Welcome to Black River Falls High School!
Transportation Information
Please
remember to have your Transportation Contracts turned into no
later than August
27, 2008. Any contracts received after August
27, 2008 will not be processed until Friday, September 5,
2008. Parents will be responsible for transportation until
the contracts have been processed. This is for the safety
of our students so that the Transportation Department has
adequate time to plan routes and ensure that your child is on
the correct bus. A post card with transportation
information will be mailed the last week of August.
Please
take a moment to review the rules stated within the
Transportation Handbook with your child in an effort reduce
student discipline issues on our buses. Remember that if
your child is suspended from the bus for misbehavior, it is
parent’s responsibility to transport or it is considered an
unexcused absence.
The
only two major transportation changes this year are in the
Mission/Sand Pillow area and City of Black River Falls:
The
Mission/Sand Pillow route will now be run as a 6th-12th
grade route ONLY. A separate bus will
service the elementary students. This will decrease your
child’s ride time significantly and help to
improve discipline issues.
Students
living within Black River Falls city limits are NOT
eligible for transportation EXCEPT for 8th
Street north of Adams, Westwind, and the area behind Hardees.
If
you have any questions, please contact Jeff Walker at 284-2557.
July 2008
New
challenges are new opportunities. It is with great excitement
and great hopes but also with humility that I look forward to
the responsibility and privilege of being the new high school
principal at BRFHS. Over the past two years as the assistant
principal, I have worked with many students, faculty and
families. They have taught me much about
Black River
Falls
, and I trust that some have learned valuable lessons from me. I
am proud of the many accomplishments that we as a school and a
community have achieved in that time. I aspire to continue my
role as a leader for many more positive opportunities,
especially for our youth, long into the future.
I would like
to thank the faculty, staff, parents and other administrators
who have been so supportive of my new position. In collaboration
with all of you, it is my firm goal to continue to promote
academic rigor, athletic excellence and strong character
development with all of our students.
I plan to
continue many efforts that we have started through programs such
as our advising,
AP classes, home construction project, Co-op Program and the
Youth Apprentice program, all of which emphasize the
areas of transition and career preparation. Several of these
initiatives are thriving, some are expanding and others are just
starting to show positive results. The Link Crew program will
start its third year in the fall, and we have trained a great
group of junior and senior student leaders who will support the
incoming freshmen to provide encouragement, guidance and
confidence for the difficult rite of passage into the world of
high school.
The staff at
the high school has been extremely supportive and it has been
exciting for me to be a part of their great accomplishments.
Through the efforts (and many hours of planning) of a group of
teachers, we instituted an advising program this year, which has
shown tremendous benefits in the lives of individual students.
Every student is chosen by a teacher as their advisor. We have
scheduled time during the year, including the first day of each
term, for the advisors to speak one-on-one to their advisees and
discuss their courses, their future, their successes or
struggles and any other issues they want to talk about. I have
heard so many positive stories of students discovering new
career ideas, trying out classes they hadn’t thought about and
of faculty members helping their advisees deal with a loss or
difficult issues. This has done wonders for making students feel
welcome and cared about by the adults in the building.
All of these
initiatives are aimed at helping students to succeed, to gain
confidence and develop responsibility and self-esteem, which are
necessary skills for them to fully engage in learning and become
well prepared for the future. After all, the future is what we
are about here. It is here that young people launch themselves
for a successful future.
Just as our
faculty has gotten to know the students better and vice versa, I
have become better acquainted with the people and places in BRF.
In the short time that we have lived in
Black River
Falls
, my wife,
Verona
, and I have truly grown to love this town, its wonderful
surrounding natural beauty and the many excellent people here.
So many
people I meet and talk with around the state have commented on
the quaintness of our town and the great natural resources found
around us. Both of us truly enjoy the outdoors and we quickly
made walks around the foundation trail, and visits to the river
or one of the beautiful parks part of our daily routine. This is
a great place to live.
I have a
vision of all our students feeling that this is a great place to
live and that our school is a great place to learn. There is
work to do to reach that vision, yet BRFHS has many traditions;
from its formidable athletics programs to the many vibrant
co-curricular programs along with strong academic and community
programs. We are increasing our AP class offerings and through
successful collaborative projects like this year’s house
construction project, students and faculty join forces more and
more with each other and with community partners. These partners
are and will be the employers, the family and the friends of our
students. The more we work together to prepare our youth to
become members of our community, the more partners we all can
count on in the future to nurture the next generation.
This
generation of students has many opportunities before them and
we, as a school, need to teach them to take full advantage of
the learning choices that will prepare them for adulthood. High
school is a time for young people to explore career ideas, learn
job skills and develop their social abilities. It is the hope of
all educators that when students graduate from high school, they
have clear ideas about the type of career they wish to pursue
and that they have gained the knowledge and responsibility to
make that a reality.
Of course,
gaining knowledge and developing responsibility are not simple
school lessons. They are acquired through interactions in
classrooms, in the hallways, on the busses and on the athletic
fields. They also are learned through travel, whether it be
field trips close to home, a summer Spanish excursion to
Costa Rica
, a co-curricular national event in
Orlando
or a student leadership training workshop in
Madison
. Certainly, many students pick up part-time jobs while in high
school and learn valuable skills through their job. It is
important for us all to remember though that a student’s number one job is their education; their
preparation for their career. Part-time jobs help pay for a car
and some gas, but a student’s education pays huge dividends
for a lifetime. I look forward to working with the staff of
BRFHS and the community of
Black River
Falls
to help create those lifetime dividends for individual students
and our community as a whole. Have a great summer!
Tom
Chambers
Principal
