Principal Vanessa Boyd of Broad Street Elementary School in Butler gets soaked with a fire hose on Thursday afternoon, Oct. 6, 2022, as a reward for children at the school performing over 600 good deeds. Shane Potter/Butler Eagle

The principal of Broad Street Elementary School takes the mission to educate her students seriously.

Last week her enthusiasm for the job got Vanessa Boyd soaking wet.

Assisting, to the students’ delight, was the Butler Bureau of Fire, which sprayed Boyd with a fire hose to celebrate school attendance.

The goal, shared by several schools in the Butler Area School District, was to have a student attendance rate of 90% through September. The object is clear: students can’t learn if they are not in the classroom.

The reward of seeing their principal soaking wet wasn’t the only draw to attending school at Broad Street this month. Each classroom competed to complete 600 acts of kindness throughout September. For each act of kindness, students earned a ticket for a prize drawing.

Boyd is not the only principal in the county to step from behind the desk to take a pie in the face or drop into a dunk tank to promote student engagement. We applaud these administrators and their staff who use their imaginations to spark those of their students.

Boyd joined Broad Street in 2021 as the elementary school reopened after being closed for six years. Children in the neighborhood had attended Emily Brittain, Center Township and Northwest elementary schools. Boyd was tasked with bringing the 150 students in kindergarten through fourth grade and nine classroom teachers at Broad Street together as a successful, vibrant school community.

At the time, she told the Eagle, "We want to remove any barriers to classroom instruction. We would like to utilize resources of the city of Butler to effectively support our families and our school."

And so she has. She reached out to families to determine their needs in and out of school. She encouraged her staff to create a “joyous” environment and make families feel welcome at Broad Street.

Also welcomed were community groups such as Fishing for Memories, which provided prizes for the kindness competition, the fire department and others who provided support from library books to clothing and food.

Boyd called Thursday’s event a success, and we agree.

“Today our attendance was 97.18% for this event,” she told the Eagle. “We are trying to encourage that with kids and parents, so we can do what we need to do to educate the scholars.”

Keep up the good work.

— DJS