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 the schools.
The stadium at Marathon High School has been named after Mike Puto.
Woltanski said, “We voted on Tuesday night at the school board meeting to name the football stadium, the Michael H. Puto stadium. And it couldn’t have been an easier vote. He has been really Mr. Marathon and part of the Marathon government, but also so, so supportive of our students. And he’s at all the athletic events and he’s a Take Stock mentor, and he is involved in the scholarship events there. He has done so much for the students there. The students wrote the letter to us asking for the naming rights of student government and it was just great to name it that. And he was so pleased. We don’t often get a time to make everyone in the room happy. This was one of the times where we voted on something and everyone in the room was happy. They will be putting the naming up, and they’re going to be having a big ceremony, probably at a football game in the fall. So we’ll be asking the whole community to come out and celebrate him.”
A STEM fair was held recently.
Woltanski said, “STEM is science, technology, engineering and math. It’s an expansion of what we all knew as a science fair, and the district fair was on Saturday down at Switlik. And the projects that the kids are coming up with these days, it’s just impressive. We had micro plastics and shrimp. We had kids who had done a project about what makes a computer password easiest to hack. They had artificial intelligence, how much bacteria is on the school stairwell handrail? It was really great. We’ve really put a lot of effort at the schools into helping the kids develop their projects and their ideas, and then helping their public speaking about their projects, because it’s more than just an experiment on a board. They have to talk about what they’ve done, and they are getting so good at it, and we’ve seen the results. We have kids placing very high in the state science fair now. So we’ve got five groups from middle and high school going to the state science fair. I believe that’s on April Fool’s Day, which is a funny day to have a science fair, but to take a bunch of clever kids and put them in a room could be dangerous. So we’re excited to see how their projects will match up at the state level.”
Key West High School is academic challenge district champions, and they will now move to represent Monroe County in the state competition as well.
Woltanski said, “They’re powerhouses in that I don’t believe they’ve lost a district meet in a decade. So it’s amazing. It’s all the academic subjects, so it’s science and literature, and they have math problems that they come and do, and at any one time, it’s four students working together to solve some of these problems.”
Celebrate Literacy, Florida! Week is this week.
Woltanski said, “It’s a Florida initiative, and the state always comes out with a subject or a theme. And this year, it’s Read, White and Blue and it’s celebrating what they call 250 chapters of America, this Fourth of July will be 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So that’s what this is involved with. So a lot of the books that are being read and the activities that are being done have to do with the history of America and civics and that sort of thing. The schools are really good about putting together some fun ways for the kids to celebrate reading. They have guest readers, which is my favorite part of the week. Key Largo school always does a camp out, which is going to be a challenge with this weather, but where families come out with tents and sleeping bags and for a couple of hours in the evening with flashlights, they read books together out there on their lawn, but they also have vocabulary parades where kids dress up like, like challenging words, like interesting words. So those parades will be happening in the school. It’s a really fun week, and it’s focused on, really what we focus on the most, and that is getting kids to love reading.”
The newly released 2024-2025 federal graduation rate index had Monroe County School District showing very strong gains, rising from 86.9% to 91.9%, a five point increase. It exceeded the statewide improvement of 2.5 points.
Woltanski said, “It was a concerted effort. We knew that that was an issue. We’ve known that that was an issue that we’ve lagged behind. And really ever since COVID and Mrs. Axford and her team had put in what they were calling graduation coaches into the high school, which were counselors that were specifically looking at the kids who were not on track to graduate and get making sure the kids understood what they needed to do to get to that level, and then that they had someone there to help them get there. So a lot of that has to do with kids who were very close, but not quite there to passing some of the state assessments. So a lot of work and attention was put into that to make sure that we could get kids across the finish line. And it’s really great to see that be achieved at this point.”
The schools have also finished testing recently.
Woltanski said, “We will see that next week, but they’ve seen the preliminary and that helps the schools understand if they’re on track or if they need to repeat a topic or something like that. It’s statewide. It was put in by Governor DeSantis. It is really unique right now in the country to have a statewide progress monitoring system. The kids are tested at the beginning of the year and the middle of the year, and then they have what we call the big test at the end of the year. But they’re all aligned so the teachers can get the information and the students and families can get the information when it’s needed to make the changes, or to make any interventions that need to be done to help the kids get to the next level.”
There are still some coaches needed in the district.
Woltanski said, “I think we always need officials. So anyone who wants to take on the role of advancing athletics by becoming an official. This year it hasn’t been too bad, but in the past, we’ve had to cancel games for not having officials. This is all thanks to the community. It is the half mil referendum that we come to the community for that helps us to pay our teachers. And so Monroe is has the highest starting salary, in part because the governor has focused on funding starting teacher salaries, but we also don’t have as much compression between the starting salary and our experienced teachers, they too, have been able to get raises, and I think that really helps, and that money for the raises for them comes from the community’s willingness to do the half mil, and that allows us to keep our teachers. In other districts, they may have higher starting salaries, but the experienced teachers have not gotten raises along the way. We appreciate our teachers. We have great teachers, and we really appreciate them, and it’s great to be able to pay them somewhere near what they’re worth, although they’re priceless.”
The new superintendent, Ed Tierney, has created a lot of initiatives.
Woltanski said, “The administrators going out into the community, this is Mr. Tierney’s idea. So we’re getting close to the time where it is the last chance for these kids who have not quite gotten the assessment data that they need to graduate. We’re getting close to the time where they’re getting to their last chance. And so Mr. Tierney has asked people from the district office who have teaching certificates during the week before that last chance, they’re going to go in and tutor or do test preparation for these mandated assessments with small groups of students. He said he’s tried that before, but never has he had people so excited to go and do it. So our administrators are really happy to go back into the classroom. I think we’re going to see tremendous gains. Plus it’s good for their souls. I mean, they have good souls to begin with. It’s good for the former teachers to get back and be in contact with students and help them achieve.”
For more information about the schools, click here: https://www.keysschools.com/