WORCESTER After hours of debate and years of trying to get to this point the School Committee on Thursday voted to implement a district-wide comprehensive sex education curriculum.
In a 5-2 vote, the full committee approved a prior 2-1 vote by its Standing Committee on Teaching, Learning and Student Supports to go with a model called Rights, Respect, Responsibility.
RRR was one of two curricula put forward by a panel of health educators earlier this year.
Mayor Joseph Petty, the chairman, and members Molly McCullough, Laura Clancey, Tracy O’Connell Novick, and Jack Foley voted for the motion; Dianna Biancheria and John Monfredo were opposed.
Worcester school standing committee keeps self-harm web filter turned off, seeks legal opinion
WORCESTER – A school standing committee on Tuesday opted to keep a web monitoring tool that detects when students are potentially considering self-harm turned off, but referred the matter to city lawyers for possible reconsideration later.
The safety check feature, which is part of filtering software from a company called Lightspeed that Worcester uses on student-issued laptops and other devices, uses artificial intelligence to determine when a student might be looking up something on the web that suggests they are considering self-harm.
In a pilot program that ran at two schools earlier this school year, when the filter was triggered, it would alert Superintendent Maureen Binienda, Information Technology Officer Bob Walton, School Safety Director Robert Pezzella, and Manager of Social Emotional Learning Maura Mahoney, who would then tell the student s principal.
Downtown Worcester free COVID-19 testing site busy before Christmas
WORCESTER – Kionna Hazzard is hoping she can spend Christmas at her aunt s house.
Hazzard, of Southbridge, was among many others at the COVID-19 testing site inside Mercantile Center at 201 Commercial St. on Tuesday.
She just returned from a trip to Puerto Rico and said she wanted to be tested. If the test is negative, she said, she is going to spend Christmas at her aunt’s house. If the test is positive, she’s staying home alone.
William Smith, project manager for the testing site, said he has been seeing a big push because of Christmas. People want to get a clean bill of health so they can spend the holidays with their immediate family, he said.