Theresa Axford, superintendent for the Monroe County School District, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about our schools.
Where does time go? There are only 17 days of school left this year.
Axford said, “I just can’t believe it myself. Everything’s going on now. Coral Shores High School has their graduation on May 22 and then Marathon High School on May 23. Key West High School on May 24. So there’s a lot of activity going on for sure.”
End of the school year productions have also taken place in the schools.
Axford said, “On Monday night, the Key West Drama Club had a fundraiser at Williams Hall. It was called Broadway Our Way. What a great event. Their voices were stunning. They’re just so great. Then last Thursday the Key West High School band had their end of the year concert. They are an award winning band, of course, we’re so proud of them. They were in London for New Year’s Day. Their jazz band has won top ratings in the Florida Bandmasters Association. So it’s just like being with professional musicians. Gary Hernandez, who is the band director, and also our art and music coordinator for the district, he just pushes the envelope and those kids just do more and more complicated work and they achieve so well. It goes hand in hand with high performance in academics as well. So we’re going to see a lot of that here at the end of the year with all the local organizations who are so generous to our seniors. They’re all participating in their scholarship interviews now. Of course, at the end of the month, all that’s going to come out, who’s been recognized but this community throughout the Keys, gives over $2.5 million in scholarships to seniors every year, which is so impressive for our small, what do we have 80,000 residents here? And we come up with that kind of money for our students. It’s amazing.”
How many students will be graduating?
Axford said, “Key West High has up to about 260, up to 300. But Marathon is at about 100 and Coral Shores about 200. So, Key West High is the largest school here in the island chain because most of the population is down here, of course, but it’s an exciting time.”
Testing time is also coming to a close.
Axford said, “It’s a different kind of testing this year, we’ve made videos for teachers, students and parents. It’s called a CAT test, computer adaptive testing, is the progress monitoring. It’s different than any test you took because the whole idea behind tests and measurements has changed. So if you answer a question correctly, the next question is more difficult. So we encourage the students to go on and just keep on doing their best, because that’s the way to achieve in this test is don’t give up and kind of expect the fact that if you got it right, the next one’s going to be harder.”
The calendar for next school year is already set.
Axford said, “We voted on that for next year, similar to this year’s calendar. There are parents on that committee that helps us put it together. We’re doing our budget for next year, we’re getting those all in place. Then throughout the summer, the school board starts to look at the budget, and they finally approve the budget in September. That’s challenging, as always, but the principals have done a very good job of aligning their budgets and coming in with a zero balance. So we’re very proud of them, as always, and we expect great things next year. The school district has just gone through an accreditation process and we came out well above the network average for our index of educational quality. We got 338 points, and their network at network average is below 300. So I would say that we are doing quite well and we’re very proud of our students and teachers.”
It looks like the concession stand and restrooms as part of the baseball field has been halted due to some of the increasing costs.
Axford said, “It remains to be seen what the board is going to do about that, but the proposed cost had doubled, and it was just more than they felt they wanted to pay and certainly, they’re going to explore some other options.”
The school district also has opportunities for those who would like to volunteer.
Axford said, “We have parent volunteers. We just recognized our volunteers of the year in all categories, the youth category, the adult category and the senior category. Volunteers give countless hours to the school district and we couldn’t really run our schools without the help of our volunteers. There’s a small process that you have to go through to become a volunteer. Just call our HR department and they will take you through that and we would welcome anybody who wants to volunteer, and I believe principals regularly recruit their parents to help out as volunteers. It’s very rewarding working with the students. I know our new Executive Director of Finance, she went up to Sugarloaf yesterday and read to the kindergarteners. She was smiling from ear to ear working with those students, and she just loved every minute of it. So we do like to have readers come in and read to the students and it just sends a message that the community supports the students and loves them as much as we do.”
The school district selection of Principal of the Year was Laura Lietaert.
Axford said she “is amazing. She is just so well liked by her staff up there. She was telling me they just had the Miss Coral Shores event on Saturday night and the event was just amazing. You know how the Miss Americas always say what they want is world peace? Well, these girls, they did for talent, competitive horseback riding, one did an oil change. One did singing and dancing. Another one did a solo flight pilot. So they were beyond talented. This is really a talent and academic competition for Coral Shores High School. Everybody should get ready and follow our website for all the events that are coming up because there’s more than just graduation. There’s recognition ceremonies and every school is going to be recognizing their top students, so it’s going to be a lot of fun this month.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keysschools.com/