Bearcat Wrap-up Podcast

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 using, students practice the same skills in two places, and that is what speeds up their growth.

Then narrow your focus to the students who need it most. Our students still scoring at Levels 1 and 2 on ATLAS are where the most growth is possible, and they are the students our report card points us toward. Name those students or groups on your form. Plan for how you will reach them often. Then keep the evidence in the Educator Effectiveness System as you go, so you are not trying to rebuild it at the end of the year. Filing the form still declares intent and does not guarantee merit pay. A clear, focused plan built with your core teachers gives your work its best chance to show up in the data.

Closing Celebrations

Homecoming ended the right way. In front of a packed Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium, our Bearcats opened conference play with a 38–31 win over Waldron, and the crowd that showed up for the 1976 State Championship Team and our Homecoming Court got a game worth remembering. Tonight, the Bearcats are back at home against an unbeaten Booneville team with a 7:00 p.m. kickoff. Please come out and fill the stands again.

Last week, the University of Arkansas Office for Education Policy recognized our schools for high student growth. This week, it released a second set of awards called Beating the Odds. These awards recognize high-growth schools where at least two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Mena Middle School ranked fifth in the state for math growth among those schools and first in the Southwest region in both math and ELA growth. Louise Durham Elementary and Holly Harshman Elementary tied for second in the Southwest region for ELA growth. Growth like this does not come from easy circumstances. It comes from teachers who expect every student to learn and then make sure it happens.

Our Bearcat Golf team, fresh off its 4A Conference Championship and a Ladycat finishing in the state’s top 10, heads to the Boys’ 4A State Tournament in Harrison next week. Please keep them in your thoughts and cheer them on as they represent Mena on the state’s biggest stage.

Our other teams stayed busy on the road this week. In junior high football at Booneville, our junior Bearcats won a hard-fought game 15–8, and our seventh graders battled in a 14–0 loss. Both teams return home next Thursday to host Lamar. In tennis at Nashville, our Ladycats and Bearcats each won two of their four matches, with wins at the top singles and doubles spots and several players continuing to build winning records this season.

We also celebrate our newest inductees into the National Honor Society and the National English Honor Society. These students have earned recognition for their scholarship, character, and commitment, and that kind of achievement grows in classrooms where learning matters. Across our district, teachers are bringing meaningful, hands-on activities into their lessons and inviting guests from our community and from industry to show students how what they learn connects to life and work beyond school. Congratulations to our inductees and to the teachers and families who helped them get there.

October is Economic Education Month, and Economics Arkansas asks schools to help celebrate. Economists call economics the “science of decision-making,” and that fits: the average adult makes about 35,000 decisions a day, and teachers make about four decisions every minute of the instructional day. The goal is for our students to become informed decision-makers. Teachers can join free webinars, offered almost every day, and earn an hour of professional development credit plus a classroom resource. Details are on the EA Event Calendar. Students also have several competitions to choose from: the Youth Entrepreneurship Showcase for grades 5–8, the Picturing Economics art competition for grades K–12 with entries due December 18, and Lights, Camera, Save!, a video contest for ages 13–18 that runs through local banks.

This week in Mena Morphology Matters, our students studied lingua, meaning language or tongue. Next week’s root is sign, meaning mark. Our youngest students will meet it through sign and signature, our third through fifth graders in signature, our middle school students in significant, and our high school students in designation, with designate and signal available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students what makes something significant. It is a fitting root for this week. A signature on an intent form puts a plan on record, and the growth that plan produces is what makes the work significant.

It was a good week of careful planning 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

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 Growth in the Southwest region. Mena Middle School earned High Math Growth statewide, along with High Overall Growth, High Math Growth, and High ELA Growth in the Southwest region. Mena High School earned High Math Growth in the Southwest region, finishing in the top five in the region. Last week I wrote that reading growth is where our last points live. It is encouraging to see that our elementary campuses are already being recognized for exactly that.

Our athletes had a full week as well. Bearcat Golf hosted the 4A Conference Tournament at Glenwood Country Club and came away as 4A Conference Champions, taking the top two individual spots, while our Ladycats finished fourth. The Bearcats advance to the 4A State Tournament in Harrison on October 5 and 6, and one of our Ladycats qualified individually for the Girls State Tournament at Sage Meadows on September 28 and 29. Thank you to the golf families, volunteers, local supporters, and Glenwood Country Club for making that tournament possible. On the volleyball court, all three Ladycat teams beat Ozark on Tuesday, and our junior Ladycats followed with a 2–1 win over Hackett yesterday. In junior high football, our seventh graders beat Waldron 18–8, and our junior Bearcats won 32–0. In our tennis match at DeQueen, the Ladycats won both of their matches and the Bearcats split theirs.

A reminder that Monday, September 28, is a Teacher Professional Development Day, with no school for students.

This week in Mena Morphology Matters, our students studied phon, meaning sound. Next week’s root is lingua, meaning language or tongue. Our youngest students will meet it through speak and language, our third through fifth graders in language, our middle school students in linguistics, and our high school students in multilingual, with bilingual and linguist available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students how life would be different without language. After a week spent thinking about how we talk with families, it is a fitting root. Language is how trust gets built, one message and one phone call at a time.

It was a good week of homecoming 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 homecoming 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

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

There is no football game tonight. Our Bearcats are on a bye, so enjoy a rare open Friday evening, and we will be back at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium next Friday, September 25, for Homecoming and our conference opener against Waldron. The rest of our programs stayed busy this week. Our tennis teams had an outstanding Tuesday against Malvern, where our Bearcats swept all four matches. On the volleyball court, our junior Ladycats brought home a second-place finish from the Paris Tournament on Saturday.

One more piece of good news, and it lands squarely alongside our report card. The Arkansas Department of Education has selected Chelsea Johnson, our eighth-grade math and Algebra I teacher at Mena Middle School, for the Arkansas Excellence in Teaching Fellowship. Now in its second year, this nine-month paid fellowship recognizes teachers who earn merit pay and elevates public understanding of what great teaching looks like. Congratulations, Mrs. Johnson. That is a well-earned recognition, and it reflects on the whole department that works alongside you.

In Mena Morphology Matters, next week's root is phon, meaning sound. Our youngest students will meet it in sound (telephone), our third through fifth graders in telephone, our middle school students in microphone, and our high school students in symphony, with phonics, phonograph, and headphones available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students what would happen if people could not hear sound. We could not have picked a better root for the week this Wrap-up describes if we tried. Phonics sits right there in the middle of the word family, and phonics is exactly where the work on our lowest quartile begins. Before a student can grow in reading, that student has to be able to hear the sounds inside a word and match them to print. Our report card says reading growth for our students who are furthest behind is the last ground we have to cover. Next week our whole district will spend a week on a root that means sound. Let us make it count.

It was a good week of validation 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

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 bringing out the best of their talents.

In Mena Morphology Matters, our Week 5 root is graph, meaning “to write.” Our youngest students will meet it in autograph, our middle school students in paragraph, and our high school students in epigraph, with biography, graphic, and telegraph available across every grade band. It is a fitting root for a week built around documentation. A biography is a life written down, an autograph is a name written by the person who owns it, and an epigraph is a short writing at the beginning of a book, chapter, or building. Everything worth remembering eventually has to be written down, which is exactly the point of both the merit pay form and a well-planned unit.

It was a good week of post-Labor Day work 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

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 county line.

Reading the New Accountability Baseline

This year’s ATLAS results are a districtwide win, and they belong to you. Proficiency climbed in all three tested subjects. ELA rose to 50 percent, a gain of 10 points. Math rose to 54 percent, a gain of 8 points. Science rose to 52 percent, a gain of 8 points. Mena students now outperform the Arkansas state average in most tested grades and subjects. Our strongest gains showed up in early literacy and secondary math, with standouts such as 8th Grade Math sitting a full 32 points above the state and 1st Grade ELA 19 points above.

These numbers are not luck, and they are not a single-year bounce. They are broad, they are consistent across grade bands, and they line up directly with the instructional work we have been doing. Focusing on Tier I instruction, improving our intervention systems, and the shift toward stronger foundational reading are all showing up in the results. In other words, this is proof that what we have been doing is working.

At the same time, we are being honest with ourselves. We still have areas below the state average, and those are exactly where we are focusing our energy this year. Celebrating the growth and naming the gaps are how we increase our collective efficacy. Doing both is what keeps our momentum real.

Last year proved the approach works, so this is no time to coast on it. Let us keep the pace and Level Up. Staying locked in on the Academic Learning Descriptors (ALD) and moving every student toward Levels 3 and 4 for their grade is how we protect these gains and extend them. We do not rest on last year’s laurels. We build on them.

Preparing Students for What Comes Next

Our seniors are leaving prepared, and the readiness data is the part of this report we most enjoy sharing.

The Class of 2026 earned 64 Diplomas of Merit and Distinction out of roughly 112 seniors. Seventy-eight students completed a career pathway, finishing 103 pathways in total, led by Agricultural Power and Technical Systems, Nutrition Science and Dietetics, Welding, and Software Development. Sixty-one students earned industry certifications, ninety-six credentials in all, including OSHA-10, CyberPatriot Tech Support, ServSafe Food Handler, and CPR. Fifty-two students earned ACT WorkKeys certification. Our seniors also completed more than 580 concurrent and Advanced Placement credit hours, posted an average ACT composite of 20.6 against a state average of 18.6 and a national average of 19.4, and received $13.3 million in scholarship offers.

Closing Celebrations

It was another full week of competition across Mena Public Schools. Our golf teams put together one of the best weeks of the season. On Tuesday, the Bearcats and Ladycats traveled to Chamberlynne Country Club to face Two Rivers, Danville, and Perryville, and both squads came away victorious with a Bearcat medalist and a Ladycat medalist on the day. On Thursday, our golfers hosted Acorn, Mansfield, and Horatio at Ouachita Golf Course, where both Mena Black and Mena Red won their matches; our golfers claimed medalist honors in both rounds, and one of our Ladycats placed fourth overall among the girls. On the volleyball court, our junior high Ladycats defeated Baptist Prep in two straight sets at the Union Bank Center on Thursday, while our senior high Ladycats fell in four sets to a strong Baptist Prep team after taking one of them.

This was Polk County Fair week, and a great many of our students were right in the middle of it. Our FFA and 4-H members spent months feeding, grooming, and training animals for the show ring, and the work behind a single showmanship class is far larger than the few minutes the public sees. Our student art exhibits drew attention as well, and something is fitting about a week in which our students displayed both what they raised and what they created. Showing livestock and hanging your artwork in public both require the same thing, which is the willingness to let other people judge your work. That is real preparation for life, and we are proud of every student who entered something this year.

Our senior high Bearcats are on the road tonight at Mansfield with a seven o’clock kickoff, and we would love a strong showing of Bearcat fans making the trip. If you cannot make it, you can always watch it on Bearcat TV.

In Mena Morphology Matters, our Week 4 root is voc, meaning "call" or "voice." Students will encounter it in vocal, vocation, advocate, invoke, and evoke, and it is a fitting root for a week spent listening to what our own numbers say about us. A vocation is a calling, and I would argue that every person reading this has one.

It was a good week of building stamina at Mena Public Schools.

At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident.

Know our numbers, keep Leveling-Up, and have a great Labor Day 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

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

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 this week's Bearcat Word Detective Challenge and see how many vis words your student can uncover.

It was a good week of groundwork at Mena Public Schools.

At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident.

Continue 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

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 school supplies for students at Holly Harshman Elementary, and the volunteers, donors, and community partners who organized the No Sale Yardsale and Back to School Bash helped make sure our students walked into Week 1 ready to learn. Your time, generosity, and support mean more to our students and families than we can fully express.

We also want to celebrate the success of this year’s Summer Food Program. In partnership with Aramark, Mena Public Schools served over 70,000 meals this summer, and we thank every family who participated in making sure our students stayed healthy, learning, and ready for a strong start to the year.

On the athletics front, our tennis and golf teams have already opened their seasons, and football and volleyball are just days away. Bearcat football held its Red/Black Scrimmage this week at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium, with a scrimmage against Bismarck/Poteau set for Thursday, August 20th, and the season opener on Friday, August 28th at DeQueen. Good luck to all of our fall athletes as the season gets underway.

Our open houses this year were a great success! Check out the results of our Open House Parent Thought Exchange here. You are also invited to complete this Thought Exchange about our back-to-school professional development to provide your input as a Mena Schools employee.

It was a good week of beginnings at Mena Public Schools.

At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident.

We will do all of this again on Monday, so have a nice weekend!

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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

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 are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident.

Rest and prepare for a good, final week next week, 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