I'm excited to share that on Monday, July 8 we launched our summer learning programs serving students from preschool through high school. We have 128 students enrolled and we look forward to supporting their learning and growing over the next four weeks of the summer.

 

I also want to highlight that our Summer Meals Program is well underway and providing free meals to children in the community, so their families have continuous support throughout the summer. I especially want to thank all of our Food Service employees who routinely go above and beyond to ensure that our children are nourished on a daily basis.

 

Looking forward: On July 25, our high school sports orientation will be held. I also want to highlight that for our athletes, Choptank Community Health System will provide free physicals to make sure that all students have access to that — for which we're very appreciative of their partnership.

 

Additionally, during the week of July 29 to Aug. 1, our MakerSpace camp will be held cultivating ingenuity and creativity for our students and I look forward to visiting and seeing all the inventions of our students.

 

I also want to add that I had the pleasure of participating in local events recently such as the Rock Hall Fourth of July parade and the Miss Rock Hall pageant. And I particularly want to thank Mayor James Cook for his thoughtfulness to invite me to these events and the opportunity to get to meet the community.

 

The truth is I was frankly very inspired by the whole celebration in the community and I look forward to the upcoming fall festivals and Veterans Day parades. So again, thank you to Mayor James Cook for the invitation.

 

Additionally, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ron Fithian and Mr. Albert Nickerson, two of our county commissioners, and Sheriff Dennis Hickman as well as Del. Steven Arentz on July 4. And I naturally look forward to getting to know them and working with them on behalf of our community.

 

I just want to share with everyone I'm in the process of scheduling many individual and group meetings with community leaders and organizations and I am enjoying and I look forward to learning and listening more from our community leaders about where we are as a community and people's vision and aspirations for the future of our work together.

 

And then lastly, I just want to thank the Kent County Board of Education and the Kent County Public Schools team, who have given me a tremendously warm welcome in the last four days in the new opportunity here. So thank you everyone for helping me get off to a great start.