Dear Batavia Families and Community,
It remains “budget season” for area school districts, including BCSD! Please remember to vote on Tuesday, May 16, from 11 am - 9 pm. District residents who live south of Main Street (Route 5) vote at BHS, and residents who live north of Main Street (Route 5) vote at Robert Morris.
Our full budget proposal and annual report may be found below, including the presentation I provided to the Board and public this past Monday night:
Please review these documents, and again, feel free to reach out to me directly with comments or questions, as some of you already have—I truly appreciate the dialogue and conversations with my fellow community members.
This past week, we celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week across all of our schools. We value and appreciate the life-changing work our teachers engage in each and every day, and we value those staff members who play a supportive and leadership role in making this happen.
Today is also a relatively newer appreciation day, in that we recognize School Communication Professionals. Our very own “school communicator” is Emily Benedict, a proud BHS grad, who works tirelessly behind the scenes with our leadership team and myself to ensure our communications (including all those cool Facebook/Twitter posts and videos!) are timely, transparent, and clear. Thank you, Emily!
Staying with theme of appreciation days:
Just last week, May 5, was National School Lunch Hero Day, where we recognize our awesome nutritional services staff for providing delicious meals to our students, and even our staff members, including yours truly (I am partial to the spicy chicken sandwich at BHS and the soft pretzels at BMS, by the way).
May 10 was National School Nurse Day, and we thank our own BCSD nurses for their tender and caring approach they bring to our students each and every day.
The importance of both these roles was certainly accelerated and appreciated even more during the pandemic, so bravo to our nurses and nutritional staff members!
Please join me again in congratulating Brian Sutton on his appointment to Director of Educational Technology, and welcome to Chad Bliss as our Director of Facilities. Both Brian and Chad bring a wealth of knowledge and leadership experience to their respective positions, and I look forward to their contributions to our BCSD community.
Have you been to a spring sporting event yet? How about a concert? If not, it’s not too late to stop by and see our talented BCSD students in action.
We recently completed our required New York State 3-8 Math and ELA Testing, and we will continue to use these results to monitor and adjust our academic programs. At the last Board meeting, I proudly shared that our District generally scores in the top 3 when we compare ourselves to other small cities across the state.
Finally, last week I enjoyed reading at Jackson Family Reading Night, and I especially liked one of the books I read: The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi. Although a children’s book, the message is powerful for all of us, young and old alike:
Here is a video of the book being read aloud: The Magical Yet
Visit our local Richmond Memorial Library, your favorite online book seller or bookstore to check the book out! It’s wonderful!
Have a great weekend, and Happy Mother’s Day!
Jason A. Smith
Superintendent of Schools
585-343-2480, ext 1000
jasonsmith@bataviacsd.org