After school for all students grades 5 – 6 begins on the first day of school.

We’ve learned that our community overwhelmingly prefers electronic correspondence; therefore, we communicate news and important reminders via email. Additionally, you can like us on Facebook (Belmont BASEC) and follow us on Instagram (BelmontBASEC) to remain current on events and see pictures from our programs.   The ease of communicating electronically sometimes overshadows the importance (and joy) of face-to-face conversation. We always have a front-desk greeter—and can make time for more in-depth discussion. Please feel free to ask questions at pick-up or request a conference!

Students come to the cafeteria directly at the end of the school day. We transition to all BASEC activities following the initial check-in to start the day.   If a student has a non-BASEC activity on a day that they regularly attend BASEC, (examples of these include homework club with their classroom teacher or a PTO-sponsored activity), he/she/they still must check in with BASEC teachers in the cafeteria, fill out one of our hall passes, and then head back to their scheduled activities. This plan has been developed collaboratively with BPS administration to ensure safety after school.   Student pickup is in the cafeteria. There is a sign-out table located by the interior cafeteria entrance. Check in with the front desk teacher at the table and they will locate your child. Please note that it is a large building, and it may take a few minutes for your child to travel from one location to the cafeteria.

BASEC @ Chenery offers two 8- to 10-week sessions of workshops: one beginning in October and the other in March. Students may choose from a wide selection of rich programming, including Parkour, cooking, coding, physical activity, podcasting, painting, writing, and many other favorites! There is an additional fee required for these programs, which varies depending on the resources required to operate the class. Please visit https://belmontbasec.org/chenery/workshops/ for more information about our Workshops, including online registration.

Our one-on-one tutoring program targets support on executive function skill-building or specific academic content. To learn more or to schedule, please contact BASEC @ Chenery Assistant Director, Blake Stensland at blake.stensland@belmontbasec.org.

At the middle school level, the Belmont school system schedules eight early release days used by teachers and administrators for staff development, grade level meetings, and parent/teacher conferences. BASEC @ Chenery provides programming for each of these days beginning at 11:00 AM and runs until 6:00 PM—this is included for any child registered with BASEC @ Chenery for an after school schedule that includes Wednesdays. Please note that two days are early school dismissals, where the building closes at 11:00 AM and BASEC After School is closed. Please see the Belmont BASEC Calendar for details.

You will need to pack a lunch for your child on early release days, as the cafeteria is not open.

Early release days provide us with the opportunity of arranging field trips and other exciting choices. Some of our favorite field trips are bowling, the Museum of Science, roller skating, and the zoo. The groups leave the school around noon and are back by 4:00. If your child attends on the early release days, he or she will need to go on these field trips or other arrangements will need to be made. We need all after school teachers to help chaperone while off campus. If you have any suggestions for more trips, feel free to email us!

BASEC requires you to have at minimum one back-up person on your child’s enrollment form (submitted electronically to our database). This person should know that you have put her/him on this form and should be willing to pick up your child in an emergency (this includes your working late). This is also important for those of you who have difficulty making the 6:00 pick up time. If you do not know anyone in Belmont who can do this for you, please see Site Director, Amanda Burke, to figure out a good match for your family.

Many BASEC @ Chenery students carry cell phones or have smart watches on them at school. We align our policy on phones with that of the Chenery School: all cell phones are to be put away while in the school building and smart watches should not be used. If a student would like to use his/her/their phone or smart watch to contact a parent or guardian, they needs to ask an after school teacher for permission to use it. We allow students to use their cell phones/smart watches to contact parents and caregivers ONLY. Students should not use their cell phones/smart watches to call or text friends while they are attending after school.

We do not allow video games/movies/music videos on smart phones during after school. We feel that we cannot effectively monitor usage without one-on-one supervision. We take cyber safety very seriously and have adopted this policy coming from that perspective.

If you need to reach your child, please call the BASEC @ Chenery main line: (617) 484-8030.

Please call us at (617) 484-8030 or email (preferred) Chenery@belmontbasec.org to report an absence.

Each family is responsible for notifying BASEC if their student:

• was absent from school;
• leaves school unexpectedly or for a scheduled appointment;
• attends school, but will not be attending after school.

We can be notified by telephone, email, or written note.

Attendance is taken and all students must be accounted for within 15 minutes of the dismissal bell. If a student cannot be accounted for, we will do an “all call” over the school’s PA system and phone calls are made. Please be sure to give us this notice in a timely manner.

If your child does not check in to after school and we have no prior notification of an absence, we call the parent/guardian phone numbers to confirm absences. On your emergency form (electronically submitted to BASEC’s database), you will notice that we ask for a primary phone contact. Please indicate the best number to reach you and we will call this number first. If there are multiple students absent and multiple phone calls to make, we will call the primary contact number for each student, then resume calling all other numbers on each student’s emergency contact form.

If you would like to email our Site Director, Amanda Burke, questions or concerns privately please use the email address Amanda.Burke@belmontbasec.org. If you would like to privately email Executive Director, Andrew Mountford, please use the email address Andrew.Mountford@belmontbasec.org. The email Chenery@belmontbasec.org should be used for scheduling, absences, and other general questions.

We welcome and encourage communication from the BASEC community, parents and children alike. Please stop by and meet the staff, see how our program runs, and feel free to offer any suggestions you may have to help better our growing community!

Yes they can, with your signed permission. You will notice on that the Authorization to Leave form (submitted electronically to BASEC’s database) indicates how you wish your child to leave the program.

We ask that you provide detailed information regarding unsupervised leave. Families can select from conditional or unconditional leave options. Unconditional leave options (recommended only in certain situations) allows a student to sign him/herself out at any time, by his/her/their own discretion. Conditional leave options allows families to set parameters, e.g. “after 5:00 PM” or “only after a phone call to parent”.

We have a preliminary conversation with each student authorized to sign him/herself out about our own policies, the expectations, and walking home safely.

Just give us a call or email and we will note it in our dismissal log for the day. Please ask the person picking up to have a photo ID ready to present to our staff at pick up.

After School is open from 2:25 PM – 6:00 PM Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

On Wednesdays, After School operates from 1:15 PM – 6:00 PM, and 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM on Early Release Wednesdays.

Please see our Daily Sample Schedule for more details.

Students may be signed-out and picked-up in the Cafeteria at any time between the end of the school day and 6:00PM

School will be dismissed at 1:15 PM each Wednesday. BASEC after school will begin directly following school dismissal, utilizing the same strategies as always to make the transition to after school as easy as possible for all of our students.   BASEC runs on the BPS schedule. If you’d like to download a copy of the BPS calendar, go to http://belmont.k12.ma.us. You can also see the Belmont BASEC Calendar for details.

Please see the Belmont BASEC Calendar.

Please see the Belmont BASEC Calendar.

If the Chenery Middle School is evacuated, students will be relocated to the Mary Lee Burbank, located at 266 School St, Belmont. All parents of students who are enrolled in BASEC @ Chenery on that day will be contacted by telephone and notified about the relocation. There will also be a recorded message on the program’s voicemail explaining the relocation.