The Story
Between the Community Senate and a potential new traffic pattern, the school board has been quite busy.
Explain.
Last week, BHS junior Matthew Pemberton spoke in front of the school board representing the Community Senate. His goal was to update the board on the happenings of the Senate and BHS as a whole.
What is the Community Senate?
It’s a group of students, teachers, administrators, parents, and even a couple school board members. It’s purpose is to create a place for communication between these various groups in the community (we see what they did there). Matthew did a very nice job explaining the importance of the Senate in being a catalyst for change within the building.
So what have they been doing?
One focus of the Senate has been increasing civic engagement for students at the high school through the Civic Action club and other opportunities. They’ve discussed and voted on Early/Mid-day Release for juniors and seniors, as well as the staffing issues in the commons. Another one of their concerns was the 0 as a placeholder policy that has a tendency to tank grades and cause a lot of stress. They also talked about traffic experiences at the middle/high school campus.
Traffic, you say?
That brings us to the next topic of last week’s school board meeting – a potential new traffic pattern for the middle and high school. As everyone has noticed, it is a daily battle that has caused a lot of strife for students and parents to get in and out of the campus.
So what do they want to do?
Mr. Fournier, Todd Zollman (the district Maintenance Director), Mr. Jozokos, and Mr. Joyce proposed a whole new traffic pattern. They suggested reversing the flow and having traffic go counterclockwise around the school rather than clockwise. This would hopefully alleviate the issue of buses getting trapped in parent pickup lines. It would be pretty much the complete opposite of the way everything works now for both schools.
When will this happen?
If all goes according to plan, the new traffic pattern will be implemented in the spring. The simple reason for this timeline is that the ground is currently too cold to paint right now. Oh, and that paint along with signage will probably cost up to $22,000.
The Runaway
The board voted unanimously to approve the expenditures for these changes. There are still a lot of details that need to be worked out, but change is in the future.
What to Say…
When you need a bathroom break…
Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite room in the school. The bathrooms. Just yesterday, Mr. Jozokos sent out an email to students explaining the situation in the bathrooms. There have been numerous acts of vandalism, including graffiti in the stalls, missing/broken utilities, and intentional flooding. You may have noticed the bathrooms are already particularly terrifying this year due to BHS’s lack of janitorial staff, and the students aren’t making it any better. Sometimes, it can be like walking into the murder room in a horror movie, complete with dripping sinks, flickering or completely broken lights, and an inch of water on the floors. We’re just surprised there haven’t been any reports of ghosts yet. In response, the school is taking measures similar to last year’s COVID protocols, with limited bathroom access to just the ones by the center staircase. That’s just one (1) bathroom on each floor. And while we’re not particularly known to be buddy-buddy with the administration, we think everyone would appreciate an unvandalized bathroom experience.
When you wanna be a superfan…
With the start of February, we draw close to the end of the winter sports season. We are rocketing into the playoffs! Boys basketball has a home game at 7:00 tonight, and another on Wednesday. Their first playoff game will be on February 9th. The girls have two away games this week, and their playoffs start on the 8th. Girls and boys ice hockey still have quite a few games to go (their playoffs don’t start until March) including a girls game at Keene on Wednesday, and a boys game at Saint A’s on the same day. For our skiers, nordic has a race on Wednesday, and alpine has their senior night on Thursday. Good luck to all our athletes!
When your mental health keeps getting pushed aside…
The school board has once again failed to make a decision on the district stress, anxiety, & mental health goal. John Schneller created his own version of the goal, which most notably eliminated the phrase “responsible decision making”. He stated that he believes that parents should be in charge of teaching their children how to make decisions, rather than the school district. Mr. Fournier, Tom Laliberte, Sue Jennato, and Mindy Bator all fiercely defended the superintendent’s proposed goal. Mr. Fournier and Mr. Laliberte explained that the language in the goal is based on a program called CASEL, which lays out five pillars of social and emotional learning and well-being – responsible decision making being one of them. Mindy Bator argued that every single day responsible decision making is one of the skills students learn in schools. Sue Jennato also argued that Schneller’s phrase “measurable observations” because when it comes to mental health, it’s not usually tangible. Schneller suggested pushing off the vote once again and Jennato and Bator got very frustrated. Bill Foote made the executive decision to push to vote to the next meeting so we guess we’ll update you again then.
Things to Know
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Decision time.
BHS course selection closes tomorrow.