Greatest Hits: 2018!

The end of a calendar year is always ripe with television specials reviewing the big news of the last twelve months. It is somewhat awkward to do so in a school since the holiday break only marks the halfway point of a school year. But in the spirit of the season, I'll give it a shot. This isn't meant to be an all encompassing reflection and the only promise I'll make is that I'll forget some! Before proceeding with my thoughts on the year we are ending, I'll concede that you probably won't agree with all my selections! So then, our twelve month look back includes events that happened not only in the school year that we are currently in, but a look at second semester last year as well. For the sake of nostalgia, I'll just turn my calendar back to January of 2018 and see if there are a few events that stand out to me. If you think I've missed something big, be sure to let me know. After all, everyone has a different opinion on the year that was!

January 4, 2018 was a pretty important day in the year for our school district. While most people will view it as an ordinary day at our school, they would be correct since there would have been nothing that stood out. In fact,  for all practical purposes January 4th was merely a mark in time on our school calendar: the beginning of the second semester. However, on that day I held two very important meetings. The first was a meeting where we made the first crucial steps toward reforming our hot lunch program and really got the ball rolling. We would go on to launch a new hot lunch program on August 23rd that has so far met and surpassed our expectations.

The second was a meeting with our architects where we discussed the upcoming feasibility study and parameters of that work. We'll talk more about that in an upcoming post, but we are currently in the bid window for Phase III of the elementary renovation project. We have been in a constant state of renovation, repair, and remodel in our school district for several years. Certainly all of these projects are great for our school and show signs of progress. But Phase III is shaping up to be the biggest in a couple of decades!

This fall, Hudson Schools debuted their very first dance team. The first performance was at
halftime of the boys basketball game right before winter break. 

Our winter months kept us all indoors through spring break and beyond. All the while, our feasibility study and master planning was well underway along with plans to bring on a new food service program to our schools. The next big event in our school district occurred on May 20th, 2018 when we bid farewell to the Class of 2018 at graduation. By my count, we had 44 students cross the stage that afternoon to receive their high school diploma. Board President Karyn Finn challenged our graduates to dare greatly in her remarks to the class. 

Once we dismissed school for the year on June 1, we quickly moved into our summertime projects. We had contractors moving into the building quite literally as students and teachers were exiting for the summer. Indeed we were very busy as Phase II of the elementary renovation project consumed a bulk of the summer. There were some great lessons learned from this project that will be applied to our Phase III work, which hopefully will begin sometime this spring!

August 1st is usually a good sign that school will be starting soon, and this fall we welcomed six new faculty members to our ranks. These new faculty brought with them a blend of experience and included former alumni, teachers with special skill sets that enabled us to expand course offerings in the high school, and a new expanded elementary music teaching position. We also enrolled 745 students this fall, increasing our enrollment by 25 over last year. It is also worth noting this is the highest enrollment number in a decade when we had 748 in the fall of 2008. Hudson saw quite a bit of residential development this year, which also attributed to our enrollment growth.

Perhaps the most memorable event of the year is the football team winning the Class A state championship. If not the most memorable of the year, then certainly of the fall? I'll leave that debate for others. Certainly there were other notable events and accomplishments in this year that was. If I have erred in anyway and left some out, please help me jog my memory! In the meantime, I'm looking forward with much optimism for a great 2019 at #hudsonschools!

Your hometown Pirates are the Class A state champions!