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

Happy Spring!!!! I am being very optimistic that we have seen the end of winter.....I hope.

I'd like to give a HUGE shout out to Seroe Michaud for the wonderful production of the spring concert. In the six years that I've been at BSS, this was the best one yet. I also can't express to you how incredibly proud I am of all of our students. They were just awesome. It was so nice to see so many families and community members there to watch them as well. I do have to admit, I was getting worried about where we were going to put everyone! The performance and the crowd supporting our kids, was just proof of how amazing our school is.

Thank you to all of you who voted for BSS to receive money from the Florence Savings Bank Community Awards. Stephanie Pouliot and I attended the ceremony last night and accepted the check. The award was for $900! The money will be used for BASE to help support our after school enrichment programs.

There have been some complaints regarding the clocks. We are aware that our clocks are two minutes ahead and are working on having someone come in and adjust them. However, students are expected to be arrive at school by the bell at 8:45 a.m. The 8:50 a.m. bell is the late bell. Please plan appropriately to have children at school by 8:45 a.m. Families who have students who have been absent 6 or more times this year and/or have been tardy 10 or more times this year will be receiving a letter with number of absences and tardies your child has. This letter is to express the importance of attendance and arriving to school on time. We understand that things come up and there will be times when your child is late or absent but please help us in making sure your child is prepared to start class at 8:50 a.m. Arriving at 8:50 a.m. disrupts the learning that is already taking place in the classrooms at 8:50 a.m. Thank you for your cooperation.

Have a great weekend.

Thank you Nurse Jessica. Check it out!

I am very excited to announce that the school committee approved the FY '19 budget last night. Last night there was an amendment made to the budget that included increasing the school psychologists at the elementary schools to full-time! This will have a big impact on us here at BSS. This is the first time in the six years that I've been at BSS, where I feel that we will have a solid SEBL (Social, Emotional, Behavioral Learning) team. In order to increase the school psychologists, we had to make some cuts district-wide. In the original budget proposal we had an increase of a .4 ESL teacher, that was decreased last night to a .2 FTE which the current ESL teacher her is .6 feels that a .8 will be enough to service our students here.

Now that the budget is approved we can moved forward with planning around how our SEBL team will be utilized next year in the new "Suite for SEBL" and how we will shape their interventions in a proactive more successful way than this year.

Now that we know how many teaching positions we will have, it will make the planning much easier. The teachers and I are almost done with our draft of the classroom structures next year. Once that draft is complete, I can share it with you. It looks like 2nd grade and possibly the 3rd grade will be the only co-taught teams next year, but we are still deciding that.

February 5th-April 6th New Base Session

April 3-May 18: MCAS Testing

March 26-29: Fifth Grade at Nature's Classroom

April 10: PTO Meeting at 3:15 p.m. BSS Library

April 11: School Council 3:30-5:00 p.m. BSS Conference Room

April 16-20: Spring Recess

Upcoming Principal's Chats

Apr. 11th 8:35-9:30 a.m. Library

May 8th 3:30-4:30 p.m. Library

June 5th- 6:00-7:00 p.m. Library

Principal Choquette's Spring Semester Doctoral Dates:

Apr. 6

Apr. 27

Snow Date: May 4