2006-12-04 School Committee Minutes

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Regular Session 2 December 4, 2006 Mrs. Gibbs highlighted her participation in a Joshua Eaton reading day and her experience reading to a 5th grade class there. Ms. Webb talked about the recent football luncheon sponsored by Rotary and how impressed she was by the speech by Mr. Fiore, HS Football coach. Mr. Michaud attended the Veterans Day celebration on the Town Common on November 11, 2006 where the Veterans presented Mr. Schettini with a special flag that has been flown over ever school and every cemetery in town to be kept at the High School as a tribute to the Memorial at RMHS. He noted that he, Ms. Webb, and Mrs. Gibbs attended a recent School Committee roundtable at Melrose High School that included Stoneham, Melrose, Wakefield and Reading School Committee members addressing issues of interest to all four districts. Mr. Michaud also highlighted the recent meeting of the Reading Substance Abuse prevention committee. Mr. Schettini announced that Killam Elementary School has been awarded the designation of Blue Ribbon Lighthouse School. In addition, Joshua Eaton has attained the Point of Light designation and is working toward becoming a Blue Ribbon Lighthouse School. He noted that these designations are part of the District's commitment to continual improvement and that these organizations emphasize continual improvement in their standards and criteria. He noted the similarity of these standards to - other accreditation standards which have been applied to other schools in the district as part of the accreditation process. Mr. Schettini also discussed the attendance of he and several administrators at the Blue Ribbon schools conference and the excellent opportunity it offered to network with other schools in the country who have the same mission to provide the highest quality instruction and to gather information on best practices to be used to benchmark the performance of our schools and implement in our schools. Mr. Schettini congratulated Mr. Finigan and his staff on their receipt of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association's District B Sportsmanship Award. New Business Mr. Buono, High School science teacher, with Mr. Finigan requested approval of a Field Trip for High School students over February vacation to assist with a Habitat for Humanities Project in an underprivileged area of rural North Carolina. Mrs Gibbs moved to approve the proposed field trip with Mr. Buono to North Carolina for habitat to humanity projects as stated in the Superintendent's memo of November 30 Mr. Michaud seconded Motion passed 5-0. Ms. Webb, Mr Michaud, Mrs. Gibbs, Mr. Caruso and Mr. McFadden.