Post by Eric Mason: Eric is the parent of 3 children who attended the Bettendorf Community School District. Eric and his family moved to Georgia this past month.
Educating my children is easily one of the most important
things I do as a parent. So I don’t
simply trust anyone to help with that.
My family and I moved to the Quad Cities from Virginia,
although we are originally from New Orleans.
We looked at all of the schools in the area before we settled on
Bettendorf High School and the Bettendorf Community School District in
general. Best choice we could have
made. Below are the two things that meant
so much to us and confirmed our school choice.
1. Commitment to Excellence. My daughter came to Bettendorf being fairly
advanced in foreign language. She was
finishing an online Spanish III class in 8th Grade and we needed Bettendorf
Middle and High to coordinate the transfer.
Both Ms. Kelly and Mr. Casas were enthusiastic about getting things
moving, with Ms. Kelly cutting through all of the red tape to make it
happen. My daughter has completed up to
Spanish IV and completed Chinese II.
My older son is a little advanced in math and needed to take
classes at the high school while he was an 8th grader. Mr. Casas was insistent that educating
advanced students should not be a problem for the families, but something that
the school could work out. And work it
out he did. He and his team coordinated
the scheduling of classes for my son to take at the high school and arranged
for a shuttle to take my son to the middle school after his high school classes
where done. My son had A’s in all of his
classes that year.
These two examples for me show a commitment to excellence,
both in the students and the administrators.
The administration at BHS took their jobs to educate all students
seriously and didn’t allow any obstacle to hinder them.
2. Communication.
BHS offered a plethora of ways to communicate with teachers and
administrators: Email, telephone, newsletters, text messages, parent/teacher
conferences, Twitter, etc. Sometimes we would
receive messages in multiple formats. My
favorite piece of communication is the Virtual Backpack. In the Virtual Backpack you get these
little tidbits of information on events going on at school and in the Quad
Cities community, like camps and concerts and museum exhibits etc. For someone not from the community this was
very useful. I also enjoyed the
parent/teacher conferences. The teachers seemed to know our children’s
capabilities and played to them.
I would recommend Bettendorf High School to anyone. Great principal, great teachers and great
students….what more can you ask for?
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