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South Carolina Association for Career and Technical Education

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Is your voice on issues that are important to you
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...a message from our President!

Greetings!
For those whom I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting, please let me introduce myself. My name is Leon Burgess, and I am both thrilled and honored to serve as the SCACTE’s President for the 2022-2023 school year. I presently serve as the Director of College and Career Readiness/CTE for Florence School District 3 (Lake City, SC), and I am looking forward to an exciting and progressive year.

Although the pandemic has dampened our spirits for the past few years, I truly believe that this is going to be a year of great progress for us. We’ve slowly been reintroduced to a new normal this past year, and things are definitely looking up. SCACTE’s membership numbers are showing a healthy desire to remain undaunted by the effects of COVID and to continue providing students with program offerings that will enable them to be successful after high school. I truly believe that CTE is the only gateway that shows ALL students what success looks like—the 4.0 student who is trying to navigate his/her way to the next level, the 3.0 student who may not be sure that college is the right path for him/her, and even the 1.0 student who may have been tossed to the side while others have given up on positive outcomes for him/her—each of these students is able the thrive in a successful CTE program and reap the benefits on his/her own terms. That, fellow educators, is truly exciting!

As we move into the 2022-2023 school year, I’d like to challenge you to do a few things:

Take care of yourself and take time for yourself. You need to occasionally take time to recharge. As much as we want to help others, we must also ensure that we have poured into ourselves so that we don’t become empty vessels.
Seek out professional development opportunities and take advantage of them. Our organization provides several opportunities for networking and sharing ideas: Region 2 Conference in Virginia Beach October 5-7, 2022; Vision Conference in Las Vegas November 30-December 3; Find Your Inspiration (FYI) Conference in Myrtle Beach January 13-15, 2023; and the National WBL Conference in Atlanta April 27-28, 2023.
Each One Reach One. Our organization is growing and we definitely want this to continue. It would be great if we could increase our membership by 10% each year for the next 5 consecutive years. Let’s begin this year by encouraging our coworkers—even students—to consider joining SCACTE. The $1M in liability insurance is simply one of the many perks, but we definitely can ensure that we ALWAYS have a voice at the table when we have the strength in numbers. Remember, this is OUR organization and we reap more benefits when we show continuous growth.

I’m ready for a stellar year, and I hope that you are ready and willing to embark upon this journey with me. If you have any ideas that you’d like to give life, or if you simply have a concern or need a listening ear, please feel free to reach out to me at LeonBurgess@gmail.com or LBurgess@fsd3.org. Additionally, I can be reached at (843) 374-8652. I’m here to serve you—thanks for the opportunity!