Westfield High School music instructor Korey Bruno, right, chats with a group of parents during an open house at the school last night. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
WESTFIELD – New Westfield High School Principal Jonathan Carter picked up a telephone in the office of the Montgomery Road school and spoke into the intercom, welcoming parents and students to the first open house of the school year last night.
After the recent enforcement of the district’s dress code, tensions have been high, but Carter chose to downplay the recent controversy in a one on one interview with The Westfield News prior to the start of the open house.
Westfield High School science instructor Ben Hatch shows an atomic structure model of a chemical compound to Kendra Mastello during an open house at Westfield High School last night. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
“Could we have done it better in hindsight? I guess if I had known, as the new principal, that the dresscode hadn’t been enforced in many years, we would’ve gone about it differently,” Carter said. “But you live and learn… that won’t change the message though, about high expectations and creating a school climate that is based on safety, respect, and student achievement.”
“The kids have been fantastic… it hasn’t been an issue,” said Carter of the dress code. “It’s been a non-issue in this building after 7:24 every morning. Not one kid has been disciplined at Westfield High School as a result of the dress policy since the first day.”
Carter, who previously served as principal at William J. Dean Technical High School in Holyoke, and at two Springfield schools, the High School of Science and Technology and the High School of Commerce, said that students have been disciplined for other behavioral matters, but he believes that this, simply put, is the case in any school.
“The expectations I have for my students are the same expectations I have for my own boys,” Carter said. “I treat my students like my own kids.”
Carter said that the evening would serve as an opportunity for parents to select six of the 19 parents of Westfield High School students to serve on the WHS School Council.
Each school in the district has such a council. Westfield High School’s is set to have 24 members. According to Carter, over 500 parents and students visited the school last night.
Music teacher Korey Bruno has overseen the music department for 18 years at WHS, and said that each year, the first open house gives her the same good feeling.
“Happy parents – I see them every year,” Bruno said after she had addressed a group of three parents before the bell deemed it time to shift classes in the school’s A schedule. “But I see a different side of the kids in choir and band. Countless numbers of kids have told me that ‘this is the only thing that kept me in school (band and choir).'”
Bruno said that she had a nice response from parents and students during the evening, and that half her homeroom had shown up.
Participation is paramount for this event, according to Christina Breed and Taigh Buckley, teachers in the school’s science department.
“If they advertised that we had lemonade up here, we would’ve had an even better turnout,” joked Buckley, as the science department’s home on the school’s third floor is notorious for getting hot in a hurry. “But we get alot of the same kids and parents year by year, and we get to ask them about their kids who are now in college.”
Breed, a third year Introduction to Biology teacher, said the most satisfying part about the evening every year are “parents who care about their kids.”
“The kids who have older siblings, their parents already know the teachers,” she said.
“New teachers do tend to be heavily visited,” said Buckley, an eighth-year faculty member who teaches chemistry and physical science.
He said that several of his former students have gone on to attend Worcester Polytechnical Institute, and other notable engineering schools.
“We send students to the International Science Fair every year,” he said. “And almost all of the students who compete in the regional (science fair) end up going on to states.”
One of the parents visiting the science department was Kendra Mastello of Russell, who was visiting the classroom of chemistry teacher Ben Hatch. She spoke of the impact the open houses has for her daughter Karly, a junior at WHS, who attends thanks to a school choice option.
“You get to meet teachers and know whats going on,” Mastello said. “It makes you know what the teacher is planning for the year.”
Mastello said that her older daughter attended Gateway Regional High School and that their format for open houses differed from Westfield High School’s.
“They would open the school up for students and parents to roam free for an hour, and certain teachers would get alot of people wanting to talk to them,” she said.
Westfield High School selects a certain day in their schedule, and gives parents a few minutes to visit each classroom on their student’s schedule for that day before hearing the bell and moving onto the next classroom, and Mastello believes that, while Gateway has changed their open house format in recent years, her daughter made a good choice in attending WHS.
“This (format) helps because, when she talks about class at home, I know what’s going on,” she said. “As they (students) get older, they don’t come as much to this event, but this is when they should go the most.”
Carter believed the evening was a great success.
“It was an amazing night,” he said on his way home following the event. “I’m really looking forward to this school year.”
