Message From The School Director

Mark Pingitore Director

We began the 2021-22 year on campus still having pandemic restrictions in place and a level of uncertainty about the pandemic continuing. Nevertheless, It was heartwarming to watch secondary students and primary students being able to socialize outside at recess or break with grade level friends as well as switch classrooms in secondary. This year, our school-wide theme, “Rising Together,” continued to serve as a guiding principle in everything we did, with the common goal of supporting our community of learners with opportunities and resources to reach their highest potential in a safe and healthy environment. While many regions in the world still required students to experience virtual learning, ASB was able to effectively manage the Covid cases and maintain a high level of faceto-face student learning throughout the school year. Furthermore, our after school programs were able to operate without restrictions and masks. The on-going pandemic and omicron spike still caused many events to be canceled, like the Winter Bazaar. However, we continued to provide many virtual opportunities for teachers and students to participate in professional development opportunities, NESDA debates and MUN experiences.

As the warm weather kicked in, our students were able to remove their masks and we were able to meet in larger groups. We were able to have the annual Ski Trip, Performing Arts musicals, ESC sports competitions, our beloved Spring Party and our biggest community event: International Day. The year culminated with our graduation and promotion ceremonies held on campus without mask restrictions.

In February, the world was shocked with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our ASB community quickly rallied to support those in need due to the conflict. Support included food and clothing collections, financial donations, and even having ASB families hosting displaced families. Our staff made concentrated efforts to help students understand how the conflict was affecting the Ukrainian society and the European perception of stability.

We are incredibly grateful to a small group of ASB family donors who stepped up and generously contributed over €300,000 towards the new Lynx Athletic Center project, enabling us to fast-track our plans to commence construction over the summer. This space in the Middle School building will provide students and our community with a true fitness and weight training space during and after school. We were also very appreciative of the efforts made by Shawn Plancke and Michelle Collin to lead the fundraising efforts in our Lynx Athletics Center project.

During the year we were also preparing for the replacement of the ES (Johanna Cena) and HS (Ann Jurewicz) principals. The search processes were successful and we secured the hiring of Kristen MacConnell for ES and Omar Ugalde for HS. Our IT infrastructure also had an overhaul as we upgraded our servers and cabling to attain a significantly higher level of system stability and better wifi access for the community.

Overall, we were proud that ASB continues to challenge our students to achieve at the highest levels. Our IB scores remained high with an average of 36 and high scores of 44. MAP scores also continue to climb in virtually all our grades (4-8) achieving well above comparative standards.

Our graduates were successful in gaining entrance to select universities throughout Spain, the UK, Europe and the US. This year was also the year that our alumni programs took off with many stories being published about how ASB alumni are making a difference in their post-ASB lives. Alumni engagement has increased as they have come to school to share experiences with our students and we even held our first alumni reunion in a local restaurant in Barcelona with over 50 alumni attending.

At the beginning of the year we chose the phrase “Rising Together” to embody how we expected to deal with the continuing pandemic situation. Overall, our community showed its resilience to adapt to the changing world and to rise together, not only to where we were precovid but to even a higher level.