Governor LePage and Messalonskee High School students play with basketballs ejected by the school’s robotics team, “Infinite Loop,” which participated in the FIRST Robotics World Championship in St. Louis in April.
The following is a news release from the Office of Gov. Paul LePage.
AUGUSTA – Science, robots and the students who designed them took center stage Tuesday at the State House as Governor Paul LePage awarded the first ever Governor’s Promising STEM Youth Awards.
The recipients included three robotics teams that participated in a national competition, a student who will be representing Maine at the National Youth Science Camp and students from Falmouth who represented the state in a national science competition.
CORRECTION: The item below has been corrected to show that appointments to both the Part C group and the Part B group will be made by the Governor.
The Maine Department of Education is seeking eligible, interested parents of students with disabilities, providers, programs administrators, private and public charter school representatives, and individuals with disabilities to serve on two advisory boards established under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Kayleigh Bowen (no relation) shows Commissioner Bowen how she used a matrix to track her own progress in meeting learning standards at Gray-New Gloucester Middle School, one stop on a tour of schools and programs doing the work envisioned in the Department’s strategic plan.
GRAY – Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen is on the road again. But this time, instead of gathering information to develop a strategic plan as he did last spring, he’s sharing the results of that work.
Bowen visited schools and programs Friday as a way to showcase the Maine Department of Education’s strategic plan, developed with the input of hundreds of teachers, administrators, parents, students, taxpayers and others he met with on a “listening tour” last year. Bowen unveiled the plan in January, but said he hadn’t been able to share it yet due to the work of the legislative session, which officially ended this week.
“What we’re talking about here is how do we get the best return on our investment in education,” Bowen said. “We spend more money on K-12 education in Maine than any other program – we’ve got a vision and a strategic plan built on the best thinking of many, many people, and we think it’s going to help our kids graduate better prepared for success in college and in the work place. That’s good for them and it’s good for Maine’s economy.”
Click the image to view the fully formatted Commissioner’s Update.This week, in addition to the usual updates about our work, I will ask for something from you.
The September 2012 deadline to request flexibility from the federal government in Maine’s implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (or Elementary and Secondary Education Act) is growing nearer, and we at the Department need your feedback to develop our proposal.
The Maine Department of Education expects to finally adopt a comprehensive revision of rules governing restraint and seclusion of students (Rule Chapter 33) by the end of this week. The effective date of the rule will be set by the Office of the Secretary of State and is expected to be June 7.
Kittery students, food service staff and administrators receive one of the nation’s highest nutrition awards from the USDA’s HealthierUS School Challenge.
Seven schools in four districts received one of the nation’s highest nutrition awards for their achievements in the HealthierUS School Challenge last week.
John Magnarelli, USDA’s top regional school lunch official, presented students, administrators and food service staff with plaques and banners at schools in Kittery, York, Wells-Ogunquit CSD and MSAD 72.
The debt limit deal enacted by Congress on August 2, 2011 calls for about $900 billion in cuts in discretionary programs over the next decade and would impose further automatic, across-the-board spending cuts in many programs if Congress were to fail to enact an additional $1.2 trillion in deficit-reduction measures by January 15, 2012. These automatic cuts are known as sequestration. Because Congress did not agree on the additional measures, the automatic cuts – the sequestration – are scheduled to go into effect.
This week, in addition to the usual updates about our work, I will ask for something from you. The September 2012 deadline to request flexibility from the federal government in Maine’s implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (or Elementary and Secondary Education Act) is growing nearer, and we at the Department need your feedback to develop our proposal.
For the second year in a row, S. W. Cole Engineering, Inc. will hold a contest this fall for schools throughout the company’s service areas to promote science and engineering educational programs. The contest, called “Dig into Science with S. W. Cole Engineering,” is open to science, math or engineering students in first through 12th grade in Maine and New Hampshire.
Because Maine is a governing state for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the Maine Department of Education encourages qualified grades 3-11 English language arts/literacy and mathematics teachers to apply to become item authors for the Consortium.
Maine DOE Newsroom 