Dear Batavia Families and Community,
I hope you have enjoyed reading these bi-weekly BCSD updates as I have enjoyed writing them. It has been my pleasure to share with you important news and highlights going on throughout our district this school year.
We are nearing the end of what I like to call “ceremony season.” What a pleasure it has been to experience each of the moving up days at Jackson, John Kennedy, and BMS. As families, community members, and educators at BCSD, we should all collectively rejoice and celebrate the accomplishments of our students. In particular, the last two years have been especially challenging due to the issues brought upon by COVID, but together we have persisted.
It has also been a pleasure to celebrate with our employees the well-deserved and earned retirements of faculty and staff members—they will each be missed for their special contributions to our BCSD family.
Of course, the biggest ceremony of them all will be tomorrow at beautiful VanDetta Stadium when we celebrate commencement and send off the Class of 2022! Graduation is one of my favorite events of the school year and I look forward to our celebration tomorrow with our seniors and their families and friends. If you want to view the live stream starting at 10am on Saturday, June 25, click here.
Thank you to each of you for the warm welcome I have received this year as your Superintendent. It has been a true pleasure and I look forward to experiencing my first full school year starting later this fall. So, please allow me to thank the following groups for all their wonderful contributions to the 2021-22 school year:
Our wonderful students
Our dedicated Board of Education members
Our talented teachers
Our supportive families and school parent groups
Our fantastic clerical staff
Our kind teacher aides
Our vigilant school security aides and School Resource Officer
Our skilled IT (information technology) staff
Our caring school nurses
Our supportive counselors, psychologists and student support staff
Our committed buildings and grounds crew (especially for the snow clean ups)
Our passionate coaches and advisors
Our employee associations for such a positive district-employee working relationship
Our awesome food and nutrition staff (I highly recommend the soups!)
Finally, I am especially thankful to our entire district leadership team, as I work so closely with them to ensure we have a successful school experience for our students, families, and staff.
I will be putting a pause on these bi-weekly updates during the summer, but please look for more information from your principals regarding back to school details around August. As I write this update, we are also finalizing start and end times for each school, and that information will be shared with you in July.
Have a safe and happy summer!
With sincere gratitude and appreciation,
Jason A. Smith
Superintendent Schools
585-343-3480, ext 1000
Twitter: @JasonJasmith