Superintendent’s Spotlight: Kayla Flores

Warwick Valley High School senior Kayla Flores caught the eye of Principal Georgianna Diopoulos during the school’s Meet the Teacher Night early in the school year. Flores is a Warwick Wildcat ambassador, nominated by her teachers, and was responsible for welcoming parents that evening.

Diopoulos said she and the other school administrators saw that night how globally aware Flores was and how impressive her communication skills were. She knew she wanted to nominate Flores for a Superintendent’s Spotlight.

“To hear her talk, you can tell she has an understanding of things beyond her immediate surroundings, a global citizen so to speak,” said Diopoulos.

Flores is also a student in the Orange-Ulster BOCES Education and Management program. She is in the second year of the program, which has classrooms and a technical nursery where students learn to become teachers by taking care of three- and four-year-old children, writing lesson plans and preparing the students to enter kindergarten.

She is a New York State SkillsUSA officer. She holds the position of officer at large. Flores attended the SkillsUSA Washington DC Leadership Training Institute (WLTI). WLTI is a SkillsUSA conference that offers students and advisors from across the nation the opportunity to advocate for career and technical education while receiving advanced leadership training. During the four-day event, students collaborated and honed their leadership skills as well as visited famous museums and monuments.

“I’ve gained many opportunities from SkillsUSA,” Flores said, including attending national and regional conferences.

The highlight of the WLTI conference was when students conducted in-person visits with their elected officials on Capitol Hill to advocate for SkillsUSA. Flores met with Congressman Pat Ryan to discuss the importance of SkillsUSA and advocate for career and technical education to receive more funding in the region through the Carl Perkins Grant, which provides federal funding to states to improve both secondary and postsecondary career and technical education programs.

“When you talk to Kayla you see she embodies a Portrait of a Graduate,” Diopoulos said. She is a lifelong learner, she constantly wants to know more and more. She can communicate about her interests and her future plans beautifully. She can collaborate with others to get things accomplished. She exemplifies the Warwick graduate.”

She is planning to pursue her master’s in secondary education and minor in either political science or business.

“I’m looking to still be able to learn even after college,” Flores said. “I want to be able to increase my knowledge so I am able to keep learning because you can never learn enough.”

Flores’s goal is to either become a middle school or high school math teacher or join her father’s business, G8 Consulting Group, Inc., which provides advocacy, strategic planning and workshop services, among other services, for a variety of clients, including those in the education sector. She is learning to be a teacher now — she is planning to get teaching assistant and CPR certifications through the program — and in college, with the hope of taking over his business when she gets older.

“He really wants me to join his business because he has seen how I have made connections with people all over America,” through the conferences she has attended, Flores said. “He said I’ll be really good in making connections with other people.”