School Committee March 21st Meeting Highlights
Yvette was covering another meeting, so I got to report on this week’s School Committee meeting. Yvette is much better than I at capturing all the details. Here is my summary of the multitude of great things going on in and around the Holliston Public Schools.
Arts, robotics, cool technology, and the recent Professional Development Day were discussed.
We heard from the School Committee’s Student Representative, Sarah O'Neill, that the HHS Pops concerts are this weekend; the senior showcase was a very successful fundraiser, spring tryouts (now that it is Spring!) are happening, and the Portal has been open this week.
Dr. Jackson spoke about how Holliston Public Schools has rented the ‘portal’ from Andover for this week. The Holliston Education Foundation provided the grant to make this rental possible. The portal is interactive technology that I would describe as Facetime on steroids. Students in Holliston interacted via video links with students in Afghanistan, Mexico, and the Gaza Strip to name a few. Dr. Jackson shared a video clip of the Holliston choral group spontaneously singing the song from Frozen with their Palestinian counterparts. It is very evident that teenagers around the world are very much alike (is this good news?).
There was an open house for the public to view the portal’s capabilities in the High School Library on Friday night.
The High School Robotics team competed in Redding in a weekend event last week. The group, coached by Beth Smith, acquitted themselves very well. The team was almost penalized because someone (Dr. Jackson) was in 'the box' and did not have proper eye protection! The team is off to Shrewsbury next. Dr. Jackson shared that more females and freshmen are joining the team.
Next weekend the arts move to Adams Middle School for the ReAct Players performance of the Addams Family musical. Tickets are going fast!
Dr. Peter Botelho gave an overview of how the Holliston educators spent last Friday during professional development. There was a focus on Project-based Learning and Dr. Botelho was excited to share that many of the sessions were led by Holliston teachers.
Other business:
The Finance Committee and the School Committee budget sub-committee had a good conversation last week. There may be a meeting of liaisons from both groups next week after all the budget requests have been presented to the FinComm.
Members of the School Committee will be holding ‘Office Hours’ at Coffee Haven, Saturday (today), March 23rd from 8:00 – 9:30.
The entire Holliston Schools community is very excited about the 5 Town School Day Games that was hosted in the HHS Field House on Friday March 22nd. Many months of hard work by Meg Camire and her team led up to this special day.