Students shine spotlight on budget, wellness and future

Students and staff have collaborated to give residents snapshots into this year’s budget process. This short video, the fourth in a series created by students in Corey Riley’s music technology class, is about Wellness and why it is a focus of everything we do. Student Malcolm Lombardi interviews Superintendent Ken Slentz.
https://ensemble.cayboces.org/Watch/j8ZAg76T
Watch for one more video this week.
Previously posted videos can be seen on our website under “District Videos.” Throughout the series, residents can hear pointed questions answered by Slentz about the 2016-17 budget and the overall health of the Skaneateles Central School District.
With this video series, everyone wins: the students get experience in producing videos with important and timely news, and the public gets to hear regular updates about the school district.
In the first video, Slentz answered questions about the district’s fiscal health. In the next two videos on Strategic Planning, Slentz described steps the district is taking to be proactive in terms of future challenges including declining enrollment, the state of our facilities, and how and why the district must spend money to maintain buildings (including the transportation center).
 In this and the next video, students learn why there has been such a district-wide focus on wellness. What does wellness have to do with academics?  What does it have to do with being “ready” at graduation?  And what does “readiness” mean, anyway? Are we raising our standards or lowering them?
Here are links and descriptions of all videos:
Fiscal Health
https://ensemble.cayboces.org/Watch/s8QDe2n9
Learn about the district’s fiscal health and how our ratings have improved. Like a variety of physical tests give people their own health rating, there are a variety of measures that tell a district about its fiscal health.
Strategic planning
https://ensemble.cayboces.org/Watch/My29ZbYp
In this first of two videos on Strategic Planning, find out how the district is planning for the future, working to be the best possible stewards and setting program priorities – all while being responsible to the taxpaying public.  Hear more too about important maintenance that must be done on the Transportation Center … learn why it must be now and what that means in terms of costs. (This is great news). 
Slentz talks about meeting the needs of each and every student.  "We have to have a relentless focus on teaching and learning in everything we do so as to ensure that we are providing the greatest advantages possible to our students. Increasingly that means we have to question, think, and act differently than we have in the past."
Strategic planning two: declining enrollment
 
https://ensemble.cayboces.org/Watch/Ri9s5NLb
Hear Superintendent Slentz talk candidly about our declining enrollment and what it means for Skaneateles . Student reporters ask candid questions about the future of our buildings in light of enrollment changes.
Wellness Part I
https://ensemble.cayboces.org/Watch/j8ZAg76T
How do students find their “north star?” What does it mean to be “ready?”  Find out about the focus on “readiness” and how that is intertwined with the importance of wellness.  Slentz talks about the Six Dimensions of Wellness … and why being well will help students achieve and grow best academically and in other ways. Why a wellness and “ready” focus is raising the bar for our students.
Wellness Part II
(To be posted early next week)
Why is wellness more of a focus? Why do students need this focus more than ever before?  In Skaneateles and in districts state wide, stress and anxiety is noticeably increasing for variety of reasons.