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Update - Friday May 11:

The May 8 School Committee Meeting Summary can be found below.

Sheridan Kimball of Dighton has received the Outstanding Vocational Technical Student Award for 2012. For more details, see the Spotlight Page above.

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center has put out a report which discusses how the State of Massachusetts foundation budget formula is currently underfunding today's educational needs. You can read this report at the MassBudget website (http://www.massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=Cutting_Class.html) or you can download the pdf version here.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has been advocating for a full and complete adequacy study of the Chapter 70 education funding formula. You can read about the status of this effort at: http://www.massteacher.org/news/archive/2012/adequacy.aspx

There have been discussions lately regarding recent legislation to reform Municipal Health Care. Municipalities and Regional School Districts have an option to adopt Sections 21-23 of Chapter 32B of the Massachusetts General Laws which removes bargaining requirements with employee unions and establishes a benchmark health insurance plan which serves as the reference for providing reasonable health insurance coverage. 
A summary of the changes can be found here.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association has a Q&A document on Sections 21-23 which can be found here.
You can read about the legislation at: http://www.mass.gov/governor/pressoffice/pressreleases/2011/municipal-health-care-reform-signed.html

Massachusetts has been granted a waiver from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements. The press release on this waiver can be downloaded here.

There is also a Question and Answer document on the NCLB waiver that can be downloaded here.

I am continually adding posts to the online discussion forum so if you have not checked that out recently, please do.
The URL for the discussion forum is: http://drforum.prhebda.com

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This is the summary of the School Committee meeting held on May 8 2012.

The next school committee meeting will be held on Tuesday May 22 at 7PM.

If you have ideas or suggestions for what you would like to see here, please let me know by sending an email to prhebda@gmail.com.

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These are my own highlights from recent School Committee meetings. My goal is to be brief and informative, but it is very likely that I will not include every item that was brought up for discussion at the meetings. These are my own comments and do not represent the views or opinions of the DR School Committee as a whole. 

Tuesday May 8, 2012

• The Municipal Representatives were chosen for the upcoming school district contract negotiations. Mr. Thomas Pires from the Dighton Board of Selectmen will be the Municipal Representative for the teacher negotiations and Mr. Michael Deignan from the Rehoboth Finance Committee will be the Municipal Representative for the ILA and secretary negotiations.
• Mrs. Pincince along with teachers and students from the Beckwith Middle School gave a  presentation to the School Committee on some of the work going on in their school. This is the fifth and final presentation in the series where each of the schools in the district is asked to make a presentation to the School Committee on some of the things they are working on.
• The Beckwith Gardening Club is looking for donations of plants, tools or anything gardening related. Please contact the school if you would like to help out.
• The full-day kindergarten enrollment deadline has been extended and there are still openings available. Contact the Superintendent’s Office if you are interested.
• The School Committee approved a motion to decrease the Dighton FY12 assessment by 119K with a contingency that this will also cover any past claims regarding voc-tech education and transportation expenses.

The summary for 2/14 and 2/28 can be downloaded here.
The summaries for 3/13 and 3/27 can be downloaded here.
The summaries for 4/10 and 4/24 can be downloaded here.