Weekly Administrative Update

Congratulations Class of 2025

Valedictorian Amelia Wallace!

Congratulations Class of 2025

Salutatorian Isma Rashid!

Congratulations Isma and Amelia!!

The Yearbook Committee have achieved the Josten's Gold Status Award! This is a National Yearbook Program of Excellence award and an incredible achievement by the yearbook committee and their advisor, Jennifer Parent!

Congratulations are in order! BFA Saint Albans Named Jostens 2025 National Yearbook Program of Excellence – Gold Level, Third Year, consecutively!

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Bellows Free Academy, Saint Albans program recognized for dynamic and engaging yearbook.

Saint Albans – May 20th, 2025 – Jostens, the leading producer of yearbooks and student-created content, today announced that Bellows Free Academy – Saint Albans’ yearbook program has achieved the Jostens 2025 National Yearbook Program of Excellence award at the Gold Level. The National Yearbook Program of Excellence recognizes engaging yearbooks that reflect a broad representation of the student body while helping students develop 21st century skills such as communication, collaboration, and information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy.

Jostens works with over 15k schools nationwide. As to date so far this year, just shy of 400 schools nationwide have earned this honor, and in the states of VT, NH, RI, ME, MA, DE and CT only 21 schools have been recognized so far. For the Jostens representative that works with BFA-Saint Albans, out of his 55 schools, BFA-Saint Albans will be the only one this year to earn this prestigious level.

The Bellows Free Academy – Saint Albans award-winning yearbook program is led by Addison Charron (Co Editor-in-Chief), Rebecca Tetrault (Co Editor-in-Chief) Dehlia Habedank (Layout Editor), Adaline Parent (Sports Editor), Amelia Weber (Clubs Editor), Gavin Putzier (Photo Editor) and staff members Mackenzie Smith, Lexy Newton, and Keira Habedank. They are under the direction of head advisor Jennifer Parent and assistant advisor Alisa Aylward.

“We are so proud of the students for making all their deadlines, being creative with their decisions, and challenging themselves to create a great product. We are an afterschool club, not a class, so the students must use amazing time management to produce the book each year. The staff members pride themselves on getting as many students as possible in the book, more than just their student photo.” – Jennifer Parent.

The award was presented to the Bellows Free Academy – Saint Albans yearbook program for achieving defined criteria in the following categories: creating an inclusive yearbook, generating school engagement, and successfully managing the yearbook creation process. Even more amazing than accomplishing this feat, is that this is the third consecutive year that BFA-St. Albans has earned this recognition.

Founded in 1897, Jostens has produced school yearbooks for over 60 years. Schools rely on Jostens and their local Jostens representatives to provide a combination of journalism education and technology tools to deliver a learning experience that helps students develop 21st century skills in journalism, photography, writing and design, leadership and business while creating the permanent record of the school year. Jostens invests in state-of-the-art technology, best in class service, educational curriculum, and award-winning print manufacturing platforms to plan, design, build and produce yearbooks.

The BFA Student Ambassadors are preparing to support the 8th-grade Move-Up day!

Kasia Bilodeau commented "Very proud of our BFA Unified team, BFA NHS, & especially Danielle Roberts for the 2025 Autism Awareness walk. It was an amazing few hours showing our support, acceptance, and inclusion for all. We do live in an awesome community. #redinstead

On Sunday, May 18th the JV A Baseball team gave back to the community. The team helped with greeting people and making sure the parking of cars went smoothly during the Autism Walk at the Collins Perley Sports Complex. Photo Left to Right: Levi Walters, Michael (Beau) Parent, Owen Toof, Grant Montgomery, Luc Gonyeau, Ray Toof, Liam Patnaude, and Mason Bates

Ms. Kane's Accelerated Geometry students just finished a design project dealing with area and volume. They were tasked with creating a non-rectangular prism cereal box that would hold exactly 5.5 cups of cereal. Here are a few pictures of students working on the project and a picture of some of the finished products.

Mrs. Tourville's 9th grade AC Reading and Writing Workshop enjoying breakfast and Shakespeare!

Spring is here! Randi's Health Classes and Science Class welcomed 17 new friends to the classroom while learning about reproduction and fertilization, as well as animal life cycles. Students were attentive "mother hens" monitoring the setting of the incubator and making 'eggcellent' observations of notable changes throughout the hatching process. Students from other classes helped out by engaging the chicks in story time and socialization. Baby chicks are a lot of responsibility and piles of smiles!

Check out one of this week's very cool Enrichment activities!

Kasia Bilodeau’s Careers class visited Molly Magnan’s farm. They visited the milking & calf barns. Mrs. Magnan answered their many questions about all of the jobs needed to run a dairy farm.

Students traveled to The Vermont Young Playwrights Festival in Burlington on Tuesday. They attended workshops and readings and several students had their plays selected to be read and performed!

On May 19th, BFA hosted a successful event for families of sophomores and juniors focused on preparing for the college search and fit process. We welcomed over 75 attendees—an encouraging sign of how engaged our students and families are in planning for life after high school!

The counseling office is running a similar workshop for 10th and 11th-grade students during Enrichment A this Wednesday. This session is important for all 10th and 11th graders planning on going to college and who couldn't attend last night.

Please encourage your students to sign up in Adaptive Scheduler under “Guidance" for the following events:

5/21 ENRA Preparing for College (BFA LIB)
6/4 ENRA COLLEGE PANEL (BFA LIB)

The second part of this workshop series is June 4th during ENRA. On this date, we will be hosting multiple colleges/universities including UVM, ST. Michaels, Norwich, Vermont State and Champlain.

Thank you for helping us spread the word and supporting our students in their college planning journey!

BFA Counseling Office

BFA Music will host its first annual ROCK SHOW on Tuesday, May 27th at 7PM in the PAC. BFA’s Modern band - A-319, a new class this year, will headline the event and feature songs by Chicago, the Temptations, the O’Jays, The Backseat Lovers, My Chemical Romance, and many others. Also featured on this show will be MVU guitarist extraordinaire Kaiden Prim and his band, and BFA alumni Will Austin and Nic Farrinacio. Admission is free!

We’re proud to celebrate our graduating seniors for their leadership, dedication, and commitment to the team:

Andrew Telfer (#33)

Cadien Shuford (#4) – Captain

Corey McNulty (#12) – Captain

Hayden Crowe-McManus (#31)

Jake Kittell (#35)

Jayden Fletcher (#39)

Josh Farinaccio (#29)

Lane Desautels (#25)

Noah Rolla-Foley (#13)

Oliver Horton (#15)

I've invited you to fill out a form to RSVP for the 2025 BFA Senior Athletic Banquet.

Please indicate if you plan on attending and how many will be in your group.

Banquet is set for Sunday, June 8th in the BFA Gymnasium at 11:30 AM.

PLEASE RESPOND ONLY ONCE (1 Time) FOR YOUR FAMILY AND/OR PARTY.

The Abbey has graciously donated food and beverages for the event and entry is free!

Link to RSVP form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdcffI8YvqJCFvUXFTcfIbmnmpLGykvZAIMJ2KRLOaViOxaNA/viewform?usp=pp_url

Jordan O'Grady

Assistant Athletic Director

jogrady@maplerun.org