American Education Week Celebration

All Wythe County Public School Employees are invited to celebrate American Education Week with us! Our reception will be Tuesday, November 14 from 4-6pm at West Wind Winery. We hope you will come celebrate with us!

Nov 2017 School Board Meeting Comments

Good evening Chairman Sage, School Board Members, Dr. Perry, School Board Office administrators and staff. Thank you for this time to speak with you tonight. I appreciate your willingness to have this night meeting to give WCPS staff, parents, and community members the opportunity to be with you at your meeting. 

Academically we are between Benchmark testing Windows so as the tides of stress go we would be in a low tide period. We have evaluated first quarter results, designed and implemented remediation plans to fill any gaps that were evident in the first benchmarks. (On a side note, We appreciate the time built in the calendar for grading and conferencing.) We had successful conferences with our students' families showing them their students results and discussing their progress so far. All of this while moving forward with the second quarter curriculum. Plans are building towards Decembers Benchmark and SOL testing. 

We have had several non-curricular moments to celebrate with our students from success with sports and organizations to Character Days to Veterans Day programs. These can at times be interruptions to our instructional program but they can provide meaningful learning opportunities for things not laid out in the SOL curriculum. We had our Veterans Day program today at Sheffey and it was amazing to see the time and effort students and staff put into rehearsing parts, creating posters, and learning about Veterans. To see the interactions of the students with the veterans and the smiles on the faces of the kids when they realize that this day was bigger than them was priceless. 

Committee work has been a valuable part of the past month. Behavior Support Team established this year at each school have been meeting at schools and county wide with Mary Henslee. This has been a great time to brainstorm ideas and make plans for students who need help to be able to focus on learning. Ms. Henslee is a valuable resource for our county and I am glad we are taking advantage of her knowledge and experience. The Salary Committee has also been meeting. We have developed a plan for what we hope will happen with the Salary Schedule with back up ideas in place in case funding is short. Two main goals of the committee are to simplify the salary schedule and communicate more in person about salary, insurance and other budget matters. 

Community involvement has also been a part of the goings-on lately. Fall Festivals, PTOs, PTAs, and boosters have been doing a tremendous job at our schools incorporating families and community members. One business - Utility Trailer Manufacturing in Atkins - has continued to shine with the generosity of their employees. They recognized their employees hard work with a weekly meal, but the employees have decided to donate the money of one of the weekly meals to charitable causes in the community. A substantial amount of that money has been donated to our schools. A big thank you to Utility. 

Finally I would like to personally invite all WCPS School Board members and  Employees in attendance to the WCEA's American Education Week Celebration. It will be held at West Wind Fame and Winery in Fort Chiswell. We have live banjo music from Wythe County's own Thom Moore. We will have prizes and finger foods. The WCEA would like to publicly thank the many local businesses that have contributed money and prizes to make this went special. I hope you will be able to join us!

Thank you for this time to speak on behalf of employees and for including the WCEA on the agenda.