Friday, September 14, 2007

Friday, September 14, 2007

Dear Parents and Constituents,

Attached is this week's schedule of Holyoke School Committee Meetings and the agenda for Monday's School Committee Meeting. Please note that agendas are in PDF format, which allows me to provide the package of attachments to the agenda. I have also attached a report from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which is well worth reading. As explained below, I have also attached the agenda from our August 20 meeting.

Highlights:

Monday’s agenda is fairly short, although there are some items that keep the meeting going for a while.

Holyoke High School was kept extremely busy last year preparing for its Accreditation Review. This is an important process that takes place every ten years, involving many labor intensive tasks including faculty self assessment and a review by a Visiting Committee. Attached is the Overview of the Visiting Committee’s report, which is a wonderful recognition of the quality of Holyoke High School. The report glows with this kind of commentary: “Holyoke High School enjoys an exemplary school climate that is safe and orderly and has an instructional program guided by a clear mission”. A copy of the complete report, with numerous detailed commendations and recommendations of the Visiting Committee, can be obtained at Holyoke High School’s Main Office. The entire HHS community has a lot to be proud of.

Wednesday’s Finance Sub-committee meeting will be a continuation of the management of our approximately $2,000,000.00 budget deficit. This situation was brought to the School Committee’s attention during the summer, at the August 3 meeting. The attached agenda for 8/20 contains the minutes of that meeting and the subsequent Finance Sub-committee meeting. Between everything attached you can read all of the discussion that has occurred to date. At some point, hopefully soon, the Committee will receive some concrete recommendations and take action to adjust the budget. While the reasons for not doing so to date are justifiable, the ongoing inaction and uncertainty is vexing and needs to end soon.

The other reason I am sending the agenda from my last message is that you never received my last message. I wrote and send the e-mail for our 8/20 meeting, unaware that the HPS server has moved. The message simply vanished into cyberspace, with no message telling me this had happened.

Also, if you sent me an e-mail to this address: mmoriarty@hps.holyoke.ma.us at any time between 8/20/07 and 9/10/07, when my access to the HPS system was restored, I never received it.