Students are considered truant if they miss more than three consecutive days without an excuse, and more than 1,000 students in the Lewiston school district fit that bill.
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Bill Grant, director of adult education in Lewiston, and Farwell Elementary School Principal Amanda Winslow speak during a session with Harlem Children’s Zone executives in 2020.
Steve Collins/Sun Journal file photo
LEWISTON After two years of study, Lewiston’s leaders unveiled a preliminary plan Monday to tackle the poverty that has thwarted the dreams of many families for generations by focusing first on the city’s youngest residents.
In a report delivered to the School Committee on Monday, the Lewiston Subcommittee on Poverty called for a communitywide effort to begin breaking the cycle of poverty by concentrating on “ambitious but achievable targets for change.”
LENOX â The search for a new town schools superintendent is down to two finalists, both of whom are on deck for public interviews by the School Committee on Tuesday.
Chosen from an initial pool of 15 applicants to succeed interim Superintendent William Cameron, including three from Berkshire County and seven from elsewhere in Massachusetts, the finalists are:
⢠Beth Choquette, a Cheshire resident and principal of the Bridge Street School in Northampton since 2012. Itâs one of the Hampshire County cityâs three public elementary schools, with a student enrollment of 291.
Previously, she was principal of Stamford Elementary School in Vermont for six years. Concurrently, Choquette was co-founder, co-director, board president and instructor of the Windsor School of Music in North Adams from 2008-09. She taught music at the former Plunkett Elementary School in Adams from 2000-06 (now Hoosac Valley Elementary School).
Gill-Montague faces potentially tight budget year
Turners Falls High School and Great Falls Middle School. Staff File Photo/PAUL FRANZ
Published: 1/13/2021 9:46:11 PM
MONTAGUE The Gill-Montague Regional School District’s budget for next school year will seek to make up for students’ academic and social losses this year, but will be challenged if state support slows due to the pandemic.
A preliminary budget discussed by the School Committee this week is worth over $24.1 million, which would be a 2.6 percent increase over the current year’s budget of about $23.5 million.
But, expectations of funding sources are not yet fully clear, partly due to uncertainty over whether state support for public schools may change to make up for schools’ losses related to the pandemic, said Gill-Montague Business Manager Joanne Blier.
The School Committee on Tuesday accepted a gift of $1,885 in memory of former Drury High School teacher Francis Merrigan, who died Nov. 2, and a $40,000 trust from estate of John and Joyce Brooks. In their letter to the committee, Merrigan s family said their father would be happy to see the funds donated in his memory benefit the high school s cinema and screenwriting course, which could use some upgraded film production technology. When Dad spoke of his time teaching, some of his favorite memories were of a filmmaking class that he was able to teach as a side project. In our family, we ve all had the experience of running into his former students and hearing their fond memories of a particular movie project that involved shooting scenes around North Adams and that was one of their most vivid memories of high school. In whatever small way, if these funds can help other students work on projects that help bring their learning to life, we would be thrilled, wrote