For the first time ever, students from Maine competed in the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair held this year in Pittsburgh, Penn. Meagan Currie of Greely High School in Cumberland and Sam Wood of Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham traveled with their teacher/mentors and parents to represent Maine at this competition.
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Smart summer shutdown is essential for maintaining healthy indoor environments in schools. During these warmer months, school or district staff can take preventative and proactive actions to protect indoor air quality and save energy costs. The Maine DOE School Facilities team is sharing the following tips from the U.S. EPA on summer shutdown of buildings.
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Imagine trying to teach over 100 kindergarten students how to recycle. At the Horace Mitchell Primary School in Kittery, students have taken charge of their recycling program in a major way, and they are learning how to be good stewards to the environment in the process.
This year, third grade students wrote and presented proposals to Principal David Foster about why they wanted to serve on a school-wide “Green Team.” Upon student selection, the group began planning strategies to make the school “greener.”
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In the past week the Maine Charter School Commission held hearings on three applications for public charter schools to open this fall. It’s a tight time schedule, but Commission members are putting in many hours to give each application a thorough review. They are striking a balance between the need to provide students and families with choices, and the imperative that they closely follow the criteria laid out for them.
Maine’s Migrant Education Program became fully certified with the Migrant Student Information Exchange initiative in May, after two years of hard work.
The Maine Department of Education recently issued notice that applications would be accepted for the Fund for the Efficient Delivery of Educational Services. However, upon further review of the program’s structure, the Administration has decided to rework the program’s focus. The administration would like to further investigate how the fund could be used to encourage systemic reform in underperforming schools and districts, and will propose changes to the fund’s configuration in the next legislative session.
The Department of Education will be accepting applications for funding of school renovation projects through the School Revolving Renovation Fund. The Department will be able to approve approximately $10 million in SRRF loans. A portion of each loan will be considered a grant and will be forgiven, and the remaining portion will be paid back over five or 10 years at zero percent interest.
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In the continuing process of developing a new assessment system, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium has announced the next opportunity for Maine educators to participate. As a governing member of SBAC, Maine is afforded the opportunity to invite educators to participate in the process of reviewing test items and performance tasks for the 2013 Pilot Test.
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Ryan Flaherty, a 2005 graduate and standout athlete of Deering High School in Portland, completed his journey to the major leagues this year when he made the Baltimore Orioles’ opening day roster.
Flaherty grew up in the North Deering neighborhood, attending Lyseth Elementary School and Lyman Moore Middle School. At Lyseth, he forged a special relationship with one of his teachers, Ron Penney. “He would always talk baseball with me,” Flaherty recalled. “I just related to him really well, and I respected the man a lot.”
In high school, Flaherty lettered in three sports – football, basketball and baseball – and he captained the 2005 football team. Flaherty was a member of one football team and two Deering baseball teams that won state championships, and he helped lead Nova Seafood to the 2004 American Legion World Series Championship.
With the press of a button, members of more than a dozen families in RSU 3 can transport themselves to the halls of Mount View High School – the virtual halls, that is. Select families in 11 Waldo County towns can enroll in this virtual learning center, which opened in 2010 as part of the Students and Parents in Cooperative Education (SPICE) Family Literacy Program that aims to overcome issues of rural isolation.
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Maine DOE Newsroom 