May 1, 2009

Friday, May 1, 2009

Yikes, is anyone else hyperventilating over how fast time is going by?!? A typical spring in any school, I suppose. (By the way--welcome to May and happy May Day!)

The Administrative Team put our best culinary foot (feet?) forward on Monday and provided lunch for our office support staff. This is the very least we can do to thank them for the tremendous support they provide to all of us and, most importantly, our students! It was a lot of fun and such a treat to be able to sit down and have lunch with the whole gang. A photo of the festivities is at the right.

We recognized our 3rd-quarter Straight A students with “walking tacos” and special recognition on Monday afternoon. What a great group of kids! It was nice to spend some time with our achievers; but true to form, they didn’t stick around long—most of them wanted to get back to class to finish some assignment or project! So we sent them on their way and told them to “go get some more A’s!” Thanks to all of our teaching staff who work with these students to help them succeed.

Wednesday evening I attended the West-Central Ohio Tech Prep Consortium Recognition Dinner and had the privilege of seeing two of OHP’s finest receive recognition. Ashley Sprang, Health Technologies senior from Kenton, and Lance Salyer, Auto Technology senior from Triad, will both be receiving Tech Prep scholarships—Ashley for Rhodes State and Lance for University of Northwest Ohio. Congratulations to these two fine young people and best wishes in your college and career! We know you’ll make us proud and go on to much success.

I was off campus on Thursday attending an “Issues Forum” with the career-technical superintendents. On the topic of the next biennium budget, among other things we are working with the Senate Education Committee to assure:
· That career-tech leadership has representation on the committee that will study our funding over the next two years
· That open-enrolled students and weighted funding are included in the amount that the proposed 1.9 percent funding increase will be based upon
· That Adult Workforce Education is fully integrated into the University System of Ohio (now that we are under the Board of Regents)
We’re on voice among hundreds, no doubt, lobbying with Senate right now over this budget bill, but we are a united voice! I’ll keep you posted.

Thursday evening we hosted our annual Career Focus Dinner and invited those students who have applied to our programs to come in, have dinner with us, and spend some time in their future labs getting to know their instructors better. We had a great turnout and I was able to talk to many excited future students (and grateful parents!) I also heard comments from several of our staff that this seems like such a nice group of kids (not that that’s anything new). We look forward to working with them over the next two years!

We’ve had a lot of activities around our 35th Anniversary this week, with many more to come! I hope you’ll all come out and join us at our Top of Ohio 5K Run/Walk tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. It’s an exciting event which draws a bigger crowd of runners/walkers every year. And best of all, it raises money for our Scholarship Fund! Thanks to all of you who are volunteering your precious weekend time for this event.

Next week is one of celebrating special people! Tuesday is National Teacher Appreciation Day, and Wednesday is School Nurse’s Appreciation Day! Let me be the first to say we greatly appreciate the professionalism of all of our teachers/certified staff and all you do to help our students chase their dreams. And I know I’m not alone in saying that I always feel a little bit safer knowing we have “Nurse Amy” watching over us as our Health & Safety Coordinator. Thanks for all you do. We’ve got the best!

Have a great weekend!