When in doubt, ask teenagers

 
Meet the Just Wright Citrus IT team.
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That’s Joshua Brunk on the left and Noah Breder on the right.
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Joshua and Noah are Lecanto High School seniors. They’re in the International Baccalaureate program, which means they are not only smarter than everyone here, they’re smarter than anyone we know.
 
They took what was essentially a cobbled together slate and created the website that will debut with sponsorships on Monday, Jan. 3. We encourage you to take a look now, keeping in mind not everything is yet where it will be. I’m fairly certain the home page on Jan. 3 will not, for example, include a picture of my cat. No guarantees though.
 
I’m sure you’re wondering how this match came to be. After all, Joshua and Noah are two brilliant high school students. I am neither brilliant nor in high school, and I can assure you my vague memories of those days do not include anything above a C average.
 
It started like this. I thought I could do it. I know, I know. But it made sense at the time. It’s a website. How hard can it be?
 
Jade White with the chamber of commerce got me set up so that I could post my daily blogs. But the site had no rhyme or reason to it, so I sought assistance from school board member Thomas Kennedy, an online guru who surely could give me kindergarten steps to building the website.
 
I sat with Thomas not once but twice at Cattle Dogs, as he painstakingly tried to show me what to click and how to design the page. I watched and absorbed – for about 5 seconds. 
 
I fretted about this for weeks. The writing part of Just Wright Citrus was coming along fine. The Facebook page continues to grow and I knew there was a lot of interest in taking this to the next level. That level being the one I couldn’t climb.
 
Then it finally hit me. I can’t do this. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can hold my own in a lot of areas. Technology is not one of them.
 
I reached out to Thomas again, this time a little more desperate. “I need more than help,” I told him. “I need someone to do this for me and show me how after it’s set up.”
 
Now, let me interject something. I had total confidence Thomas was going to find me a solution because we’re dealing with Citrus County Schools. These guys are problem solvers. If Thomas put the word out, I knew someone would step up.
 
And Darrick Buettner did. Darrick is coordinator of special academic programs for the Citrus County School District, but his claim to fame in my book is heading up the IB program at Lecanto High. That’s how I got to know him during my Chronicle days. IB is college prep for kids who go to the type of college that wouldn’t accept me.
 
IB kids seek scholarships so they can afford the higher education suited to their future. Community service hours (and high GPA kids tend to do a ton of it) help qualify for scholarship points, and that’s another area hit by the pandemic. Kids are having a harder time finding places to work those community service hours.
 
Darrick introduced me to Joshua and Noah, and away we went. We met three times – the last one Monday night via Zoom with my wife Deb. They walked us through the website and how to place in the elements (which I forgot an hour later), and the result is a site that, in my humble opinion, looks pretty cool.
 
I can’t thank these two young men enough. I told them to each report a zillion hours of community service hours for scholarship points, and for Mr. Buettner to OK it. They deserve every minute.

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