School starts two weeks from Monday, and we are busy getting ready to welcome our Bobcats back to another year of learning. Our summer school attendance hit record numbers this summer and we are excited to see so many students continuing their learning over the break. We are having great movement on all of our summer construction projects in our district, all while our custodians and facility staff are working very hard to prepare our buildings for students to arrive on August 22nd and teachers to return on the 15th.
Workers are finishing the floors in all of the HS and MS gym entrance bathrooms this week, and will set appliances and partitions next week. New BGHS bleachers were installed with improved safety and functionality and MS and HS gym floors have been sealed and ready to go for another year. BGE HVAC work is complete replacing 25 year old units, and new roofing at the elementary and middle school is finished. The BGHS auditorium and entry roofs are complete, and workers are continuing progress on the BGHS North and South wing roofing over the next few weeks. Staff are working on our alarm system and the installation of the new speakers to augment our coverage zones on the BG campus and the Frankford FEMA shelter is coming along with plumbing all roughed in and walls starting to be constructed. The additional road at Frankford is complete, and we plan to pave that road in the coming year. (As a reminder, we are shooting for a winter break completion timeline on this new facility and will house art and music classes and is large enough to hold the entire student body in case of emergency.) The BGHS road should be ready for paving next week and the area in front of the field house before our first football game. The field house roof and the staff daycare roof and fencing are complete and the drain/concrete repair in the BGHS courtyard done. The benefits for this road are that it improves traffic flow and improves safety by directing traffic away from where students are walking on the sidewalk as student drivers arrive and dismiss, fixing the erosion on the back on the baseball/softball stadiums and correcting storm drainage issues, all while responding to overwhelming feedback on our surveys and focus group meetings from 2017 asking us to create a better, more accessible entrance to the high school, and helps to facilitate a possible future phase of an early childhood center and storm shelter with road access to where it would be placed. This idea along with the creation of an expanded MS/HS library and storm shelter and finalizing our roof needs at Frankford and the BGHS gym and kitchen and playground upgrades at BGE and Frankford are all items our board is considering in coming phases and will be looking for more input related to these ideas.
Our board is working hard to continue to take care of our facilities and provide safe and secure learning environments all while creating opportunities for our students to meet their potential. They will continue this work at the August 9 work session planning for our future and additional stakeholder feedback opportunities. In the past four years, we have maintained a balanced budget each year, improved student performance, added additional programs for our students and lowered teacher attrition. In the last three years alone, teacher attrition has gone from 11% to 8% to 3.5% and is far below state and national averages of 8% and 11% all while maintaining five days a week and consistent learning environments for our students and families. Our state highway patrol bus inspections assessment rates have gone from 56.5% in 2016 to 65.2% in 2018 to 72% in 2020 to 84% in 2022 as we have been working to gradually modernize our fleet. (We have four more new buses that have been on order for half of a year and are due to arrive this Fall.) Our preschool and staff daycare have doubled in size in recent years, and 100% of our seniors that started last school year graduated on time last May as we have worked to increase our graduation rate over the past few years. We are very thankful to our Bowling Green family and all of those who work to support our students and look forward to input along the way to more continuous improvement from our community this school year. It is a GREAT day to be a Bobcat! We look forward to seeing our Bobcats on the 22nd! #BGBOBCATPRIDE
See pictures of our construction projects progress here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ArcG...