Motivated Students, Teachers Reason for Brighton Getting Top Honors

June 2, 2019

By all accounts, it has been an outstanding year for the Brighton Area Schools, and most particularly, for Brighton High School. Last fall, BHS was recognized as one of only five schools in the United States to be named an exemplary school as part of ESPN’s Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools National Recognition Program.

Brighton High School was honored for involving special needs students in the Unified Champion Schools program, which incorporates Special Olympics sports to unite special education and regular education students in supportive classrooms, school-wide activities and sports in which the regular and special ed students play on the same teams in flag football, basketball and bocce ball.

Among other programs that have won the Brighton Area Schools recognition is The BHS FIRST Robotics Team which was combined in an alliance with teams from Philadelphia, Sterling Hts., MI, and Eindhoven, the Netherlands, to take the championship trophy in the FIRST World Robotics Championship at the Cobo Center and Ford Field in Detroit. The event drew competitors from over 40 countries and had about 40,000 in attendance. The coach of the TechnoDogs is Rocky Roberts, who heads the school’s Automotive Technology program.

Also, the Bridge Alternative High School has been named the top alternative high school in the state for the second time in the last three years by the Michigan Alternative Education Organization.

Just last week, the Brighton Area Schools Destination Imagination Elementary School team took 27th place in the DI World Finals in Kansas City, Missouri. The Brighton “DI Deetectives”, as they are called, is composed of four 1st and 5th graders from Hornung Elementary and Maltby Intermediate schools. They were teamed up with a DI group from Poland for the competition, which took place over four days, from May 22nd, through May 25th. Considering it was only the second year the Brighton team had competed in the tournament, Supt. Greg Gray says they did extremely well. More than 1,400 DI teams from over 45 US states and over 14 countries were in the competition.

Gray says the accolades are a result of a talented and motivated group of students, coupled with a dedicated and hard-working teaching staff – factors which have placed the Brighton Area Schools in an enviable position. Gray says several other Brighton groups and individuals earned honors during the 2018-19 school year. That includes Kyle Kantola and River Shettler winning two state wrestling titles, and Brighton, as a team, finishing state Division I runner-up to Detroit Catholic Central. (TT)