Principal's Weekly
Principal Beth N. Choquette, Bridge Street School
Bridge Street School
2 Parsons Street
Northampton, Massachusetts 01060
413-587-1460 (phone) 413-587-1484 (fax)
Beth N. Choquette, Principal bchoquette@northamtpon-k12.us
Elizabeth Peterson, Administrative Assistant epeterson@northampton-k12.us
Nicole Sawula, Senior Clerk nsawula@northampton-k12.us
A Message from Principal Choquette 5/11/18
Happy Friday! I hope you all have something planned that is enjoyable and relaxing for the upcoming weekend. I'd like to wish all the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and anyone who is like a mother to someone, a very happy Mother's Day and thank you for the love and support that you give to our children every single day.
As the end of the year nears, I'd like to encourage as many families as possible to volunteer their help with any of the end of the year activities. The PTO does an amazing job at providing wonderful activities for our students. One of those awesome activities is field day. Field day is a great day for our students, but it is also a day that is very difficult to organize and run, especially if we don't have volunteers to help out. If you are available to help make this day a success for our kids, please look for the flyer coming home to sign-up. Let's make this another great field day for our students and thank you to the PTO for putting it on. Our field day will be on Friday, June 8th this year.
Some of you have reached out to your first and second grade teachers about the assigned seating at lunch. The lunch staff felt this was necessary to encourage students to be safe and to follow the 4 R's in the cafeteria. The first and second graders are having a challenging time in the cafeteria. They are getting up out of their seats to run over to another table, leaving the cafeteria without permission, and not following the 4 R's for the cafeteria. The classroom teachers came up with seating arrangements for the students in a way where they felt students would be able to socialize while having students sit with appropriate peers. This is not a punishment, but rather a way to make it safer and more manageable for the staff in the cafeteria. Since they started doing this, the cafeteria has been calmer and students are spending more time eating.
Yesterday at celebration, I spoke to the students about kindness. We have had some disturbing things happen over the past couple of weeks that I addressed yesterday. Inappropriate words written on the shed and basketball court in sidewalk chalk, making fun of the way teachers look, and taking things out of other students back-packs. As you can imagine, these actions are upsetting not only to the adults, but to our students as well. Kindness can mean many things and being kind doesn't only mean something we try to be towards people, we also need to be kind to our building and respect other people's belongings. Kids make mistakes, and I've always encouraged them to do so. Let's make sure our students are learning from their mistakes and that we are all teaching them about the act of kindness.
Thank you for your ongoing support of BSS! It truly is a wonderful place to be.
Have a wonderful weekend!
K-5 Celebration
Thursday, May 17, 2018, 09:00 AM
BSS Cafeteria
Inclusion Update-Dr. Fazzi Report
A couple of months back I was approached by a parent about the possibility of our school working with Dr. Bob Fazzi to help come up with a way to move our school forward in a positive way given the challenging year we had. I thought it was a great opportunity for our school and we went ahead with the process. Dr. Fazzi spent time interviewing many different stakeholders to get information about our school, this past year, inclusion, the culture, etc. In the end he wrote a report and gave us some recommendations to help us move forward. After reviewing the report, it was nice to see that all of his recommendations are areas we have been focusing on already as a school and are things the school council have been discussing as being part of our school improvement plan. We will continue to work on those areas as we move forward in making BSS a great place to work and to be educated.
One of his recommendations, a Success Team, is also something the school council has been talking about over the past year. Our school council has parent representation, community representation, teacher (both general education and special education) representation, and PTO representation. All of our members are nominated and elected. In order to have our school council work on promoting inclusion, we would like to invite two more people to our discussions. These two new people will not be part of the school council, however they will join us for the planning of promoting successful inclusion and a positive school culture. Therefore, I will be sending a letter to the SpedPAC (Special Education Parent Advisory Council) and to REAL (Racial Equity and Learning) in hopes to get representation from both of those groups to join our school council for these discussions. Promoting and supporting the inclusion of all students and families at BSS and supporting our faculty and staff in a way where they can feel successful is our goal.
Attached below is Dr. Fazzi's report titled Final Assessment and Recommendations for BSS.
Thank you to all of the stakeholders involved in this process and for your commitment to our students and school.
Important Dates
April 3-May 18: MCAS Testing
April 9-June 15: New Base Session
May 16: PTO Meeting 6:00 p.m. Library
May 18: Early Dismissal 12:20 p.m.; Family Tech Talk WWII Club/Deuce 7:00 p.m.
June 7: BSS Talent Show 6:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
June 8: Field Day
June 15: 5th Grade Graduation
Upcoming Principal's Chats:
Due to no attendance at the last chat, and only 1 person at the two before that, I have canceled the June chat. Thank you to all who attended them this year.