Superintendent Blog Post October 18, 2019

Dear Beacon City School District Community:

Thanks

I just wanted to say a huge thanks to our faculty and staff yesterday at Beacon High School, Rombout Middle School, and Sargent Elementary for dealing with temporary power outages.  Things stayed calm for our students during the outages and it is due to the professional work of many people. Thank you!

Upcoming Dates in November

I wanted to take a moment and remind everyone of some upcoming dates in November.

Tuesday, November 5th- No School For Students- Professional Learning Day for Staff

Thursday, November 14- Half Day for Parent/Teacher Conferences- BHS Dismissal 10:30, Rombout 11:15, Elementary 12:15

Friday, November 15- Half Day for Parent/Teacher Conferences- BHS Dismissal 10:30, Rombout 11:15, Elementary 12:15

Tuesday, November 26- Go Home Early Drill (State Required)- All Schools end 15 minutes earlier than usual.  We will send reminders about this.

 

District Diversity/Equity Committee:

The District will be holding its first Diversity/Equity Committee of the year on Thursday, October 24 at 7:45-9:00 in the Community Room at Beacon High School.  At this monthly meeting, attendees will have a chance to share their thoughts about district initiatives and action steps and will also have a chance to learn more about the different things we are doing to promote equity and diversity in the district.  All are welcome!

 

Beacon Schools on Instagram

You can find different Instagram accounts related to our district. Here is a partial list:

beaconcityschool

romboutms

southaveelem

bhschorus

beaconplayers

I am sure I am missing some so I will keep updating you on new ones to check out!

Have a great weekend!

Matt Landahl

Dear BCSD Community:

I hope everyone is doing well.  We have had a great start to the school year and I want to thank everyone for their support this year.  Attendance at all of our schools’ meet the teacher nights has been outstanding and I want to thank our teachers and staff for putting so much energy into a great first few weeks of the year.  I wanted to take a moment to provide you with a couple of updates on some things.  

Homecoming Reminder

On September 25, 2019, John Giametta sent an email regarding Homecoming activities.  We would love to see you there! The fireworks on Friday, October 4th after the football game are being provided by donations from the community.  Thanks to Beacon Xtreme Softball for helping to lead those efforts and thanks to all who donated. We have better temporary bleachers now in place at the field so more folks will have a better view of the events.  We are still working on some longer-term solutions for seating but the newer bleacher seats should help. It has been so much fun to see our student-athletes and PE classes use this facility the past month. We even have had our pep band performing at our home games and they have been amazing!  Thanks to the community for supporting this work and see you next Friday!

Ways to Follow Our Work

I have been working to provide regular updates of the amazing work in our district through our new district Instagram account “beaconcityschool”, our Beacon City School District Facebook page, and my twitter account at @mlandahl.  Our principals/schools, athletic teams, Beacon Players, and some of our clubs are on twitter and Instagram as well.

New courses at BHS for the 2019- 2020 school year

One of my goals this year is to show our 19-20 budget work in action.  One of our goals for this year was to increase the course offerings at the high school.  While we are still working on hiring a person to start the Business program at the high school and we are either targeting second semester or next year to do that, we are offering a wide variety of new courses this year at BHS, most of which we are accomplishing with existing staff.

Architectural Design-This is a second-semester course.

Computer Science Essentials- Project Lead the Way-This course is our first course in implementing the Project Lead the Way Computer Science offerings at BHS.

DIA & Contemporary Art II- This is a second-semester course.

Science Research Literacy- We are offering two sections of this course this year.

Italian 1-We are offering two sections of this course this year.

Media Literacy- This is a first-semester course.

Magical Realism- This is a second-semester course in the English department.  

AP English (English 11) -We are offering three sections of this course in its first year.

Networking: Help Desk- We have twenty students at Beacon High School who are helping to run the Help Desk for students and their Chromebooks.  

We will keep working with our staff and students to improve and increase the offerings we have at our schools.  Thanks for your support of this work!

Smart Bond Application Process

I will be sending an update to the community next week on our Smart Bond proposal.  We are focusing on upgrading the technology we use for building security. I will send this information next week and also post it on the website.

Have a great week!

Matt Landahl