Lansing Sun

Lansing School Superintendent Ben Shuldiner recently presented the district board information on school transportation efforts, plus an update to Sexton High School's mascot.

During the May 4 Lansing school district board meeting, Shuldiner addressed the transportation within the district, one of the major struggles for the past few years following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The district has been working on ways to improve school attendance and access for students, encouraging multiple methods of transportation or working with families to find the best way to get the children to classes each day. The school district has provided after-school programs and transportation so that kids aren’t stranded or unable to join extracurricular activities. 

According to Shuldiner, attendance numbers are looking up. In total, the district has "2,874 kids with gas cards, 743 kids with CATA cards and 3,174 kids on the buses with 154 on the wait list," the superintendent said.

Shuldiner went on to praise the district's diversity.

"I've been just been so amazed by is how diverse Lansing is, but in so many different variations of that word," he said. "Not only are we talking about race and creed and ethnicity and religion, we're talking about languages and we're talking about spaces and we're talking about programs. I would posit that a district of our size, about 10,000 kids in a city of about 115,000-125,000, nobody around the country has this kind of diversity."

Shuldiner ended his report discussing the revamped mascot and logo for Sexton High. Sexton’s old nickname was the “Big Reds”, a derogatory term that is often offensive to the Native American community. The school voted to adopt J-Dubb the Bulldog as its new icon, showing a video that promoted the change.

“As we all know, we've spent a lot of time, a lot of meetings, a lot of conversations, recognizing and understanding the past that was Lansing and the future that is to become Lansing," Shuldiner said. 

"I think an incredibly symbolic and incredibly important moment was when this board, this community, moved forward with leaving a moniker that had inordinately negative connotations behind and been able to create something really special and really new for this community.”