School has begun to wind down across the Carbon School District. With Summer right around the corner, CSD Superintendent Mika Salas joined the KOAL newsroom to close out this year’s series of school district updates.
“It’s been a great year,” opened the Superintendent. “We just have the best kids. We have the best staff. Everyone’s in it for the right reasons, and it’s just exciting.”
Looking at the data, Salas spoke on districtwide improvement in reading and math. “It’s so exciting. And you know, we don’t want to hang our hat only on testing. You know, it is a thing that we have to do. But certainly, the learning and the improvement in confidence and watching our kids just be so excited as they accomplish their goals, that’s what it’s all about. And we’ve seen it over and over in every school. There’s just such growth and learning happening and goals being achieved. And just the confidence and the happiness in that is what we’re after. And we’ve seen it again and again.”
Districtwide, educators have aimed to mix learning with a healthy dose of fun to keep the students fully engaged. “We do try that intentionally at every school. And you know, it isn’t all fun. And so we have to try to teach kids how to have that grit, to stick with something challenging and accomplish it anyway.” Salas continued,” And those lessons are hard to learn. You know, not everyone gets things at the same pace. And so if it takes you longer, it’s more frustrating. We do try to build in those incentives to keep going and then really celebrate when they achieve their goals. And it’s working.”
Looking ahead to the 25-26 school year, Salas encouraged parents to get their students reenrolled,” So everyone who’s not a senior, all of the students who are currently enrolled with us, we just yesterday opened our re-enrollment efforts for the fall, the 25-26 school year. So, every contact listed in our system, so if you are a parent or guardian connected to a student in our system, you would have received a text and an email yesterday with information on how to reenroll your students. And we really need everyone to do that. Even if you’ve been with us for years and years, that’s something we need to do every year. It’s basically what we used to call registration. It’s just re-enrollment now in our new system. And so just encourage parents to watch for that email and text and follow those directions closely and get that done.”
Salas also took the time to speak on the upcoming free summer lunch program across Carbon County. “We serve all youth in our community, whether or not you’re a student with us. You can have free lunch from birth to 18 through our summer lunch programs. We also provide breakfast for the next morning. So you get a grab-and-go lunch and something to eat for breakfast the next morning. And then on Thursdays, they give food for the weekend. And so it’s a really big deal. There will be multiple locations all over.”
Looking at changes coming to the district, Superintendent Salas first spoke about the new principals for Creekview Elementary and Mont Harmon Middle School. “These principals are new to their role, not new to the district. We have Keith Palmer, who’s been the principal at Creekview. He’s headed to Mont Harmon as the principal, and Keith was a math teacher at Mont Harmon for years before he became a principal. He was a highly successful teacher and principal at Creekview, and he has decided to make the change and go to the middle school. And we couldn’t be happier. We’re so excited and just waiting for that to happen.”
Looking to Creekview, Salas shared,” Jennifer Black, who has been an instructional coach with us at Wellington Elementary and, before that, a longtime teacher for us, will be taking over as principal of Creekview Elementary. And again, I couldn’t be happier. These are two highly successful, highly driven people who are just really out to make a positive change, and we’re just excited and fortunate to have them on our team.”
Our penultimate topic of conversation with the Superintendent was renovations happening at schools across the district over the summer. “We have lots of projects going on. We will be starting two major construction projects at two of our schools that will take several years to complete. We’ve received an infrastructure grant through the state that will really impact Sally Mauro and Mont Harmon, and that will be maybe less on the surface where people can see, but a much-needed kind of infrastructure remodel and support there.”
The Superintendent added,” And then just our typical carpet, cabinets, blinds, all kinds of more – I guess what we would say is more minor construction. We have very limited time, so there’s a lot of work being done right now to set all that up so that we can start the second school gets out and end hopefully right before it starts again.”
In closing, Salas stated,” Just thank you to everyone for the support you give a student. If you help a student in any way, if they’re your child and you help them, support them, encourage them, we thank you for that. It all matters if you’re a neighbor or a family member who takes someone under your wing and helps them. It takes all of us, and so we just appreciate everyone’s support. Thank you for coming to the events. Thank you for being positive with these kids and telling them how much you love and support them. It really takes each of us to do that to make it work.”