Dear District 41 Community,

My fellow board members and I spent Wednesday morning welcoming students back to another school year. I was immediately aware of the joyful sounds emanating from the crowds of kids and adults who walked, drove and bussed to school. It was also impossible to miss the multitude of diverse faces full of smiles and wonder. As the first school bell of the year rang and teachers welcomed their students, I realize something profound had happened. Unfolding at Hadley, Churchill, Ben Franklin, Forest Glen and Lincoln was the renewal of a social contract. One generation would love, educate and keep safe the next. School would start so that another child’s life of promise would begin and take flight.

The rush of children, parents, grandparents, and guardians congregating before the school house doors continued a grand tradition linking all of us to our past and forcefully binding one another as citizens and neighbors. We knew this day would come. It was as certain as the movement of the tides. As inevitable as the seasons. The hard collaborative work of parents, teachers, school staff, principals, and district administrators instills in us the confidence that when summer’s shadows lengthened we would, no matter the swirl of other events uphold the duty to care for our children. It is time again to go to school. What happened this week?
It is simple and sublime: we affirmed the past and began the future.

Thank you.

Dr. Robert Bruno, President

District 41 Board of Education