By Dr. Rickie Harris

The 2018-2019 school year has been a wonderful year for Team Mustang with numerous accomplishments by our students and staff. There is much to celebrate!

At the start of the school year, we welcomed West Orange-Stark Middle School students back to a newly renovated building. Our students enjoyed a fully functioning campus this year, as opposed to previous year limitations that resulted from Hurricane Harvey and the loss of half of the capacity of the campus.

In November, the community entrusted West Orange-Cove CISD with $26.75 million in bond revenue to make significant updates and improvements within the district. In many of my previous Orange Leader columns, I shared the projects associated with this bond, our timeline, and project updates. The Board of Trustees, the students and the staff of WOCCISD, and I are eternally grateful for the resources that have been afforded to us by our stakeholders.

As always, we are so proud of all of our student accomplishments this year from All-State academic awards to All-State athletic awards, to All-State fine art awards, and too many others to list. I also want to acknowledge the hard work that our staff has done during the year to ensure that our students had an excellent educational experience. This includes the transportation department, which worked understaffed; but transported our students from school to home to extracurricular activities safely and with a smile. It also includes our custodial and cafeteria staffs who made sure that our campuses met student needs.  Our wonderful teachers and administrators, additionally, led our students in achieving their academic goals.

It has been a great year! We faced obstacles; but, as Mustangs always do, we overcame them to become better and/or stronger.

In the remaining two weeks of the 2018-2019 school year, our campuses will host the end of year activities. Listed below are some of our larger events. Campus website calendars (www.woccisd.net) list additional programs. We welcome you to attend and show your support of our Mustangs and Stallions!

Sunday, May 19

– Baccalaureate, First Baptist Church of Orange, 7637 MLK Dr., Orange, 6 p.m.

Tuesday, May 21

– North Early Learning Center Transition Ceremonies, 8:30 & 10:30 a.m.

Wednesday, May 22

– North Early Learning Center Transition Ceremony, 9:30 a.m.

Friday, May 24

– WOS Class of 2019 Graduation Walk of Campuses, 8:45 a.m.

Tuesday, May 28

– WOCCISD Retirement and Employee/Teacher of the Year Dinner, ESC Atrium, 6:30 p.m.

Thursday, May 30

– 8th Grade Night of Champions, WOS Middle School, 6:30 p.m.

Friday, May 31

– WOS Elementary 5th Grade Celebration, 9 a.m.

– Graduation, 6 p.m.

We believe in John Maxwell’s philosophy that “One is too small a number to achieve greatness.”

Go Mustangs!

Dr. Rickie R. Harris is the Superintendent at West Orange – Cove CISD.