The School Committee met last night and among the issues and items discussed were:

Meeting with recent Boston Globe Scholastic Art winners who attended the meeting the Art teacher Patricia Turner from the Pierce Middle School.

Luke Pastore gave perhaps the most refreshing description of his work when he said, “This guy was a failed project.”  Clay Baker riffed on some portrait of Ronald Reagan titled, “Would You Buy a Car From This Man,” and Ken Lee Mercury redefined a checkerboard that had Classical vs Rock music. It was all rather wild and wonderful. And they were selected from ~12,000 (that’s TWELVE THOUSAND) entries. It is highly competitive and a fantastic achievement. In addition Milton students Philip Wikina and Elizabeth Hiss from Pierce and Linda Li and Elizabeth O’Connor from the high school also won awards.

The work will be included in an art exhibit of ACE work  on June 1rst at the Pierce Middle School.

Sean Walsh previewed the new Milton Public School web site. What an improvement! The staff worked with local design firm Jackrabbit Design to evelop a more intuitive and user friendly site that made information “1 click away.”

The site will launch Monday at http://www.miltonps.org. Edline will still be available.

Glen Pavlicek gave an update from the finance subcommittee. He focused principally on stimulus funds. There are two awards in play; one for special ed and one general education. He had two cautions in terms of how they viewed the money: 1) both awards require that a significant portion (50% in case of spec ed) go to new programs and 2) it is at best 2 time money (i.e. it is not an ongoing source of funding but a one or two time payout that will dry up in next year or two).  Consequently, it will not prevent layoffs only delay them. Mr. Pavlicek stated that, “It is a moving target. . . very fuzzy. . .  the stimulus is saving us from anything.”