March 26, 2025 • 16 mins
Brett McCrery joined the show to talk about the new extracurricular department that offers students lots of activities for participation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We go. Joining me in studio today is Brett McCreary
with the Marion City Schools. And I'm not going to
kind of get into what Brett does. I'm going to
let him tell you a little bit about it. But
it's a brand new initiative that started not too long
ago in the Marion City Schools and Brett has stepped
up to take this challenge and really do something fun
(00:23):
and unique and different with our kids to get them
more engaged. Brett. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Appreciate you coming in today.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thanks Paul, I really appreciate the opportunity to come in
and kind of promote some of the great stuff that's
happening in the city schools.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Well, right off the bat, tell everybody what Prexy Youth
Athletics and Activities is.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
No, I appreciate that. So the PYAA right. Prexy Youth
Athletics and Activities is a program that was developed as
a product of the Board of Education's desire to emphasize
the importance of extracurriculars. Okay, we understand full well. I
know the Board really, you know, believes very strongly in
(01:03):
the power of extracurriculars. And the opportunity that they can
provide students outside the classroom and the education of the
whole child. And so that's something that they've really bought into.
And I was lucky enough, after twenty five years in
a high school classroom, to be offered a position in
this department, and in the process of that, have developed
(01:24):
with the rest of our team, our extracurricular team, this
p YAA, which is essentially an organization, if you will,
inside our department, meant to provide for kindergarten through sixth
grade and in some instances pre K students an opportunity
to engage in extracurriculars. And that's not just athletics. Right.
(01:46):
Sports have been a big part of my life. I
know they're a big part of your life, but it's
not all about sports. We want to meet kids where
they are. We want to engage them in the things
that they're interested in or possibly interested in, and so
we've really made an effort to expand our programming, not
only in athletics, but also in activities.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right. And you know, I think we all know and
you and I talked a little bit about this experience
in our own families. When you find your people. When
you find your thing, it changes your entire perspective and
you can become a new person, the person you were
meant to be. And when I look down this list
of the youth activities, you get everything that you're used to,
(02:25):
all the sports that you see and everybody talks about.
But then you have archery, and then you have prexy planteers,
then you have computer coating and chess club and cardio drumming.
It's really anything and everything that somebody could possibly think about.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, it's really been exciting for me in this role
to I tell our staff all the time. Our staff
is fantastic. Our teaching staff is great, and they've really
stepped up to the plate to provide advisory roles in
the creation of these clubs. And I tell them, when
we kind of started this, it was all about their passion.
What is it that they are passion about. Teachers are
(03:03):
kids kid magnets. Absolutely, they absolutely are. And so if
there is a teacher that has a passion about something
in particular, we have teachers in our district, as you mentioned,
who are passionate about a whole host of things, all
kinds of interesting things, and the kids say, you know what,
I just want to be with Missus Pickens, And I
may not know anything about chess, but I just love
(03:25):
being with Missus Pickens at Hayes and so as a result,
I'm going to sign up for the chess club. And
what we've seen is that students that are engaged in
these extracurriculars are performing better and they're showing up more often.
There was a quick story, if you don't mind, I'd
like to share at the beginning of this experiment, if
you will, that the Board of Education has really devoted
(03:48):
itself to the in the development of the department. What
happened was I was Sean Kerns's assistant athletic director for
a number of years and Shawn is now our director,
our K through twelve extracurricular director, and in the process
of developing this he looked at the top fifty graduates
(04:09):
of Harding High School last year. So Harding High School
graduated one hundred and eighty four students last year, which
is a bit surprising. It's not as big as we
all remember. It to one hundred and eighty four students,
and of the top fifty graduates, every single one of
those top fifty graduates was engaged in at least one
extracurricular whether it be sports, whether it be music, art club,
(04:32):
any number of the clubs that the high schools offer.
Then we took a look at the bottom fifty graduates.
Now these are still graduates. We're very proud of them
and the fact that they accomplished what they needed to,
but they found themselves the bottom fifty grade point average
wise in that one hundred and eighty four, and of
that bottom fifty we were over not a single one
(04:54):
of those bottom fifty were engaged in extracurriculars. And so
we realized that in order to meet our students where
they are and to provide the education that we believe
is best for the whole child, we want to provide
as many opportunities in extracurriculars as we can. And so
that really drove what our goal was. And so, just
as you mentioned, when you find your people right, it
(05:15):
makes you want to come to school, It makes you
want to be around people of like interest, It gives
you an opportunity to see your teacher in a different light. Right,
it's not a place where a child goes to school
and they're told that they're not enough. It doesn't have
to be a place where they go to be corrected
in their behavior all the time, or to be told
(05:35):
they're not smart enough, or or to be reminded that
they're less than or anything of that nature. Instead, what
extracurriculars and the opportunity and extracurriculars can provide for them
is a great experience at and with their school. So
as much as we want to improve attendance and we
want to improve performance, because we all want that for
(05:56):
our children, we want as much as anything to the
relationship that our families and our students have with their school,
we want it to be a positive place for them
to come. We want it to be a great experience
for them, because if they value education in that way,
they'll take it more serious as they get older, and
then we hope generationally, as they have children and grandchildren,
(06:18):
that they see their experience in school as a positive
and they will reinforce that with their own children generationally.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I love that. I mean, you talk about better attendance,
better performance, better attitudes at school and education, better behavior,
and that's because they're engaged correct.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
That's exactly right now. Anytime a student feels valued and
believe strongly that the school offers them something. They're going
to engage in the educational experience better and more faithfully
and with with their whole energy and their whole heart.
(06:58):
And that's what we want. We want. We want school
to be a place for them to go where they
can enjoy and engage in things, not only that are important.
The academics obviously are. We don't need to say how
important academics are, but if we can support them. As
I told you before we started recording here today, we
said that frankly, we don't care why they come to school,
(07:19):
right right. We want to get them to school because
we know we have a fantastic teaching staff and incredible
teaching staff. It's going to teach them the three ares right,
They're going to know and get all they need academically.
But we want to get them there. We want to
get them there, get them their consistency, and we want
to get them there with a great attitude. And we
believe that ex curriculars can be the key that unlocks
(07:41):
that for them.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I mean, just looking down the list too, and you
talk about making an investment into this program, A lot
of these things don't probably require any real cost. I mean,
you've got a running club, you've got pickleball, we have courts,
and we're building more here in this town. The photography
club doesn't take a whole lot because you can take
pictures with your phone and every kid's got them, we know,
(08:04):
you know, the chess club, the comic book club, cross
stitch club. How awesome is that? Teaching kids to sew
and things like that. Again, it goes back to our youth.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, that's right, you know we again it boiled down
originally every one of these clubs that you see on
this this little list we've provided, you know, just real
quick last year, just to give our listeners an opportunity
in our community, an opportunity to understand the we hope
the impact we hope we're making. Last year, there was
(08:34):
somewhere in the neighborhood of about ten programs. They were
all athletic, and they were all pretty much handled by
our varsity coaches. So they were camps or small little leagues,
things of that nature. The Board of Education for the
last several years has done a great job trying to
provide support for our youth programming athletically, but they hadn't
(08:56):
devoted the resources necessary to developing an apartment the way
they have recently, and we've seen great, great, great improvement
and great strides, and that is primarily the result of
our teachers and their buy in for their own passions.
Right when I took this job, and really one of
the great attractive things about this position when I decided
to take it was the fact that it had never
(09:17):
existed before. So there's something. It's something to building something
from scratch. It's really kind of exciting and it's been
a lot of fun. And I wondered to myself, Okay,
what am I going to do? Am I going to
survey the kids? What do they want to do? What
are they interested in? And I realized very quickly that
oftentimes kids have no idea what they're really interested in.
But because we need adults to advise these clubs, I
(09:40):
realized the key was finding what is it that the
adults are passionate in, Because, like I said, teachers are
kid magnets, and so they'll do things just because Miss
Jones is doing it right, and so as a result,
we get a wide variety of things. Got a wonderful
lady at McKinley Elementary miss Phillians who leading our cross
(10:00):
Stitch club, and that came strictly after a staff meeting
where I tried to kind of tell people who we
are and what we were trying to do. And she said,
you know what, my grandmother taught me how to cross stitch,
and I would love to share that with these kids.
And I said, yes, let's do it. That's that's one
of the neat things about my job. I'm I'm the
yes guy. Yeah, you know. They invite me into their
then their buildings, and I go and I meet with
(10:21):
them and they say, you know what I'd like to do.
I'd like to start a club. And I get to
tell them, yes, let's do it, and any any anywhere
I can go, anybody I can talk to. It's one
of the reasons I'm here today. I spoke at our rotary. Locally,
I've I've Heidi Jones and the Chamber of Commerce has
been incredibly supportive of me, and a lot of people
(10:42):
have been incredibly supportive of what we're trying to do
with the extracurricular department, and as a result, it's given
me an opportunity to kind of engage the community, right
And that's been really fun, a really interesting and fun
part of my job because it reinforces what we're doing.
The commune munity has given us tremendous support and believes
wholeheartedly in the power of extracurriculars. And that's why I'm
(11:04):
so thankful that the Board of Education devoted themselves to this.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I love it. We've got Brett McCrary with us from
the Marion City Schools talking about the Prexy Youth Athletics
and Activities program that he is the coordinator of. And Brett,
I got to ask you what you talk about the
community and how important it is. How can the community
help to make these programs grow or add programs or
(11:28):
enrich what the kids are doing.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No, that's a really great question, Paul. I'm glad you
said something. What I've done is I have reached out
to a number of different community partners like Rotary, Chamber
of Commerce, Ohio State University, Maryon Tech, some other partners,
and encouraged anybody, literally, any adult and any listener here
(11:52):
today who is interested in engaging Marion Cities youth. Right.
I've I'm very, very very lucky in that my long
career with the Marion ski City schools has given me
an opportunity to engage in what I believe is the
most rewarding of professions. And I think the same thing
is true of community members who are interested in giving back. Right.
(12:17):
I don't know that anybody can be as intrinsically rewarded
in the act of giving back to a community than
when you give or when you work with young people.
It's incredibly rewarding, So anybody who wants to engage. We've
had a couple of community partners, some of you might
(12:37):
know Nicole Workman. Nicole is a wonderful lady who after
I had an opportunity to meet with Heidi Jones of
the Chamber, she said, you know what, I would love
to do something with you, and so we set her
up at Garfield Elementary and she has and is running
the Garfield gab which is a what amounts to a
(12:57):
student newspaper, which is digitally and the kids are learning
how to use canva and they are going around and
reporting the good news that's happening at Garfield Elementary. It's
been incredibly rewarding for those students and certainly for Nicole,
who is just a community member who wants to give back,
and so we have a couple of other people who
(13:18):
are very similarly motivated, and we are always open. Last year,
like I said, we had ten programs or somewhere in
the neighborhood of about ten athletic based programs. Now we're
well up over forty programs in the Marion City schools
and we want to grow. I'd love to have ten
clubs at every elementary if we can, so, Like I said,
(13:39):
I'm the yes guy. Typically, anybody that's interested, you can
find flyers online, QR codes to volunteer, to volunteer forms,
any of those things. You can also contact us at
the extracurricular office. Is it okay if I give the
phone number? Yeah, definitely seven to four zero two two
(14:01):
three three seven six eight. So, anybody that's interested out
there in our community and maybe starting a club, giving
a little bit of yourself and your time and sharing
your passion with students, We're open to it, and we
want to talk about it, and we want to give
you the opportunity to engage our kids in a positive
(14:21):
way and to do it. Within the Marion City school.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Over seven hundred kids just in the elementary age are
engaged in the programs. That's got to be exciting.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, it's very very exciting. And that number, Paul, I'm
happy to say has increased even more well, up over
eight hundred now in just the K through five. If
you go K through six, we're well over nine hundred
students have engaged in PYA programming that's either athletics or
(14:52):
or activities. That's thirty seven percent of our student body
K through six are directly involved in PYA program and
that's something that didn't even exist last year. So we're
very excited about that. We've got over fifteen hundred and
sixty what I like to call points of participation, meaning
that of that nine hundred and sixteen, many of them
are doing multiple activities. They're not just doing one thing,
(15:15):
so they're engaged over and over and over again and again.
That is our goal is to engage these kids, to
meet them where they are, to do things that aren't
necessarily traditional. There's a lot of kids out there that
have no interest or have no aptitude towards hitting a
ball or shooting a basket or anything of that nature.
So we've offered things like martial arts, archery, all the
(15:40):
other activities that we are doing again, computer science, coding,
three D printing of course, traditional art clubs and book
clubs and all those kind of things as well. So
we want to engage kids where they are.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, I think it's fantastic, Brett, great stuff. We've run
out of time, but thank you so much. Once again, Brett.
Tell everybody how they can reach out to you in
the organization if they are interested, go right ahead again.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Absolutely, thanks Paul. You can email me directly. My name
is Brett McQuary, it's B like my first name. McQuary
mc c r E r Y B mcquarie at mcspresidents
dot org, or you can call us seven four oh
two two three three seven six eight. I'd love to
(16:25):
talk to you. I'd love to see how we can
help you help us.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Thank you so much for being on the show. Great stuff,
and if you're interested, make sure you reach out and
take take note of what these kids are doing. Some
great stuff.
We go. Joining me in studio today is Brett McCreary
with the Marion City Schools. And I'm not going to
kind of get into what Brett does. I'm going to
let him tell you a little bit about it. But
it's a brand new initiative that started not too long
ago in the Marion City Schools and Brett has stepped
up to take this challenge and really do something fun
(00:23):
and unique and different with our kids to get them
more engaged. Brett. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Appreciate you coming in today.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thanks Paul, I really appreciate the opportunity to come in
and kind of promote some of the great stuff that's
happening in the city schools.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Well, right off the bat, tell everybody what Prexy Youth
Athletics and Activities is.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
No, I appreciate that. So the PYAA right. Prexy Youth
Athletics and Activities is a program that was developed as
a product of the Board of Education's desire to emphasize
the importance of extracurriculars. Okay, we understand full well. I
know the Board really, you know, believes very strongly in
(01:03):
the power of extracurriculars. And the opportunity that they can
provide students outside the classroom and the education of the
whole child. And so that's something that they've really bought into.
And I was lucky enough, after twenty five years in
a high school classroom, to be offered a position in
this department, and in the process of that, have developed
(01:24):
with the rest of our team, our extracurricular team, this
p YAA, which is essentially an organization, if you will,
inside our department, meant to provide for kindergarten through sixth
grade and in some instances pre K students an opportunity
to engage in extracurriculars. And that's not just athletics. Right.
(01:46):
Sports have been a big part of my life. I
know they're a big part of your life, but it's
not all about sports. We want to meet kids where
they are. We want to engage them in the things
that they're interested in or possibly interested in, and so
we've really made an effort to expand our programming, not
only in athletics, but also in activities.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right. And you know, I think we all know and
you and I talked a little bit about this experience
in our own families. When you find your people. When
you find your thing, it changes your entire perspective and
you can become a new person, the person you were
meant to be. And when I look down this list
of the youth activities, you get everything that you're used to,
(02:25):
all the sports that you see and everybody talks about.
But then you have archery, and then you have prexy planteers,
then you have computer coating and chess club and cardio drumming.
It's really anything and everything that somebody could possibly think about.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, it's really been exciting for me in this role
to I tell our staff all the time. Our staff
is fantastic. Our teaching staff is great, and they've really
stepped up to the plate to provide advisory roles in
the creation of these clubs. And I tell them, when
we kind of started this, it was all about their passion.
What is it that they are passion about. Teachers are
(03:03):
kids kid magnets. Absolutely, they absolutely are. And so if
there is a teacher that has a passion about something
in particular, we have teachers in our district, as you mentioned,
who are passionate about a whole host of things, all
kinds of interesting things, and the kids say, you know what,
I just want to be with Missus Pickens, And I
may not know anything about chess, but I just love
(03:25):
being with Missus Pickens at Hayes and so as a result,
I'm going to sign up for the chess club. And
what we've seen is that students that are engaged in
these extracurriculars are performing better and they're showing up more often.
There was a quick story, if you don't mind, I'd
like to share at the beginning of this experiment, if
you will, that the Board of Education has really devoted
(03:48):
itself to the in the development of the department. What
happened was I was Sean Kerns's assistant athletic director for
a number of years and Shawn is now our director,
our K through twelve extracurricular director, and in the process
of developing this he looked at the top fifty graduates
(04:09):
of Harding High School last year. So Harding High School
graduated one hundred and eighty four students last year, which
is a bit surprising. It's not as big as we
all remember. It to one hundred and eighty four students,
and of the top fifty graduates, every single one of
those top fifty graduates was engaged in at least one
extracurricular whether it be sports, whether it be music, art club,
(04:32):
any number of the clubs that the high schools offer.
Then we took a look at the bottom fifty graduates.
Now these are still graduates. We're very proud of them
and the fact that they accomplished what they needed to,
but they found themselves the bottom fifty grade point average
wise in that one hundred and eighty four, and of
that bottom fifty we were over not a single one
(04:54):
of those bottom fifty were engaged in extracurriculars. And so
we realized that in order to meet our students where
they are and to provide the education that we believe
is best for the whole child, we want to provide
as many opportunities in extracurriculars as we can. And so
that really drove what our goal was. And so, just
as you mentioned, when you find your people right, it
(05:15):
makes you want to come to school, It makes you
want to be around people of like interest, It gives
you an opportunity to see your teacher in a different light. Right,
it's not a place where a child goes to school
and they're told that they're not enough. It doesn't have
to be a place where they go to be corrected
in their behavior all the time, or to be told
(05:35):
they're not smart enough, or or to be reminded that
they're less than or anything of that nature. Instead, what
extracurriculars and the opportunity and extracurriculars can provide for them
is a great experience at and with their school. So
as much as we want to improve attendance and we
want to improve performance, because we all want that for
(05:56):
our children, we want as much as anything to the
relationship that our families and our students have with their school,
we want it to be a positive place for them
to come. We want it to be a great experience
for them, because if they value education in that way,
they'll take it more serious as they get older, and
then we hope generationally, as they have children and grandchildren,
(06:18):
that they see their experience in school as a positive
and they will reinforce that with their own children generationally.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I love that. I mean, you talk about better attendance,
better performance, better attitudes at school and education, better behavior,
and that's because they're engaged correct.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
That's exactly right now. Anytime a student feels valued and
believe strongly that the school offers them something. They're going
to engage in the educational experience better and more faithfully
and with with their whole energy and their whole heart.
(06:58):
And that's what we want. We want. We want school
to be a place for them to go where they
can enjoy and engage in things, not only that are important.
The academics obviously are. We don't need to say how
important academics are, but if we can support them. As
I told you before we started recording here today, we
said that frankly, we don't care why they come to school,
(07:19):
right right. We want to get them to school because
we know we have a fantastic teaching staff and incredible
teaching staff. It's going to teach them the three ares right,
They're going to know and get all they need academically.
But we want to get them there. We want to
get them there, get them their consistency, and we want
to get them there with a great attitude. And we
believe that ex curriculars can be the key that unlocks
(07:41):
that for them.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I mean, just looking down the list too, and you
talk about making an investment into this program, A lot
of these things don't probably require any real cost. I mean,
you've got a running club, you've got pickleball, we have courts,
and we're building more here in this town. The photography
club doesn't take a whole lot because you can take
pictures with your phone and every kid's got them, we know,
(08:04):
you know, the chess club, the comic book club, cross
stitch club. How awesome is that? Teaching kids to sew
and things like that. Again, it goes back to our youth.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, that's right, you know we again it boiled down
originally every one of these clubs that you see on
this this little list we've provided, you know, just real
quick last year, just to give our listeners an opportunity
in our community, an opportunity to understand the we hope
the impact we hope we're making. Last year, there was
(08:34):
somewhere in the neighborhood of about ten programs. They were
all athletic, and they were all pretty much handled by
our varsity coaches. So they were camps or small little leagues,
things of that nature. The Board of Education for the
last several years has done a great job trying to
provide support for our youth programming athletically, but they hadn't
(08:56):
devoted the resources necessary to developing an apartment the way
they have recently, and we've seen great, great, great improvement
and great strides, and that is primarily the result of
our teachers and their buy in for their own passions.
Right when I took this job, and really one of
the great attractive things about this position when I decided
to take it was the fact that it had never
(09:17):
existed before. So there's something. It's something to building something
from scratch. It's really kind of exciting and it's been
a lot of fun. And I wondered to myself, Okay,
what am I going to do? Am I going to
survey the kids? What do they want to do? What
are they interested in? And I realized very quickly that
oftentimes kids have no idea what they're really interested in.
But because we need adults to advise these clubs, I
(09:40):
realized the key was finding what is it that the
adults are passionate in, Because, like I said, teachers are
kid magnets, and so they'll do things just because Miss
Jones is doing it right, and so as a result,
we get a wide variety of things. Got a wonderful
lady at McKinley Elementary miss Phillians who leading our cross
(10:00):
Stitch club, and that came strictly after a staff meeting
where I tried to kind of tell people who we
are and what we were trying to do. And she said,
you know what, my grandmother taught me how to cross stitch,
and I would love to share that with these kids.
And I said, yes, let's do it. That's that's one
of the neat things about my job. I'm I'm the
yes guy. Yeah, you know. They invite me into their
then their buildings, and I go and I meet with
(10:21):
them and they say, you know what I'd like to do.
I'd like to start a club. And I get to
tell them, yes, let's do it, and any any anywhere
I can go, anybody I can talk to. It's one
of the reasons I'm here today. I spoke at our rotary. Locally,
I've I've Heidi Jones and the Chamber of Commerce has
been incredibly supportive of me, and a lot of people
(10:42):
have been incredibly supportive of what we're trying to do
with the extracurricular department, and as a result, it's given
me an opportunity to kind of engage the community, right
And that's been really fun, a really interesting and fun
part of my job because it reinforces what we're doing.
The commune munity has given us tremendous support and believes
wholeheartedly in the power of extracurriculars. And that's why I'm
(11:04):
so thankful that the Board of Education devoted themselves to this.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I love it. We've got Brett McCrary with us from
the Marion City Schools talking about the Prexy Youth Athletics
and Activities program that he is the coordinator of. And Brett,
I got to ask you what you talk about the
community and how important it is. How can the community
help to make these programs grow or add programs or
(11:28):
enrich what the kids are doing.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No, that's a really great question, Paul. I'm glad you
said something. What I've done is I have reached out
to a number of different community partners like Rotary, Chamber
of Commerce, Ohio State University, Maryon Tech, some other partners,
and encouraged anybody, literally, any adult and any listener here
(11:52):
today who is interested in engaging Marion Cities youth. Right.
I've I'm very, very very lucky in that my long
career with the Marion ski City schools has given me
an opportunity to engage in what I believe is the
most rewarding of professions. And I think the same thing
is true of community members who are interested in giving back. Right.
(12:17):
I don't know that anybody can be as intrinsically rewarded
in the act of giving back to a community than
when you give or when you work with young people.
It's incredibly rewarding, So anybody who wants to engage. We've
had a couple of community partners, some of you might
(12:37):
know Nicole Workman. Nicole is a wonderful lady who after
I had an opportunity to meet with Heidi Jones of
the Chamber, she said, you know what, I would love
to do something with you, and so we set her
up at Garfield Elementary and she has and is running
the Garfield gab which is a what amounts to a
(12:57):
student newspaper, which is digitally and the kids are learning
how to use canva and they are going around and
reporting the good news that's happening at Garfield Elementary. It's
been incredibly rewarding for those students and certainly for Nicole,
who is just a community member who wants to give back,
and so we have a couple of other people who
(13:18):
are very similarly motivated, and we are always open. Last year,
like I said, we had ten programs or somewhere in
the neighborhood of about ten athletic based programs. Now we're
well up over forty programs in the Marion City schools
and we want to grow. I'd love to have ten
clubs at every elementary if we can, so, Like I said,
(13:39):
I'm the yes guy. Typically, anybody that's interested, you can
find flyers online, QR codes to volunteer, to volunteer forms,
any of those things. You can also contact us at
the extracurricular office. Is it okay if I give the
phone number? Yeah, definitely seven to four zero two two
(14:01):
three three seven six eight. So, anybody that's interested out
there in our community and maybe starting a club, giving
a little bit of yourself and your time and sharing
your passion with students, We're open to it, and we
want to talk about it, and we want to give
you the opportunity to engage our kids in a positive
(14:21):
way and to do it. Within the Marion City school.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Over seven hundred kids just in the elementary age are
engaged in the programs. That's got to be exciting.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, it's very very exciting. And that number, Paul, I'm
happy to say has increased even more well, up over
eight hundred now in just the K through five. If
you go K through six, we're well over nine hundred
students have engaged in PYA programming that's either athletics or
(14:52):
or activities. That's thirty seven percent of our student body
K through six are directly involved in PYA program and
that's something that didn't even exist last year. So we're
very excited about that. We've got over fifteen hundred and
sixty what I like to call points of participation, meaning
that of that nine hundred and sixteen, many of them
are doing multiple activities. They're not just doing one thing,
(15:15):
so they're engaged over and over and over again and again.
That is our goal is to engage these kids, to
meet them where they are, to do things that aren't
necessarily traditional. There's a lot of kids out there that
have no interest or have no aptitude towards hitting a
ball or shooting a basket or anything of that nature.
So we've offered things like martial arts, archery, all the
(15:40):
other activities that we are doing again, computer science, coding,
three D printing of course, traditional art clubs and book
clubs and all those kind of things as well. So
we want to engage kids where they are.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, I think it's fantastic, Brett, great stuff. We've run
out of time, but thank you so much. Once again, Brett.
Tell everybody how they can reach out to you in
the organization if they are interested, go right ahead again.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Absolutely, thanks Paul. You can email me directly. My name
is Brett McQuary, it's B like my first name. McQuary
mc c r E r Y B mcquarie at mcspresidents
dot org, or you can call us seven four oh
two two three three seven six eight. I'd love to
(16:25):
talk to you. I'd love to see how we can
help you help us.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Thank you so much for being on the show. Great stuff,
and if you're interested, make sure you reach out and
take take note of what these kids are doing. Some
great stuff.
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