Suttons Bay Public School enters 2025 fresh-faced and bushy-tailed with a renewed focus after discontinuing its virtual school program earlier this summer.
“We are ready for another wonderful year of connection and engaging learning with our students. We would also like all our families to know that we will take great care of their children by embracing, supporting, and empowering all students,” Suttons Bay superintendent Casey Petz said.
Suttons Bay has been making improvements around campus this summer. Some of the most noticeable changes are in the high school gym with upgrades to scoreboards, scoring tables and chairs, resurfaced floors, and fresh paint.
“We have also put a lot of work into our wayfinding signs and wall decals that help all our students and families feel welcome in SBPS,” Petz said.
For the first time since BLANK, Suttons Bay will not be offering a virtual program. This changes the school’s focus to in-person students only, gaining more access to support resources and additional staff.
Petz said the school has been able to add several new curricula and new courses at the secondary level. They also added several additional staff members and additional student support programs this year.
“We have been working to implement for years,” Petz said. “The shift in focus has really helped our leadership teams focus on improving the quality of education we offer.”
Suttons Bay estimates that there will be between 340 and 365 students this fall. This count doesn’t include preschool students, just our GSRP and K-12 school population.
Another year after the COVID era, teachers are still evaluating the effects on students.
“Every person, especially students who were enrolled in a K-12 public school during COVID, will carry impacts from that experience. There are long-term impacts on our students’ ability to learn, to communicate, to focus, and engage with their teachers that we feel we will always be working on. The most successful strategy that we used was to trust our families and staff to make the best choices for themselves in terms of their education. SBPS made an effort to keep school open as much as possible for our students to attend in person, but also offered a virtual option for families with concerns about being in-seat for that period of time. Essentially, the most effective policy was to think and act like a school and keep the doors open for all who wished to attend. I don’t think there’s much that we would have taken a different path on, we followed the orders of the governor and health departments as required, and we did the very best we could to implement the ever-changing health and safety protocols,” Petz said.
The cell phone policy remains the same at Suttons Bay.
“No changes. K-5 (no cell phones during the day, but they can come to school and stay in lockers/backpacks), 6-12 (no cell phones during instruction, but students may check them at lunch time as long as they are stored in lockers). Any student violating the policy is subject to discipline. This policy has had a tremendous positive impact on the educational environment in SBPS, so we aren’t looking to change anything,” Petz said.
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