It is a middle schooler’s worst nightmare: PowerSchool is frozen, classes are reshuffled in the middle of a school year and there’s no way to make up missing assignments. Well, not quite.

To top off 2020, Coleytown and Bedford Middle School students, merged in the Bedford building since the start of the 2018-2019 school year, are separating during winter break. The renovated Coleytown Middle School reopens to students on Jan. 5 while Bedford will return to “normal.”

BMS and CMS began the 2020-2021 school year with separate core classes and merged encore classes. Core classes will remain the same after the split between BMS and CMS. However, encore class groupings will be reshuffled. Students will receive new schedules when they return on January 5th and PowerSchool will be frozen during winter break. 

According to Bedford’s Assistant Principal Ms. Jacquelyn Mellin, “PowerSchool will NOT be accessible to students and families from the end of the school day on 12/23/20 until 1/4/21.” During this time, Westport Public Schools administrators will remove existing encore class groupings and finalize new groupings. These new groupings will be assigned to students when they return to school on January 5th.

Ms. Mellin states that second-quarter grades prior to winter break “will continue into … new encore classes. Core classes and grades will remain unchanged.”  However, students will not be able to make up assignments from their old encore classes once they are assigned a new encore class grouping. According to Ms. Mellin, “late work submitted after 12/23/20 for core classes will be accepted.”