Thank you, community, for great 1st year as superintendent

As we wrap up the 2024-2025 school year, I have a lot to be grateful for. I am thankful to the entire school district and community for the opportunity to serve as a leader. The mentorship of Mr. Endreas through the years went above and beyond to help prepare me to take on this role. He was instrumental in my development as an educator.

Our school board has been nothing less than fully supportive of our staff, students, community, and me. They have represented our community well, and their support and leadership should not go unnoticed.

Our staff and building leadership have done a phenomenal job. They show up every day ready to do their jobs well and serve the students and community.

Finally, I want to express my appreciation for our students. Whether it be the infants and toddlers in our Launchpad daycare center, the Rookie Rockets, elementary students, or middle and high school students, there is nothing more rewarding than coming to work every day and interacting with all of the kids in our district.

I want to give a big shout-out to our food service director, Darla Fleischman. She has served the district for 30 years and recently announced her retirement. I wish Darla the best in retirement. We are in the process of hiring a new food service director. Any interested candidates should reach out to me at the school. Food service is one of, if not the most, regulated aspects of education. We look forward to continuing to grow our program.

This year, our strategic planning process drove the school year. Engaging with stakeholders in the community was extremely important and informative. We have set goals around preparing our students for college, careers, and life. We are focused on maintaining and implementing staff retention, recruitment, and development strategies. Our community really emphasized the importance of mental health supports and providing a safe and healthy environment. The community wants to see us utilize funds in a transparent way to maximize our potential and continue to maintain our facility and stay up-to-date. Finally, the community wants to continue to engage and focus on our family-first atmosphere. We surveyed our parents, community, and staff, and will use the information we obtained to continue to make decisions that reflect what is important to all of our stakeholders. Stay tuned, as we will be announcing some enhanced ways of communicating with parents and our community.

This year, I learned a lot about daycare. We are very fortunate to be able to provide daycare to infants, toddlers, and 3- and 4-year-olds for our staff and community members. There is a strong need for daycare options in our community, and we are happy to be able to provide relief. We are looking forward to expanding our 4-year-old kindergarten program to four full days a week next year.

We are coming to the end of our policy-writing initiative with NEOLA. NEOLA is a company that specializes in school policy. We will be adopting their templates as our policy, and we will continue to partner with them as they will provide updated policies to reflect changes in state and federal government. Recent years have proven to create a flurry of changes at those levels, and we need to keep up with these changes through our policy-writing process.

We are continuing to maintain and upgrade our facilities. We have pushed our window project back to the summer of 2026. We were concerned that the delays in shipping times would trickle into next year, and we want to have a cleaner start to the project next June. We are currently evaluating our hallway flooring for possible upgrades. This summer, we will also complete our renovations of our maintenance building adjacent to the playground.

Over the summer, we will be engaged in a number of initiatives preparing for the next school year. We are going to create a local dashboard that will serve as a local school report card. The state report card falls short of reporting on all of the things that are important about our school. We are going to enhance our intervention programs at the middle and high school levels to offer more support for students who are struggling. We will be remodeling the middle/high school office to create a safer entry into the building.

Overall, it was a very good school year. I am again thankful for all of the support and communication throughout our school and community. I am filled with pride for our students, staff, and community. I look forward to seeing what next year will bring.