Welcome to the Freetown Elementary School |
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Dear Families, Our Monthly Newsletter usually highlights the events, programs and work we are doing at school. Occasionally, we’ll solicit your help with one of the many projects happening at our school. This month I am asking your help in supporting our school budget. I’d like to roll the clock back in time to my first summer as Principal of Freetown Elementary School. At that time, the school just went through a devastating budget cut. In addition to several classroom teachers being cut, the Library was closed, the Science Scan Tech and Computer Labs were closed, a custodian was cut, and most of the paraprofessionals were cut. As a result classroom sizes increased, the Library remained closed for two years, our technology became outdated and maintenance of the building suffered. It suffices to say although our delivery of educational services was good, it could have been much better. We are fortunate that today we are in much better shape. Over the past three years we have been able to add teachers back to the classroom, decrease class size, reopen the Library, update technology, provide the resources of paraprofessionals to our students and see our performance increase on state mandated assessments. I am sad to say that with the current financial state of affairs our town is experiencing, we are once again facing some very difficult decisions regarding our budget. Upon receiving all the pertinent information from the town officials available at the time, our School Committee voted on a budget, for the Elementary School only, of $4,268,450. This represents increases in salaries, utilities and transportation. Prior to arriving at this figure, we decreased the budget by over $100,000 in areas of maintenance, supplies, professional development and materials. For our school to remain as we see it today we need your support at Town Meeting. Please make every effort to attend the Town Meeting on Monday, May 5, 2008 at Apponequet Regional High School at 7:00 P.M. On a different note, our Playground Committee remains very active. On April 26th, they held a Bottle and Can Drive that brought in over $700. Slowly but surely money needed to remodel the Early Childhood playground in the rear of the school is raised. Thank you to Jeanne Richard and Diane Huling for their efforts in coordinating this event. In our last newsletter we recognized many children for being a part of our Destination Imagination Teams. Regrettably we omitted one name, Ciara Borges. We apologize to Ciara and her family for our oversight. Our last round of MCAS Assessments is just around the corner and will begin on Monday, May 12, 2008. The schedule for the week is as follows: Sincerely,
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