The Ray Darling Upward Bound Rotary Awards

What a great morning at the quarterly Ray Darling Upward Bound Rotary Awards. So grateful to our Citrus County Rotary Clubs that a so supportive to our students and schools. This event is just one of the numerous ways they are committed to our students and a better tomorrow.

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Kennedy Files for Re-Election 2022

I am happy to announce that today I filed election papers to continue serving Citrus County as District 1 School Board Member. I want to build on our many successes. I want to continue to work daily for the students, families, staff, and community who depend on Citrus County Schools.

The Citrus County School District has a distinguished history of achievement with awards, honors, and recognition at state and national levels. Despite the last couple of years presenting some unique challenges for our students, staff, and families, we continue to succeed.

Due to the many positive initiatives implemented throughout our community that directly support our students and families, I was named STAR Florida School Board Member of the Year by the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations in 2018. This award is only presented to one Florida school board member each year. In 2021, I was further honored to be awarded the Phil Royal Legacy Foundation’s “Heart of Gold Award” for our work in establishing our new Emergency Medical Technician Pathway. I am humbled, yet proud, of these honors. However, I am most proud of our efforts and work that led to more opportunities for Citrus County students to succeed.

As a parent of two recent Citrus County School graduates and as the husband of a teacher with thirty years of experience teaching in Citrus County, I have a perspective of the needs and challenges our students, families, and staff face. As a strong supporter of parents’ choice in their child’s education, I will continue supporting parents’ voices and participation in our education system including their active involvement in our School Advisory Councils, Student Code of Conduct policy development, Student Progression Plan Team, School Calendar Committee, state curriculum adoption input, and much more.

I will continue advocating for programs and pathways for students who are not college-bound. Citrus County Schools is a leader in workforce certification programs offered to our high school students. Citrus County Schools offers over 150 separate Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses, covering over 60 industry certifications, that connect to 34 different Program of Study Pathways at our three high schools and through dual enrollment at Withlacoochee Technical College. These excellent on-campus workforce certification programs provide significant benefits to direct-to-career students and college-bound students. These successful programs impact our students’ lives and fill essential job needs in our community. Project Lead the Way, one of our nationally recognized programs, recently named one of our CTE teachers as the 2021 National Project Lead the Way Teacher of the Year. We will continue to expand these CTE opportunities. We have increased the number of Career and Technical Education programs in our middle schools, high schools, and vocational college during the last four years alone, including the new Phil Royal Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) Program. This year we are adding additional career pathways in construction engineering, veterinarian sciences, and more.

I proudly support Citrus County District’s passion in celebrating, honoring, and uplifting our great country and state. That passion and love of country are written into the very fabric of Citrus County Schools. I was School Board Chairman when our district was honored to be the first Purple Heart School District in the nation. We support outstanding Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs at each high school. These programs recently received the “Distinguished Unit Award.” We have one of the most extensive Veterans in the Classroom programs, where our local Veterans come into the classroom and teach students about patriotism in action (deeds, not just words). Our Veteran celebrations, Veterans’ Day participation, and flag ceremonies are just a few of the events that our schools and students participate in and in which our school district supports, facilitates, and sponsors. We work together to deepen the patriotic curricula and ensure that patriotism remains recognizable in the DNA of our school district.

Together we were instrumental in Citrus County’s district-wide digital adoption initiative, which included one-to-one student devices in our K-12th grades. The initiative played a critical role during the state-required remote learning in the Spring of 2020. The devices provided academic continuity as well as choice opportunities during these past school years. They also provided the critical digital skills and tools necessary to succeed in future careers and continuing education. We will continue to focus on preparing students for the world they must succeed in.

Accessibility and communication are essential to our families and community. Since elected, I diligently worked to be an easily accessible school board member. My communication has included writing and publishing over 525 columns. These columns have highlighted the positive news in our classrooms, schools, and public education, as well as the needs of our students, staff, and schools. I have maintained an active blog and social media presence, reaching more than 5,000 readers monthly. I have helped influence more than 30 local newspaper editorial board columns to better inform the public about the needs and successes of public education locally and throughout the state.

I continuously strive to provide an influential local voice at the state level by developing strong legislative and state leadership relationships. After a rigorous multi-year selection process, I was elected President-Elect of the Florida School Board Association (FSBA) and will ascend to be President of the FSBA in June 2022. This honor will be the first for a Citrus County School Board member. This role will further the opportunities for Citrus County students, staff, schools, and programs to be showcased to many educational and state leaders throughout Florida.

Together we will continue our work to meet the needs of our students, families, staff, and schools. I humbly ask for your continued support in this election and the days forward.

Thomas Kennedy

www.Kennedyforkids.com

thomas@kennedyforkids.com

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LHS IB Theory of Knowledge Exhibition Night

Last night LHS junior and senior International Baccalaureate (IB) candidates presented their Theory of Knowledge Exhibitions. The students’ TOK exhibitions included a verbal presentation that accompanied their 1,600-word essay.  Attendees then had the opportunity to ask questions of the students about their exhibitions.

These IB student TOK exhibitions were so in-depth. The IB website describes TOK as, “a thoughtful and purposeful inquiry into different ways of knowing, and into different kinds of knowledge, TOK is composed almost entirely of questions. The most central of these is ‘How do we know?’, while other questions include: What counts as evidence for X? How do we judge which is the best model of Y? What does theory Z mean in the real world?”

The LHS International Baccalaureate (IB) program is another of our Citrus School’s choice magnet programs where parents and students choose to participate in the program and apply their 8th-grade year for acceptance their high school freshman year.

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