Spring has finally arrived in the Northwest, and that means graduations are around the corner.<\/p>\n
This year, the Kent School District will see more than 1,600 young adults walk across the stage to receive their diplomas, and walk straight into their futures.<\/p>\n
Our primary goal is to prepare all students to be college and career ready, with a knowledge of the many options before them and the confidence to face the challenges along life’s journey.<\/p>\n
Of course, our school district as a whole is also on a journey. In my past notes to you, we have explored the rich diversity of our school district, and the 150-year-long march to equity and quality services that this community has provided. We are on a continuous financial journey as well. Another goal is to focus our best efforts to maximize the resources available to provide the best possible educational experience for each and every student.<\/p>\n
In my last message, I wrote about the spending and hiring freeze necessitated by lower than anticipated revenues and escalating costs. Since implementing these cost-saving measures, we have experienced significant reductions in both our operational and personnel expenditures. In fact, after the first two weeks of May, operational expenditures are below $1.3 million from the same period last year. This is a big step in the right direction and our efforts are making a difference. If we stay true to this path, we can anticipate being on a more solid financial footing in the future.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the future, in my next message I will be highlighting some of the incredible young people as they take part in our upcoming graduations and prepare for greeting life’s challenges with a smile and a determination to make things better.<\/p>\n
I look forward to keeping you updated on all things KSD.<\/p>\n
Calvin Watts is superintendent of the Kent School District.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spring has finally arrived in the Northwest, and that means graduations are around the corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-28799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28799"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}