Board of Education Meeting Recap

Both meetings this month were short, but packed with useful information!

See below for some highlights.

During the January 7th meeting, Director of School Counseling and Wellness, Sarah Kern, presented on the required NY State comprehensive K-12 school counseling plan, which details the role of the school counselor from Kindergarten through twelfth-grade.

Key highlights:

- The plan references New York State Standards and the American School Counseling Association standards throughout.

- Details department management, what goals and vision is for the program

-The majority of the tasks and roles of the school counselor is the same as in previous years, but there has been some new additional work on the middle school program.

- The upcoming Mountie Minds will feature a little briefing of the role of school counselors and upcoming programing.

The major goal of counselors is to make sure every student feels comfortable and happy in school and when we see a gap in that, we look to work on ways to bridge that gap. The entire plan can be read here.

In Dr. Gundersen's comments on January 21, he took a moment to acknowledge the cumulative years and incredible number of student lives that each of our upcoming retired teachers have impacted during their time at Suffern Central. Although we don't formally recognize their retirements until the spring, during the January 21 board meeting, the list of retirees was voted on and approved. We look forward to celebrating them later this year.

The dual language team is taking the mandate of a dual language program and taking it up a notch, by truly providing an opportunity for bilingual education, not only for Spanish speaking students, but also for English speakers as well, to help students become bilingual and bicultural at an early age.

Dr. Patricia Balbuena spoke on the introduction of the program this year, and showcased the successes we're seeing, how the students are experiencing learning in two languages. The program is an inclusive, enrichment model that prepares students to be successful in our interconnected world. Here at Suffern, we have two classes at Sloatsburg Elementary School. Each class has 22 students, one class is taught in Spanish, the second taught in Spanish. Students rotate every other day to learn content in each language. Learning is continuous - meaning new content is introduced every day, no matter the language. To download the powerpoint, click here.

You can watch her entire presentation here.

For the 2025-26 school year, Suffern Central is looking to expand the two-way program to incoming Kindergarten and first grade families at both Sloatsburg and RP Connor Elementary Schools. If you have a child entering either of those grades next year, sign up for an information session to learn more about the program.

• January 29, 2025 - No school, Lunar New Year
• February 4, 2025 - Board of Education Meeting
• February 17 - 18, 2025 - No school, President's Break
• February 19, 2025 - Board of Education Meeting