The March 17 Champlain Valley School District board met remotely against the backdrop of the uncertainties related to school suspension of operations due to Coronavirus. The discussions were largely focused on maintaining traditional work and planning for a board retreat on May 28
Following is a letter from the Champlain Valley School District. In addition to the broad communication from the district office, Charlotte Central School Co-Principal Jen Roth said in an email, on behalf of the school, which was open March 16 and 17, “Our CCS faculty and staff have done a remarkable job using the precepts of our school to model the calm necessary for our students to feel safe and to carry on with what they know. At a time with many uncertainties, we need to hold onto what we believe.
After a four-year absence, baseball is back at Charlotte Central School, and a new sport is ready to go: track and field is now one of the school’s middle school spring sports offerings, joining the already-popular March volleyball team.
Julia Lollis, winner of this year’s CCS Scripps spelling bee, with co-principals Stephanie Sumner and Jen Roth. Say the word, spell it, then say it again: this is the mantra for all participants in the Charlotte Central School Scripps Spelling Bee.
The Champlain Valley School District, of which Charlotte Central School is a part, would receive $4.5 million of the $6 million that’s up for a bond vote in March. On Town Meeting Day, voters in Charlotte, Shelburne, Hinesburg, St. George, and Williston will decide via Australian ballot whether or not the capital improvement project is a go. All five towns need to approve the bond vote in order for it to pass.
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.
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.
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 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 young guys who play open gym basketball at Charlotte Central School call their twice-weekly ball games by the affectionate name of “Old Man.” The older men who play in the games also call it Old Man, with the full knowledge that they’re the reason it’s called that. As the Champlain Valley School district moves forward with facility use policy changes, the future of Old Man could look very different, and the guys who play, both young and old, are concerned.
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.
Just days before sixth graders at Charlotte Central School were released into the wild to swim and have fun with their friends, they traveled to Starksboro to release some trout into Lewis Creek to do the same.
Charlotte Central School students in grades 6 through 8 danced, sang, growled and glowed as the cast of “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” from April 4-6. Seventh grader Charlie Taylor intimidated and ingratiated as the cranky-beast-turned-besotted-prince, and eighth grader Rory McDermott was fortunately typecast in the role of Belle, a fierce book-loving beauty with a big heart who isn’t afraid to speak her mind.
After five years, Charlotte Central School is changing the way elementary education is experienced by students in grades one through four. The current model is to “loop” students, by grade, in a two-year period with the same teacher and same students for both years. Starting this fall, first and second grade students will be placed in multi-age classrooms, and moving forward, all subsequent 1-4 students will do the same.
A team of 6th grade problem-solvers competed—and won first place—at the Vermont State Destination Imagination competition in Burlington on March 23. They also received a special award for teamwork and team spirit.
A new student group has formed at Charlotte Central School in which students are asking big questions and then performing the results of their inquiry. “We research for answers and when we are done, we create a performance to explain our findings to our peers,” said founder Deirdre Higgins. The inspiration for the group came from fellow students Grace Zappala and Emma Metzler, who were wondering why people kick.
News Editor Melissa O’Brien meets with middle school students at CCS each Tuesday morning as part of the new Journalism Club formed in association with The Charlotte News.
This past Friday, the Charlotte Central School Parent Teacher Organization and my CCS co-principal, Jen Roth, and I hosted a New Family Social as an opportunity for new families to get an overview of how the school and the PTO work together to provide opportunities for the students of CCS.