As I reflect on my sixth year at Barnet School I continue to feel very grateful for the opportunity to serve in such a warm, supportive, and welcoming community. The community’s unwavering support of its school and its faculty and staff is commendable and very much appreciated. I want to recognize our faculty and staff as dedicated and caring people who understand the importance of keeping the best interests of children in mind whenever decisions are made. Our students continue to be interested in learning, enthusiastic, inquisitive, energetic, and well behaved, most of the time. For those times when a few of our students have difficulty behaving, we have instituted some new procedures to address their challenges. Beyond that we are embracing Vermont Positive Behavior Supports (VTPBS) a statewide effort to help school teams form behavioral and discipline systems that support students’ learning and social development. For the past year Barnet’s team has been attending workshops and monthly meetings to prepare for a four-day institute this summer. Team members Jean Densen, Nedra Willard, Susan Jensen, Cindy Mosedale, Bill Douglas, Cathy Browne, Susan Persson, and I will attend the institute and return with an action plan to train other staff members and to implement positive behavior supports for all students.
Target goals will include:
- Support for all children and adults to build community by modeling and enforcing
positive behavior
- Emphasis on the importance of positive relationships, respect, and support for others so
that all can succeed
- Clear expectations, taught and reinforced verbally, visually and continuously
- Improvement of academic achievement

The purpose of school-wide PBS is to establish a climate in which appropriate behavior is the norm. Introducing, modeling, and reinforcing positive social behavior is an important part of a student’s educational experience. We believe that teaching behavioral expectations and rewarding students for following them is a much more positive approach than waiting for misbehavior to occur before responding. We are looking forward to an enhanced, more positive, school climate in the years ahead!

As I noted in previous years, we have many reasons to be proud of our school but even very good schools can get better. We have been working hard to continue development of our school as a professional learning community with a focus on learning, rather than teaching. This shift in focus continually forces us to rethink our strategies and practices as we continue to ask ourselves the same three key questions.

If Learning Is The Central Purpose Of Our School:

1. What do we expect students to learn?
2. How will we know what students have learned?
3. How will we, individually and as a school, respond to students who are not learning?

In order to achieve the vision of a school that functions as a professional learning community, a school must have a “vision”. Faculty and staff developed a vision statement five years ago. The “Vision Statement” is printed below; its logo is on the following page:

“We strive to be a supportive community of learners in which every member meets the highest standards. We do this through respecting differences, encouraging risk-taking and questioning, collaborating, being creative, celebrating, finding joy in learning, reflecting, self-motivation, and self-discipline.
We are becoming local and world citizens who honor the environment, people and cultures of the world.”

We will continue to ask ourselves those challenging questions noted above, look at student work together, and further improve upon a collaborative culture that enhances student learning.

We continue to revisit our assessment practices. Many teachers explored and shared Formative Assessment practices throughout the past year and others attended training during the summer. We will keep families informed as new practices develop.

Our enrollment continues to grow. New registrations for next year have increased our enrollment to 182 K-8 students and 35 pre-schoolers, for a total of 217, compared to 205 this year. We welcome our new families and look forward to their participation in our school community!

Sincerely,


Kerry Keenan, Principal