November 3, 2024

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Happy Sunday, Pirates. We are grateful to be back with you. It feels like it's been a couple of weeks since I've been with you on a Sunday afternoon. 

I am so excited to get to show you around the Junior Achievement Learning Center. This is a special partnership that we have with our Heartland Education Foundation. This is a site that's here in our district, but we also share it with other districts and students can come here. There are financial literacy lessons that happen. They get to play the Game of LIFE as kids, but doing it in real life. So I want to show you some of the really cool places that our kids get to visit.

Over here we have the Crandall Car dealership. This is one of my favorite places. Kids come in and they get to pick out a car that they want. So they're provided a budget. And at the beginning, every kid says, I want the sports car. So we go through all the paperwork, they get their sports car, and then they visit some of our other stations and they realize, oh, maybe I need to come back for the sedan. It's one of my most favorite lessons to watch kids learn in this process is just this whole how to be an adult and budget your money.

Over here we have City hall, and this is where students come and complete their permits. This is how they get to participate in their civic life. I'm going to take this opportunity to remind all of our citizens that Tuesday is election day. And if you haven't voted, we want to make sure that you do that. We have the Election being held at Crandall Combine Community Center, and the hours are 7 to 7. We hope that you'll take an opportunity to vote while you're there.

Next, I want to showcase our Heartland Partnership. And another really cool experience that kids get to do when they come to the Junior Achievement Center is pick out a house. They get to talk about mortgages, and they get to talk about monthly payments, and they get to go so far as to get to design their house and pick the colors. Such an adult and really cool thing to get to do and experience while they're a student here, but hopefully building them with those real world skills to be successful as adults.

Other places that you see behind me, uh, we have the vet where kids get the experience of adopting a pet, figuring out how to pay for it, pet insurance, those kinds of things. Airport, when they get to do some traveling In every scenario, someone always gets sick. A kid is always sick or someone needs to go to the doctor. And so we have a medical facility here that students get to participate in. And then, of course, everyone needs a bank loan for something to be successful as an adult, and so they get to go through the bank.

But ultimately, what we are so thankful for in our partnership with Heartland is just this real world opportunity for kids to get to come and play and yet learn a whole lot about their future life in, you know, being just great financial managers. I want to send a couple of reminders.

We are out of School on November 8 for a professional learning day. Students will not need to be in attendance. Our teachers will be here, um, growing and learning and doing their thing.

Then wanted to also say congratulations to a couple of kids and to a couple of groups. Our football team has qualified for the playoffs. We'll continue to watch them throughout the regular season to see our seed, but we have qualified for the playoffs, so congratulations to that group. We look forward to seeing our band and cheer and drill, and all of those students get to perform for at least one more week.

And then lastly, Caden Floyd ran in the state cross country meet yesterday. We're really proud of his accomplishments.

We hope you have a great week, and we look forward to seeing your kids back at school tomorrow.