Appreciating teamwork from our schools and community

As the 2018 school year ends, I want to first emphasize my appreciation for our educators. Our school system relies on a variety of teachers and mentors who support students in our classrooms and beyond — everyone who plays a role and works tirelessly for the benefit of our students. This is the most important part of who we are as a school district and what we do. I am grateful and appreciate that the Whitefish community and our board of trustees recognize the value of our educators.

Being an educator is a vocation. It is a life’s work for the people who choose this path because of their love for children. Our nation often does not perceive the full value that our educators bring to the world. All of our educators in Whitefish Schools work tirelessly beyond the classroom and each school day to enrich students’ lives.

The support from our community shines with the efforts from our family involvement team, booster club, education foundation, coaches, local community groups, service organizations, and the businesses that support our schools as we provide the foundation for innovative and meaningful learning. Thank you for all you do for our schools and community.

We began the school year with a cyber terror event that closed schools for nearly a week. Whitefish and our partner school districts came together, worked together, and learned together to support one another in difficult times.

Directly after the cyber terror situation tested our strength, our community passed a bond issue to build the new Muldown Elementary School. With the many years of work that have gone into this forward-thinking initiative, I celebrate this as a critical accomplishment for the school year. There is still much work to be done!

The grand opening of the Center for Sustainability and Entrepreneurship is another example of great things that happen as our community and schools work together as a team. The Whitefish community is a national example of extraordinary efforts for our children in so many areas.

To the graduates who now embark on the next chapter of their life, I encourage you to think creatively and have fun at whatever you do in the future. There are so many opportunities that wait — ones that we are not even aware of yet. New prospects for careers and learning are opening up every single day.

Although these times can be challenging, it’s also a particularly exciting age to be young and to be part of a quickly changing world. Our focus on entrepreneurship is an area where we are doing good work and we will continue to create opportunities for students to work toward jobs that don’t feel like “work,” but instead are exciting, challenging, and engaging.

Computer science, coding, entrepreneurship and more will continue to be at the forefront of our expanding curriculum. We will continue to give our students opportunities to be creative, invent, and learn how things work in a new ways.

I appreciate the work we are doing to come together as a community on ideas, issues, and shared problem solving. Relationships are the key on a local, national, and global level. Compassion, open-mindedness, acceptance, and kindness must remain at the forefront of our focus.

Thank you for the positive energy and support of the Whitefish community throughout the school year. Our teams and relationships are helping to create opportunity and growth in students’ lives, and a great future for all of us.

Heather Davis Schmidt is the superintendent of the Whitefish School District.