Lately I’ve had a good reason to be extremely grateful. After several years of planning, design, construction, and preparation, BWSD’s newest school, R. A. Lutz Elementary (LES), opened on January 8 to welcome its first classes of students. This momentous occasion would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of hundreds of people, including administrators, faculty, staff. school board members, architects, designers, contractors, vendors, and our entire District community.
Throughout this process, I have had countless opportunities to say “thank you” to everyone involved in making our vision of a new, state-of-the-art school become a reality. And every time I say “thank you,” it helps reinforce a fundamental lesson: gratitude is our reminder that none of us succeeds alone.
Building a school is obviously something no one person could do by themselves. Being grateful for the various contributions made by so many helps remind us that every school’s success is truly a community effort. But even our smaller successes in life are still the result of many different people’s contributions to our accomplishments — and each of them deserve our gratitude.
For example, as students, our classmates and teachers help us succeed academically. At work, our coworkers and managers help us advance in our careers. And when it comes to parenting, the examples and advice we learn from our friends and relatives undoubtedly influences our own choices.
This is why it’s so important to say “thank you” along the way. The people who have helped us deserve to be recognized and appreciated. Likewise, as parents, our children also need to see that we are comfortable and grateful in acknowledging just how helpful the people in our lives have been. This doesn’t mean we can’t be proud of what we accomplish; it simply means we should let those who helped us reach that goal know that we appreciate them.
In that spirit, I would like to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to everyone whose work over the past several years has helped make LES possible, including those who supported the first day of classes on January 8 and those who attended the school’s Grand Opening Ceremony on January 13. Reaching this point would not have been possible without you, and I cannot wait to see how our District grows from here. In fact, we have lots of great work planned for each of our other schools over the next few years, which means we will have countless more opportunities to say “thank you” — and I look forward to each and every one.