District marks century of consolidated schools
The 2021-2022 school year has been a big year for Vandalia-Butler City Schools as we celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the consolidation of the city and township schools, which consolidated in 1921.
One hundred years is a long time, and so much has happened historically in this timeframe. The last two years have been incredibly challenging. It is up to history to decide, but I’ll start the debate now; I don’t know if there has been a tougher two years in the past one hundred to operate a school district than these past two.
However, the Vandalia-Butler community has come together in many ways. Last year, the business community, residents, parents, faculty, administration and the Board of Education came together to develop a plan to bring students back to in-person learning that lasted the entire 2020-2021 school year. In the face of incredible adversity, we provided a firstclass educational experience for our Aviators in the classroom, with our full offerings of extracurricular activities and athletics. The 2021-2022 school year has been a repeat of the ‘20-’21 school year with even more normalcy. This has built a huge sense of pride and renewed focus for what we’ve done and what we’ve learned these past two years.
Five years ago, in the first year of my superintendency, we started a new district tradition of having a district-wide pep rally with our entire student body and staff in our Student Activity Center at Butler High School. The event nearly fills our 4,000-person capacity gym and builds an incredible amount of excitement and school/community spirit. Every year we have held the event in the fall to kick off the school year. Unfortunately, we were not able to have the pep assembly in the ‘20-’21 school year.
However, on Tuesday, May 3, the entire district came back together to celebrate our 100-year anniversary and to celebrate what we call “backto-back championship school years.” As always, it was an incredible event, but this year, it was even more meaningful.
Our band played the fight song and fanfare, our cheerleaders and student body cheer section (whom we call the “B Squad”) led our entire district in cheers. Students from every building level participated in games together such as Bucket Ball, the Quick-Change Relay, and Noodle Ring Pass. And our staff competed in a game of Smash the Balloon.
It was amazing to see the interactions between our youngest Aviators and our high school students. It was also great to watch our staff interacting and modeling to students the value of recreation and fun. We had 20-, 30-, 40-, and 50-year-old staff members playing smash the balloon. It was so fun to watch, and just what we all needed!
At the end, I had the pleasure of speaking to the entire district, and thanking our students for being respectful, responsible, resourceful and resilient these past two years. I thanked their parents for being so supportive. I thanked our community residents and businesses who have also supported us. I thanked our staff, who have been nothing short of amazing. And, finally, I called attention to the thing that helped us get through these adverse times – our need for each other and our being there for each other. The pandemic pushed us to realize this, and we stepped up for each other. There are many things I want to forget about these past two years, but I hope we never forget that we are truly better together, whether that is in adverse times or normal times.
At the onset of the pandemic and closure of school buildings in the spring of 2020, one of my earliest messages I sent to the entire district included this quote: “No bird soars in the calm.”
As we end the first one hundred years, the Vandalia-Butler City Schools have soared to great heights, especially the last two years, while facing incredible adversity. I look forward to soaring together as we end this school year and start the next one hundred years!