Thursday’s State of the Enumclaw School District was the way Superintendent Mike Nelson likes it – all about the students.

The evening opened with Mollie Parce singing the National Anthem and was quickly followed with kudos for the school district’s custodial, facilities and grounds-keeping staff, which went above-and-beyond their job after the recent storm.

Enumclaw School Board President Chris VanHoof thanked each with a roll of Life Savers candy and a personal note.

The Enumclaw High School auditorium stage then opened to highlight students.

“I love the power of student voice,” said Nelson, who started the annual community evening five years ago as a way to highlight the district’s successes and take a look at the coming year.

Fifth-grade students Abby Sherwood and Garrett Rismiller and EHS senior Lauren Cary shared their classroom technology experiences with the audience. Classrooms once labeled with terms like smart and technology are now being called sustainable to adequately define how they will continue to meet student needs in the future. Nelson said this summer, thanks to the levy taxpayers passed, the district will finish loading that technology into classrooms.

Eighth-grade students Grace Sales and EHS freshman Katja Barnhart took a few minutes to share their experiences with Springboard and AP Human Geography. Springboard is the middle school program started this year to get students to try a course with more rigor and to get them excited about AP courses at the high school. AP Human Geography is a college level course offered for the first time at EHS to freshmen.

Secondary students Taliah Olson and Ryan Chynoweth spoke about leadership in the district.

“The best legacy I can leave,” Nelson said, explaining his role in the hiring process. “Is to know that I’ve hired an incredible staff that will be there well beyond my time.”

Olson spoke about teacher Karl Karkainen, who started at Enumclaw Middle School this fall, while Chynoweth, through a voice mail recording, talked about how newly-hired EHS basketball coach Kellen Hall was not just concerned about basketball, but about his players as people.

Black Diamond Elementary student Grace Doleshel and Thunder Mountain Middle School students Brooke Boren and Tianna Johnston shared their stories with how the Rachel’s Challenge program was changing the climate at their schools.

Doleshel said there is more happiness and less sadness at Black Diamond since the program started, and her school has collected thousands of links to add to the growing chain. Nelson reminded audience members to continue to add their links of kindness to those at the schools and around town to help reach the 2-mile goal.

The Rachel’s Challenge Rally is set for March 6.

Boren and Johnston explained TMMS’s High Five program and how that program encourages acts of kindness on the campus.

One of the highlights of the program was a demonstration from the EHS Robotics team, which recently finishes second in the state competition. Cody vanHaalen and Sam Phelps maneuvered the remote-controlled wheeled machine across the stage to pick up a rubber racquet ball and then lifted its basket high in the air so the audience could see.

Nelson then took a few minutes to briefly hit on programs the district is using to help staff help student learning. Those programs are: Professional Learning Communities, the Five Dimensions of Teaching and Learning, Project Lead the Way and the implementation of sustainable classrooms.

Nelson anticipates the district will face at least two challenges in the near future. The first will be state funding for kindergarten through 12th grade. The second is a declining enrollment tagged with potential growth.

He concluded the evening with the understanding those who were in attendance and those in the school district care about students and education and he finished with a quote from Forest Whitcraft, “One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much I had in my bank, nor what my clothes looked like. One hundred years from now, it will not matter, what kind of school I attended, what kind of typewriter I used, how large or small my church, but the world may be … a little better because… I was important in the life of a child.”