During each month's school board meeting, Uinta 4's Board of Trustees takes time to recognize extraordinary, demonstrated success. These successes will come from a variety of areas but, in general, will be focused on achievements that have truly benefitted our students. This is not an “employee of the month” program and it is not an “everyone wins a trophy” program. Rather, it is a merit-based attempt to recognize those staff members who have truly demonstrated excellence. Therefore, some staff members might get recognized more than once each year and some staff members might never get recognized.
September's spotlight shines on district Maintenance Supervisor Bob Alvis. In his 12 years in our district, Bob has provided real leadership in helping the district navigate some difficult and unique situations. He not only has a broad knowledge of building and maintenance, but a specific knowledge of electrical systems that has provided professional growth for our entire maintenance crew. He has done an excellent job of working to transition Monte Bernard into both his current role and his upcoming role of maintenance supervisor. Bob has also been a go to for us in our contracts and bidding process. Early in his career with us, Bob was vital in getting our new K8 building on line for our students and staff. Our thanks to Bob for his service to the district and we wish him well in his coming retirement.
UCSD #4 Special Education Appreciation Shout Outs! Case managers task paras Sommer Tysver and Kara Olson with contacting parents to schedule meetings. The design in this duty/responsibility allows the case managers to focus more of their time on providing services to their students. This arrangement is somewhat unique and really a testament to the quality of work that they both do. For case managers to entrust paras with this responsibility says a lot. I know how hard it is to coordinate with admin, teachers and parents to find times that work for meetings. I realize the stress involved in this duty and the patience they have to have, to do it well. I am continually impressed with the quality of our paras and Sommer and Kara are two are a perfect examples of this. Thank you, Sommer and Kara, for handling all of our demands with a warm, friendly smile and a calm, can-do attitude. We really appreciate the work you do!
No surprise to anyone, we have some pretty capable bus drivers in our district! This month's Spotlight falls, once again, on the Uinta 4 Bus Rodeo Champions. This summer, our Transportation department leaders, Brian Deru and Carmen Erickson, took several drivers up to Casper for the Wyoming Pupil Transportation Association's mountain driver training and the annual bus rodeo. Carmen Erickson and Angie Pitts represented our district well with their driving skills by taking first place in the bus rodeo portion of the training. This is the first time that our district has actually won this event, and you should see the traveling trophy we now have, thanks to the WPTA and the amazing efforts of our school bus drivers.
MVHS would like to shine the spotlight on Jolene Schnackenburg and Clay Hysell. These two individuals do so much behind the scenes and without their help these last few weeks, high school registration would not have happened. Clay is our resident "techie" and he is there at a moment's notice whenever we're having issues. His knowledge is abundant and we are very lucky to have his expertise. Jolene is sifting through mountains of PowerSchool info to make sure we are on track with student and parent registration. Her skillset is made evident, especially when coordinating attendance, compliance requirements from the state and sticky situations sometimes we are put in with school activities. Their professionalism and skill sets aside, both of these folks are such wonderful humans and their kindness shines through with every interaction, we are so grateful to work alongside them.
This month's Spotlight is a thank you to Mountain View High School Media Paraeducator Kim Tait and Josh Camp, representing Fort Bridger Historical Society, for their work with high school teachers and students to help coordinate a cross-curricular project this past spring that was very well done by students and staff and allowed the high school students to interact with younger students from both of the other buildings.