Dear SSD Families and Community Members,

I hope this update finds each of you doing well. I am full of hope as we move later into winter and head toward warmer spring weather. We just started the second half of the school year, and there is a lot of information to share with you. Wonderful things are happening for our students in each of our schools and our school district.

First, a couple of our winter athletic teams are engaged in post-season competition that is taking place on Saturday, February 15th. Twelve wrestlers from Sultan High School will travel to Chief Sealth High School in Seattle for a district competition. The competition begins at 9:45 am. Girls Varsity Gymnastics will play at Nathan Hale High School at 10 am.. The Sultan High School girls varsity basketball will host Lindbergh High School at Sultan High at 1:00 pm. Also, in other exciting competition news, for the first time ever, the culinary arts program at Sultan High School will send four students to the Culinary Prostart invitational in Renton on March 1st. Our students will compete against students from Sumner, Spokane, and Bellevue.

One of our guiding philosophies is to remove barriers for our students and provide opportunities that spark curiosity and thinking while meeting a variety of student needs. Each year for the last several years we have added components to our Career and Technical Education Program (CTE) at Sultan High School. We are in the process of adding a heavy equipment simulator to our high school CTE program based on a grant written by CTE teacher Mr. Matt Widaman. The grant was submitted to a philanthropic organization named Foundry10 and we received $37,000 for a backhoe loader simulator. This is a great deal for our students! The goal is to have the simulator installed and operational by the last quarter of the current school year. We are excited for our students and committed to adding additional components to the simulator as we move forward. If you are curious as to what this simulator will do go to this link https://www.simlog.com/product/backhoe-loader-personal-simulator/.

When I think of creating great opportunities for our students, I have to mention Sultan Middle School and the Venture Out program. The program was developed by Kim Gilreath, Assistant Principal, and Allison Kelly who teaches PE at Sultan Middle School. Students who are participating will have the opportunity to go hiking or climbing, skiing at Stevens Pass, and mountain biking. You can click on the previous links to learn more about each aspect of the program. In addition to the vision of Ms. Kim Gilreath and Ms. Allison Kelley, we could not have done this if it wasn't for the generosity of Stevens Pass Ski Area which donated about $50,000 worth of services and rental equipment for the skiing portion of the program and Outdoor Adventure Center owned and operated by Mr. Blair Corson that donated mountain bikes to the program.

We have received several grants to date that will benefit our students and schools. We are in the process of replacing all indoor and outdoor lighting at Sultan High School and Sultan Middle School because of a $305,000 grant we received from the Department of Commerce. There is an additional $178,000 rebate available from the PUD that will further enhance this grant and upgrades to lighting at the middle school and high school. One of the main features of LED lighting is that it is much more efficient and can dim indoor lights as natural sunlight comes in through windows.

Finally, if you would like to see where we are regarding the projects that were part of the 2022 Capital levy go to the following link 2022-2026 Capital Levy to find a list of projects that have been completed in the left column. In the column on the right side of the page is the schedule for upcoming projects. When you scroll down further, you will come to a section called Project Details and this is here where you will find a list of all projects and which ones are complete. When you select one of the projects that have been completed you will see a tab that reads cost supportive documents. When you click on the cost supportive documents tab you will find the receipts of the project which can be compared to the project budget.