JEFFERSONVILLE, NY — At the Sullivan West Central School District’s September school board meeting, 11-year-old Mia Bustillo was honored as the elementary school’s Student of the Year for the 2023-2024 school year. 

Veteran elementary school principal Rod McLaughlin said that Mia received the honor “for being a positive role model [and] being the individual with the most Caught Being Good tickets in the entire school.” She had more than 60 “tickets” last year, “which means she was very busy doing good things for people every day that she was at school.”

“Mia is a sweet and caring individual who goes out of her way to help others,” said McLaughlin. 

Mrs. Schumacher, her homeroom teacher last year, added that “Mia is a wonderful girl, and I was happy to have had her in my fourth-grade classroom. She had many fine contributions to our class, and was an inspiration to her classmates… She worked hard in every subject, and pushed herself to be on the honor roll.”

Mia is now a fifth-grade student in Mrs. Murphy’s homeroom. 

In closing his remarks to the board, McLaughlin added about Mia, “I am not surprised at all, because she exemplifies the key message we are focusing our students on for this year: that ‘making positive choices in life leads to positive things in your life.’”   

A chat with Mia 

“I think I got the award because I was good; I’m just made that way,” said Mia, when asked about her selection. “I know not to make bad choices because there are going to be consequences.” 

Asked what it means to make good choices, she replied that it meant staying after class to help her teachers pass out papers, and recycling paper.

So what about bad choices? 

“I talked back to this student in class, felt so bad, and I apologized,’” she responded. “I’m a very good person!”

And what does she think she might want to do later in life, after growing up a bit and graduating high school?

At this point, Mia is considering becoming a cake designer for weddings and baby showers, or writing young-adult mystery novels. “It’s creative to make stories, and I’m actually working on a book of stories,” she said. (The book is about “a detective searching for missing presents.”)

“I like puzzles and how to figure stuff out,” she explained, adding that right now her favorite author is Judy Blume, an American writer of children’s, young adult and adult fiction. 

A chat with Rod McLaughlin

The 2023-2024 school year marks McLaughlin’s 27th year in education and his 14th year as head of the local elementary school, which serves kids in grades pre-K to six.

“I love working at the elementary grades because the students are still young, and we’re able to change the direction and course of their lives,” he said. “We put a lot of time and energy into it,” helping them understand that making good decisions is a lot more productive than bad ones.

As part of that process, the school established the Positive Choice Incentive Program (PCIP). It focuses on improving the school environment with positive actions and attitudes. “We emphasize that the choices build your future, and the importance of making positive choices each day,” said McLaughlin. 

At the beginning of the current school year, the head of the elementary school told the staff “that everything we do is done with a purpose, and that purpose is to help kids learn to develop a pattern to make positive choices that will bless them through life as they grow older.”

And to that end, the school is employing a Healthier Generation leadership team that is working together to help students make more of those good choices and develop good character traits.

To make that point, the school set up a newly purchased book vending machine. It accepts “gold” coins, which are handed out by the teachers to kids who make positive decisions.

“Kids who are ‘caught being good’ get a ‘golden’ ticket as an incentive for being seen helping someone else,” he said. It rewards positive choices and reflects “the power of making positive choices in their lives.”

The elementary school also hands out Bulldog Badges every month to students “who are kind and giving their best effort,” he said.

When not helping guide students in the right direction, McLaughlin serves as pastor of a nondenominational Bible church in PA.

Commenting on the new security protocols implemented at the building and on the middle/high school campus, he said, “Unfortunately we’re living in a time of human history where it’s not the same world it used to be… Then Columbine happened, and the doors got locked… If kids don’t feel safe, they can’t learn.”

During the Columbine High School shooting of April 20, 1999, 12 students were slaughtered and 21 additional people were injured by two mentally deranged seniors. 

Reflecting on the school scenes of the ‘50s and ’60s, McLaughlin said, “Back then, the biggest problems were gum chewing, running in the hallways and passing notes… It only takes a couple of generations for a country to fall apart.”

“We hardened the buildings, so this will not be the place [for easy access by intruders of ill intent],” he said on the topic of building security.