Eighth-grade class will attend the Guilderland high school musical
The community was heard, Superintendent Marie Wiles said on Friday: On Feb. 15, from left, Guilderland High School Assistant Principal Amy Hawrylchak, Farnsworth Middle School Seneca House Principal Michael Pipa, and Guilderland High School Principal Thomas Lutsic spoke to the Board of Education Wednesday night.
The entire eighth-grade class will attend the Guilderland high school musical this spring after all.
The administration had ended a 40-plus-year tradition of bringing the entire eighth grade to the high school every March to see a dress rehearsal of the Guilderland Players’ musical. Last year, that visit had been combined with the eighth-graders’ tour of the high school, and students had reported in a survey that the day involved too much sitting and was boring.
Administrators wanted to avoid taking eighth-graders out of school on two separate days — for the musical and the orientation — as their spring testing schedule is, Pipa said, “steady and fierce.” They wanted to bring, to the musical, just the Mask students — the middle-school students who are involved in the middle-school musical — and take the entire eighth-grade class to the high school only in May, for orientation.
Wiles said Friday that the Mask students will also go on the field trip to the musical, and that the eighth-graders will return in May for orientation.
