I just visited the SHS Interact Club on this beautiful "spring" day, and Interact Club Advisor Margo Austin and her students have the latest update on the annual Tree Plenish project. From Margo:

The Interact Club is hosting Tree Plenish for the 3rd year in a row. Our goal is to offset Spaulding's annual carbon emissions by planting 1,000 trees. This year's options are: Red Maple, Eastern Redbud, and Yellow Poplar. Trees will be available for pickup or have them planted by students at your home on Sunday, May 5th. Order your trees by April 5th. We have 300 FREE trees remaining, after that saplings are just $5. Contact Margo Austin at maustshs@buusd.org with any questions! The link:

ORDER TREES!

Supporting the SHS Tree Plenish project is a terrific way to support our students as they try to reduce our school's carbon footprint, and it's free! Reach out to Margo at: maustshs@buusd.org if you have any questions.

Tide NATION, let's continue to create a wave of pink in the stands, along with pink sticky notes that will be provided at the games for fans/family to share out, along with at Spaulding

Tide Nation, we challenge YOU! Show up in pink and support our WINTER ATHLETE's cause in FIGHTING cancer on Wednesday, February 14th | Thursday, February 15th | Friday, February 16th | Saturday, February 17th, especially OUR SENIORS.

Please note that all proceeds from admissions tickets will go to their cause of FIGHTING cancer. 

This short video helps explain how education taxes are calculated.

This short video helps to explain and give background about the terms that are used when calculating education taxes.

We have two updates for you this afternoon…

SHS Voting Expo!

The first is an exciting School Showcase focusing on the SHS Student Council and Interact Club that we covered this afternoon. We got to see SHS students engage in a Voting Expo where they had a chance to vote on eight different youth-led projects in order to decide which would get funding. The funding for this project is coming from a $40,000 grant by the Department of Education, Senator Sanders, and Vermont Afterschool. The SHS Student Council have taken the lead in surveying their peers, brainstorming solutions, and creating proposals and presentations. Now they get to use ranked choice voting and the democratic voting process to prioritize the projects. Again, very exciting! Please check out this brief video to see more.

Let's Learn About Education Finance and Taxes!

I'd also like to share these two brief but helpful slide presentations with you. These presentations will hopefully give everyone in the community a quick lesson on all of the education finance terms in Vermont and how all of this impacts our taxes. This was a collaborative effort of other districts in the region, and there has been a big effort here to simplify the very complex education finance system in Vermont. We would welcome your feedback. As we said last week, more details on the BUUSD FY25 budget will be coming in the weeks ahead, and understanding this information will be very helpful in keeping us all informed. Check the presentations out at buusd.org/budget and look for the following:

Let’s Learn About: Education Finance Terms
Let’s Learn About: Education Taxes

Finally, we will be conducting a Budget Information Night next Thursday, February 1 at 6:00 in the SHS library. There will be a virtual option for folks who can't make it in person. We look forward to summarizing all of the budget information shared so far, and answering your questions.

For this week's showcase, we spent Wednesday afternoon with the students and staff at Spaulding High School experiencing and learning about Enriching Wednesdays.  New SHS Assistant Principal Becky Busker, SHS Instructional Coach Mya Violette, and many others have been hard at work this fall creating a new approach to building community and providing many different opportunities to support our students' success.  Take a look at some of the highlights of our visit.

It was a great experience listening to students share how well these Wednesday afternoons are working for them!  You will notice here that the goal of Enriching Wednesdays is to support students academically as well as emotionally.  One primary option is to provide a "call back" for students who need support in their classes; teachers can call back students, and students can also ask to be called back.  We saw both focused study groups and specific courses where students were getting small group or 1:1 support.

Those who are not called back can pick from a wide variety of enrichment options that are both student and staff generated based on mutual interest.  Everything is about building strong relationships, and I got to see students see their teachers (and each other) in a different, non-academic setting having great fun together.

This program is still at the beginning stages of development and the SHS team is working incredibly hard with the logistics, but I was very impressed to see how far things have come in just the first quarter of the year!  I think you'll be impressed too.

Thank you for reading, and we hope you have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving break with your loved ones.

The SHS Webpage has recently been updated for the new upcoming school year to reflect the new bell schedules and staff as well as the Student Handbook. You can check out the newly updated pages here:

SHS Staff Directory

New Bell Schedules

SHS Student Handbook

8/30: New Student Orientation Day

8/31: First Day of School for All Students

Our students and school community were honored to participate in this year's Memorial Day Parade this past Tuesday, and it was a powerful learning experience for all.  I had a chance to connect with BTMES, BCEMS, and SHS marching bands to hear their thoughts on participating in the ceremony, and we also go to catch up with the SHS J.R.O.T.C. program.

Command Sgt. Major Arianna Little (Junior, SHS) said it best:  "It's so important to honor those that have served our country and to show our patriotism."  Indeed it is, and all of our students respectfully honored our veterans on this perfect day for a parade!  Many thanks to our Band Directors Bobby Booth (SHS), Ally Tarwater (BTMES), and Angela Garcelon (BCEMS) for providing this opportunity for our students to shine on such an important day.  And of course, thank you to SHS J.R.O.T.C. Instructors Sgt. Danny Boone and Lt. Colonel Paul Stafford for leading our efforts in having our students be such an integral part of these events that honor our veterans.  It was a day to be truly proud of our school community!

SHS Step UP Night For  Incoming Freshmen and new students will be Thursday June 1, 2023, 5:30-7:20 pm. 

We had a great visit with the SHS Interact Club yesterday, and I can promise that you will be impressed with the leadership skills of these Tide students!  Club Advisor and SHS Flexible Pathways Coordinator Margo Austin joined us with four of her club officers to talk about a "Tree Plenish" project they are conducting for the second year in a row.

We are hosting three separate virtual information nights for students who are currently in 8th, 10th, or 11th Grade.  Click the image above for more information!

For this week's School Showcase, we honor and celebrate our SHS Winter Sports teams.  What a fun and incredibly successful season this has been!  I will let you watch and listen to the team captains in the showcase below to hear all of the highlights instead of sharing them here, but many of our teams and athletes are among the top in the state.

Last night we attended the Varsity Boys Basketball game against Hazen and spoke with four students to hear their thoughts on the past two weeks and how proud they are of their community for stepping up and showing their support.