Brewster Superintendent: 'A Note From the Middle'

Brewster Central Schools Supertinendent Dr. Jane Sandbank sent the following via email Friday:
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“Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts. You have to remember this when you find yourself at the beginning.” Sandra Bullock

When I walk along the beach whether in Cape Cod or Jones Beach or when a child, Orchard Beach in the Bronx, I’m always awed by the moment by moment shift of where the land ends and the water begins or visa-versa. Ends are beginnings and just as we graduated our wonderful Class of 2013, and indeed it was a magnificent graduation, we prepare to meet our new kindergartners and our graduates prepare to begin the next step of their lives. Our eighth graders move up to being the new freshmen class at the high school. We say goodbye to colleagues who are retiring or ending their work in Brewster and greet our newly hired bus drivers, administrators or returning teachers.

Endings and beginnings are always hard. As the quote above says, it is what is in the middle that counts. This has certainly been true of our Brewster school district this year. I would hold that somewhere in the middle of this year we went from good to great. It did not happen on one special day or through one special event. In fact, the beginning was long before September and the ending is far, far away. The story is still becoming.

One day however, you wake up and you know a shift has taken place. A seasoned administrator said to me today, after a 40-year career, that this year was the most meaningful in terms of really connecting to teachers and their work. A teacher said to me last week as we were waving goodbye to students, that this year was the hardest, most stressful, yet best of her career in terms of connecting with her students and seeing them achieve at higher levels than expected. 

We overcame excruciating obstacles and tragedy. We went from believing we would have to dismantle some of our most precious programs or lose some of our best teachers, to being able to build programs, hire back lost teachers and achieve a long sought after goal—full day kindergarten.

I read in today’s Journal News and am proud to be a part of the school district’s partnership along with the Village of Brewster to explore the reuse of Garden Street School as an anchor for renewal and redevelopment of the Village. This is an exciting project with enormous potential and another example of an ending leading to a beginning.

As we take a break and enjoy the pleasures of summer, watching where the sea ends and land begins, or waiting for the exact moment when the dusk turns to dark or the dawn turns to day, enjoy the middle; be less fearful of the beginning or the ending (it is not always sad you know) and believe that collectively we can all go from good to great.

Thank you all again for the support of Brewster’s children and youth and ensuring a great middle.

Best,

Dr. Jane Sandbank
Superintendent of Schools

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