Dear Beacon Community:

I wanted to provide you with a quick update before the weekend begins.  

Beacon High School Graduations

I had not been to a drive-in movie theater since seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind with my family when I was 7 years old.  While that is a classic movie, this was much better.  Yes, we had our high school graduation at the Hyde Park Drive-In and it was amazing!  It was really the final event of a number of events to honor and celebrate our seniors.  The film that was produced took three full days of filming each individual graduate walking across our stage with their families and some school staff present.  Everybody got to see the movie at the same time at the drive-in and it was wonderful to be together one last time as a group.  The ceremony got to be a little more personal and individualized than usual and we got to honk our car horns all night.  It was great! 

Thanks to the following people for making things happen for our seniors:

Mike Adamcek for filming every senior walk the stage for three straight days.

Mike Gersh for putting the whole graduation movie together, an incredible process.

Elisa Soto for standing out on our turf field for three days celebrating our graduates.

Tom O’Neil for playing pomp and circumstance about 250 times for each of our graduates from the press box.

The transportation department for delivering caps and gowns to all of our seniors.

The security team for helping to supervise all of the graduation activities.

Andrea Davis for being the senior class parent advisor and doing so many things to make everything special.

To BHS PTSO Risa Ostrow, Donna Green,  Fran Vakirtzis for leadership and support.

To parents Chastity Beato, Lynn Costello, Mary Antalak, and Patty Rinaldi for everything!

I know I am missing people, so I apologize in advance, but also thanks to the community for helping make this such a memorable end of the school year!

Reopening BCSD

Just a quick update.  We are eagerly awaiting the NY state guidelines for reopening schools.   We will work to prepare for every contingency and I think it best for parents and families to prepare for every contingency as well.  These contingencies include full/regular school, hybrid social distanced school with students coming half of the time, to school closed/distance learning.  The reopening guidelines are expected to come out in 1-2 weeks.  We will do our best to prepare for everything that may come our way next year and we will communicate with the community frequently this summer to keep everyone updated!

BCSD Summer Meals

We will start up our summer meals program at BHS and South Avenue on Wednesday, July 8 from 10-10:30 for pick up.  We will do the meal pickups on Mondays and Wednesdays.  We will not be able to do delivery over the summer!  Let us know if you have any questions.

BCSD Playgrounds are Open this Summer

Feel free to use our playgrounds this summer, they are open as are the City of Beacon playgrounds as well. 

A Few Meeting Dates

Ways to connect to these meetings via Zoom will be shared the week before the meetings.

District Diversity/Equity Committee Meeting, Wednesday, July 22 at 7:00.  We will meet as a whole group and then divide into smaller working groups via Zoom.  This was our committee working style before the pandemic school closure.  We have focused on the code of conduct implementation, hiring for a diverse workforce, supporting the inclusion of students with special needs, and supporting LGBTQ students.  We can add other focus areas as we work.  

Reopening BCSD Planning/Information Sessions:

We should have the NY state reopening schools guidelines soon.  We will host these sessions to discuss the current state of our reopening planning and answer questions and concerns.  These meetings will be via Zoom and we will share Zoom info the week beforehand.

Tuesday, July 21 10:00am

Thursday, July 23 4:00pm

Monday, July 27 7:00 pm

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Matt Landahl