Parent Newsletter by Franny Shuker-Haines

Dear Buxton Families,

Greetings from the beautifully snow-covered campus of Buxton! The amazing Mike St. Pierre is currently plowing, sanding, and salting all the paths, roads, and driveways, and the tail end of the storm is delivering soft snow flakes outside my window. It’s lovely!

Home Weekend starts later today/tomorrow, and we are excited to get going on all of our trip preparations in earnest when we get back. Trip groups have started to make appointments, although it’s been slow-going for some of us (the group I’m in only has one appointment set up at the moment…but many irons in the fire!). The different elements of the play are  coming along, and we’re looking forward to putting them all together next week.

Speaking of the trip, I wanted to talk about dress code. We ask that kids both show respect for the people and places they are visiting—and be mindful of how they are representing Buxton—by dressing nicely throughout the time we are in Montreal. That means “nice” pants—clean, not ripped or frayed, tidy in overall appearance. Jeans can be okay if they’re really spiffy-looking, but we prefer other kinds of pants if at all possible. Tops should be similarly office-appropriate: no T-shirts with big writing or graphics, nothing too low-cut or too short at the bottom, etc.”Business casual” is the term the kids are using, and that sounds about right. So, if you could help your children locate appropriate clothing over the weekend, that would be great! (For kids on campus this weekend, we will take a few trips to Target and the local thrift stores to round out their wardrobes.)

Now, onto the news section of the newsletter: Buxton now has a full-time counselor on staff! Her name is Katelin Roberts, and she is terrific. She has a lot of experience at independent secondary schools, having spent a decade at Groton School, a couple of years at Greenwich Country Day School, and another long stint at Trevor Country Day in New York City. Her office is up in the music building, so feel free to stop by and say hi when you’re on campus; you can also meet her on the last Friday of the term (March 8th) when you come to see the all-school production and pick up your kids. In the meantime, feel free to reach out. Her email is KRoberts@BuxtonSchool.org, and she will soon have a phone extension. In the meantime, if you want to speak with her, call the main number and Lindsey will help connect you. We are so happy to have Katelin here at Buxton, and we can already tell she is a great match for us.

Finally, as many of you know, we have recently had a nasty stomach bug tear through out campus! Ugh. The good news is that it is mostly over (nasty but short-lived!), and the school is on the mend. We reached out to the department of health, who reassured us that we were doing everything right and also told us that they had been seeing this virus pop up all over Berkshire County. Kudos to the faculty who remained standing throughout, as they brought “meals on wheels” to all the sick kids (gloved and masked, natch!), and picked up the slack here, there, and everywhere. As unpleasant as the whole thing was, I am SO glad it happened now rather than on the bus ride to Montreal!

And with that vivid (and redolent) image in your minds, I will sign off!

All the best,

Franny