Board Members:
The best part of this week is the fact that we have had 5 days of school in a row, and we have been on time each day! Most of the students are exhausted because they aren't used to a full week of school! The highlight of my week was reading Dr. Seuss's 'Sneetches' to the second grade yesterday. Speaking of Dr. Seuss, I hope you have your tickets for the musical this weekend. If you don't, please contact Dee in the high school office today and get them before its too late! I am really looking forward to seeing this show!
This was funnel week at the state capitol, so it was very busy with subcommittee and committee meetings. As a refresher on funnel week, in order for a non appropriations bill to stay 'alive' for consideration this session, it needs to have passed out of a committee. So the legislators were very busy trying to get bills out of committee to keep them moving. Bills that have been approved by a committee are eligible for debate on the floor of the chamber. Once they clear that chamber, they are passed to the opposing chamber where they again need to clear that committee before being eligible for debate on the floor. If it gets approval in that chamber, it goes to the governor for signature. The next funnel deadline is April 5th. By that date, bills must have cleared one chamber and a committee in the opposing in order to stay alive. It is not easy for a bill to become a law, nor should it be!
Unfortunately a scaled back voucher bill did clear the Senate Education Committee on an 8-7 vote. Interestingly enough, two republican senators broke ranks with the majority and voted with the democrats. The bill has faced, and will continue to face fierce opposition, and we have been working very hard to kill it before it got this far. In fact, up until the vote we thought we may have had the votes to stop it. The good news is this bill has an uphill climb with a very uncertain future. There is hope that if if clears the Senate it will stall in the House. Hopefully it doesn't get that far.
In other news, Wednesday afternoon we held a pre-construction meeting with Cardinal and all the subcontractors. Please check your March board agenda for more details. At this time we are planning to break ground on April 8th. You'll also be happy to know the $5.14 million wire arrived precisely on time on Tuesday morning!
The photo I am sharing this week is from our inservice at Central Rivers on Wednesday afternoon where the faculty heard from Trevor Ragan. Trevor studies the science of learning and was very engaging for our faculty. I will write more about this next week, but one key takeaway is that we all have the capacity to learn new skills, no matter our age. If you believe it, you can get better at almost any skill. This is known as a 'growth mindset'.
Have an awesome weekend and I look forward to seeing you next week!
Dr. Tony Voss, Superintendent
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