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.
All three high schools are district champs in baseball for the first time ever.
Woltanski said, “We have three high schools of three different sizes. So they’re all in three different districts, and each baseball team has won their district title and will be playing today for in their first round of the regionals. Coral Shores is playing away tonight, but Marathon is playing at home, and so is Key West. So if people don’t show up, there’s no such thing as a home field advantage. So go out to the game and cheer the team on, and give them the advantage that they earned.”
There are musicals that will be coming up, too.
Woltanski said, “Mamma Mia, Key West High, had a great performance of Mamma Mia. That run is over. Coral Shores High School had a couple of weekends of the 25th Annual Putnam Valley Spelling Bee. That was great and very funny. I think Switlik just did an elementary school performance of Frozen that got rave reviews. This weekend, I went and saw Moana, that is a Key Largo School drama club performance and Key Largo’s after school programs, their sports and their drama club allow kids to try out from the two charter schools and Plantation Key schools, so all four Upper Keys, k-8 can try out. So it was really a community event of kids from all the schools and, I saw it on Saturday afternoon, and the voices were amazing. Then I really found out that it was the understudy cast. They allowed all the understudies to perform. So I can’t even believe what the regular show is like, because I couldn’t believe how good the understudy show was. So that will be next Friday and Sunday. There’s a matinee on Sunday and Friday, and it was great. It’s about a girl who lives on an island and wants more. She has everything she needs on her island, but wants more, and I think that kids could relate to that.”
Where are we with our superintendent search?
Woltanski said, “So on our website, you can go to the superintendent search page and see where we are. We now have 11 semi finalists from the original 32 candidates, and they have on the website some answers to written questions and then some video links where they answered some questions that the board had for them, and we will be reviewing those answers, plus getting feedback from the community. If the community wants to endorse or make any comments about any of the semi finalists they can get on at that same page and let us know what they think. But we’ll be discussing that tomorrow at Marathon High School. There’s a change in the location. It’s at Marathon High School at 4:15 tomorrow. The traffic situation up here has prompted the change. Anyone who has anything they need to say, can always just email school board members as well. We have really a great number of candidates, and I think the next step will be to whittle it down to somewhere between three and five finalists, and we will be bringing them all down to the Keys the following week. There is going to be a meet and greet in each the Upper, Middle and Lower Keys. On the 30th in the Upper Keys, on the 1st in the Middle Keys and on the 2nd in Key West. There will be an all day school board meeting that’s open to the public. We will be interviewing them individually, then following day, and then the next week we’ll be making our decision. We do want citizen input, and I really applaud the Florida School Board Association, Superintendent Search crew. They’ve really helped us make this process really transparent, and allowing as much community input as possible. So that’s been great. There’s great candidates, and I’m excited to see where Monroe goes under our new superintendent. Mrs. Axford is done at the end of July, so there will be a month of overlap so she can introduce if it’s an outside person, to the community. Personally, I don’t think we could go wrong with any of the semi finalists. They were all very impressive.”
There have been some cutbacks in educational funding recently.
Woltanski said, “There’s a $2 billion surplus up in Tallahassee this year. But they’re putting out austerity budget so the increase, it doesn’t keep up with in with the cost of inflation and then when you add in the rising costs of property insurance, health care, and the teacher salaries, which they mandate, the increase, I’m not opposed to that, but they mandate that, then we’re going to be $2.5 million dollars in the hole, and I think most districts are in a similar situation. So the budget is a challenge. It’s not finalized yet. In fact, because of Easter, normally they would have come in to work all weekend, right after they proposed the budget, but because of Easter, this week is really crunch time. We’re still advocating through representative Mooney and Senator Rodriguez, making sure that they understand the impacts that the proposed budgets would have on our schools. We do have a fund balance that we put aside for rainy days. But if this is going to be a continual thing, we will have to figure out what we can cut without really affecting the impact on kids. I learned this year that there were 100 girls in the Upper Keys that rely on their schools for their feminine hygiene products. I thought, well, what’s going to happen to them in the summer? So I talked to some friends, and we decided we would try to get money for the products to provide to the girls. It’s been very busy, and we were coming up against a deadline. So last Sunday, I put an Amazon wish list online for the products we would need for those 100 girls and this Upper Keys community really came through, and in 72 hours, they had provided, we’re talking about 9,000 of one thing and 5,000 of another, and they provided what these girls needed in three days. We’re going to be getting those to the girls, and then it was so successful that we’re going to be approaching some people about seeing if we can make it a permanent thing for all the schools in the Keys, because we want all kids to have a great summer. We’re so grateful to live in a place that cares about each other.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keysschools.com/