Closing an elementary school? Laying off 120 teachers? Those are the choices we’d face if a Select Board candidate makes good on his promise to cut $10 million from the Schools’ budget. Don’t let that happen.
When you live in a compact, walkable town like Belmont, its easy to forget that many, many other communities across the country are what you might call “car bound.” They’re sprawling, decentralized, with poor access to critical services and lacking even the basic infrastructure, like sidewalks and bike lanes, to support citizens who choose to go car free. No surprise, also, that in these communities the collective memory of things like walking or biking places or riding the bus has disappeared, making those once normal activities seem foreign or downright dangerous. Thus, the news item that flashed across my computer screen today about high school seniors in Michigan being punished for riding their bikes to school. Crazy, no?
Live blogging here from Spring Town Meeting. We’ve been here for close to two hours and are still snagged in debate of the first substantive issue: approval of a new stabilization fund for Minuteman Technical. The idea here is to…
The Wellington Building Committee has posted updated site plans for the new Wellington Elementary School on its Web site.
The rancor over President Obama’s speech to children tomorrow doesn’t reflect well on either side. As is often the case in brush ups like this, the needs and opinions of the kids in question have been pushed to the side…the better to clear space for the grown ups to fight. Hopefully President Obama’s words will put the debate to rest. His message: dream big, study hard, and don’t give up – no matter the odds.
An interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times on changes coming to a classroom near you: digital textbooks. The article, by Tamar Lewin, talks about pilot projects in school districts in Arizona, Louisiana and California that are replacing traditional printed textbooks with online, digital equivalents, or even “open source” texts compiled from materials and lessons generated by teachers or from public (and reliable) sources of information online.
This year’s marathon, multi-session Town Meeting might be best remembered for what wasn’t heard last night: a single dissenting voice among the more than 200 assembled Town Meeting members to a motion to allocate more than $39 million for reconstruction of the Wellington Elementary School. The unanimous vote in favor was sweet victory for all those who have battled to have the aging school rebuilt!
MSBA Executive Director Kathy Craven told Belmont voters that now was the time to act on funding a new Wellington Elementary School, and that $12.4m in State funding will be off the table, and given to other towns if the town fails to pass a debt exclusion in June.
A town-wide forum to answer questions about the Wellington Elementary project is being held this Tuesday, May 19, at 7:00 pm. Officials from the State, Town and School Dept. will be available to talk about the
Together for Wellington has released an excellent video about the need to rebuild Wellington Elementary, and addressing questions and concerns about the project. Check it out!