That's a Wrap

What a great weather weekend! I know that plenty of you went to the Zac Brown concert,  or the Polish Festival, Syracuse Chief's games, graduation parties, or maybe you just spent time outside in the yard, exercising, or just plain old relaxing. Whatever you did, I hope some of it was outside. We do not get many nice days living here in Syracuse; and Mother Nature strung three in a row for us!

The School Year Comes to an End: Cartoons and television shows always depict educators as being excited as the kids pull away on the buses for the last time of the school year. They show teachers partying, seemingly happy that the kids are gone for the summer.

After watching the school buses pull away for the last time in June, 17 years in a row and counting, the actual reaction of our staff (and me), is the very opposite. Our employees put everything they have into helping our students to be successful. They ride the highs and lows of growing up, and the school year, just like the students do. That final departure is quite emotional.

I usually watch the students from Stonehedge leave, and this year as I was slapping high fives with the kids, several commented to me that they didn't want the school year to end. I heard those same comments from some seniors at graduation. Of course we are all going to enjoy the summer and all of that, but at the same time, I am very sure that our Wildcat Family is strong and everyone will be happy to return in the fall. Good stuff!

Crisis Prevention Training: During the winter, 15 of us (myself, a couple of principals, some counselors, and a few teachers) became trained as trainers in the Crisis Prevention Institute. The point of the Crisis Prevention Institute is to teach our employees every possible thing they can do in an escalating student situation besides using any type of physical restraint. If the situation becomes violent, we also teach what employees can do to keep the student, other students, and themselves as safe as possible.

With 860 full and part-time employees to train, we have our work cut out for us. On Friday we began by training 100 of our bus drivers and attendants. That went very, very well, and I am proud of the dedication of our drivers, as the training kept them from beginning their summer vacations! Everyone passed the training and all received an official "blue card", certifying them as being trained.

Over the summer we will train approximately 150 more people in each of our buildings. Over the course of next school year, we hope to get the remainder of our employees trained and certified. I really enjoy teaching, so I never have to be asked twice to lead a group!

A New Generator at the High School: This week we are going to be installing a generator at the high school. It is a monster, size wise, and will power the entire building and everything in it should we not have power. This will be really helpful for those early morning power outages that sometimes happen. It can run for days so we probably eliminated another reason to close school. I know you are thrilled!

I do work all summer, but I am going to take a few days off here and there over the next couple of weeks. As such, I am going to take a couple of weeks off of writing this blog. We continue to be about 5,000 strong every time something is posted, and I appreciate the support.

Thanks and enjoy the week!

Chris