Schools play an important role during weather emergencies

Dr. Sue Woltanski, Board Chair of Monroe County School Board and 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 schools were closed during Hurricane Milton.

Dr. Woltanski said, “One of the things I want to highlight is the function of public schools during hurricanes. Not only do they serve as shelters, and I know they were opening shelters on the west coast to bring in families that were on the East Coast for the ones that were evacuating from the West Coast and then many of those schools in the damaged areas are not reopening yet because they still have people staying in them who have lost everything. So the schools, as we saw with Irma, they serve such an important purpose and recovery from the storms as well.”

Andy Griffiths recently retired from the school board after 32 years of service.

Dr. Woltanski said, “He had a retirement party on Saturday night that was a fundraiser for United Way which he’s also been very active in. There were four video messages from superintendents, and I believe all the rest, maybe one of them wasn’t there, attended the event. So it was really a who’s who of the history of Monroe County School District over the weekend. It was a great event. Andy has been, he was the president of the Florida School Board Association. He has been the voice of Monroe County schools to Tallahassee for so many years. I think you can’t underestimate the impact that he’s had on the schools.”

The basketball court at Horace O’Bryant school will be named after Coach Dexter Butler.

Dr. Woltanski said, “As people probably remember he tragically died in an accident last year, and he was a coach at Key West High well and at the middle school. He was a very loved teacher at Horace O’Bryant, and he left behind a very young daughter, and last week at the school board meeting, we were finally able to formally approve the naming of the basketball court at Horse O’Bryant in his name, and that there will be an official ceremony coming up soon on for that. He was a Key West High athlete, and was really a standout. I believe that the high school court is named for his father, so it’s also a lovely, memory for that whole family.”

There will be two referendums on the ballot coming up for a half mill and a half cent tax for the school district.

Dr. Woltanski said, “I like to think of this as the least controversial and most impactful measures that are on the ballot for this community. The two referendums, which will likely be at the end of the ballot, they say school board referendum above them, just continue the funding that we have now and have had for the last 20 years. So this is nothing new. It’s just due to some recent laws and timing, they both end up on the ballot together. It’s not an either/or. One is for maintaining buildings and athletic fields and computer technology, and the other is for providing teacher pay, nurses in the schools and school resource officers in the schools. So it’s a continuation of that, and right now it is endorsed by the Keys Democrats, Keys Republicans, all three local Republican clubs, the Ocean Reef Community Association, the Key West, Marathon and Key Largo Chambers of Commerce, the League of Women Voters. We haven’t found any group that’s opposing these. So this is a universal ask from all the groups that we continue to fund our great schools because our kids deserve them. They will be on the backside of your ballot. So you’ve got to flip it over. There’s no requirement that people vote for everything on the ballot, but please vote for the school referendums. The whole community needs those.”

A recent grant will obtain an Oculus for each social worker at the school.

Dr. Woltanski said, “It’s like virtual reality interactions that kids can assess the situation and then see how they would react to it and it helps guide them through. I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know exactly what it does, but it’s an interesting idea. I know we’re required to do mental health instruction, and the student leaders had come to us to say that the programs that we had, which were approved by the state, kids weren’t taking them seriously. We know that mental health is super important, especially these days, and so we’re looking for ways to better serve the students in a way that’s meaningful to them. One final thing, I’m going to shout out to the Key West swimming team. I went to a fundraiser for them at the Tropic Cinema last night. I got to see Jaws on a big screen. That was great.”