Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Bearcat Wrap-up Podcast
EducationCourses

Bearcat Wrap-up Podcast

Dr. Lee Smith

things that Mena Public School staff members need or want to know presented in a discussion format.

bearcatwrap.substack.com
Play
Open in
  • 29 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 9 min
  • English

Episodes 29

NewestOldestLongest
All20Unplayed20In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • November 6 · 11 min

    Week 13: Rising to the Challenge

    Happy Friday! Thank you for a strong week of teaching and learning. Early November is when the energy of fall gives way to the steady work of the second nine weeks, and our classrooms have stayed focused through it. That steady work is what moves us toward our three performance targets: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improvement in behavior and school climate. New to the Performance Targets dashboard is a link to a staff attendance and substitute fill-rate dashboard. Please check it out. Last week, we looked at the other side of our numbers and found that most of our students are present, respectful, and succeeding. This week, I want to share what can happen when we expect even more. One of our own teachers has been telling that story to the entire state, and it is one every one of us should hear. Teaching Up, Not Down Chelsea Johnson, who teaches eighth-grade math and Algebra 1 at Mena Middle School, was selected this fall as a 2026–2027 Arkansas Excellence in Teaching Fellow. The fellowship brings together a select cohort of the state’s highest-performing teachers who have earned merit pay and helps them share what great teaching looks like with the public. Last month, she did exactly that in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette opinion column titled “I don’t teach down to my students, and they’re rising to the challenge.” Her message is simple and bold. Some students arrive in her classroom working several grade levels behind, yet she begins with eighth-grade math on the first day. She does not reteach earlier standards to the whole class or wait for students to be “ready.” Instead, she pairs grade-level work with support: a strict daily routine, five minutes of bell work to refresh key concepts, and targeted one-on-one help at her desk for students who need to revisit a skill. She calls it productive struggle. She is there to guide, but she will not do the work for them. The results speak for themselves. Last year, 72 percent of her 115 eighth graders scored proficient on the ATLAS Grade 8 Mathematics assessment, double the statewide average of 36 percent. She has earned merit pay for student growth three years in a row, and Mena Middle School was recognized by the Arkansas Department of Education as a Gem School for Math. She is quick to credit her team. Our middle school math teachers collaborate so students do not get lost between grades, and last year’s eighth graders were the first group to learn from Illustrative Mathematics in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade with the same fidelity and the same high standards. The line from her column that stays with me most is a personal one. Math did not come easily to her as a child. She had to work at it, so she understands the student who looks at a problem and thinks, “I can’t do this.” That is exactly why she holds the bar high. In her words, “I believe they can do more than they think.” Congratulations, and thank you for representing Mena Public Schools so well. Why the Bar Matters Our mission is to serve our community by instilling an individualized purpose in our students and staff. Purpose does not grow from easy work. It grows when a student faces something hard, sticks with it, and discovers what he or she is capable of. Her column ends on that same idea: when students stick with something difficult and finally get it, they learn something bigger than math. They learn that they can face down a challenge and come through it stronger. This is also how confidence is built. As I have shared in previous Wrap-ups, students believe they can succeed when they have real evidence that they already are. Encouragement matters, but nothing builds a student’s belief in himself or herself like mastering something that once seemed impossible. When we lower the bar to spare students the struggle, we also take away the very experience that would have shown them what they can do. As she puts it, “…as soon as I do, they’re going to limit themselves.” High expectations are not the same as high pressure. Every part of her approach pairs a demanding goal with a clear path and a caring adult. That balance is what our district vision describes: students and staff uplifting one another, and it reflects our values of accountability, growth, and determination. It is also what Leveling-Up looks like in a classroom: not doing more, but aiming higher with greater clarity and purpose. Here is what that can look like in any subject or grade level: * Start with the standard. Plan from where students need to be, and close gaps with targeted small-group or one-on-one support rather than reteaching to the whole class. * Show students the target. Share what proficiency looks like, whether through ATLAS achievement-level descriptors, a rubric, or a strong example, so students can see the distance between where they are and where they need to be. * Protect productive struggle. Give students time to wrestle with a problem before stepping in, and resist the urge to do the thinking for them. * Keep routines tight. Predictable openings, quick review, and steady pacing tell students that every minute matters. * Name the growth. When a student pushes through something difficult, say so, and connect the effort to the result. Many of you have already committed to this kind of work, and it shows through our student data. This story is a reminder that growth is not a matter of luck. It comes from high expectations, consistent routines, strong curriculum, collective efficacy, and a team that works together, and every one of those is within our reach. Preparing for the Trails at Mena Our Mena High School Tourism and Recreation Studies students had their first field experience this week at Queen Wilhelmina State Park. Students took an in-depth look at state park careers and operations, shared a picnic, and went on an educational hike on Rich Mountain. Thank you to Mrs. Frost, who is starting this brand new career pathway and planned this experience, and to the park staff who took time out of a busy season to give our students such a valuable day. This is the kind of learning that connects directly to our community’s future. Construction is underway on the Mena Mountain Bike Park, the first phase of the Trails at Mena, with a target opening in spring 2028. The lift-served park will connect the Ward Lake area to Round Top Mountain near Queen Wilhelmina, and plans call for visitor services, lift ticketing, rentals, and food and beverage operations at its base. When it is complete, the full Trails at Mena project is expected to be the largest lift-served mountain bike park in the world built exclusively for biking. A destination like that will bring jobs in guest services, park operations, lift operations, hospitality, trail work, and outdoor recreation, many of them right here in Polk County. Our students who are in high school today will be ready to enter that workforce when the park opens, and we want them prepared to step into those roles with skills, confidence, and a clear sense of purpose. This field experience is one step, alongside our new county-wide mountain bike team, and more preparation programs are on the way. When our students see a future for themselves here at home, they have every reason to rise to the challenge. Closing Celebrations Congratulations to our Ladycat volleyball players who earned postseason honors this week. Two Ladycats were named All-State, three earned All-Conference recognition, and four more were named All-Conference Honorable Mention. These honors are a fitting finish to a strong season and a credit to our players and coaches. Tonight, Bearcat Football closes the regular season at Ozark with a 7:00 p.m. kickoff against an undefeated Hillbilly team. Please show up and support them as they play to improve their playoff seeding. Thank you to everyone who came out for Alumni Night and the Faculty Game last night at the Union Bank Center, and a special thank-you to our brave faculty and alumni players. Basketball seaso… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • October 30 · 8 min

    Week 12: Gaining Traction

    Happy Friday! Thank you for a fun and meaningful week. Between Red Ribbon Week and our Halloween activities, our students had plenty of reasons to smile, from dress-up days and the Red Ribbon Week Pep Rally to costumes and classroom celebrations. Activities like these are not a break from learning. They support it in a different way, building the positive culture and sense of belonging that help students want to be at school. They also create memorable moments for students and staff alike, and those memories are often what our students carry with them long after they leave our halls. Thank you to everyone who planned, decorated, chaperoned, and joined in the fun. Next week’s Morphology Matters root is tract, meaning to pull or draw, and its Word Detective Challenge asks a simple question: What attracts your attention most? It is a good question for adults, too. Most weeks in the Wrap-up, our attention is drawn to concerns: absences, discipline referrals, and students who are not yet where they need to be. That focus is right, because it is how we keep improving toward our three performance targets. This week, though, I want us to look at the other side of those same numbers. The Other Side of the Numbers When we study data for improvement, we naturally look for what is missing. We count the students who were absent, the referrals that were written, and the grades that fell short. It is easy to forget that those concerns describe a small share of our students and a small share of our days. Here is what the majority looks like at Mena Public Schools. Our teachers are here. Teacher attendance is at 93 percent so far this year. When a student walks into a classroom and finds a familiar teacher ready to go, that student knows what to expect, and that steadiness is one of the quiet reasons our students keep showing up. Thank you as well to the substitutes and staff members who step in when a colleague must be out. Most of our students are making good choices. Eighty-eight percent of our students have not had a single discipline infraction this year. That is nearly nine out of every ten students who come to school, follow expectations, and treat others with respect day after day. We will keep working on the classroom disruptions, vaping, and physical incidents we discussed last week, but those reports describe a small group. The large majority of our students are doing exactly what we ask, and they deserve to hear that from us. Most of our students are succeeding in class. Ninety percent of our students are carrying an average above 70 percent, and the average across our students is 83 percent. That is solid B work. It did not happen by accident. It reflects assignments completed, feedback given, lessons retaught, and teachers who do not let a student quietly fall behind. These numbers matter because of how confidence is built. Students believe they can succeed when they have real evidence that they already are. Please share this side of the story with your students. Tell them that most of their classmates are present, respectful, and doing well in class, and then tell individual students when they are part of that majority. A specific word of praise, a positive note on a paper, or a quick call home about a good week can do more for a student’s effort than any reminder of what is going wrong. Looking at the majority does not mean ignoring the rest. It actually sharpens our focus. When we know that 88 percent of students are not having behavior problems and 90 percent are above 70 percent, we know exactly how small the group is that still needs more from us, and we can give those students more of our time. Traction is what keeps a vehicle moving forward on a hard road. These numbers tell us we have it, and the second nine weeks is our chance to use it. Closing Celebrations This week was Red Ribbon Week across Mena Public Schools, and our students spent it learning and celebrating what it means to make healthy choices. Thank you to our counselors, who organized daily themes that gave students a fun and visible way to take part, and to the Project Prevent Team at Mena Middle School, which planned this year’s activities with help from a $1,000 Red Ribbon Week grant from the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association. On Thursday morning, students and community members gathered at Bearcat Stadium for the annual Red Ribbon Week Pep Rally to cheer on our kids as they choose to live drug-free. It was a fitting week to celebrate the 88 percent of our students who make positive choices every day. Be Kind. Be Healthy. Make Positive Choices. Congratulations to six teachers at Louise Durham Elementary who were recognized on Wednesday with the Bessie B. Moore Award from Economics Arkansas for their Mini Marketers project. The award honors Arkansas teachers who go above and beyond to build outstanding economics and personal finance projects into their classrooms, and it is a statewide recognition of the creative, hands-on learning happening in our elementary classrooms. The other four winning projects were from much larger districts, so thank you to this team for bringing economics to life for our students and making Mena shine. Congratulations to our Bearcats on a 42–14 win over Dover on Senior Night last Friday, which brings them to 4–4 overall and 3–1 in conference play. It was a fitting way to honor our seniors and their families, along with the members of the 1996 Conference Championship Team who joined us to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Tonight, the Bearcats are off due to a forfeit by Subiaco Academy. Next Friday they close the regular season at Ozark. Our Bearcat and Junior Bearcat cross country teams competed at the District Meet in Acorn on Wednesday, with strong individual performances leading both teams. Complete results are available on MileSplit Arkansas. Our junior high Bearcats closed their season last night with a 56–6 win over Subiaco, finishing the year with a 6–3 record. Congratulations to our players and coaches on a strong season. We also congratulate the Bearcat golfer who finished fourth at the Overall High School Golf Championship at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, a strong finish to an outstanding golf season. Thank you to everyone who ran, walked, and volunteered at last Saturday’s Ladycat Ultra 5K. Nominations for the Mena Public Schools Hall of Honor remain open through November 30. Please take a few minutes to nominate someone whose service and character have brought lasting honor to our schools. We have included a new Google Form application for those who wish to use it. As mentioned, this week in Mena Morphology Matters, our students studied ject, meaning to throw or send. Next week’s root is tract, meaning to pull or draw. Our youngest students will meet it through pull and attract, our third through fifth graders in attract, our middle school students in traction, and our high school students in contract, with distract, extract, and tractor available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students what attracts their attention most. In a district with deep agricultural roots, we suspect a few students will find their way to tractor before the week is out. It was a good week of perspective at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident. Keep your traction, keep Leveling-Up, and have a safe and happy Halloween weekend! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • October 23 · 10 min

    Week 11: Staying on Trajectory

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another busy and productive week at Mena Public Schools! Although we had just four instructional days this week, there was certainly no shortage of activity across our district. Along with the important work happening in our classrooms, we had the opportunity to host the 4A North Regional Volleyball Tournament at the Union Bank Center. Events like this require tremendous coordination, flexibility, and teamwork, and I appreciate everyone who helped make the week successful. This week’s Morphology Matters root is a fitting one for this point in the year. Next week, our students will study ject, meaning to throw or send, and our high school students will meet it in the word trajectory. A trajectory is the path something follows after it has been sent in a direction. Our first nine weeks set our direction. The second nine weeks will decide whether we stay on course toward our three performance targets: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improvement in behavior and school climate. Our Focus for the Second Nine Weeks The second nine weeks is a long stretch of instruction, but it is also interrupted by Thanksgiving, colder weather, and the days leading into Christmas Break. Those are the times when attendance slips, routines loosen, and learning time is easiest to lose. Here is where I would ask every classroom to aim its effort. Academic growth. Our state report card told us exactly where our next gains are. The students who started the year farthest behind are growing, but not fast enough in reading and science. That is the gap between a B district and an A district. Please keep those students in front of you by name. Give them more chances to read, write, and explain their thinking every day, in every content area, not only in English and science classes. Use the weekly Morphology Matters root in your lessons, because word knowledge helps a struggling reader in every subject. As we discussed last week, much of that work is often best done on paper, with a pencil, and in conversation with a teacher. If you filed a Merit Pay intent form, this is the quarter to put that plan into practice, week after week, so the growth can show up in the data this spring. Attendance. We finished the first quarter above our goal, but slightly behind last year, and the colder months are usually when attendance falls. Our biggest concern is still kindergarten, followed by second grade, sixth grade, and twelfth grade. Please keep calling families early when you notice a pattern, especially around Mondays, Fridays, and the days next to a holiday. A friendly call before Thanksgiving week can save several days of instruction. When a student’s attendance improves or if you have any other good news, call home about that, too. Behavior and school climate. The first quarter proved that focused effort works. Bus incidents dropped by 42 percent because we set clear expectations and followed through every day. The second quarter is our chance to bring that same approach into our classrooms, where class disruption and insubordination rose and where incidents of physical harm and vaping are our most serious concerns. Keep routines consistent, supervise hallways and transitions closely, and stay connected to the students who are struggling most. Next week, our schools will recognize Red Ribbon Week, providing another opportunity to reinforce the importance of healthy choices, positive relationships, and personal responsibility. While the activities and dress-up days make the week fun for students, the message behind them is important throughout the entire school year. Staying on trajectory does not require a new plan. It requires us to keep doing the right things with the same energy in December that we had in August. A New Opportunity on Two Wheels I am excited to share that we are working to start a mountain bike team for our students through the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). Our students will be part of a county-wide team alongside students from Ouachita River Schools and Cossatot River Schools, and we are grateful to the Mena/Polk County Chamber of Commerce for supporting this effort. The Arkansas Interscholastic Cycling League serves students in grades 6 through 12 and is built on the idea that every student can ride, regardless of experience or ability. Mountain biking fits our district well. It gets students outdoors in some of the best riding country in Arkansas; it builds fitness and confidence, and it is a sport students can continue for the rest of their lives. It also gives students who may not play a traditional sport a team to belong to, and belonging is one of the strongest reasons students come to school. A team like this depends on caring adults. In the coming days, I will forward an email from our NICA support specialist to gauge interest in volunteering and coaching. You do not need to be an expert rider to help. NICA provides coach training and licensing, which includes a background check and training in safety and youth development, and there are roles for adults at every comfort level. Please read the email when it arrives and respond if you are interested. The other districts will be offering the same opportunity, so this has a potentially promising effect toward creating a biking culture in our area to support the trails, increase collegiality with our neighboring districts, and increase healthy habits impact in the community. NICA will also host a professional development session this spring for teachers who are interested in supporting the team. More details will come as plans take shape. If you have ever thought about combining your love of the outdoors with your work with students, this is a great opportunity. Closing Celebrations Next week, October 26-30, Mena Public Schools will celebrate Red Ribbon Week! Our counselors have organized activities and daily themes to encourage students to make healthy choices and understand the importance of living drug-free. We especially appreciate the Project Prevent Team at Mena Middle School for helping plan this year’s activities, supported by a $1,000 Red Ribbon Week grant from the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association. Thank you to everyone who has worked to make this an engaging and meaningful week for our students. Thank you to every staff member and volunteer who helped organize and run the 4A North Regional Volleyball Tournament at the Union Bank Center this week. Hosting a regional tournament is a three-day commitment that touches nearly every part of our district, from setup and admissions to concessions, custodial work, and hospitality for visiting teams and fans. The tournament was a big success, and that success came from careful planning and steady effort from start to finish. Our visitors saw Mena at its best. The tournament also marked the end of a strong Ladycat volleyball season, which came to a close Monday night. This group gave us a lot to celebrate, including a runner-up finish at the Paris Tournament, a night when all four Ladycat teams won at Ozark, a Senior Night sweep of Waldron, and a sweep at Dardanelle. Our junior Ladycats also finished as runner-up at the 4A-2 District Tournament last Saturday. Thank you to our players, coaches, and families for a season of hard work, and a special thank-you to our senior Ladycat, whose leadership, dedication, and example helped guide her teammates throughout the season. We appreciate the lasting impact she has made on our volleyball program! Tonight is Senior Night at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium as the Bearcats host Dover. Parents of our seniors should meet on the track at 6:20 p.m., and the Senior Night recognition begins at 6:30 p.m. We will also celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1996 Mena Bearcat Conference Championship Team, and every member of that team receives free admission. Kickoff is at 7:00 p.m., so please come out and fill the stands. Our students also spent time this week exploring… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • October 16 · 11 min

    Week 10: People Before Programs

    Happy Friday! Thank you for a strong start to the second quarter as we work toward our performance targets. Last week, we took an honest look at our first-quarter attendance and behavior numbers, and this week our work turned toward the people behind those numbers. Our elementary teachers spent time face to face with families, our classrooms continue with expectations, and our buildings began the second quarter with a clear sense of where to focus. This week, I want to share something our district leadership team has been reading and thinking about together. It concerns one of the most common tools in every classroom, and it asks us to be thoughtful about how and when we use it. Screens, Learning, and Purpose This fall, the district leadership team is reading The Digital Delusion by neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath. The book argues that the heavy use of laptops, tablets, and classroom software is weakening the way children learn and develop. Several of its concerns are worth sharing with every member of our staff. * Engagement is not the same as learning. Fast, flashy digital tools can hold a student’s attention without building lasting understanding. A student who is busy on a screen is not always a student who is learning. * Devices invite drift. According to the research the book reviews, students using classroom devices can be off task for as much as 38 minutes of every hour. * Paper and pencil still matter. Students understand what they read better on paper than on a screen, and handwritten notes produce better recall than typed notes. * More screen time tracks with lower scores. On international assessments, students who use computers more than six hours a day score far below students who do not use them at all, a gap of roughly two letter grades. The book is not a call to get rid of technology. Learning to type, building a spreadsheet, or practicing a skill that truly belongs on a computer are good uses of a screen. The question is whether a device is the best tool for the learning in front of us or simply the most convenient one. We began reducing screen time as a district before we ever opened this book. Bell to Bell, No Cell took personal phones out of the school day. We have been doing this for more than two years now, and we have encouraged everyone to reduce screen time for students and increase the amount of handwriting they do. The reading confirms that we are on the right path, but it also reminds us that this work is decided in each classroom, not in a policy. Please monitor how much time students spend on devices. Use devices on purpose, when they are the best tool for the task, and do not let them become the default for every learning activity. Reading from a printed page, writing by hand, working a problem on paper, and talking through an idea with a classmate and a teacher remain some of the most powerful learning experiences we can offer. A Different View Than a Decade Ago This is a real change in thinking for our profession. In 2008, it was widely predicted that half of all high school courses would be delivered online by 2019, and a decade ago many educators believed that prediction was on track. Online learning was expected to become the primary way students learned, and many of us assumed more technology would naturally mean more learning. The results did not support that belief. Even before the pandemic, a national study found that students in full-time online schools gained the equivalent of 180 fewer days of learning in math and 72 fewer days in reading each year than similar students in traditional schools. The pandemic made the cost impossible to ignore. A study of more than two million students in 49 states found that students who spent more of the 2020–2021 school year in remote instruction grew far less than students in earlier years, and the losses were steepest in high-poverty communities. Where schools returned to in-person learning sooner, the losses were smaller. Recovery from those years is still part of our work today. The lesson is not that technology is bad. The lesson is that learning is a human activity. It grows through relationships, focus, conversation, and effort. When we put people before programs, our devices become what they should be: tools that serve our teachers and students rather than replace them. I say all of this as someone who once held the opposite view. When I was in the classroom, I was a technology enthusiast and an early adopter. I was often the first to try a new tool, and I believed, as many educators did, that online learning would one day be the most common way students learned. My enthusiasm cooled well before I opened this book, however, because I have watched the results from online and screen-heavy learning across our state and nation, and I have experienced online learning firsthand as a student myself. Those experiences taught me that a course delivered through a screen is not the same as learning alongside a teacher and classmates who know you. I still believe in the right tools used for the right purposes, but I no longer believe that technology can take the place of a great teacher. Roster Verification Is Now Open On a related note about using technology, the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education has opened the 2027 Roster Verification System (RVS). RVS connects each teacher to the students he or she taught, so each teacher’s state growth score reflects the growth of those students on the spring state assessments. Accurate rosters matter because state growth scores are one route to eligibility under our Merit Pay Pathway, and state growth scores for last year are expected on November 5. What to do now: Log in to LEA Insights with your APSCN ID and password, and select Master Schedule, then Roster Verification System. Review your roster, your potential contributor list, and your course assignments. If you need help with your password, contact the district Active Directory Manager, Nathan Stone. How corrections work: Corrections are not made inside RVS. If something is wrong, let your building principal know so it can be corrected in eSchool or eFinance. RVS updates each night with the previous day’s changes, so you can confirm the correction the next day. Key dates: * October 12, 2026, through April 25, 2027: Review rosters and request corrections. * April 26 through June 1, 2027: Teachers verify their rosters, principals approve all rosters in their buildings, and the superintendent approves all schools in the district. The state’s Roster Verification webpage includes short videos and slide decks for teachers of record and potential contributors, along with the verifiable and excluded course lists, contributor job codes, and a list of frequently asked questions. Please take a few minutes this month to check your roster while your schedule is fresh, rather than waiting for the spring window. Closing Celebrations Thank you to our elementary teachers and staff at Louise Durham Elementary and Holly Harshman Elementary for yesterday’s parent-teacher conferences. Conferences work best as one more step in a conversation that is already happening, and the calls, messages, and progress updates you have shared with families since August made this week’s meetings more productive and more personal. Thank you to every member of our staff, in every building, for the effort you put into keeping families informed. When families and teachers work as partners, students are the ones who benefit most. Thank you to our child nutrition staff, especially the ladies at Holly Harshman, who celebrated National School Lunch Week with this year’s Cafeteria Circus theme. The National School Lunch Program has supported students for 80 years, and our cafeteria teams on each campus show every day that a healthy meal is part of a successful school day. We were happy to host Fields of Faith on Wednesday evening. Thank you to everyone who organized the event, and a special thank-you to those who moved it to the Union Bank C… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • October 9 · 11 min

    Week 9: Checking Our Progress

    Happy Friday! Thank you for all that you have done this week as we come close to the end of the first quarter. Nine weeks ago, we set out with three performance targets: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improvement in behavior and school climate. A full quarter is long enough to show patterns, so this week I want to look closely at two of those targets and compare where we are with the same weeks last year. Like any good Level-Up check-in, this one comes with real progress and real work still to do. Both deserve our attention. Attendance Through the First Quarter Through the first quarter, our district attendance rate is 94.7 percent, above our 93.5 percent goal. At the same point last year, we were at 94.9 percent, so we are running just a little behind last year’s pace. There is a lot to celebrate. Holly Harshman Elementary improved in every grade, and our fifth graders are now above 95 percent, a full point higher than last year. Our first, seventh, and ninth graders are also ahead of last year, and our tenth graders have the highest attendance rate in the district. Every grade but one is above our goal. That one grade is kindergarten, and it is our biggest concern. Kindergarten attendance has dropped from 94.8 percent last year to 91.5 percent. Second grade has dipped as well, and together they pulled Louise Durham Elementary down about 1.4 points overall. Mena Middle School and Mena High School are each slightly behind last year. Within those buildings, we are watching sixth grade, the first year at the middle school, and twelfth grade, which is down almost a full point and has the lowest rate at the high school. Kindergarten is when families build school habits, and those habits tend to last. A five-year-old cannot get himself to school. When a kindergarten student starts missing days, the most helpful thing we can do is reach the family early, with a friendly call rather than a warning letter. The first quarter is usually our strongest stretch of the year. Last year, attendance slipped through the colder months before we finished above our goal, and starting a little behind leaves us less room to spare. If you notice a pattern, such as a student who keeps missing Mondays, call the family now to determine what the barriers to attendance may be, and we will try to help. Behavior Through the First Quarter Through the first quarter, we recorded 342 discipline actions, compared with 358 for the same weeks last year. That is a decrease of about 4.5 percent. It is movement in the right direction, but our goal is a 10 percent reduction, which means about 20 fewer actions than we have now. The total also hides two very different stories. The first story is real improvement. Bus incidents dropped from 144 to 84, a 42 percent decrease and the biggest gain in the report. Thank you to our drivers, our transportation staff, and every administrator who has worked on bus behavior. Disorderly conduct dropped by more than 40 percent, from 88 to 50. Tardy-related actions fell from 15 to 2, and fights went down from 8 to 5. Parent conferences nearly tripled, bringing more families into the solution, and out-of-school suspensions stayed low, which means we are still keeping students in school whenever we can. Phone-related incidents also held level in the second year of the Bell to Bell, No Cell Act. The second story is a concern. Outside of buses and disorderly conduct, discipline actions rose from 126 to 208, an increase of about 65 percent, and much of that growth happened in classrooms. Class disruption more than doubled, and insubordination quadrupled. Incidents of physical harm to another student rose from 2 to 25, the most serious change in the report, and vaping incidents rose from 3 to 17. In-school suspension climbed about 7 percent. That keeps students in the building, but it still keeps them out of class. Some of this may reflect more consistent reporting, and accurate records are a good thing because they help us respond. Our building principals are looking closely at the physical harm reports to understand what is behind them. Whatever the cause, every student deserves a classroom and a playground where they feel safe and can learn. What the Numbers Ask of Us The bus numbers prove that focused effort works. Last year, buses were our biggest discipline challenge. This year, clear expectations and steady follow-through made a real difference, and we can bring that same approach into our classrooms. Here are three places to start this week. First, reteach classroom expectations as if it were the first week of school. After nine weeks, routines start to slip, and a short reset now prevents a lot of problems later. Second, invest in relationships with the students who are struggling most. They usually need a trusted adult more than a harsher consequence. Third, keep thinking “45 minutes out” with families. Call home about attendance and behavior early, before small problems become referrals, and call about the good news, too. Parent Square is also a very valuable communication tool we can use to share concerns and report information to families. In fact, next week we will add automatic attendance alerts to Parent Square. This will notify families of their students’ absences on a daily basis and offer a two-way sharing of excuse notes with the offices. A full quarter of data gives us a clear starting point. Leveling-Up means using what we learn and what to do to make the second quarter better than the first. Blue & You Mini Grants for Student Health If you have an idea that could help with some of these needs, there is money available. The Blue & You Foundation for a Healthier Arkansas offers mini grants of $1,000 to $5,000 for health initiatives in public schools. The current window is open now and closes November 30, 2026, with awards announced in December. The School Health Initiatives category includes calming rooms, food pantry supplies, hygiene products, school supplies, financial literacy, and preventative programs. Several of these fit our first-quarter numbers. A calming room gives a struggling student a place to reset before a problem becomes a referral, and hygiene products and pantry supplies remove some of the quiet reasons students stay home. Each application covers one category; the foundation does not award partial amounts, and projects must be in place within six months. The grant cannot pay for salaries, conferences, athletic teams, or tobacco-related projects. The Mini Grant Submission Guidelines have the full details. If you have a project in mind, please talk with your building principal first so we can coordinate applications across the district. Closing Celebrations Congratulations to one of our Louise Durham Elementary teachers, Robin Castor, who was nominated for the 2026–2027 SHAPE Arkansas Teacher of the Year. That honor recognizes excellence in health and physical education. Our youngest readers are off to a great start. Through the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program, fifteen of our preschool students have already read at least 100 books with their families this year, and preschool classes have begun regular visits to the Louise Durham Library. Habits like these, built at home before kindergarten even begins, carry into strong attendance and strong reading later on. Thank you to the Mena Fire Department for visiting Louise Durham Elementary to teach fire safety ahead of Fire Prevention Week. Thank you also to the Arkansas Sheriffs Association for their Red Ribbon Week donation. Those partnerships connect what students learn in our classrooms to real careers in public service right here at home. It was a busy week for our Bearcats and Ladycats. Bearcat Golf finished fifth at the 4A State Golf Championship, and one of our Bearcats placed third individually to earn All-State honors and a spot in the Overall Tournament on October 22. On Saturday, the senior volleyball Ladycats finished as runner-up at the Paris Tour… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • October 2 · 14 min

    Week 8: Making Every Mark Count

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another good week. Coming off homecoming and a professional development day, our buildings settled right back into the work, and that steady return to routine is what keeps us moving toward our three performance targets: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improvement in behavior and school climate. This week’s Wrap-up is about two kinds of careful counting. The first is our budget for 2026–2027, which the board approved at our last meeting. The second is our local Value-Added Measure (VAM) reports, which will reach teachers who do not receive a state score next week. Both ask the same question: are we using what we have, whether dollars or data, in the way that does the most good for students? Leveling-Up means answering that question with a plan, not a guess. A Careful Budget for a Leaner Year At our last meeting, the school board approved the district’s budget for 2026–2027. I want you to understand the main points of that plan, because it shapes the decisions we make in every building this year. The short version is that we expect less money this year and have planned for it. Our operating fund is projected to bring in about $18.15 million, roughly $1 million less than we received last year. Most of that drop comes from lower state aid, which is tied directly to enrollment. When we serve fewer students, the state sends us fewer dollars, and our enrollment has declined. We also expect less from investment earnings. Local property taxes are expected to rise a little, which helps, but not enough to cover the gap. We did not respond with cuts across the board. Combined teacher salary and operating spending is budgeted at about $17.4 million, down only about 1.3 percent from last year, which is primarily due to us not having to pay for health insurance. The state used to send us that money on a per-pupil basis, and we would just send it back to the Employee Benefits Division. Now, the department will pay EBD directly. The reductions we are making are spread across student support services, facilities, career education, and administration, including central office and building administration. At the same time, the budget puts more money where students need it. Special education rises by about $241,000 to cover therapy services for our students. Federal law also requires us to meet maintenance of effort, which means we must keep up our spending on special education from one year to the next. Transportation rises by about $116,000 so we can buy new buses we badly need. Twenty-three of our buses are more than ten years old. Regular classroom instruction is nearly level with last year, and the budget for classroom supplies and materials actually goes up. Protecting what happens in the classroom was the priority, and the budget shows it. We will soon be sending out specific budgets to those who manage them so each department is aware of its amount. The outlook is steady. Our local revenue has grown over the past several years, and as long as that continues, we will be in good shape. Still, good shape depends on good habits, so I am asking each of you to help. Plan your purchases ahead of time, share resources across classrooms and buildings when you can, and bring essential student and classroom needs to your supervisor early rather than at the last minute. A need we know about in October is much easier to meet than one we hear about in April. None of this changes our goals. Our students are still counting on growth in the classroom, steady attendance, and a positive school climate, and this budget is built to support all three. Spending carefully now is part of Leveling-Up, because it protects the programs and people our students depend on for the years ahead. How Our Local VAM Scores Are Built The state released student growth scores on September 17th, and those scores are what make our local calculations possible. Using them, local Value-Added Measure (VAM) reports will be ready next week for teachers who do not receive a state VAM score. Teachers in tested courses will receive their state VAM scores on November 5th. Before the local reports reach you, I want to repeat the process that I explained back in August as to how they were built. This week, I have been organizing our local VAM reports and updating a district spreadsheet that tracks teacher results from year to year. The process matches the students on each teacher’s roster with their available ATLAS growth scores using student ID numbers. It then applies our highly mobile student exclusions and calculates each local VAM score using the district’s established formula. Two safeguards matter here. Missing growth data are not counted as zero, so a student without a score does not lower your result. Any case that needs clarification stays pending until it has been reviewed. AI has helped with the time-consuming parts of this work: matching records, organizing calculations, and preparing reports for principal–teacher discussions. It has also helped with one of the most important decisions in the process, which is deciding which ATLAS test fits each course. Many of our courses are not tested directly, so for each one, AI compares the course content and standards with what each ATLAS test measures in ELA, mathematics, and science, then recommends the closest match. A course built around measurement and calculation may line up best with mathematics, while one built around reading and writing may line up best with ELA. I review every recommendation before it is used, so the final decision is still made by a person who knows our courses. Each report includes supporting audit information, so your results can be checked rather than simply accepted. The tracking spreadsheet keeps historical scores and will calculate a three-year average once three complete years of data are available. Over time, that average will tell us more than any single year can. Student privacy is a priority throughout this process. Source files that contained student names have been modified to only use state ID numbers. Any future data submissions should contain student ID numbers only, so you will have to look at rosters to know which students are and are not included. These reports are meant to help us look at growth over time, ask useful questions, and find ways to support both teachers and students. When you sit down with your principal to go over your report, that is the conversation I hope you will have. More Time for Merit Pay Intent Forms Once you have your local results, you should have time to look at them before you commit to a plan for the year. I am extending the Merit Pay Intent Declaration Form deadline by one week. Completed forms are now due to your building principal by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 9, 2026. That extra week is time to make your plan stronger, not just time to finish it. The strongest intent forms show frequent, embedded instruction tied to English Language Arts, mathematics, science, Algebra I, Geometry, or Biology. A single enrichment activity tied loosely to those areas does not count. Embedded means the skills show up again and again in the regular work of your class. A strong plan shows students doing that work week after week, so the growth can be measured. The best place to start is a conversation with the core content teachers in your building. Ask them which standards their students struggle with most and which ones fit naturally into your content. For example, a welding or mechanics class can teach measurement, ratios, and the geometry of a project. A physical education class can collect data and graph it. Music can use fractions and patterns. An art class can teach proportion and scale. Social Studies and history can focus on close reading and document analysis. A business or FACS course can have students read technical writing closely and write to explain what they did. When your plan uses the same standards and vocabulary the core teacher is usi… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • September 25 · 12 min

    Week 7: Forty-Five Minutes Out

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another strong week. Last week our report card showed what focused instruction can do, and it showed that an A is only 11.69 points away. This week I want to talk about something underneath every one of those numbers: how we communicate with families. None of our three performance targets- academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improved behavior and school climate- move very far without families who trust us and hear from us before they have reason to worry. Forty-Five Minutes Out Early in my teaching career, I often took students many miles from home for agricultural/FFA education contests and activities. Parents were placing a great deal of trust in a young teacher, and there were no cell phones. The planning had to happen before we left the parking lot. When did the contest start, and how long would it run? How much money would I and the students need and what had to be paid ahead of time? How long to load students and equipment? Where would we eat, and would we need fuel? What about weather or a contest that ran long? How many hours was the drive home? Once I had worked it all out, I gave parents a written plan and an approximate return time. That estimate mattered. Families used it to decide whether their child could go, to arrange rides, and to know when to be waiting in the parking lot. Most of all, it told them someone had thought through the details before asking for their trust. When cell phones came along, I added one more practice. When we were about 45 minutes from home, I had the students call their parents. It was convenient for me, but the larger reason was that it released the responsibility to the students. When someone is waiting on you, you let them know where you are and when you will be there. Good communication is part of the planning. Before any event, deadline, or change, ask what families will need to know, what they will need to arrange, and when they need to hear from us to have time to respond. So whatever the task, whether it is a field trip, a schedule change, or a student who is starting to slip, I am asking all of us to think "45 minutes out." Look ahead, anticipate what the people depending on us will need, and let them know before they ever have to wonder. No Surprises That foresight matters most when a student is struggling. Parent/Teacher Conferences should never be the first time a family hears that we are concerned. No parent should leave a conference thinking, “I wish I had known.” Please send progress home frequently. A short update should tell families how their child is doing, what needs attention, what support we are already providing, and what they can do next. Include the good news too. A family that hears about growth every week is ready to hear a concern when one comes. Whenever possible, let students help explain their own progress, the same way my students made the call home. This also connects to our report card: the last 11.69 points live in the growth of our lowest-quartile students, and those are the families who most need to hear from us early and often. What ParentSquare Is Telling Us We now have a tool built for this work, and the early numbers from ParentSquare show that many of you are already using it. Since August: * 99.7 percent of our families are reachable. Only five family records need attention. * Staff and families have exchanged 596 direct messages across 304 conversations, and 81 parents have started messages of their own. * Staff have published 64 posts, and 172 parents have responded with 109 appreciations and 19 comments. * 45 teachers have posted or messaged families, and several have each sent dozens of direct messages. Thank you to every teacher who has been using ParentSquare to keep families informed. Our elementary campuses are leading the way. Now for the room to grow: about four out of five staff users have not yet published a post, and far fewer posts have come from our middle school and high school. Secondary teachers see more families, which is exactly why this tool saves time. If you have not used it much yet, start this week with one class post and one direct message to a family you have not heard from lately. Also encourage parents to download the app. Only 23 percent have it, and those who do get our messages as notifications instead of waiting in an inbox. If you would like to see the full ParentSquare data dashboard with the most recent numbers, you may view it here. When to Pick Up the Phone Written messages carry our words without our voice, and tone is the first thing lost. In studies by Justin Kruger and Nicholas Epley, email senders expected readers to catch their intended tone about 89 percent of the time, but readers got it right only about 63 percent of the time. By voice, accuracy rose to about 73 percent. Kristin Byron’s research found that readers often take work emails as more negative than intended, so a note meant as concerned can land as critical. And although most of us expect phone calls to feel awkward, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley found that calls built a stronger connection than email and were no more awkward. Use written messages for reminders, updates, and routine progress. Pick up the phone when you are sharing a concern for the first time, when the topic is sensitive, when a parent is upset, when a thread keeps going back and forth, or when you want a family to hear good news in your voice. Follow an important call with a short written summary. After all, the call home at 45 minutes out was a phone call. Families appreciated hearing their child’s voice. They will appreciate hearing yours too. Natural State Ornament Project The Arkansas Department of Education has invited each school building to submit one student-designed ornament for the holiday tree at the Arkansas State Capitol through the Natural State Ornament Project. The theme is Symbols of Our State, such as the state bird, flower, tree, mammal, insect, or flag. * Designs must be hand-drawn, painted, or colored by a student. No AI-generated or computer-created artwork will be accepted. * Students must use the official ornament template, and the selected design must be scanned as a JPEG. * Each building chooses its own design in October. The entry form in the link must be submitted by October 24th. Submissions are due to the Department on November 13th, the display opens November 16th, and ornaments return in January. If your students take part, let their families know now. A parent whose child’s design might hang in the State Capitol will want to hear about it early. Closing Celebrations What a week it has been. Homecoming week filled our buildings with festivities, school colors, and the kind of energy you can only get when an entire community pulls in the same direction. If anyone doubted it, this morning’s pep rally settled the question. It was loud, it was proud, and it was a preview of what we expect tonight: a big and excited crowd at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium as our Bearcats open conference play against Waldron. Homecoming is one of the few nights each year when current students, alumni, families, and neighbors all fill the same stands for the same reason. That shared joy is not a small thing. It is the kind of unity that carries into our classrooms next week and reminds all of us that these are our kids, and this is our school. Please note that the Homecoming Ceremony has moved to 6:15 p.m., ahead of the 7:00 p.m. kickoff, so we can recognize our Homecoming Court and honor the 1976 State Championship Football Team. Fifty years later, that team is still part of what it means to be a Bearcat, and I hope you will be in your seat early to welcome them home. The academic news this week was just as worth cheering. The Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas recognized all four of our schools in its annual Outstanding Educational Performance Awards for high student growth on ATLAS. Louise Durham Elementary and Holly Harshman Elementary each earned High ELA… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • September 18 · 13 min

    Week 6: Twelve Points Away

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another week of good, hard work. Six weeks in, our routines are holding, our classrooms are settled, and the instruction we are seeing is purposeful and paced. A particular thank-you goes to everyone who gave time beyond the school day this week. Our elementary staff has been hosting grade-level parent meetings, and our middle school and high school staff held parent-teacher conferences, which meant late afternoons and evenings on top of a full teaching load. Those conversations are where families stop being an audience and start being partners. Every one of you who stayed made this district stronger this week than it was last week, and we do not take that for granted. That work connects directly to our three performance targets: continued academic growth, daily attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. Parent meetings and conferences move all three at once. A family that understands what their child is expected to learn is a family that gets that child to school, backs you up on expectations, and asks better questions at home. There is no target on our list that gets easier without them. The state released the 2026 school and district report cards yesterday, and I want to give them to you straight before anyone hears a version of them somewhere else. This report card is the first hard evidence of what our academic growth target actually produced last year, and it is good news. It is also specific about where our work is not finished, which is exactly what a useful measure should do. What the Report Card Says Mena School District earned a B for the second year in a row, with an index score of 520.31 out of 900. Two years ago that number was 451.02. Last year it was 485.00. This year it is 520.31. That is 69 points of movement in two years, and it puts us above 85 percent of the 251 rated districts in Arkansas. Last year we were above 69 percent. The state median district scored 466.00, so we are sitting 54 points above the middle of the state. Three of our four indicators improved for the third consecutive year. Achievement climbed from 110.69 to 122.51 to 146.16 out of 300 possible points, which is the largest single jump on the report card. Behind that number, the percentage of our students scoring at levels 3 and 4 rose in every subject: English Language Arts from 35.40 to 43.96 percent, mathematics from 42.74 to 49.80 percent, and science from 44.37 to 52.40 percent. Overall Growth rose again to 165.75, with 62.79 percent of our students meeting their individual math growth targets, a rate that ranks above 95 percent of comparable districts. Success-Ready Graduate rose from 130.77 to 142.30 to 155.03 out of 200, carried by a four-year cohort graduation rate that moved from 85.71 percent to 97.54 percent and by 58.91 percent of our graduates finishing with Merit or Distinction. The building-level results are the part I am most proud to share. Mena Middle School moved from a C to a B, from 441.82 to 503.71, a gain of nearly 62 points. Mena High School also moved from a C to a B, from 405.63 to 471.91, a gain of more than 66 points, with 61.48 percent of graduates earning Merit or Distinction. Our elementaries held their B grade to give us Bs across the board. Two schools moved up a full letter grade in the same year. That does not happen by accident, and it does not happen without great teaching and support. It is also worth saying plainly that the gains were not limited to one group of students. Every reported student group in our district improved its index score over last year. Our economically disadvantaged students, who made up 68.1 percent of our enrollment, improved from 459.68 to 500.89 and earned a B of their own, ranking above 87 percent of comparable districts. When a district’s gains show up across the board rather than in one corner, it usually means the instruction changed rather than the roster. There is more data about our school and other schools available in the AR Data Hub. Mena Middle School Is an Arkansas Gem School Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva notified us this week that Mena Middle School has earned a 2026 Arkansas Gem School designation for Growth by Content Area in Mathematics. That designation goes to schools ranking in the top 10 percent statewide within their grade span for growth in a single subject. Out of every middle school in Arkansas, our math growth is in the top tier. The numbers behind it are worth seeing. At Mena Middle School, 74.06 percent of students met their math growth target. Middle school math achievement reached 61.78 percent scoring at levels 3 and 4, against a state middle school median of 44.50 percent. And among the students who started the year farthest behind their peers, 74.00 percent met their math growth target, up from 61.63 percent the year before. Our lowest-performing math students grew faster than three-quarters of the state. Mena Middle School will receive a recognition item from the Department and a designation marker on My School Info. To our middle school math teachers, interventionists, and the leadership that protected the time to do this work: this is a state-level recognition earned entirely by results. Congratulations. When you share this one, please use #ArkansasGemSchool and tag the Arkansas Department of Education so the state can help us celebrate it. Where the Last Twelve Points Live Now the honest part, and it is the reason I titled this Wrap-up the way I did. An A in Arkansas requires an index score of 532.00. We scored 520.31. We are 11.69 points from an A. After two years of climbing, we are closer to the top rating than most districts in this state will ever get, and we are close enough that the gap is no longer abstract. It has an address. Three of our four indicators went up. One went down. Growth of the Lowest Quartile fell from 55.69 to 53.37 out of 100 possible points, and it is the only place on our entire report card that moved backward. That indicator asks one question: are the students who are farthest behind their peers growing? Ours are growing, but not fast enough, and not evenly. Districtwide, 61.37 percent of our lowest-quartile students met their math growth target, which ranks above 86 percent of comparable districts and is genuinely strong. But only 47.48 percent met their ELA target, ranking above just 42 percent of districts, and only 51.25 percent met their science target, ranking above just 37 percent. That indicator is worth 100 points, and we earned 53.37 of them. There are 46.63 points sitting in it. We need 11.69. I want everyone to sit with that arithmetic for a minute, because it means the difference between a B district and an A district is not a mystery, a formula change, or a better group of students. It is reading and science instruction for the students who are furthest behind, and it is available to us this year. The pattern holds in every building, which tells me it is a system issue rather than a building issue. Lowest-quartile ELA growth was 50.00 percent at our elementary, 46.53 percent at the middle school, and 44.90 percent at the high school. Science was 47.42 percent at the middle school. And our elementary index declined this year, from 511.28 to 458.54, driven almost entirely by growth and lowest-quartile growth rather than achievement. Our elementary science achievement was actually our strongest achievement figure in the district at 55.19 percent. The gap there is growth, not content knowledge. So here is the ask. Every one of you knows which of your students are in that bottom quartile. Look at them by name, and look hardest at reading. Our math results prove we already know how to move students who start behind. We have done it at scale in one subject and earned a state designation for it. Now we do the same thing in literacy and science. We went from a C to a B in two years. Eleven points is the shortest distance we have ever had to cover. Closing Celebrations This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • September 11 · 10 min

    Week 5: Putting It on the Record

    Before anything else, today marked twenty-five years since September 11, 2001. Patriot Day is not among the state's required instructional observances, so how the day was handled belonged to each of you, and I am grateful for the care you gave it. Every student in our buildings was born after that morning, which means the adults in our schools are the ones who remember it firsthand. A moment of silence, an honest answer to a student's question, or a word of thanks to a first responder or veteran in our community was enough. Our standards ask our students to know what happened. Our work is helping them understand why it still matters. Happy Friday! Five weeks in, the short week felt like we were moving from starting school to running with purpose and intent. Thank you for the work that got us here. Routines are settled enough now that instruction, not logistics, is what fills the day, and that shift is what makes the rest of the year possible. We are still working toward the same three targets: continued academic growth, daily attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. Attendance is the one I want on your mind this month, because September sets the pattern for the year. Every conversation with a family about getting a student here on time is a conversation about all three targets at once. Two items in this Wrap-up deserve your attention, and both come down to the same idea. Good work that is not documented is difficult to recognize, and requirements that are not planned for become last-minute scrambles. Leveling-Up means putting things on the record before the deadline arrives rather than after. Mena’s Merit Pay Pathway State growth scores will be released on September 17, and once they arrive, we will calculate local VAM scores using the process I presented to you before school started. Teachers who receive a state three-year growth average are automatically eligible for merit-pay consideration and do not need to do anything. Contracts for that group were already formed using the adopted index scale applied directly to the state growth measure. That is the straightforward half of the system. The other half is the reason we built a district pathway. A merit pay model should not reward only the teachers who happen to receive a state-generated score. Many of you influence student growth every day without teaching a directly tested course, and if merit pay were tied only to state VAM, opportunity would be uneven before the conversation ever began. Our District VAM and Educator Impact pathway exists to close that gap. It is equal opportunity, not lower standards, and I want to be honest that it is not the easier route. It asks for documentation, artifacts, and principal approval that the state pathway does not require. If you do not receive a state VAM score and you want to be considered, complete the Merit Pay Intent Declaration Form, sit down with your building principal to discuss it, and put your intent on record for the remainder of this school year. The form is linked in this Wrap-up so you can pull it up and get started today, and completed forms are due to your building principal by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 1, 2026. The form asks you to name one growth focus area in English Language Arts, mathematics, or science, explain how your course, program, intervention, or instructional role connects to growth in that area, identify the student outcomes and strategies you intend to use, name the students or groups through which your impact will be documented, and mark the evidence you will maintain in the Educator Effectiveness System. Your principal then reviews and signs it. Filing the form declares intent and begins the evidence process. It does not guarantee merit pay, because final eligibility still depends on growth data, documentation, and administrative review. What Our Social Studies Teachers Need on the Calendar Arkansas released its 2026-2027 social studies instructional observances last week, and two of them arrive within days. Constitution Day falls on Thursday, September 17, and federal law requires every district to hold an educational program on the United States Constitution that day, commemorating the signing in 1787. Celebrate Freedom Week follows September 21 through 25, when state law directs every social studies class to include instruction on the freedoms we enjoy and the sacrifices that secured them. The state resources for both are organized as general K-12 materials, so our elementary teachers have something usable as well. Suggested topics are named in the law, but curriculum decisions belong to us, so feel free to build something that fits your students and our academic targets rather than pull a generic lesson off a shelf. The newest requirement deserves the most attention. Beginning this year, districts must ensure instruction addresses the Founding Fathers and how their religious and moral beliefs shaped our founding documents, including the Declaration’s assertion of unalienable rights, the founders’ commitments to ordered liberty and the free exercise of religion, their influence on separation of powers and the Bill of Rights, and the connection between their beliefs and the freedoms Americans hold today. This is an embedding requirement rather than a separate unit, so the work is a review of our existing grades 6-12 curricula to confirm those concepts sit intentionally in the right courses. Two other items are required later. Holocaust Education Week falls January 25 through 29, 2027, with grade-band resources releasing December 1, and an Arkansas Veterans unit for our Arkansas History courses releases October 1. The Arkansas Celebrates America250 dashboard also remains open with standards-aligned lessons and enrichment projects. In the year our nation marks 250 years, our students should be able to explain what happened, why it mattered, and where Arkansas stood in it. Closing Celebrations Our senior high Bearcats host Central Arkansas Christian tonight at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium with a seven o’clock kickoff, and after the first two weeks of the season being on the road, our players have earned a full home crowd. Please come out and be loud. Our conference opener against Waldron follows on September 25 at home. It was a busy week across the rest of our programs. Our golf teams traveled to Mystic Creek to face Magnolia and El Dorado on their home course, with Fountain Lake and Camden Fairview also in the field, and our Bearcats came away with a second-place individual finish on a round of 74 while our Ladycats were led by a fifth-place finish overall. Our cross country runners competed at the Tom Stuthard Stampede in Acorn on Tuesday, where our junior boys placed fourth as a team behind a tenth-place individual finish, and our junior girls, senior girls, and senior boys were each led by strong efforts of their own. That team returns to Acorn on Tuesday, September 22. Our volleyball teams opened the week the hard way, falling at Lakeside on Tuesday at the senior, junior, and seventh grade levels, and then answered it Thursday with victories at Waldron. That is the part worth recognizing. A rough Tuesday is not what defines a team. Coming back two days later and winning on the road is, and our Ladycats and their coaches deserve credit for how quickly they turned the week around. Our fine arts students are another reason to celebrate. Our band has been at every football game this season, in the stands and on the field, and the great atmosphere at the games belongs to our band students and directors as much as anyone. In theatre, auditions for The Lightning Thief drew a record turnout, and the props that are being built speak to the creativity and dedication of our students. Just as impressive, the fair art on display last week was very creative and appealing to parents and fair patrons. To our fine arts staff, thank you for building programs students want to be a part of and bringi… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • September 4 · 16 min

    Week 4: The Story Our Numbers Tell

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another strong week of work. Four weeks in, the routines are holding, the hallways feel settled, and the instruction we are seeing in classrooms is purposeful. That is not a small thing in early September, and it is the direct result of the preparation each of you put in before the first bell ever rang. Every fall, our district compiles its Annual Report to the Public, a required accounting of our finances, student performance, personnel, and programs. We are in the final stages of building the 2026-2027 report right now, and I want you to see it before the community does. This report is full of robust data from last year and this current school year. Too often, a document like this becomes a compliance exercise filed away in a cabinet. Ours tells a story, and the story is a good one. This matters for our three performance targets, too. We are working toward continued academic growth, daily attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. The Annual Report is the evidence base underneath those targets. Leveling-Up is not only about what we intend to do this year. It is also about recognizing the ground we have already gained, because you cannot build confidently on a foundation you do not know you have. Careful Stewardship of Every Dollar Mena Public Schools spent $15,264 per student last year. The Arkansas average was $16,557. That means we educated our students on $1,293 less per child than the typical district in this state, and we did it while our academic indicators moved in the right direction. We want to be clear about what that number represents, because spending below the state average can be read two different ways. It does not mean we cut corners on students. It means we run a disciplined operation and push the savings back toward the classroom. Of that per-pupil total, $5,827 went to maintenance and operations, $4,852 to teacher salaries, $1,968 to debt, $1,084 to federal grants, $633 to transportation, $613 to academics, and $287 to student extracurricular activities. Our total state and local revenue for 2025-2026 came to $19,814,344, built primarily on $7,576,627 in local tax revenue and $8,385,659 in state foundation aid, with $900,483 arriving through the LEARNS teacher minimum salary funding and $593,978 in Enhanced Student Achievement dollars. Our community funds these schools generously, and we owe them careful management in return. You can see where that discipline goes. Last year alone the district re-paved the parking lots at Mena Middle School and Mena High School, resurfaced the track, upgraded our campus and bus communications system, purchased a new bus with a wheelchair lift, added safety features on every campus, adopted a new K-5 literacy curriculum, replaced teacher and student computers, installed new cafeteria equipment and new lighting controls in the Performing Arts Center, replaced carpet and baseboards, added ceiling-mounted side goals at UBC, added academic support staff, and built the bus loop awning at Louise Durham Elementary. None of that is glamorous. All of it matters to the person standing in front of students every day. Our Enhanced Student Achievement funds, which are tied to the number of students qualifying for free and reduced meals, went toward dyslexia instruction, school security, concurrent credit tuition, and transportation, communications, and logistics. With 62.3 percent of our students on free or reduced meal plans last year, those are the exact places where a rural district either supports its students or does not. State rules require us to spend 85 percent of that allocation each year, and we do more than that. Competitive grants have also made a significant impact across our district. Over the last two fiscal years, Mena Public Schools secured $167,800 through the Stronger Connections Grant, $167,800 through the State School Safety Grant, $178,500 for High Impact Tutoring, $31,148.25 for CTE Modernization, and $31,470 through the Phone Free Schools Grant. Federal programs have provided an additional $1.2 million for district personnel salaries and benefits, supporting certified staff and instructional aides who work directly with students. These funds also provided $12,089 for staff professional development, $34,751 for parental involvement programs, $73,786 for technology resources and internet safety programming, and $83,967 for classroom instructional supports and resources. Together, these investments allow us to add people, strengthen instruction, support families, improve safety, and provide opportunities for students beyond what local resources alone could provide. What the Enrollment Numbers Actually Say Our current enrollment stands at 1,653 students, supported by 147 certified and 89 classified staff members. Enrollment in rural Arkansas has been a difficult conversation for a decade, and I would rather we have it honestly than avoid it.Here is what the opening weeks of this year actually show. Ninety students withdrew. One hundred four registered. That is a net gain of fourteen students. The single largest reason families left was relocation outside Polk County, at thirty-nine students, and relocation was also our single largest source of new students, at forty-nine. We lost twenty-one students to homeschooling and gained seventeen back. We lost twenty-one to Acorn and Oden and gained sixteen from the same direction. Twelve of our new registrations are international exchange students, which is a genuine bright spot for our classrooms and our community. That is churn, not exodus. Families move in nearly as often as they move out, and school choice is flowing toward Mena at roughly the rate it flows away. Any longer-term decline in our enrollment trend is better explained by demographics, with larger graduating classes replaced by smaller kindergarten cohorts, than by families leaving unhappy. I say this because you will hear the other version in town, and you deserve the actual data. One related note deserves your attention. When families ask about full-time virtual options, please encourage them to look closely at the outcomes on My School Info. Arkansas’s largest virtual schools posted state report card grades of D and C last year, with elementary reading proficiency at 22 percent against a state average near 40 percent, and national graduation rates for full-time virtual schools run far below the national average. Online learning genuinely fits some students, and we offer options for those it fits. It is hardest on our youngest learners and on students who need relationship-based instruction to build foundational skills. Families should choose with their eyes open. Evidence That Our Targets Are Moving We set our performance targets a few weeks ago. The Annual Report gives us the baseline those benchmarks sit on top of, and several lines are genuinely encouraging. Attendance finished last year at 93.75 percent. That cleared our 93.5 percent target, landed above the state average of 93.35 percent, and rose sharply from 92.34 percent the year before. That is the first meaningful climb since the pandemic, and it happened because we invested in helping families overcome barriers and because you kept telling students that showing up matters. Discipline referrals fell 12.89 percent district-wide against a target of 10 percent. Our workforce stability index has run above the state average consistently, and in the most recent years that gap has widened considerably in our favor. Stable adults in front of students is not a soft outcome. It is one of the most reliable predictors we have of both achievement and climate. Our external position has improved as well. Mena Public Schools now ranks 45th of 251 Arkansas districts on SchoolDigger, a climb of twenty-eight spots, and we lead every district in the DeQueen-Mena Educational Cooperative area. Rankings are not a finish line, but they do tell us the work is registering outside our … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • August 28 · 9 min

    Week 3: Staying Connected, Staying Alert

    Happy Friday! Thank you to our entire Mena Public Schools team for another strong week of collective effort toward our performance targets in academic growth, attendance, and behavior and climate. Three weeks into the year, our routines are taking hold in every classroom and in every hallway, and the relationships behind those routines are growing stronger by the day. That is what leveling up looks like in practice: not a single big change, but steady, daily progress that adds up. This week’s Wrap-up covers a change in how we communicate with families, an online safety concern every staff member needs to understand, two strong opportunities worth putting in front of our students, and a look back at a busy week of Bearcat and Ladycat activity. Transition From Rooms to ParentSquare I want to update everyone on a change to how we communicate with families. We have discontinued Rooms, the parent communication tool from Apptegy, because feedback from staff and families did not show it was strong enough to justify staying with it. We are transitioning to ParentSquare, which now includes the messaging technology behind Remind, a tool many of our teachers already use and trust. I will be honest that we are behind our original schedule on this rollout, but ParentSquare will be up and running district-wide in September. Once it is in place, ParentSquare will let us reach every family through the channel that works best for them, whether that is the app, text message, email, or even an automated voice call, and messages will translate automatically into a family’s preferred language. Families will be able to reply directly by text or email without needing to download anything, and we will be able to send forms, permission slips, and sign-ups through the same system. Teachers will also be able to schedule messages ahead of time and use templates to save time while keeping communication organized and visible at the building and district level. In the meantime, and even after ParentSquare is fully rolled out, I want to ask every teacher and building staff member not to rely on Facebook alone to get important information to families. Facebook is a wonderful way to celebrate our students and share good news, but not every parent sees it, and it should never be our only method for anything families truly need to know. Please continue to use paper notes home, email, phone calls, and other direct methods alongside social media and Thrillshare (contact Mark Hobson) so that no family misses information that matters to their child. A Serious Online Safety Concern: “764” For those who do not know already, the FBI has issued repeated warnings, including one specific to Arkansas from the Little Rock field office, about a decentralized online network known as “764” that targets minors through platforms our students use every day, including gaming apps, Discord, and social media. Predators build trust with a young person, then use blackmail and fear to coerce escalating and dangerous behavior, sometimes including self-harm. Federal investigators have already confirmed cases in Arkansas. Please treat this as a mandated-reporter issue. Warning signs include a student suddenly withdrawing or becoming secretive, fixation on or fear of a new online contact, unexplained gifts or gaming currency, or unexplained marks or injuries. If a student discloses anything that sounds like this, or you notice these signs, please report it immediately through our normal reporting channels. It can also be reported directly to the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov. It is far better that all of us over-report a false alarm than miss a student who needs help. Opportunities for Our Students A couple of strong opportunities are open right now and worth putting in front of the right students. America250, the organization Congress charged with leading the nation’s 250th anniversary commemoration, has opened a national startup competition for student innovators, and the window is open right now. Students submit a short written proposal and a brief pitch video explaining a business idea, why it matters, and how it could grow. Entries are due Thursday, October 8th. Ten finalists receive $25,000 each in grant funding that they do not have to give up equity for; the top three receive another $25,000, and the strongest 100 proposals earn an invitation into NVIDIA’s startup program. The contest is open to students currently enrolled at an accredited college, university, or trade school who are at least 13 years old, which makes our concurrent-enrollment students and recent graduates eligible. Interested students should confirm their eligibility in the official rules at america250.org/americas-startup before beginning. Separately, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has launched a new statewide contest called My Natural State Story, inviting Arkansas students to write about a real outdoor adventure they have had here at home. Students pick one of seven categories- hunting, fishing, boating and paddling, climbing, camping, hiking, or the overall Story of the Year- and tell that story in 500 words or less, in their own words. It is open to two age groups, ages 10 through 13 and ages 14 through 17, and entries are due before October 10th. Sixteen students statewide will win, with prizes ranging from gear and Arkansas State Parks getaways to a lifetime Game and Fish Commission license. I would love for our teachers, especially in ELA and any outdoor education or agriculture programs, to put this in front of students who spend time hunting, fishing, camping, or hiking around here. It is a low-lift way to turn something they already love doing into a shot at a genuinely good prize. Full rules and the entry form are at mynaturalstatestory.com. Closing Celebrations Our senior high Bearcat football team opens its season tonight on the road against DeQueen, and we would love a strong crowd of Bearcat fans making the trip. If you cannot be there in person, you can watch live on Bearcat TV, our student-run broadcast on YouTube. It was a full week of athletics across Mena Public Schools. On the football field, our junior high Bearcats opened their season with a hard-fought 12-8 win over DeQueen at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium. On the volleyball court, our Ladycats, our junior high Ladycats, and our seventh-grade squad all opened their seasons this week against tough competition from Greenwood and Lake Hamilton, and every team competed with effort and heart in every set. On the links, our golf teams turned in one of their best weeks yet, winning the team matches at Waldron and then traveling to DeGray, where the Bearcat team placed first overall in a field that included three teams ranked higher than Mena at the state level, while the Ladycats also turned in a strong showing. A special thank you to Brew Stop and Nordyke Photography for donating and delivering drinks to our staff at Holly Harshman Elementary this week. Gestures like these are much appreciated. In Mena Morphology Matters, our Week 3 root is aud, meaning to hear. Students across all four buildings are exploring words built on this root, from audio in our K-2 and elementary classrooms to audience in middle school and auditory in high school, along with word family members such as audible, audition, and auditorium. Watch for this week’s Bearcat Word Detective Challenge, and see how many aud words your student can uncover. It was a good week of effort at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident. Keep leveling up and have a great weekend! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • August 21 · 9 min

    Week 2: Setting Our Benchmarks

    Happy Friday! Thank you to every teacher, bus driver, custodian, food service worker, office staff member, paraprofessional, maintenance worker, administrator, tech team member, and volunteer for the dedication you showed throughout this second week. This week gave us the chance to move beyond the introductions and routines of the opening days. Now routines are taking hold, classrooms are settling into rhythm, and our campuses continue to hum with the kind of purposeful energy that comes from students and staff who are ready to work. Your steady effort in building relationships and reinforcing expectations this week is the foundation that makes everything else possible. Tracking Our Performance Targets If this is your first time reading this Wrap-up, welcome. Each week in the Wrap-up, we track three performance targets that guide our work as a district: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. These three measures are not just numbers on a page — they represent whether our students are learning, present, and supported, which is the whole of our mission in a sentence. Because we are beginning a brand-new school year, we are also starting our tracking over from zero. Last year’s totals do not carry forward; every week from here builds a fresh record for 2026-2027, and we will share our progress against these three targets regularly so everyone can see where we stand. In the coming days and weeks, our start-of-year assessments and screeners will begin returning results. Those results will give us our first academic benchmarks of the year, the starting line from which we will measure every bit of growth to come. These measures, along with the engaging teaching and learning we are already seeing, will help us keep a clear view of where we are and where we need to go. Building Improvement Plans Each of our buildings just submitted its 2026-2027 School Improvement Plan to the state, and I want every teacher and paraprofessional to be familiar with theirs. They are posted here on our district website. These plans are built using a Plan-Do-Check framework and cover the same core areas at every campus: Literacy, Math, Science, and Engagement (attendance, behavior, and family/community involvement). For each area, the plan lays out a SMART goal, the strategic objectives behind it, the specific instructional and intervention steps staff will carry out, and how progress will be monitored, whether through ATLAS interim data, common formative assessments, PLC reviews, or quarterly reports. These plans are not a compliance document to file away. They are our shared playbook for the year, connecting the goals we track in this Wrap-up to the day-to-day decisions happening in classrooms and PLCs, from how intervention groups are formed to what gets discussed at your next team meeting. Knowing your building’s plan helps you see how your classroom work connects to our schoolwide targets and gives you a head start on the data conversations, PD topics, and support structures you will see throughout the year. Building principals will be sharing your specific plan, and I would encourage you to read it closely and ask questions. High-Impact Tutoring This week, we submitted our application for the state’s High-Impact Tutoring Grant, a LEARNS Act program that helps districts fund during-school Math and ELA tutoring. Our proposal focuses on literacy support for grades K-2 and 6-11, pairing an experienced certified elementary teacher with our grades 6-11 literacy intervention tutor to provide up to 68 concurrent tutoring placements, three 30-minute sessions per week per student, built entirely into the school day without displacing core instruction. If awarded, this program would give many of our students exactly the kind of frequent, targeted support that helps early gaps close before they widen. We expect to hear back around September 1, and we are hopeful. For Our Teachers A few opportunities and reminders worth your attention this month: * Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is offering free K-12 learning experiences this school year, including free admission, transportation, and substitute reimbursement, and complimentary lunch for facilitated visits. * The Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators grants page maintains a running list of grant opportunities for classroom and school needs. A few with near-term windows include the ASTA Teacher Scholarship and Classroom Grants (up to $500, deadlines March 31 and October 31), Gravely and Paige Grants for STEM Teachers (up to $2,000, rolling applications), and Spark Good Local Grants (up to $5,000, next quarterly window opens November 1). Take a look and see if something fits your classroom. * Through a partnership between the Arkansas Department of Education and NIET, all of us now have access to the Arkansas Calibration Content Library in EE PASS. It offers hundreds of resources, including professional learning modules, TESS and LEADS calibration tools, and instructional video exemplars, available 24/7 for individual learning, coaching, collaborative planning, and PLCs. Whether you are looking to strengthen your own instructional practice or calibrate expectations as an evaluator, this library is worth exploring. Visit next.eepass.org and use the Contact Us tab to request access. Each of these opportunities is designed to invest in you and to support your work with students. Closing Celebrations On the athletics front, our Bearcats and Ladycats opened the week strong at DeQueen. The Bearcats won 3 of 5 tennis matches, picking up wins in both singles and doubles play, while the Ladycats swept all 5 of their matches, with two doubles teams remaining undefeated on the season. On the links, our golfers opened the week against Greenwood, Van Buren, and Lavaca, with the Bearcat boys finishing 3rd as a team, highlighted by a medalist finish, and the Ladycats posting two personal records on their way to a 7th place team finish. The boys followed that up with an even stronger showing at Magnolia on Thursday, placing 3rd out of six teams and upsetting a higher-ranked Hamburg squad to climb to 10th in the state 4A rankings, while the Ladycats added another strong individual finish. Both squads are back in action Tuesday, August 25th at Waldron and Thursday, August 27th at DeGray Country Club in Arkadelphia. Last night, our Bearcat football team took the field for a scrimmage against Bismarck and Poteau. The Bearcats looked sharp against both opponents and are ready to open the regular season next Friday, August 28th, at DeQueen. Also last night, our Ladycat volleyball team took the court for a benefit game against Van Buren at the Union Bank Center. It was a great tune-up before the season opener next Tuesday, August 25th, at Greenwood. Looking further ahead, Bearcat and Ladycat cross country will open their season on Tuesday, September 8th, at the Tom Stuthard Stampede in Acorn, kicking off a full fall schedule that runs through the state meet at Oaklawn on November 6th. We also want to recognize the generosity shown to our students and staff this week. Mena First Assembly of God treated the Holly Harshman Elementary staff to breakfast as a small thank-you for all they do. A group of parent volunteers fed our Bearcat cheerleaders before Thursday's football game. And Ouachita Hometown Realtors partnered with the Office of Child Support Enforcement to donate backpacks and school supplies to students at Holly Harshman Elementary. Thank you to our churches, businesses, and parent partners for investing your time and resources in our students and staff. In Mena Morphology Matters, our Week 2 root is vis, meaning "to see." Students across all four buildings are exploring words built on this root, from visible in our K-2 and elementary classrooms to vision in middle school and supervise in high school, along with word family members like revise, visual, and television. Watch for t… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • August 14 · 10 min

    Week 1: Time to Level Up

    Happy Friday! The first Friday of the 2026-2027 school year is here, and after another summer that felt like it passed in a blink, our campuses are once again filled with the energy that comes when students and staff return to Mena Public Schools. I want to sincerely thank every teacher, bus driver, custodian, food service worker, office employee, paraprofessional, maintenance team member, administrator, and volunteer whose preparation made this week possible. Your work behind the scenes over the summer set the tone for a smooth and successful start. This year, our performance targets remain the compass that guides our daily work: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. Everything we do in this Wrap-up, and throughout the year, will circle back to those three measures because they represent what matters most — students who are learning, present, and supported. It Is Time to Level-Up As we begin the 2026-2027 school year, Mena Public Schools has chosen “Level-Up” as our district theme. The phrase is energetic and easy to remember, but our purpose goes well beyond a slogan. Level-Up means building on what is working, learning from what can be improved, and challenging ourselves to take the next step. It means helping every student grow from where he or she begins while continuing to raise expectations across our district. Leveling up will look different for every person. For a kindergarten student, it may mean developing confidence as a reader. For a middle school student, it may mean attempting a difficult problem without giving up. For a high school student, it may mean earning college credit, completing an industry-recognized credential, improving attendance, or making a plan for enrollment, employment, or enlistment. For our staff, it means continuing to collaborate, studying evidence, refining instruction, and building the relationships that make learning possible. You know… doing the small things that Jason Curry emphasized to make improvements, and building self-efficacy within our students and collective-efficacy among ourselves, as communicated to us by Jeana Williams. We will not define Level-Up as simply doing more this year. We will define it as doing the most important things with greater clarity, consistency, and purpose. We will celebrate progress without becoming satisfied, address challenges without losing confidence, and keep students at the center of every decision. A Strong Foundation to Build On We enter this year with good reason for confidence. Although Arkansas has not yet released the official 2025-2026 school report cards, our latest ATLAS results and independent statewide rankings point to meaningful academic progress. SchoolDigger’s 2026 rankings place Mena School District 45th among 251 Arkansas districts, an improvement of 28 positions from last year and ahead of approximately 82 percent of districts statewide. Mena Middle School rose 45 positions to rank 59th among 327 middle schools, while Mena High School climbed 51 positions to rank 71st among 293 high schools. Our mathematics results provide another reason to celebrate. Districtwide Algebra proficiency reached 57.4 percent, compared with 36.9 percent statewide, and Mena Middle School recorded 100 percent Algebra proficiency among the students tested. Holly Harshman Elementary also posted science proficiency of 54.8 percent. These results did not happen by accident. They grew from focused instruction, collaboration, careful use of assessment data, and the steady work that happens in classrooms every day. We are proud of these gains, but Level-Up also means being honest about the work ahead. A ranking is not a finish line, and a test score never tells the complete story of a student or a school. We will continue strengthening reading fluency, written reasoning, mathematical thinking, and students’ ability to work independently with challenging material, and we will use the official state report card, when it is released, to study our progress and identify where additional support is needed. Mena Morphology Matters This year, we are also launching Mena Morphology Matters, a new K-12 districtwide word-learning initiative built on a simple but powerful idea: when students understand the building blocks of words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes, they gain the ability to unlock the meaning of hundreds, even thousands, of words they have never seen before. The program unites all four of our buildings, Louise Durham Elementary, Holly Harshman Elementary, Mena Middle School, and Mena High School, around one shared root each week. Every grade band studies the same theme with a developmentally appropriate focus, meaning a kindergartner and a senior may be learning from the very same root on the very same week. One root. Four buildings. One language of word learning. The research behind this work is strong. Morphological awareness, the ability to recognize and work with meaningful word parts, is consistently linked to gains in vocabulary, decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension. Learning a single root like spect, meaning “look,” gives students a foothold on inspect, spectator, perspective, respect, circumspect, and dozens of other words. As texts grow denser with complex vocabulary, morphology gives our students a strategy to break unfamiliar words into interpretable, meaningful chunks rather than guessing or giving up, and it teaches a transferable skill rather than rote memorization. Brief, repeated exposure across the week, through principal announcements, family newsletter blurbs, differentiated classroom activities, bulletin board displays, and our Bearcat Word Detective Challenge, builds the kind of shared vocabulary culture that reaches beyond our classrooms and into our hallways and homes. Week 1’s root is spect, meaning “look.” It is a fitting launch. Before students learn to read the world’s words, Week 1 asks them to do the most fundamental literacy act of all, to look closely, and gives them the very root that names it. Throughout the year, watch for Junior and Expert Word Detective recognitions, monthly Morphology Madness challenges, a growing Word Detective Wall in each building, and an end-of-year celebration week with awards like Root Master, Vocabulary Detective, and Word Wizard. This initiative is a direct investment in our literacy goals as a district, and I am excited to see how it builds vocabulary, comprehension, and a shared word-learning culture across every grade level this year. Closing Celebrations This year’s staff has grown, and we are better for it. To our new bus drivers, teachers, paraprofessionals, office staff, and maintenance team members: thank you for choosing Mena Public Schools, and welcome. To our returning staff: thank you for the experience, consistency, and mentorship you bring to your new colleagues. Your combined effort adds new strength to our story, and I am excited to see how this year’s chapters unfold as our team levels up together. Mena’s First Fridays Festival on August 7th brought out a great lineup for our students and families, including a Splash Zone from the Mena Fire Department, bike safety demonstrations from Spokes & Sprockets, vision screenings from Walmart Vision Center, and a hands-on broadcast experience from Mena High School Journalism and Bearcat TV, alongside food trucks, games, and live entertainment at the Mena Train Depot. The weather ultimately cut the evening short, but the effort these organizations put into bringing engaging, student-focused activities downtown did not go unnoticed, and we are grateful for their partnership in kicking off the school year. Our community’s generosity leading into the school year deserves recognition as well. The American Legion Auxiliary and Junior Auxiliary member Teagan Childress collected school supplies for our Back to School Bash as part of her Junior Auxiliary Patch Program, CMA donated backpacks and scho… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • May 22 · 2 min

    Week 37: Celebrating a Strong Finish to the School Year

    Happy Final Friday! Once again, thank you for all you have done to finish up a good week of school and a great school year! As we close out the school year, our district performance targets give us every reason to celebrate. We set meaningful goals in attendance, school climate, and academic growth, and together our students, staff, and families rose to the challenge in impressive ways. Showing Up and Finishing Strong One of the brightest highlights of the year is that we exceeded our district attendance goal of 93.5% by finishing at 93.9%. This is the first time this has happened, and it is an outstanding accomplishment. It is definitely a reflection of the value our students, families, and staff place on being present, engaged, and ready to learn each day. A Meaningful Reduction in Discipline Referrals We also have much to celebrate in the area of school climate and student behavior. Our goal was to reduce discipline referrals by 10%, and we surpassed that goal with a 12.89% reduction, a strong sign that our schools are continuing to grow in positive culture, support, and student success. Growth Worth Celebrating Along with these important gains, we are encouraged by the academic improvements we have seen this year in English Language Arts, math, and science. Our schools have stayed focused on student learning, and that steady progress reflects the dedication, expertise, and persistence of our teachers, staff, and students. Thank You for a Great Year Thank you to everyone who made this school year such a success. As we wrap up Week 37, we do so with pride in what we have accomplished together, gratitude for the people who made it possible, and excitement about the momentum we are carrying forward. It was a good year of determination at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident. Rest, recover, reflect, and have a great summer break! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • May 15 · 7 min

    Week 36: Turning the Tassels

    Happy Friday! Thank you for the steady work, encouragement, and professionalism you continue to bring to Mena Public Schools each day. As we move through the final stretch of the school year, I want to say again how much I appreciate the focus you have kept on our performance targets, including student learning, attendance, and school climate. This time of year allows us to reflect on progress, celebrate important milestones, and help students finish strong with the support and expectations they need. This week’s theme, “Turning the Tassels,” captures more than a graduation tradition. It represents transition, accomplishment, and the kind of growth that happens when students are consistently supported by caring adults, clear systems, and meaningful opportunities. Graduation is one of the most visible reminders that the daily work happening in classrooms, offices, cafeterias, buses, and activity spaces truly matters. Graduation Mena High School will celebrate the Class of 2026 at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, Saturday, May 16, at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium. Graduation is always a meaningful milestone, but it is especially powerful because it reflects years of steady growth, support, and shared investment from families, teachers, staff, and the larger Mena community. For many of these seniors, this journey began here many years ago as young children entering Kindergarten in Mena Public Schools. Others joined the Bearcat family somewhere along the way, and we are equally grateful for every student and family who became part of our district at any point in that journey. Whether they were here from the beginning or arrived later in their school life, we are proud to have walked beside them as they learned, matured, and prepared for what comes next. This moment connects directly to our district mission. Mena Public Schools exists to serve our community by instilling an individualized purpose in our students and staff, and graduation is one of the clearest examples of that mission becoming visible. As students cross the stage, we are seeing young people who have developed skills, discovered strengths, earned credentials, and grown in confidence through opportunities provided by both curriculum and community. Graduation also reflects our district vision that students and staff uplift one another and the community they serve. The Class of 2026 has been shaped not only by instruction but also by relationships, encouragement, accountability, and perseverance. Their story is a reminder that success is rarely a single moment; it is built over time through support, responsibility, and the willingness to keep moving forward through adversity. Graduation is one of those moments when we see that vision come to life, as students lift up their families, honor their teachers, and step forward ready to serve and strengthen our community or the communities they will enter. Our values are visible in this class as well. Service, accountability, relationships, growth, empowerment, and determination all matter in a moment like this because they help explain what students carry with them beyond graduation. Their accomplishments reflect more than credits earned or requirements completed. They reflect years of effort, learning from failure, accepting support, and growing into people who are better prepared to contribute to the world around them. This is why commencement means so much in Mena. It is not only a celebration of completion, but also a celebration of formation. It reflects the long arc of growth that begins in the early years, continues through every classroom and campus experience, and culminates in a moment when students quite literally turn the tassel and prepare to step into the future. America250 Freedom Truck We are also excited to share a special opportunity for Arkansas schools, educators, students, and families this summer. The America250 Freedom Truck, a traveling interactive exhibit that highlights the history, ideals, and future of the United States, will be in North Little Rock from June 26 through June 29 as part of the Arkansas Folklife Festival. This immersive experience is designed to bring American history to life through engaging visuals, technology, and primary-source storytelling. It offers a meaningful extension for educators looking to connect civic learning and historical understanding to real-world experiences, and it would be a great opportunity for families and student groups looking for something educational and accessible during the summer months. The event is free and open to the public, and it is the kind of opportunity that aligns well with the work of helping students understand their place in the larger story of our country while building background knowledge, curiosity, and civic awareness. Additional information about the Freedom Truck can be found at freedom250.org/freedom-truck, and information about the Arkansas Folklife Festival can be found at arkansasfolklifefestival.org. Year-End Staff Celebration As a reminder, Thursday, May 21, will be the final day of school for students, and Friday, May 22, will be our last in-service day of the year. As in years past, we will gather at approximately 10:30 a.m. in the PAC to celebrate staff achievements, recognize career milestones, and honor this year’s retirees. This ceremony is a special time to reflect on the incredible impact of your work and to close the year together as a district. Lunch will be served immediately following. If you are reaching a Mena School District years-of-service milestone (1, 5, 10, 15, etc.) or have achieved a significant accomplishment this year, please take a moment to complete this form so we can include you in our recognitions. Your response helps ensure that your contributions are acknowledged in front of your colleagues, and we have gifts for each milestone of service. Graduate Opportunities I want to share a professional growth opportunity for members of our teaching staff who may be considering graduate study or additional licensure. Henderson State University has several programs that may be a good fit for educators looking to expand their knowledge, strengthen their practice, or prepare for future leadership roles. The Arkansas Teacher Academy Scholarship may be applied toward the Master of Arts in Teaching, the MSE in Teacher Leadership, and the MSE in Special Education. The Teacher Opportunity Program may be used for the Educational Leadership program. These options offer different pathways depending on where you are in your career and professional goals. If one of these opportunities may fit your goals, details are available in this shared folder with the program flyers and scholarship information. Staff members who want to explore the programs more closely can review the documents there and follow up with Henderson State for further information. Closing Celebrations As our spring sports seasons begin to come to a close, I want to thank our student-athletes, coaches, and sponsors for the way they have represented Mena Public Schools. Across competitions, practices, and travel, they have carried themselves with effort, sportsmanship, and pride, and they have reflected well on our district and community. We are grateful for the commitment they have shown and for the many ways they have demonstrated what it means to compete with character. This time of year also brings many of the experiences students remember most, including field trips, field day games, class celebrations, parties, and other end-of-year activities that bring joy to our schools. These moments are fun and rewarding for students, but they also take thoughtful planning, extra coordination, and a great deal of energy from the adults who make them possible. Thank you to everyone who has organized, supervised, supported, and worked behind the scenes to create meaningful experiences for students as the year comes to a close. It was a good week of celebration at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • May 7 · 8 min

    Week 35: Appreciating Our Teachers and Elevating Student Futures

    Happy Thursday! Thank you for the steady, professional work you bring to Mena Public Schools each day. As we move further into the closing stretch of the school year, our goals for student learning, attendance, and school climate remain in clear focus, and it is the consistent habits you carry into classrooms, hallways, buses, cafeterias, offices, and activity spaces that keep us moving in the right direction. This week brings a mix of reflection and forward momentum. We are honoring the daily work of educators during Teacher Appreciation Week, recognizing the relationships and instructional skill that make our recent gains possible. At the same time, we are continuously using college and career planning tools and approaches to help students connect their present efforts to future opportunities in concrete ways. This week’s Wrap-up reflects both of those realities. There is a clear focus on the people whose work shapes students’ lives every day, new data for our college and career planning efforts, and several closing celebrations that highlight how Bearcats are showing up in ways that will stay with them long after this school year ends. Teacher Appreciation and Redefining Ready This Teacher Appreciation Week, I am thinking about our work through the lens of “college-ready, career-ready, life-ready.” Readiness is measured by what students actually do: taking advanced and CTE courses, maintaining strong attendance, engaging in work-based learning, participating in activities, and building the social-emotional skills that help them persist. When we look at those kinds of indicators in our college and career reports highlighted later in this Wrap-up, what we are really seeing is the daily work of Mena educators showing up in the data. Every AP or dual-credit assignment you design, every CTE lab you run, and every time you use a club, practice, or rehearsal to reinforce attendance and belonging, you are pushing students closer to those readiness benchmarks. When our students meet college-ready or career-ready indicators, it is not an accident; it is the result of thousands of decisions made by teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, bus drivers, office staff, custodians, and administrators across the year. If you are a classroom teacher, I hope you take a moment this week to see yourself in those readiness stories. If you are in a support role, I hope you see how your consistency, relationships, and high expectations make it possible for students to show up and succeed. Teacher Appreciation Week is a reminder that our systems, our initiatives, and our goals only matter if they reflect and support the work you do with students every day. College & Career Planning 2026 Earlier this year, we committed to giving every student in grades 8–12 access to the Encourage college and career planning platform, along with a set of College & Career Planning 2026 resources. Encourage gives students a free web and mobile app to explore careers, compare programs, and discover scholarships, while giving educators tools to see student interests, track engagement, and use ready‑to‑go planning lessons. That combination is exactly the kind of system we have in mind when we say we want to be purposeful, not random, in how we prepare students for what comes after Mena. As of April 2, 293 students across three Mena schools have participated in the Encourage program, with roughly half identifying as female and half as male, and a significant share identifying as first‑generation college‑bound. The majority of participants are in the classes of 2026, 2027, and 2030, which gives us a strong view of both near‑term graduates and students who still have several years to plan. The postsecondary pathways report shows that large majorities of students in every group are considering public state colleges and universities, and that many are also interested in private colleges, community or junior colleges, and career and technical schools. Students who would be first‑generation college‑goers are just as likely to express interest in public and private college options as students whose parents completed college, which underscores the importance of the information and support they receive at school. At the same time, meaningful percentages of students are looking at apprenticeships, direct‑to‑work options, and the military, reminding us that “college and career ready” must include a range of high‑quality pathways. On the career interest side, health and medicine, finance and business, and art, design, entertainment, and media rise to the top, each drawing interest from around one‑quarter of students. Law, criminal justice, and protection services; architecture and engineering; and education and teaching also show up strongly, with clear patterns by gender and graduation year. For example, many students in the classes of 2028 and 2029 report interest in health and medicine alongside business, while students in earlier grades show growing interest in engineering and other technical fields. These reports are not just charts to look at once and file away; they are an invitation to ask, “If this is what our students say they want, how do we design the experiences, partnerships, and supports that match?” As we learn more, we will keep aligning our college and career work with local industry, high‑demand programs, and the two‑ and four‑year options our students are naming. At the same time, we will keep asking whether every student, especially those whose families did not complete college, has access to the information and encouragement to pursue the pathway that fits them best. Closing Celebrations The school year is coming to a close, but we still have had a lot to celebrate this week. Our track and field athletes turned in outstanding performances, including a state championship in the pole vault and another podium finish in the same event, representing Mena with grit and excellence. Our FFA chapter capped off the year with its 79th Annual End of the Year Banquet, recognizing the accomplishments of members from the 2025–2026 year and thanking the parents, staff, and community partners who helped make the evening and the program a success. We also honored our school nurses on National School Nurse Day, recognizing the essential role they play in student health, safety, attendance, and learning across all of our campuses. Good luck to our Bearcat baseball team this evening in the regional tournament as they take on Pea Ridge, and thank you for the hard work, preparation, and teamwork that brought you to this moment. We also wish our boys’ soccer team the very best as they are working hard for their own postseason play. We appreciate the effort, sportsmanship, and pride with which you represent Mena. It was a good week of appreciation at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident. Tomorrow is our final planned school closure day of the year. So have a nice long weekend! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • May 1 · 9 min

    Week 34: Progress, Opportunity, and the Work That Matters

    Happy Friday! Thank you for the steady, professional work you continue to do across Mena Public Schools. As we move deeper into these final weeks of the year, our performance targets in student learning, attendance, and school climate remain in clear view, and the habits you bring each day to classrooms, hallways, offices, buses, cafeterias, and activity spaces are what keep us moving toward those goals. As we begin May, there is a great deal to be encouraged by across our district. This time of year asks a lot of schools. We are still carrying out work that matters greatly every day for students while also helping students and families look ahead to what is next. That combination matters because purpose grows when people can connect present effort to future opportunity. This week’s Wrap-up reflects both of those realities. There are strong signs of academic progress worth recognizing, several new opportunities connected to student learning and wellness, and another reminder that meaningful experiences often shape students in ways that last far beyond a single week or event. ATLAS Progress and What It Tells Us One of the clearest reasons for encouragement right now is the direction of our ATLAS Summative performance. Across the last three years, our overall proficiency moved from 34 percent to 44 percent in ELA, from 34 percent to 54 percent in math, and from 41 percent to 55 percent in science. Those gains are significant, especially in math and science, and they reflect steady improvement over time, indicating the professional growth you all have had. Several cohort trends are especially worth noting. In ELA, grades 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 all showed gains from 2024 to 2026, with the current 8th-grade cohort moving from 28 percent to 51 percent. In math, some of the strongest jumps include current 2nd grade up 21 points, 8th grade up 15 points, and Algebra up 21 points over that same span. In science, 3rd grade rose from 34 percent to 57 percent, 4th grade rose from 44 percent to 64 percent, and overall science proficiency increased by 14 points. Those results deserve to be recognized for what they represent. They reflect the daily work of classroom teachers, interventionists, paraprofessionals, counselors, instructional leaders, and support staff across the district. They also reflect students who have stayed with the work, families who have remained engaged, and schools that have kept expectations clear and support strong. It is important to add one note of caution here. While it is useful to look at year-to-year trends, the state department does not want schools trying to calculate their own official growth scores because the methods they use are not straightforward. Plus, not all testing is finished. We should absolutely celebrate the improvement we can see, but we also need to wait for the state’s official growth information rather than trying to reverse-engineer that process ourselves. Arkansas Future and Beyond The Arkansas Department of Education has released May’s Arkansas Celebrates America250 update, and the theme is Arkansas’s Future. This is a helpful reminder that history instruction should not only look backward. It should also help students see how past investments, innovation, and service shape what comes next. Through the Journey Across Arkansas resources, schools have access to ready-to-use lessons that highlight Arkansas innovators, industries, literacy connections, arts integration, and future pathways for students. The broader message of this month’s update is one that fits our district well. Students should be encouraged to connect with their heritage, celebrate what others have built, and think seriously about how they will contribute through advanced education, high-growth careers, military service, and community leadership. These are the kinds of connections that help learning feel purposeful. You can access all of the resources in this Commissioner’s Memo. Supporting Student Wellness The state is also promoting Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ #RazorbackReady2026 Fitness Challenge as a way to celebrate student wellness and build enthusiasm around physical fitness. This initiative is tied to the return of the Presidential Fitness Test in Arkansas public schools beginning in the 2026–2027 school year. Districts have the opportunity to participate by sharing a short video of students engaging in selected fitness activities, and the challenge aligns well with National Physical Education and Sport Week, which runs from May 1 through May 7. For our schools, this is about more than a challenge or a social media post. It is another reminder that physical health, school engagement, and student readiness to learn are connected. We appreciate the work our physical education teachers and staff do to help students build habits that support both wellness and learning. School of Conservation Leadership Another opportunity worth watching is the School of Conservation Leadership, a statewide initiative designed to help schools build hands-on, outdoor, and conservation-focused learning experiences. Programs like this matter because they connect classroom learning to the natural resources and outdoor economy of Arkansas in practical ways. They also give students additional opportunities to learn through movement, observation, exploration, and problem-solving rather than only through traditional classroom routines. The initiative includes standards-aligned curriculum, professional development, equipment support, and opportunities for schools to grow outdoor learning experiences over time. For a district like ours, that kind of opportunity fits well with the idea that meaningful learning should be connected to place, purpose, and the real world students live in. Besides all of the natural resources around our district, we also have the Duckett Outdoor Classroom as a wonderful location to apply these concepts. If you want to know more, please contact Brian Schuller, Science Specialist, at the DeQueen-Mena Educational Services Cooperative. Closing Celebrations This week brought one of those rare opportunities that students are likely to remember for a long time. A group of Mena students had the chance to learn filmmaking through an experience connected to Inclusion Films, giving them more than just exposure to a creative field by helping them build communication, teamwork, confidence, and the ability to move an idea from concept to completion. A filmmaker named Joey Travolta made this meaningful opportunity possible. He is a veteran filmmaker, former special education teacher, and founder of Inclusion Films, an organization focused on teaching filmmaking and creating meaningful pathways for individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities while centering belonging, skill-building, and helping young people see themselves as capable contributors in meaningful work. Experiences like this reflect something important about the kind of school system we want to be. Students grow when they are given access to authentic work, supportive adults, and opportunities that help them see a future for themselves beyond the walls of a classroom. Today is School Lunch Hero Day to recognize our Food Service staff. It is a good reminder that their work goes far beyond serving meals—they create a welcoming environment, support attendance and readiness to learn, and take care of students in ways that often go unseen but never go unfelt. Today is also School Principals’ Day, and it highlights how much our campuses depend on steady, student-centered leadership. Our principals provide direction, encouragement, and support for students, staff, and families every day, and this is a good moment to pause and thank them for the way they lead and serve our schools. Next week also brings an important moment of celebration for two longtime Bearcats. On Monday, May 4th, we will honor the retirements of Ray Hunter and Tommy Johnson with a reception in the middle school library at 4:30 p.m., and ever… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • April 23 · 9 min

    Week 33: Opportunity in the Weeks Ahead

    Happy Thursday! Being out of school tomorrow brings another early Wrap-up. Thank you for the steady, professional work you continue to do across Mena Public Schools. As we move deeper into these final weeks of the year, our performance targets in student learning, attendance, and school climate remain in clear view, and the habits you bring each day to classrooms, hallways, buses, cafeterias, and offices are what keep us moving toward those goals. This time of year requires us to do two things at once. We need to stay focused on the daily work that still matters greatly for students, and we also need to help students, staff, and families see what opportunities are ahead. That balance matters because purpose grows when people can see both the immediate work in front of them and the next step beyond it. As we move toward the end of the semester, I want to use this week’s Wrap-up to highlight a few opportunities connected to student growth, staff learning, and community engagement. Each one reflects something important about who we are as a district. We want students to experience meaningful learning beyond the classroom, we want staff to continue growing in practical ways, and we want our schools to remain deeply connected to the broader life of our community. Summer Opportunities for Students There is a great no-cost summer science opportunity for our high school students. Arkansas students entering 10th, 11th, or 12th grade in the 2026–2027 school year can apply for the free AEGIS Summer Camp: Project Water & Wilderness through the Ozark Natural Science Center. The two-week residential camp runs from July 18 through August 1, 2026, and gives students the chance to work alongside field researchers while exploring ecosystems across the Ozarks. Students in the program will participate in activities such as tracking reptiles with radio telemetry, learning about bird banding from ornithologists, monitoring bats using acoustic technology, sampling fish and aquatic life in the Kings River, and studying the night sky. The experience also includes a glade field study, canoe trip, and overnight camping expedition, making it a strong example of the kind of real-world learning that helps students build both knowledge and confidence. The application deadline is May 15, 2026, and families can learn more and apply at www.onsc.us/aegis. Summer Opportunities for Staff Our staff also has access to valuable summer professional development through Economics Arkansas. Mena Public Schools is a member district, and Economics Arkansas provides practical training that helps teachers connect economics, personal finance, and decision-making to everyday classroom instruction. These are the kinds of learning opportunities that can strengthen instruction while also giving teachers ideas and materials they can use immediately with students. I currently serve on the Economics Arkansas Board, and Tracy Floyd, first-grade teacher here in our district, serves as one of their ambassadors. That local connection makes this opportunity especially meaningful for us. One session I want to highlight is Cooking Matters, which will be offered here in Mena and includes a stipend for attendees. This is a strong example of professional learning that is practical, relevant, and tied to real-world readiness for both educators and students. Teachers interested in exploring the full summer catalog can register here by using the QR code in the summer catalog. Community Opportunity Through First Fridays One of the strengths of a community like ours is that schools do not grow in isolation. They grow stronger when students, families, staff, local organizations, and businesses share common spaces and common purpose. This year, the Mena Advertising & Promotion Commission is launching First Fridays as a new series of community events that will run from May through December on the first Friday of each month from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. These free, family-friendly evenings will feature live music, children’s activities, food, arts and crafts vendors, a street dance, and other opportunities for people to gather in downtown Mena. Most events will take place at the Historic KCS Depot, with June connected to the Lum & Abner Festival at Janssen Park and December held at the Old Armory as part of Winterfest. This also creates a practical opportunity for some of our student clubs and organizations. Groups looking for ways to raise funds, increase visibility, or connect their work to the community may want to consider participating as vendors. Vendor spaces are available in 10x10 booths for $20 per space, and nonprofit groups may apply through the vendor process provided by the Mena Advertising & Promotion Commission. For our students, this is more than a booth space. It is a chance to represent their organization well, engage with the public, and learn how service, leadership, and initiative can create real value in the community. Those interested in learning more about event details or vendor participation can use this folder for forms and information. Staying Focused on Our Purpose As we move through Week 33, please continue to keep a close eye on the same actions that support strong performance. Daily attendance. Calm, predictable expectations. Strong instruction. Supportive relationships. Clear communication with students and families. When those pieces are in place, we give ourselves the best opportunity to meet our performance targets and finish the year the right way. These final weeks are also a reminder that purpose is strengthened when people can connect effort to opportunity. When students see adults who remain steady, focused, and encouraging, they are more likely to believe they can keep growing, too. That is at the heart of our mission: helping every student and staff member build a strong sense of purpose and the skills to pursue it. In keeping with that idea, here is an interesting Reel posted on Instagram by Christopher Mukiibi. Closing Celebrations Our students have had another strong week of activity beyond the classroom. Mena wrestlers brought home top finishes at Freestyle State, reflecting both their hard work and the time invested by coaches and volunteers to help them grow in skill and character. On the track, our junior high athletes continue to perform at a high level, with strong individual and team showings at the conference meet that highlight their commitment to practice and competition. Our soccer teams added solid wins on the field, and our choir students are sharing their talents tonight in their spring concert that celebrates achievement, recognizes seniors, and reminds us how the arts contribute to a well-rounded education. Louise Durham Elementary’s Spring Picnic was a success, and I want to thank everyone who helped organize, support, and facilitate that event for students and families. Events like that take a great deal of planning and teamwork, and they help strengthen the relationships that matter so much in a school community. The other schools’ picnics are still ahead, and I appreciate the work and adjustment that is already going into making those events meaningful for those families as well. I also want to thank the teaching and administrative staff at Mena Middle School and Mena High School for spending time with parents last night during parent-teacher conferences. Those conversations matter. When schools and families stay connected, students benefit from the shared clarity, support, and encouragement that come from adults working together. This has also been a good week for student leadership and scholarship. Mena FFA members represented our district well at the Arkansas FFA State Convention and Expo, competing in leadership development events, earning scholarships, and being recognized for the strength of their chapter. Their work is a reminder that when students are given opportunities to lead, speak, and represent their school, they often rise to the occasion in impressive ways. Our Bas… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • April 17 · 8 min

    Week 32: From Spring Effort to Summer Growth

    Happy Friday! As we move deeper into the spring stretch, I remain grateful for the steady, professional way you support students and one another. Our performance targets in attendance, discipline, and academic growth remain in clear view, and the habits you bring to classrooms, hallways, buses, and cafeterias each day are what keep us moving toward those goals. This week’s Wrap-up focuses on how we use the last weeks of school to keep students moving forward and how we are planning next year’s professional learning so it truly fits the people doing the work. I also want to thank you specifically for your conscientious approach to our ATLAS summative assessments as we move through the testing window. We are already receiving some scores back right away, which is a great benefit of the current system and gives us an early look at how students are performing. For the writing portion of the assessments, about 15% of student responses are hand-scored by human scorers to validate the AI scoring. Those results take a little longer to finalize, but this extra step helps ensure that the scores we receive are accurate, fair, and trustworthy reflections of the work you and your students have done all year. Finishing the Year the Right Way The environment we create in these final weeks matters as much as any single lesson plan. Students are watching how we respond when they struggle, how we talk about their future, and whether we truly believe they can still grow. When they see adults who are consistent, caring, and focused, they begin to believe those same things about themselves. Our classrooms, buses, cafeterias, and hallways all send a message, and you play a central role in shaping it every day. Academically, we know from our data that many of our students are within reach of important targets. That means the work right now is not about starting over; it is about moving students who are “close” into truly proficient territory. The way we plan questions, structure small groups, prioritize writing and reasoning, and use feedback in these next few weeks can nudge students across that line. Every conference, every re-teach, and every moment when a student gets to explain their thinking is another brick laid in their long-term success. As we move into next week, please keep a close eye on the same core levers that have served us well all year. Daily attendance, both for students and adults. A calm, predictable approach to behavior and classroom expectations. Strong Tier One instruction that uses the time we have with students very well. When those pieces are in place, the rest of our work has a solid foundation. Looking Ahead to 2026–2027 Learning As we look ahead to 2026–2027, we have finalized a district Employee Professional Development and Training Plan that outlines our required days, district priorities, and major opportunities for next year. You can review the full plan here: 2026–2027 MSD Employee Training Plan. This plan provides a backbone for our work, with a clear focus on curriculum and instruction, literacy engagement, and writing engagement. It also maps out required training days, district data days, parent conference hours, and additional opportunities offered through our partners. The plan includes on-site professional development, classroom work days, and conference days designed to support staff across all campuses. There are scheduled sessions for math instruction at different grade bands, lesson plan internalization, strategic reading, and district-wide data days that help us align what we teach with what students need. In addition, the plan highlights cooperative opportunities through DMESC, such as math intervention, writing aligned with ATLAS, and summer conferences that touch nearly every content area. Professional Learning that Fits You At the same time, I want to be very clear: our goal is not to simply “fill hours”; our goal is to grow people. A strong district plan gives us alignment, but the most powerful professional learning happens when it is connected to your actual needs, your Professional Growth Plan, and the students you serve every day. If there are trainings, conferences, or sessions you believe would benefit you more than what is currently listed, or would better fit your role and goals, we want you to have those opportunities. You have access to a wide range of options through DMESC, ADE, AR IDEAS, and professional organizations. The plan already points to sessions in areas like literacy, mathematics, science, CTE, early career exploration, dyslexia, mentoring and coaching, classroom behavior, and ESL support. In short, there is something there for almost every role, and the challenge will be making sure you know what is available and how it connects to your work. If you see a session, conference, or course that clearly aligns with your growth areas or instructional needs, please visit with your building administrator. We will work with you to see how it can fit with the district plan, required trainings, and available resources. When you invest in learning that truly matters to you, our students are the ones who benefit the most. This same mindset applies to our support staff, drivers, counselors, paraprofessionals, and all who serve students in roles that may not always be in the spotlight. Your learning matters just as much. If there is a training or certification that would help you serve students more effectively, strengthen safety, or make your daily work more sustainable, I want us to talk about it. The purpose of our professional development system is to support you, not box you in. Staying Focused on Our Purpose As we move through Week 32, please continue to treat these tasks—finishing strong with students and planning your own learning—as one more way to advocate for your students and for one another. Building strong relationships, holding high expectations, and providing the kind of feedback that helps students believe they can grow remain the core of our work. When students experience adults who are both supportive and demanding in the best sense of the word, they develop confidence that carries far beyond our classrooms. That is at the heart of our mission: helping every student and staff member build a strong sense of purpose and the skills to pursue it. Closing Celebrations Mena baseball picked up a hard-fought road win at Booneville on Monday, edging out their hosts 9–8. It is good to see our players continuing to compete well, respond in pressure situations, and represent our community the right way as they move through a busy spring schedule. Our track and field athletes at both the junior high and senior high levels continue to perform very well in recent meets. Across events, our Bearcats and Ladycats are turning in strong efforts, earning top finishes, and showing steady improvement as the season progresses. Their work on the track and in the field reflects a lot of time invested in practice and a commitment to competing with character and effort. As a reminder, if you have not yet completed the DeQueen–Mena Educational Service Cooperative user feedback survey that was shared last week, please take a few minutes to do so. Your input directly shapes the services and professional learning the co-op provides in the future and helps ensure that support remains aligned with the work you are doing every day. You can access the survey here: DMESC User Satisfaction Survey. It was a good week of determination at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident. Keep the #menareads posts and videos coming, and have a nice weekend! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
  • April 10 · 12 min

    Week 31: Verifying What Matters

    Happy Friday! As we move deeper into the spring stretch, I remain grateful for the steady, professional way you support students and one another. Our performance targets in attendance, discipline, and academic growth remain in clear view, and the habits you bring to classrooms, hallways, buses, and cafeterias each day are what keep us moving toward those goals. This week’s Wrap-up focuses on a behind-the-scenes task that has real implications for how our work is measured and recognized, an update on summer professional learning from our Teacher Center Committee meeting, and several celebrations that show how our students are growing in academics, the arts, and athletics across the district. Getting Credit For Your Work The state Roster Verification System window is now open in LEA Insights, and this step is essential to ensuring Merit Teacher Incentive Fund rewards are based on accurate and fair data. Roster verification is how we confirm that every student is correctly linked to the teacher who actually provided instruction, so that growth scores and future merit pay decisions reflect your work with students. This year, roster verification includes both our traditional ATLAS-tested areas and our earliest grades. That means teachers who serve students in grades K through 2, as well as teachers in grades 3 through 10 English language arts, grades 3 through 8 mathematics, algebra, geometry, and tested science courses, will verify that their rosters are correct. For K through 2 teachers, this is a forward-looking step. The state is beginning to collect and link K through 2 scores now so that, after three years of data, those grade levels can also be included in merit pay calculations. Careful roster verification this spring is what will make it possible for early elementary growth to count in future years. Our local deadline for completing teacher-level roster verification will be ten days before the state final due date. We build in that time so principals and I can review and certify everything before it goes to the state. Please do not wait until the last week of the window to begin. The earlier you log in and review your rosters, the more time we have to correct any issues and ensure that you receive full credit for the students you serve. The state has provided a helpful set of slide decks and short videos to walk teachers and administrators through the Roster Verification System. These resources are available on the state department Roster Verification System page and are organized by role, including Primary and Secondary Teachers of Record, Potential Collaborators, Building Administrators, and District Administrators. I encourage you to use the slide deck and video that match your role as you complete your verification. If you need assistance after reviewing those materials, please reach out at the building level first so we can support you quickly. Our goal is simple and important. Every student correctly linked to the right teacher, every time. When the state calculates growth and merit incentives, we want those numbers to reflect the real work that you do with students each day. Teacher Center Committee Meeting at DMESC This week, our spring Teacher Center Committee for the DeQueen-Mena Educational Service Cooperative (DMESC) met to complete one of our three required annual meetings and to provide feedback on school needs while previewing summer professional development. The Teacher Center Committee continues to play an important role for us by serving as a direct line between schools and the co op. Their input helps shape the kinds of support and training that are offered, and it keeps the focus on what our teachers and students actually need. The co op team shared a wide range of summer professional development offerings that touch nearly every content area. There will be math sessions focused on fluency and foundational number sense, literacy sessions from state specialists that support writing, comprehension, and planning an effective literacy block, and science sessions that use high-quality instructional materials and ATLAS data to guide instruction. In addition, there are opportunities in CTE, early career exploration, dyslexia, mentoring and coaching, classroom behavior, and ESL support. In short, there is something here for almost every teacher, and the challenge will be making sure you know what is available. One key update for us involves RISE training. The K–2 and 3–6 RISE Academies scheduled at our co-op will not make because they did not meet the state minimum of fifteen registered participants. Teachers who still need RISE proficiency will need to register at other co-ops, such as Dawson, Southwest, Guy Fenter, or Arch Ford. Those sessions are already filling, so if you still need this requirement, please register as soon as possible rather than waiting until later in the summer. Click here for a list of dates and locations. The meeting also highlighted several important opportunities connected to CTE and early career readiness. Pre-educator pathway trainings are scheduled for late July, and districts are encouraged to send their pre-educator teachers to both days so that these pathways remain strong options for students who are interested in the teaching profession. Schools that serve grades six through eight will also have a chance to send a team to an early career exploration training in September. Participation in that training will be tied to eligibility for Paxton Patterson Career Exploration Kit grants, which could provide additional hands-on experiences for our middle school students. Another theme of the meeting was targeted support in areas where we know there are gaps. A new Geometry Nexus collaborative will bring geometry teachers together across districts to align curriculum maps with standards, address the disconnect between current materials and the state assessment, and build a shared set of resources. Dyslexia support will expand through Level 2 screener training at Dawson Co-op and through on-site “What Every Educator Needs to Know About Dyslexia” sessions that districts can schedule. Coaching and mentoring opportunities will come through John Wink training for experienced teachers who support novices, and there will be additional literacy sessions, such as Strategic Reading Days for middle school teachers. Our next steps as a district are straightforward. We will identify staff who still need RISE or other required training and help them register at available sites. We will ensure that pre-educator pathway teachers are signed up for both summer sessions and that we have appropriate teams registered for early career exploration training so we remain eligible for grant opportunities. We will also continue to monitor the co-op professional development offerings, paying attention to both the updated and the canceled sessions, so that our staff receives accurate information as they make summer plans. Finally, please take a few minutes to complete the DMESC user satisfaction survey for this year if you have not already done so. Anyone in our district who uses the co-op in any capacity is invited to respond. Your feedback directly shapes the services and professional learning that DMESC provides in the future, and it is an important way to make sure that support remains aligned to the work you are doing every day. Looking Ahead As we move into next week, please keep a close eye on the same core levers that have served us well all year. Daily attendance, both for students and adults. A calm, predictable approach to behavior and classroom expectations. Strong Tier One instruction that uses the time we have with students very well. When those pieces are in place, the rest of our work has a solid foundation. If you have not yet logged into LEA Insights to review your rosters, next week is a good week to begin. A few focused minutes now will save you stress later and will help us avoid last-minute corrections at the end of the window. … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

    • Transcript
Showing 1–20 of 29 episodes