It’s December, and you wake up to a crisp and snowy day already feeling that exciting tingling that all kids feel when you enter the Christmas month. When you race downstairs you see the Christmas tree and on top of it…an elf!
These are no ordinary elves! They are Elf on the Shelf elves, and to the people who carry out this tradition they are some of the highlights of Christmas.
The rules are simple:
The December 3 CVSD Board meeting focused on a discussion of the FY 2021 general instructional budget and the difficulties of aligning board goals and vision with budget realities. Superintendent Elaine Pinckney guided the board through the process of how the budget is developed through planning meetings with principals and building staff.
For about 55 students and a handful of adults at Champlain Valley Union High School, the night of Nov. 21 is one that will likely stay with them for a long time.
The CVSD Board meeting on Nov. 19 focused on a discussion of special education budgeting and spending estimates for 2021. Director of Student Support Services Meghan Roy and Chief Operating Officer Jeanne Jensen led the discussion on the factors involved in making budgeting decisions.
S’mores are a delicious snack that almost everyone loves. They’re so creamy and chocolatey, and everyone wants to have them. S’mores are a gooey sensation that are made out of chocolate, graham crackers, and roasted marshmallow.
Since 1994, every senior who has graduated from Champlain Valley Union High School has completed a graduation challenge project. The guidelines are very open ended, encouraging creativity and allowing students to do virtually anything they want—all for half of a credit.
With two final messages and his usual gentle antics, Pumpkin Man said good-bye to Charlotte Central School last week on Halloween. Along with the local mysterious figure’s dismissal, school principals also cancelled the annual Halloween parade, and the final time the holiday was celebrated at school had smiles, tears, and a gentle, loving message from the man of the hour.
Charlie Taylor and Estelle Emmons took time out of their school day to travel to Montpelier and visit the…
This week’s CVSD board meeting featured a discussion of personalized learning, which is designed to maximize student choices around curricula and respond to individual learning styles. It is an important building block in the Proficiency Based Learning (PBL) system that the Champlain Valley School District has embraced across all schools.
It’s October 31! Halloween! You should be excited, but instead a sense of dread fills you: you’re low on candy and it’s too late to head to the store. What do you do?
Charlotte Central School’s resident mythical figure, Pumpkin Man, has been the center of controversy in town lately, as school principals Stephanie Sumner and Jen Roth recently announced that after this year, he will no longer be appearing at the school’s annual Halloween parade—and that in fact, this will also be the parade’s last year. In light of recent news reports claiming that Pumpkin Man wanted to retire, the man himself reached out to The Charlotte News to set the record straight and explain that he did not, in fact, want to retire after this year.
Every year since the early 90s, at the CCS Halloween celebration, students parade by grade out into the school’s back field. They gather at the far edge, uncharacteristically silent, looking expectantly at the tree line on Pease Mountain.
Who’s in my yard? If someone is running away from your front door in October, don’t panic and call the police. Instead, take a second to look and see if there’s a bag on the doorstep. If there is, you just got ghosted!
The Charlotte Central School staff is undertaking a number of activities to improve social and academic learning and proficiency this year. On the academic front, CCS is engaged in a design/build implementation that is moving the instructional system from a standards-based system to a system that measures proficiency at each level.
The Champlain Valley School District invites all community members to the CVSD Community Budget Forum. The CVSD School Board encourages you to get involved and share what’s on your mind as we begin the budget process for the 2020-2021 school year.
Bunny yoga is a thing that exists. Yes, yoga with rabbits. And not too long ago, a Connecting Youth mentor and mentee pair from Champlain Valley Union High School got to experience some lapin Zen together. Now in its fourth year, the CY-CVU mentoring program is connecting students and community members in new ways, fostering a relationship that reaches much further than the school walls. The program is in need of adults who are willing to spend time with a high school student on terms that make sense to both the mentor and the mentee.
The perpetual challenge for parents of tweens and teens is getting kids off their electronic devices and encouraging them to participate in the real world. Charlotte Central School is taking steps to do just that for students during the school day, rolling out the Away for the Day program as school started last week.
The Charlotte News wants your help reporting on our wonderful community. We’re looking for a dozen junior reporters to join our newsroom once a week for an afternoon of investigating, interviewing, writing and editing.
Charlotte Central School faculty and staff will officially return on Thursday, Aug. 22, with the annual CVSD convocation at CVU. This day will include a welcoming from CVSD Superintendent Elaine Pinkney, school board representatives and members from the CVU student council.
The exterior improvement most visible to the public for now is the removal of the outside stairs on the east side of the building. The cement staircase is currently in the process of being replaced with safer steps that are also compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.