Hello to all throughout the Northwest Community!

I wanted to give you an update on things that are happening throughout the district from the Board Office vantage point.

* As many of you know, we have been planning on the Northwest High School addition and renovation of the Annex for some time. We are getting closer and closer to breaking ground. We anticipate that happening towards the end of January or the beginning of February of 2026. 

The addition includes building a new weight room for our students. This will help develop a daily curriculum to get more and more students comfortable working out and staying healthy. Our hope is that this would become a normal lifestyle for all of our students. We are also building a new wrestling room as our wrestling numbers continue to grow. We will also add more storage for our arts programs as choir and band continue to grow in numbers as well.

Renovating the Annex to maintain home and away locker rooms with significant storage will be the best part of our project. This renovation is long overdue and we are looking forward to the finished product. 

Go to our Northwest Local Schools website and click on the "About Us" tab. Then click on our "Facilities Project" tab. You can see all of our plans for this project. We are excited to get this done for our students!

* Beyond this addition projects, we will also be replacing the turf at the stadium. We will begin this project mid-May of 2026. This should be completed by the end of June 2026. We will have more detailed news on this soon right after Christmas break.

* Finally, we have two big goals this school year to help to continue the overall direction of our school district. We will be working on new mission and vision statements with various stakeholders and community leaders this month. We have not changed these statements for almost 15 years. We are long overdue to make this happen!

The second thing we will be working on will be developing new strategic plans for Northwest Local Schools. This process will stretch from February through the end of March of 2026. We will include our School Board, administrators, faculty & staff, parents and community members, and - most importantly- students. We will have two or three opportunities for all of our parents to meet to help with input on the direction of our school for the next several years.

I will have more information on this for all of you very soon! As always, we are thankful for your support. We are also grateful for your trust in educating your children every day.

If you have questions or concerns on anything happening at Northwest, call me at 330-573-9024 or reach out to our teachers or principals anytime.

Respectfully-

Shawn Braman