THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – FriDAy, DECEmbEr 20, 2024 Page 15 The Sounds of Saugus By Mark E. Vogler Good morning, Saugus For the first time in nearly nine years as The Saugus Advocate editor, I get to wish our readers best wishes for a happy holiday season and all the best for a Happy New Year. That’s because today will be the final paper for this year. The Advocate Newspapers staff – which includes The Saugus Advocate and our three sister papers in Everett, Malden and Revere – will get to enjoy the Christmas week off next week. The Advocate Newspapers will return to work the following week – with the year’s first edition on Jan. 3, 2025. Best wishes to all of our readers and Saugus residents for a happy, healthy and safe holiday. If you are out partying on New Year’s Eve, play it safe and leave the driving to a designated driver. Begin 2025 with a Breakheart hike For those folks who want to get the new year off to a healthy start, consider participating in the First Day Hike at Breakheart Reservation on Jan. 1. The state Department of Conservation & Recreation and the Friends of Breakheart Reservation will once again be cosponsoring this event. Take some sage advice from the Friends: Start off the New Year with an invigorating First Day Hike in a beautiful state park and make a resolution to burn off those extra holiday calories! We will have two guided hikes – a two-mile hike and a three-mile hike – through the paved loops of Breakheart. We’ll be viewing animal tracks, CCC projects and the Lower and Upper Ponds. Be prepared for cold weather; dress in layers and wear winter boots. Warm up with hot chocolate and clam chowder from Kelly’s Roast Beef by the fire at the Visitor Center after the hike! Bring your friends and family! Plan on meeting at the Visitor Center at 10 a.m. on Jan. 1. Breakheart is located at 177 Forest St. in Saugus. For more information call 781-233-0834. option but a big thank you to Town Manager Scott Crabtree for offering the front of Town Hall to locate the Santa mailbox. Thank you! “And an RIP for Benny Coviello, who worked at Stop and Shop for so many years. Always had a smile and a friendly Hello for the shoppers. He will be missed!” Eden Bloss offered this “Shout Out” for Saugus Middle School students: “Saugus Middle School MEDAL WINNERS: Left to right: AJ Diciero, a third-grader at Belmonte STEAM Academy, and Santino Diciero, a first-grader at Veterans Early Learning Center, display the awards they won on Dec. 7 at the 10th Annual Massachusetts Elementary School XC Championships at the Gannon Golf Course in Lynn. AJ finished first in the category of boys grades 1–3. Santino finished 9th. Michael Wheeler, Jr., a third-grader at Belmonte STEAM Academy, finished 10th in the cross country race involving 29 runners. (Courtesy photo to The Saugus Advocate) Year in Review issue on Jan. 3 As in past years, The Saugus Advocate plans to publish a Year-In-Review edition on Jan. 3, recapping the major stories of the year with a listing of the main headlines for each month. We usually let the elected town officials reflect on the year’s most important stories. This year, we will also solicit comments from our readers on what they thought were the top stories. Feel free to share your thoughts with an email to me at mvoge@comcast.net. If you wish to tell us what you think the top stories for 2024 were, please slug your email to me “Top Saugus stories 2024.” Thank you and best wishes to you for a great new year. Still time to write Santa Karen Coburn, the retired postal worker who enjoys writing letters back to Saugus kids in response to letters they mail to Santa Claus, said there is still time for kids to write Santa. “Probably until the twenty-third so the mailman can get them to the kids by the 24th,” she told me earlier this week. Karen, as we reported last week, wasn’t allowed to put her special “Letters to Santa” mailbox in the lobby of the Post Office this year. Fortunately, Town Manager Scott C. Crabtree agreed to let her set up her mailbox at Town Hall. And she already got 60 letters over the past week. The kids will be happy. Saugus United Parish Food Pantry The Saugus United Parish Food Pantry welcomes all neighbors facing food insecurity on Fridays from 9:30-11 a.m. at 50 Essex St. in the basement of Cliftondale Congregational Church. If you are able to donate to the food pantry, you can also stop by during those hours, drop off donations at the Saugus Public Library during library hours or contact office@cliftondalecc. org to make an appointment. Please note that the food pantry will be closed on Friday, December 27, in observance of Christmas. No new Legion Hall bookings till 2025 The American Legion Post 210 announced recently that it will honor any contract it has signed for a party from now through the end of December, but will not book any new ones until after the first of the year. This week’s “Shout Outs” Avid Saugus Advocate reader Sue Fleming offered multiple “shout outs” for this week’s paper: “A big Shout Out to everyone involved in the lighting and decorating around town which looks awesome! Very festive and everyone should be thankful. “Another Shout Out to Karen and John Coburn for all the hard work they do with the Santa letters for the kids in town. Disappointing that the Post Office is no longer an reached a historic milestone – achieving a #1 rank in the state of Massachusetts for 8th grade math performance improvement using the Carnegie Learning Middle School Math Solution. The average student growth percentage (SGP) is up +10.9 points from 2023 and up +31.2 vs. the state average in Massachusetts. “Saugus administrators faced a formidable challenge at the beginning of the 2021 school year: improve math proficiency among their 8th grade students – at the time ranked 169/300 in the state – in the midst of a pandemic. The school leadership doubled down on high quality instructional materials – MATHia and MATHbook – to align with the deep critical thinking and conceptual mathematics learning students should be doing in class.” Carnegie Learning CEO Barry Malkin added to the praise: “Reaching number one in the state for 8th grade math improvement is a remarkable achievement. It’s a testament to the commitment of Saugus leadership to continuous improvement, to maintaining a high level of student engagement and accountability, and off-the-charts teacher collaboration and support. We know that math proficiency opens doors to infinite opportunities – more than half of the jobs of the future will require math as a core skill – and Saugus students are well on their way to taking advantage of all the opportunities available to live life to the fullest while setting the standard for others THE SOUNDS | SEE PAGE 17
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