Dylan Daugherty

Community members listen as superintendent Dr. Jason Snodgrass announces the school district’s plan moving into the 2023-2024 school year. In the upper right corner, you can see the new school central office, which opened in April 2023. Dr. Jason Snodgrass discussed the hope of continuing to engage students with the school. “Continuing to engage students,” Snodgrass said, “making sure that when they come to school, they’re excited to come to school, ready and prepared to help them after high school.”

On Feb. 9, 2024, Fort Osage School District held the annual State of the District. During the event, Fort Osage Education Foundation President Eric Wilson and Fort Osage Superintendent Jason Snodgrass spoke about their upcoming plans for the remainder of the current and upcoming 2024-2025 school year. Education Foundation President Eric Wilson hoped to raise awareness of the goals of the foundation.

“The main point of the Education Foundation today was to help share more about what we do,” Wilson said, “build awareness for the purpose of the foundation that we can help gather private donations from businesses and individuals who want to give to the school, and have a passion about Fort Osage School District, and want to help people succeed.”

This year’s state of the district had a major focus on real world learning experiences, such as the programs offered by the CTC, or the new internship program started at Fort Osage High School in 2023. Superintendent Dr. Jason Snodgrass plans to expand the school’s partnerships next year.

“I think just partnerships the district has so many partners in education, obviously with the teachers, and counselors, and everybody in the classroom,” Snodgrass said, “and pair educators, bus drivers, community members, business owners, and that’s led to a lot of success for our students and our school district.”

Another major focus of this year’s state of the district was the philanthropy provided by the Fort Osage Education Foundation, which provided $72,395 worth of scholarships between July 2022 and June 2023. High School Principal Dr. Joshua Luke feels that real world learning helps better give students an understanding of information.

“I think when you take experiences that are often ambiguous and don’t have context to them,” Luke said, “real world learning bridges that gap with that tangible experience to really make a content come to life, which really assists with helping students acquire that knowledge and prepare them by realistically mobilizing that information.”

The event lasted around 25 minutes, and the next state of the district will most likely be held around the same time next school year.