there are a lot of kids there that are working with science labs, in universities and corporations. So for our kids down here where we don’t have a medical school, it’s really impressive because these are kids who are actually doing these projects on their own and coming up with the ideas on their own. They’re not doing someone else’s project. So it’s really impressive how successful they’ve been.”
Other extracurricular activity groups have been recognized, including the Key Largo cheerleaders.
Dr. Woltanski said, “Over the weekend, the Key Largo cheerleaders went to the US Cheer Association’s National Championship and they won, their middle school pom team won. Not only did they win, but they had zero deductions. So it was very impressive, but they’re not the only cheerleaders to do great. Key West High School’s Special Olympics cheerleaders, went to their regionals, and they took first place and they’ll go on and represent the high school at the state level. Then along with Special Olympics over the past week, weekend, we have what we call unified teams, which have some kids with special needs and some kids that don’t have disabilities. They play on teams together. We sent five, maybe six soccer teams to the regional championships in Bradenton, for the unified soccer and every single one of them won and will go on to the state. So in Marathon in the Lower Keys, and both Coral Shores and Key Largo so it’s super impressive for that.”
Athletic teams are also seeing accomplishments.
Dr. Woltanski said, “We’re sending boys once again, to the weightlifting state competition, where kids have done really well in the last few years. So we’re looking forward to seeing how they can do there.”
A student group spoke to the school board recently about student-related issues and some of those included increasing student engagement, improving attendance and addressing the vaping issues at school.
Dr. Woltanski said, “This had been a project of the superintendent’s for a while. She felt like we needed to have direct student voice. So they put together, they call it MAGS, but it stands for Monroe Association of Governing Students. It has students from each high school, from each grade level. They meet together under Christina Macpherson’s direction, and they’ve taken some leadership training, and they work together to find issues that are common across all the high schools and then to try to come up with some solutions. So we’re looking forward to working with them, because they’re really the boots on the ground. They know what’s effective and what isn’t effective. What came out of that, for me was, we’re required by state law to give five hours of mental health training and the training is approved by the state, but it comes to us as a computer program and the kids felt like it was not an effective use of their time. They are looking for something more robust, more face to face, more that kids can discuss with each other. So we’ll be looking into what options there are for that because high school is short, and there’s no reason to waste kids time.”
Keys Kids Swim happened last week.
Dr. Woltanski said it’s “one of my favorite programs. It’s a collaboration between the school district, the county because they provide Jacob Aquatic Center and this group Keys Kids Swim, who train people to be swim instructors. They took all of the kindergarteners at Key Largo school for two weeks, 45 minutes a day of swim lessons. They test the kids before and after. The strides they make are fantastic. And then the lifeguards at Jacobs Aquatic Center will say they require kids to do swim tests before they’re allowed to go in the big pool basically, and the Key Largo graduates of this program, have the confidence to just get in there and do it. They’ll tell them I already learned this in Keys Kids Swim. The vision of that program is to expand that up and down the Keys to all the kindergarteners. It’s a program that not only will make summer more fun for those kids, but it will save lives. It’s fantastic.”