Farewell to the 2012-2013 School Year

The end of the 2012-2013 school year has arrived. The last day for the children is Monday, June 24th, which is a half day for the students. It seems like this year flew by! We've accomplished a lot. Our teachers worked hard to complete curriculum writing projects under the direction of Mr. Brian Cameron, our Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning. All content areas, except for 2, now have standards-based, School Committee approved, coordinated K-12 curriculum guides that provide the framework for classroom instruction. The Physical Education curriculum is due to come before the School Committee at their July meeting. The last content area that needs work is science. We are waiting to see how the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will respond to the Next Generation Science Standards, which is a multi-state effort, recently completed, to strengthen science education across the United States.

Our Office of Information Technology has worked tirelessly to upgrade classroom technology across the district. A proliferation of digital projectors, laptops, document cameras, and the like have filtered into classrooms in every school. All of our schools now have wireless access, enabling staff and students to make use of the rich resources of the Internet to implement our curriculum.

We are also working on measures to enhance our security systems, making our schools as safe as possible for our students and staff. A School Safety Task Force will be convening this summer that will involve administration, law enforcement and emergency responders, and others in working together to ensure that our schools are safe places for students to learn and staff to work.

This past week has been a week of good-byes and looking forward to the future. Our students who will be transitioning from one building to the next engaged in a step-up day to visit their new schools. The culminating event of the week was the eighth grade celebration, held on Friday, June 21st, at Belchertown High School. Each eighth grader was recognized with a certificate of achievement for having completed their middle school studies, followed by their Aloha! Dance in the BHS cafeteria, an opportunity to say good-bye to JBMS and hello to BHS. There will be an orientation evening on August 20th for incoming freshmen and new students to BHS. More details will be forthcoming soon.

SRE Day

The students at Swift River Elementary School celebrated the end of the school year at SRE Day on Thursday, June 20th. The day was organized around a variety of cooperative games and activities with a PeaceBuilders theme. Thanks go to Mr. Baker and Mr. Quist, Physical Education Teachers at SRE, the rest of the SRE faculty and staff for organizing the day and to the CSSR PTO for all the volunteer work they provided to make it happen!

SRE students created a giant peace sign with the letters "SRE" in their PTO-donated t-shirts!

Children played cooperative parachute games during SRE Day.

Pennies for the Playground

On Friday, June 21st, the CHCS students celebrated a fundraiser for Jessica's Boundless Playground, which is a fully accessible playground we hope to build soon! The students raised over $750.00 for this endeavor, which was sponsored by Team Jessica in cooperation with the CHCS PTO. The fourth graders, who came in at 3rd place, had the opportunity to "silly string" members of the CHCS staff and "yours truly." Fifth graders (2nd place) got to throw pies in our faces, and sixth graders (1st place) got to slime us! It was a messy, but fun time!

Pies in the face for selected staff members!

CHCS Interim Principal, Dr. Irizarry, wears his slime with pride!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our administrators, faculty, and staff for your hard work during this past school year. You have taken on a lot of work, infused many state and federal mandates into an already packed work day, and have provided our students with the foundation to be productive thinkers and citizens in our society. I would also like to thank the many volunteers who have donated countless hours of time, money through fundraising activities, and support to the work we do. I am also grateful to our students' families who have supported their learning along the way. This truly is a group effort with the goal of ensuring that all of our students meet with success every day.

This will be the last weekly post of the 2012-2013 school year. Less frequent posts will be uploaded during the summer months. I would like to wish everyone a safe and relaxing summer! As always, please feel free to call me at 413.323.0423 or send me an email at superintendent@belchertown.org with any questions or comments.

Best regards, Dr. Judith Houle, Superintendent of Schools