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I want to provide just an overview of our Community Conversations. In total, we conducted five Community Conversations across our school buildings, in addition to an all-hands-on-deck meeting so every employee within the organization was given the opportunity to participate in the same process that we did with the community.

In addition, in the months of July and August I met tirelessly with multiple stakeholder groups of business leaders and nonprofits.

In total, we collected input, feedback and insight into our strategic plan from approximately 450 participants. I feel like that was a decent number of people whose voices and insights are influencing our strategic plan.

We are in the process of analyzing all of that feedback. And as we come back from the holiday break and through early part of the second semester, we'll be really putting onto paper a multiyear plan that will be a result of all of that work.

Thank you to all these 450 people who participated in some way, shape or form in that process.  I also want to acknowledge that we just received word at the end of last week and over the weekend that we have six of our Kent County Public Schools team members who achieved National Board Certification.

We will be formally honoring them in the upcoming months, in January and February, with a pinning ceremony.

We have to get the official pin from the national board, but I just want to recognize them initially tonight, since it's hot off the presses.

• Rachael Watchilla from Galena Elementary School

• Sara Brock from Galena Elementary School

• Jessica Ribaudo from Galena Elementary School

• Katie Hughes from Kent County Middle School

• Caren Saunders from Kent County High School and Kent County Middle School 

• Melissa Walters from Kent County High School and Kent County Middle School

So again, we'll have a more formal celebration for them, but we wanted to immediately lift them up to celebrate this accomplishment.

My last update is on our middle school project.

I'm pleased to say that in partnership with the Maryland Stadium Authority, we have selected the architecture firm. It is Crabtree, Rohrbaugh and Associates Architects. They have done work for us previously on some of our renovation programs.

We are in the process of meeting with the architecture firm every other week in the design process.

We will be scheduling four community meetings in the second semester to apprise the community of updates on design ideas and to collect feedback from the community in that process.

So that's phase one, which is the funding and the design of a new middle school building.

Phase two is, we are in the process of pursuing the funding to actually be able to build the actual middle school.

I'd like to thank our state delegation for Annapolis. They met with Kent County Board of Education leadership and myself today to discuss legislative initiatives in the upcoming legislative cycle in Annapolis. And so I just sincerely want to appreciate our full delegation of senators and state delegates who took time out of their schedules today to meet so that we can continue to pursue the funding to make it a reality for our community.

So with that being said, that concludes my report for this board meeting.

I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season. Before we know it, it will be the end of next week, and you'll have time with your loved ones, and I hope it's restful, enjoyable and rejuvenating.