Idell Biles: Volunteers, You show up strong. You show you care.

Roy Samras: We're not teachers or we're not teachers aides, but we're mentors.

Rhonda Harting: We have about four core volunteers and maybe a dozen volunteers we can call on at any moment that are more than happy to come up to school to lend a helping hand.

Jeff Dawsey: My big thing is I mentor at lunchrooms.

Ken Slats: Jeff Dawsey is a pastor at Compassion Christian Church and one of SCCPSS's valuable volunteers.

Jeff Dawsey: And so I am talking to students just trying to be a presence. And then I do whatever I can to support staff.

Roy Samras: We establish a one on one friendship and a relationship with these students.

Idell Biles: A smile, a word, a guiding light. You help our students reach new heights.

Tameka Tribble:  We have our volunteers who come for their students in our school.

Roger Moss: Thank you. We can't do this without from helping us with our literacy campaign to mentoring, to just being you. Are these essential? You are essential players in our students education.

Idell Biles: So here's our thanks sincere and true for all the countless things that you do.

Roy Samras: It's so important because that's what drives our society. That drives our economics, our art, our social interaction. It drives all of that. And it's so important for people to be, well educated and especially to read.

Kurt Hetager: You represent so many wonderful individuals who understand what commitment means. To understand what your time with a child means and how that can change a child's life.

Ken Slats: And that volunteer time well spent also instills a thirst for our youth to help out as well.

Rhonda Harting: They always ask how they can help. How can I help set up? Can I come after? I want to donate. I want to fundraise. I want to provide a bear to the children in the hospital. They are constantly expressing their wishes on how they can make the community better.

Jeff Dawsey: My hope is that we will multiply by a thousand, you know, and to flood these schools to have, you know, mentors for all these 35,000 students and support for the 5000 educators and support staff.

Idell Biles: SCCPSS shines bright because of you. Thank you. Please stand and give yourselves a round of applause.

Ken Slats: Kudos to all our SCCPSS valuable volunteers. I'm Ken Slats reporting.
 

Announcer: We welcome Antoinette Flournoy.

Ken Slats: The dean of our local retirees. Miss Flournoy dedicated 39 years as a kindergarten paraprofessional. Her last SCCPSS stop at Marshpoint Elementary School.

Antoinette Flournoy: It's just the kids and just enjoying themselves when they learn new things. The excitement and the joy. I love it. I've always worked with kids, even before working with the board.

Ken Slats: Miss Flournoy wasn't the only retiree working for more than three decades with the district, each with a similar passion.

Gwendolyn Williams-Walker: The kids. It's most definitely. I'm a mother. I'm a grandmother. Okay. So, naturally, you know, I felt like the kids were my kids. So I like to interact with them. I like to listen to them and sometimes, you know, you go and you talk to a child and find out they just need a friend. They need a buddy, and they need somebody to believe in them.

Kathleen Taylor: The relationships you build with the children are everything to the culture of your classroom.

Announcer: This administrator with 35 years of service, ladies and gentlemen, Kathleen Taylor.

Kathleen Taylor: Obviously it's the children that keep you going, but it's also the people you work with. The culture of the school is important to me. And so what you build with those people who you're with, what you create together and how you work with one another. And so I don't really consider myself the only leader of the school like we do it as a team.

Dr. Denise Watts: Your legacy is not only in the years you served, it is in the students who learned more because of you. The colleagues who grew stronger because of you, the families who trusted you, and the schools and departments that are better because you showed up with commitment, care and excellence.

Ken Slats: A toast to all those who are now officially off the clock. We thank you for your dedication to SCCPSS. At the annual retirement ceremony, I'm Ken Slats.
 

Molly Lieberman: Reading is such an adventure. You can go anywhere in the world. You can experience things you never get to experience  when you read a book.

Dr. Tonia Howard-Hall: You know that there is power in reading. There is power and writing, and there is power in speaking.

Ken Slats: And that power was flexing at Books, Blankets, and Family Fun..

Janard Murray: I saw Spider-Man and Captain America, and we've been doing some games. There was a basketball hoop and there was a Nerf gun, and you had to shoot down the towers. And they also gave us these, free shades.

Ken Slats: Certainly a bright day at Daffin Park, all centered around our North Star, literacy.

Kim Gusby: And you better get to class, throwing her bag over her shoulder.

Janard Murray: I love rereading because I like to read comic books.

Ken Slats: Which favorite comic?

Janard Murray: I don't know, I have a lot of. I read a lot, and, I like I like books and I like superheroes.

Aliyah Patrice: Dork Diaries.

Ken Slats: What do you like that book?

Aliyah Patrice: Because it's like it's a girl. Though she expressed my feelings, I like to express my feelings. So every time when I read a book I feel confident.

Molly Lieberman: Reading just opens up the whole world, doesn't it? You know, there's very few things in life that don't involve reading. So when you learn to read, you're opening the gates to countless exciting adventures that you can have throughout life, and then just really practical things that it's so much easier to navigate the world.

Ken Slats: Reading, writing, arithmetic, century old staples. The core expanded at SCCPSS.

Dr. Angie Lewis: Our focus is to serve the whole channel, not just testing, not just what they get in the classroom. We want them to know education expands beyond the four walls of a classroom. So by offering opportunities for them to come out and have fun, to let them know that education is really fun. And we find out that when students have fun and learn, they retain it, they keep it and they grow.

Ken Slats: That growth starts with literacy. A little advice, maybe.

Janard Murray: I tell them that that they have to push themselves to do better, and if they don't know how to read, they then can possibly find a tutor.

Aliyah Patrice: I'll tell them that they need to read is very important because if you don't read, you can't be good in life, so you really need to read a lot. So you can learn words.

Students: Read on.

Ken Slats: At the 2026 Books, Blankets and Family Fun event, I'm Ken Slats.