Interest in French Immersion remains strong among families with students entering 1st Grade. Overall 57% on incoming 1st Graders will enter French Immersion. This according to recent numbers released by Assistant Superintendent Phelan at the last meeting of the School Committee.

The Collicot, Cunningham, and Glover schools all have two strands of French and English. (“Strand” is the vocabulary the administration uses to refer to a class.) The Tucker has one of each. The Collicot and Tucker schools each have one co-taught 1st grade class. A co-taught class is a class taught by a special needs teacher and elementary teacher.

The most recent enrollment figures will be updated over the summer. It has also been noted by administration that enrollment in the English strands will likely grow as the classes progress through the grades as students move into the district.

Here is a current draft of the most recent enrollment figures:

During Citizens Speak parent library volunteer Kathleen Peto spoke about her concerns regarding the cut to library services which included the fact that Milton schools will only have 1 librarian for 2,024 students.”Students will now have a library class once every other week for 30 minutes. Or possibly once a month if the day of a student’s instruction falls on a Monday, which is often a holiday.  Ms. Peto noted that of 16 surrounding towns only Quincy offers less time. They don’t offer any library class instruction. They let all their librarians go. Other comparable school districts offer library instruction at least once a week.

Ms. Peto also referenced a Simmons study done in 2000 that correlated library class time with MCAS scores. Students with more frequent access to school libraries performed between 10 – 20% higher on their MCAS tests. (You can find the paper “School Libraries and MCAS Scores” here.).

According to  a draft memo from the school department, the cut in library services was made to increase art instruction to once a week. Both library services and art, as well as music and phys ed, are classified as specialized services. Superintendent Gormley was quoted in the Milton Times as saying, “It’s a valuable resource but we have to live within our budget.” They can change the size of the pieces of the pie but they cannot change the size of the pie.