Dr. Sue Woltanski, Monroe County School Board member for District 5, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s happening in the district.
The start of school is right around the corner.
Woltanski said, “It’s unbelievable for most kids, summer school has ended. There are still some summer programs that are going on and then school starts again for the kids on the 13th of August, that’s a Wednesday, and so they’ll have their meet the teachers meetings on the Tuesday before that. That’s a real exciting time. It’s going to be a particularly exciting new year because of that new superintendent.”
This is the last week for Superintendent Theresa Axford and Monroe County School District has achieved an A rating from the Florida Department of Education.
Woltanski said, “Those successes involve the entire community, really, without the community support, our schools wouldn’t function nearly as well as they do, but Mrs. Axford has put her mark on all aspects of the way our schools run with a very student focused leadership, but she’s also just led from her heart. She was responsible for creating way back the GEMS program, which brings in the teachers and the students in front of the board to celebrate accomplishments. She created the Move program, which gets kids out of school and into internships in the community. She’s done so much for mental health, establishing counselors and social workers at all the schools, and then really her focus has been keeping great teachers in the classroom, and with the high cost of living, she’s been addressing both the salaries, which beginning salaries since she took over as superintendent have gone up 29% and we’re making serious headway, finally, on affordable housing at Trumbo. Our next school board meeting, we should have a ground lease agreement with the contractors, and then things will really start rolling there. So she’s really, she’s the one of the longest serving superintendents in the state right now, and she was Monroe’s first female superintendent, so she’s going to go down in history as one of the really good ones.”
Monroe County School District has also been state designated as a suicide prevention certified district.
Woltanski said, “That one hits really close to home. The impetus for that was when one of my children’s friends took their life, in middle school, and from that day forward, the mental health team have been working to make sure we don’t want that ever to happen again. It’s been about eight years that they’ve been working on that. That’s a big accomplishment and that’s important.”
Ed Tierney will take over as the new superintendent.
Woltanski said, “We’re so lucky to have him. I think he was Chief of Staff in Palm Beach County, but he served so many different roles there. His leadership style is really he wants to listen and learn about Monroe and figure out what he can do to help all the students be more successful. He led last night’s school board meeting and one of the his comments was about how he and his wife had been really there was a lot of gratitude for the welcome that they had gotten in the community, and the number of people who would come up to them and give them their card and say anything you need, I can help you with anything. I think our community embraces our schools, and I think he’s going to feel that and really, you can’t do it without the community. So it’s really wonderful that he feels the welcome. I think he’s going to be a really good leader. He’s going to take what Mrs. Axford has, the structure she has put in place, and really take us to new heights. I’m real excited about that process. I understand that he has found a house, and they found it already. I think people were concerned about would someone come and stay? And that has been his intention. He told us that his intention was always to be to end up in the Keys and so you can look for him around town.”
It’s budget season in the district.
Woltanski said, “It’s a very structured timeline of notices to the community and then the process of budgeting. The budget is going to be a little challenging, because some of the federal funds that had been allocated to be dispersed to schools back in March on the day before, on June 30, those were put on pause to be re evaluated by the current administration. This week, they did release these 21st Century funds, which are the funds that fund the Summer Program and the after school programs at Gerald Adams School. So that was great. But the some of the other funds, they really represent 47 staff members. That’s teachers and support staff, and we are, I don’t know, cautiously optimistic, hopeful. I don’t know what the right word is that the pause will be lifted on the rest of those funds for us, because I think that that Florida education process has been in line with the current administration, so they’re not going to see our schools doing anything that is out of what their priorities are. So I’m hoping that for Florida, I would hope for all schools, but I hope we’re going to be able to recoup those funds, because those are vital programs. Some of it is English language learning and the kids need that to be successful. In a small district like ours, everyone wears multiple hats, so it’s not so easy to just say, oh, we’ll get rid of the federal programs people. Well, those people are also doing curriculum, and they’re doing, finance, and they’re doing other things. So we have people that wear very many hats, but there were some positions that were open, that we’re consolidating with other positions now and looking towards the future. It’s a good time to be honest, to do that, because Mr. Tierney, as he goes along, he may want to restructure things. So adding a lot of new people right now doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, although it would be great if it was on our terms.”