Business Department News

Contest Winners

BFA St. Albans Business Department participated in the Lights, Camera, Save video contest through their Personal Finance course. Peoples Trust Company awarded all students for their participation, and the winning class video won $500.

Congratulations to the winning video produced by Greg Torbert, Keira Wells, and Daniel Hill.

National Business Honor Society

The BFA St. Albans Business Department held its annual National Business Honor Society Induction Ceremonies this past Sunday. 

Congratulations to our newest members of the National Business Honor Society: Maddy Giroux, Ben Archambault, and Jacob Benware. And a big welcome back to Meghan Connor.

The National Business Honor Society is an organization that recognizes juniors and seniors who truly excel academically in all their classes and are interested in pursuing a career in the business world. Students are also selected for recognition based on their overall academic, character, and leadership skills.

Chamber Singers performed for the St. Albans Area Chamber of Commerce

"Chamber Mixer"

BFA Chamber Singers were invited to perform at the People’s Trust Company for the St. Albans Area Chamber of Commerce first “Chamber Mixer" of the year. This was a wonderful experience for our students to meet and sing for local business owners and community leaders. 

Repertoire performed included the 16th century madrigal, “Awake Sweet Love,” followed by “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” (an African-American folk song) and “Seasons of Love,” from the Musical, Rent. Chamber Singers rendition of “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” helped highlight the historical context of the Underground Railroad which had prominent routes and locations throughout St. Albans City. 

With the Martin Luther King holiday approaching, it was especially important to sing about the Underground Railroad highlighting efforts by enslaved African-Americans to reach free states in the North and Canada. Thus, some of the very first steps leading in the long road of our nation’s civil right’s movement.

Invitation to Community Forum Re: Principal Search

Wednesday, January 15th, 6-8pm

BFA Library

As many of you are aware, I have been asked to facilitate the hiring process for BFA’s next Principal.  The process will include staff and community forums and the selection of a hiring committee.  At each of the community forums, the group will determine the skills and characteristics they would like to see in our next principal.  This information will help to inform the hiring committee as they build their selection process.

Therefore, I would like to invite all of you to attend the community forum to contribute to our hiring process on Wednesday, January 15^th in the BFA library at 6pm.

Bill

Assessment Week Schedule

Assessment Schedule - 1st Semester

4 Block Brunch

The first day of Semester 2 is January 21st

	Tuesday 1/14/2020	Wednesday 1/15/2020	Thursday 1/16/2020	Friday 1/17/2020
7:00 – 7:55	Breakfast in Cafeteria	Breakfast in Cafeteria	Breakfast in Cafeteria	Breakfast in Cafeteria
8:00 – 9:45	Assessment Period 2	Assessment Period 3	Assessment Period 5	Assessment  Period 7
9:55 – 11:35	Enrichment/Brunch	Enrichment/Brunch	Enrichment/Brunch	10:00 – 11:45 *Assessment Make-ups
9:55 – 10:20	Lunch 1	Lunch 1	Lunch 1
10:20 – 10:45	Lunch 2	Lunch 2	Lunch 2
10:45 – 11:10	Lunch 3	Lunch 3	Lunch 3
11:10 - 11:35	Lunch 4	Lunch 4	Lunch 4
11:40 – 1:25	Assessment Period 1	Assessment Period 4	Assessment Period 6	Teacher Prep
1:30 – 2:45	Teacher Prep	Teacher Prep	Teacher Prep	Teacher Prep

                                                           

Parent Meeting held on 1/6/20 Re: Proficiency Based Learning, Scoring & Reporting

We would like to thank all of the parents and community members who attended our parent forum this past Monday night.  We had approximately 45 people in attendance who provided feedback on the goals for our reporting and scoring system through both real-time surveying and small discussion groups.

We will be using the feedback to adjust our goals and to look at what BFA must provide to create a clear and equitable, scoring and reporting system that all can understand.  We will have future parent forums to collaborate on the construction of the system.

If you were not able to attend Monday night's forum, please click on the link below to view the presentation, watch the video, and see the feedback we received.  We expect it will be another 4 to 6 weeks until we have another forum, so please stay tuned to this blog as we will post announcements about upcoming dates.

BFA Website page: click here

Vimeo direct video link: click here

Parent Group exercise - responses: click here

Also, note that this information can be found on our BFA campus website. Go to the MRUSD website, within Campus, choose BFA. Go to Menu. Click on Student/Parent, which gives a list of items. Click on Proficiency-Based Learning.

Invitation - Parent Meeting Monday, January 6, 2020

Hello parents:

We would like to invite parents, especially those of freshman, sophomores, and juniors to take part in a working session on our proficiency-based scoring and reporting. This session will be held this Monday, January 6th at 6 pm in the BFA Library. 

During this presentation, we will update you on what we have heard from the feedback we have received, the work we have done to this point and provide you an opportunity to give us input on the major objectives for grading/scoring and methods of reporting.

Please bring a smartphone or plan on using one of the school's Chromebooks, as we will be using live, online polling to receive feedback.  The night will be facilitated in whole group and small group discussions.  Please do not worry if you cannot attend, there will be additional opportunities for providing feedback throughout the winter and spring.

Bill

Holiday donations!

We wanted to share our communities outstanding efforts in making sure our BFA families felt the warmth of generosity this holiday season. A heartfelt thank you to all involved for donating food, paper bags, and time assembling and delivering. THANK YOU!