Each year, our Turner Board of Education recognizes one classified and one certified staff member for the "Turner Points of Light." The recipients of a Turner Points of Light award will be individuals who have shown great enthusiasm and vision for the students in USD 202 and has exhibited this through his/her dedication and deep commitment to these students. The award is given during Convocation at the beginning of the school year.

Congratulations to our Certified Point of Light for 2024, Ashley Copple! Ms. Copple is our Early Childhood Coordinator. Below is her nomination letter.

Turner Points of Light Selection Committee, 

I am pleased to write this nomination letter for Ashley Copple, our district’s Early Childhood Coordinator. 

I have worked closely with Ashley since she was chosen to lead our district’s early childhood efforts through the Kansas Health Foundation grant, which we received in 2020. 

It was evident in my first interactions with Ashley how passionate she was about early childhood literacy – and not just the concept of it, but the impact it could have specifically on children in the Turner community. 

It was not uncommon for me to get texts and emails from her late at night excitedly sharing new research she was reading about early childhood strategies that could be implemented into our program. I have never in my life met someone who cares so much about an academic topic as Ashley cares about early literacy skills. 

Ashley has built our early childhood program from the ground up. Each year, she has tweaked her processes and strategies to continue improving and growing our early childhood programs. Highlights of the program include the weekly Toddler Tuesdays, Literacy Spaces and Places, monthly newsletters, and numerous grants that Ashley has taken it upon herself to write in order to expand the resources and offerings of the program. 

After the Kansas Health Foundation grant ended, Ashley continued her early childhood efforts in our community by overseeing the Turner Parents as Teachers program. I witnessed Ashley take on that role and saw the incredible way she built relationships with and empowered her staff and expanded the program to offer even more to our Turner families. 

Since then, Ashley has spearheaded several important partnerships for our district early childhood and pre-k programs, such as Literacy KC, Lead to Read KC, and Turn the Page KC. She has also expanded the offerings of our Parents as Teachers program to include more early literacy events, like Gathering at the Garden, and programming for families, like group playtimes and parenting classes focused on early literacy skills. 

I have watched as our early childhood programming has grown under Ashley’s leadership. What started as one family showing up for Toddler Tuesday at Pierson Park to now having consistently 20+ families showing up, it is really remarkable to see the community she has built for our families with children under the age of four. 

This year in particular, Ashley has been responsible for getting a book vending machine at TSGA, as well as writing a grant that has elevated our Parents as Teachers program into 

being considered a Family Resource Center, meaning they can help connect our Turner families to resources throughout the county. Another project she oversaw this year, which has actually been years in the making, is the addition of the Turner Literacy Room within Turner Recreation Commission. 

She has worked with our local library and the staff at Turner Rec to use grant funds she acquired to create a space full of early childhood literacy activities. She noticed that many libraries in surrounding communities have something like this, but we were lacking a publicly available literacy space in Turner. So, she initiated conversations and facilitated the process to make it happen. 

Ashley does so much for our early childhood programming, and she does it without asking for any sort of recognition. She is so humble. 

Ashley is truly a gem in our district, and I am so grateful for the important work she does – along with our Parents as Teachers staff - on behalf of our early childhood families. 

Please consider her as a Turner Point of Light for this year.