We Are SPPS

James A. Engen with Princpal Duane Dutrieuille

စ့ၣ်ဖီလ်ပဒိၣ်ကၠိ(SPPS) ကၠိဖိလီၢ်လံၤ ကွဲးလံာ်တဘ့ၣ်လၢဘၣ်ဃးဒီး ဝ့ၢ်စ့ၣ်ဖီလ် မုၢ်ထီၣ်

စ့ၣ်ဖီလ်ပဒိၣ်ကၠိ (SPPS) ကၠိဖိလီၢ်လံၤ James A. Engen ကွဲးထုးထီၣ်လံာ်အဆိကတၢၢ်တဘ့ၣ်, လၢအမ့ၢ်ဝဲ The Trestle: A Story from the East Side of St. Paul ဖဲတယံာ်ဒံးဘၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ဖဲလံာ်အံၤအပူၤမ့ၢ်တၢ်လၢအဘၣ်ဃးဒီး ပှၤသးစၢ်လိၣ်ဘိတဖၣ်အတၢ်အိၣ်မူအိၣ်ဂဲၤဒီးအတၢ်ဆၢတဲာ်တဖၣ်ဖဲအဝဲသ့ၣ်ဒိၣ်ထီၣ်ဝဲလၢ Hazel Park ပှၤတဝၢန့ဘၢဟူၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.‌

Roxie T. Smith holding a bouquet in a wheelchair, adjacent to a black and white portrait of her as a young woman.

'Everybody’s Grandma,' Health Start Pioneer Roxie T. Smith Turns 100

A pioneering force and invaluable member of the Saint Paul Public Schools community, Dr. Roxie T. Smith has had a profound and lasting impact on thousands of students, their families and her many colleagues. On October 13, 2025, she turns 100.

A colorful mural painted on a brick building depicts stories of grief

School Board Director Jim Vue's Family Honored with New Mural

When Jim Vue joined the school board in July 2020, he was selected to fill the seat that was tragically vacated when then-Board Chair Marny Xiong died from COVID-19. Just three years and three days prior to Marny’s passing, Jim’s 6-year-old daughter drowned in Lake Elmo. The family’s story has been shared in the media and a children’s book by award-winning Hmong author Kao Kalia Yang. Now, a new mural “honors the grief we carry for those no longer living within this world.”

Woman in a graduation cap and gown with her husband and young son in front of a red college backdrop

Karina León de Bettino: Bilingual EA Becomes First Mexican Licensed Librarian in Minnesota

When Karina León de Bettino moved to Minnesota from Mexico in 2017, it wasn't easy. She had worked as a teacher and a journalist in Mexico, but being an immigrant who did not speak perfect English made it difficult to find a job at first.

Eli & the Golden Hug Muffin: Focus Beyond Student Creates New School Menu Item

If you can dream it, you can achieve it. No one knows this better than Eli, a student at Focus Beyond whose entrepreneurial spirit and passion for baking inspired a new menu item that will be served in every Saint Paul Public Schools cafeteria starting in fall 2025.

Washington Tech's Mark Bauch is Education Support Professional of the Year

ပသးခုဃုာ်ဒီး Mark Bauch, လၢအမ့ၢ် ကူၣ်သ့လီၤဆီကူၣ်သ့ပှၤဆီၣ်ထွဲမၤစၢၤတဂၤဖဲ Washington Technology တီၤထီကၠိ, ဘၣ်တၢ်ဃုထၢထီၣ်အီၤလၢဒိးန့ၢ်ဘၣ် ၂၀၂၄-၂၅ နံၣ် မံၣ်နံၣ်စိထၣ်တၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ် ကူၣ်သ့ ကူၣ်သ့ပှၤဆီၣ်ထွဲမၤစၢၤတၢ်စဲၣ်နီၤ (ESP) လၢကၠိနံၣ်တီၢ်ပူၤအတၢ်လၤကပီၤ န့ၣ်လီၤ. Bauch မၤတၢ်ဒ်သိးဒီး ကူၣ်သ့ပှၤဆီၣ်ထွဲမၤစၢၤတၢ်တဂၤလၢ ၁၄နံၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤ လၢအသိၣ်လိမၤစၢၤ ခွံတီၤကူၣ်သ့ လီၤဆီကၠိဖိတဖၣ်ဖဲ Washington တီၤထီၣ်ကၠိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဃုသ့ၣ်ညါအါထီၣ် Bauch အဂ့ၢ်အကျိၤ ဒီး ESP of the Year အတၢ်လၤကပီၤ ဖဲအံၤ န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.

Young woman wearing pink shirt and long wavy hair standing in front of an elementary school

Katie Kupris: 'Kindness is My Politics'

Katie Kupris မ့ၢ် ကၠိသရၣ်မုၣ်အစၢၤလၢအမၤတၢ်အခီၣ်ထံးတနံၣ်ဖဲ Como Park တီၤဖုၣ်ကၠိ, လၢအထီၣ်မၤ လိတီၤဖုၣ်ကၠိတချုးအဖျိထီၣ် စ့ၣ်ဖီလ်ပဒိၣ်ကၠိဖဲ Como Park Senior ဒီး Focus Beyond ကၠိအခါန့ၣ်လီၤ. Katie အိၣ်ဖျဲၣ်ထီၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီး mosaic Down syndrome, ဒီးအဝဲဆိမိၣ်လီၤအသးလၢအမ့ၢ်ပှၤတဂၤလၢအိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သ့တၢ်ဘၣ်လီၤဆီတခါ ဒီး အဝဲဘၣ်တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်အဂ့ၢ်National Disability Employment Awareness Month (ထံကီၢ်ဒီဘ့ၣ် တၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါနၢ်ပၢၢ်ပှၤအိၣ်ဒီးနီၢ်ခိလီၤတူၢ်လီၤကာ်တၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤအလါ) အသိးန့ၣ်လီၤ.

We Are SPPS: National Bus Safety Week

Chuck Spellman ဒီး Edward Lacy ဂဲၤထၢၣ်ဂီၤဂီၤကိးနံၤဒဲး ဒ်သိးအကမၤလီၤတံၢ်လၢ ကၠိဖိလၢအကထိဖဲ စ့ၣ်ဖီလ်အပူၤ ကလဲၤထီၣ်ကၠိ ဒီး ဟဲက့ၤဆူဟံၣ်ဘံၣ်ဘံၣ်ဘၢဘၢကိးမုၢ်နံၤဒဲးအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကွၢ် ဘံၣ်ဒံၣ်အိၣ်အဝဲအံၤ ဒီး ဃုသ့ၣ်ညါအါထီၣ်အဝဲသ့ၣ်အဂ့ၢ်အကျိၤ, ဒီး တဘၣ်သးပ့ၤနီၣ်စံးဘျုးပှၤနီၣ်ဘၢးစ်ဖိတဖၣ်ဖဲတနွံညါအံၤ ဖဲ National Bus Safety Week(ထံကီၢ်ဒီဘ့ၣ်ဘၢးစ်တၢ်ဘံၣ်တၢ်ဘၢအနွံ) တီၢ်ပူၤအံၤန့ၣ်တဂ့ၤ.

Male student in JROTC uniform standing next to mural that says The Pride of the East Side

William Rubio: Harding ကၠိဖိအတၢ်ဖျိးစိစးထီၣ်အသးဖဲနီၢ်ကစၢ်တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်သး

William Rubio မ့ၢ် National Honor Society ကၠိဖိတဂၤ, ဟံးန့ၢ်မၤလိ IB တီၤတဖၣ်, သူၣ်ဆူၣ်သးဂဲၤနုာ် လီၤပၣ်ဃုာ်ဖဲ JROTC တၢ်ရဲၣ်တၢ်ကျဲၤအပူၤ, မုာ်သးမၤကလီတၢ်ဖဲပှၤတဝၢအပူၤ, ဒီး လံာ်အမးပာ်ဖှိၣ်တၢ် ထိၣ်ဃူ(GPA) မ့ၢ်ဝဲ ၄.၂ န့ၣ်လီၤ. အခဲအံၤ William မ့ၢ်ဝဲ Harding တီၤထီကၠိ တဆံခံတီၤကၠိဖိတဂၤ, ဒီး အတၢ်ဖျိးစိအံၤစးထီၣ်အိၣ်ဖျါထီၣ်အသးဖဲ အနီၢ်ကစၢ်စးထီၣ်ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်သးအခါန့ၣ်လီၤ.

We Are SPPS Nominations

We are always looking for students, staff, alumni and community members to feature for their achievements in connection to Saint Paul Public Schools. Who do you know who has a great story to tell? Please fill out the form below if you would like to nominate someone (or yourself!) to be featured in the We Are SPPS campaign.

We Are SPPS Nomination Form