HUDSON — Five Hudson High School students helped preserve a mural in the former School Committee room, Director of Technology Ellen Schuck said on June 13.
When officials were looking at changes to be made to the old School Committee room in the school administration building on Apsley Street, they were trying to figure out the best place to install a flat panel TV.
There is a “beautiful image” that was painted by former art teacher Mike Correa.
Schuck said, “We realized that we needed to find a way to preserve this mural.”
First, they reached out to the school photographer to reproduce a life size banner of the image, which did not pan out. Schuck then enlisted the help of technology teacher Bruce Hedison, who has produced banners for Hudson High School in the past.
Hedison did not hesitate to take on the project, she said. His students created their own design for banners from each school using photos of students. The students who participated in the project were Brady Crogan, Nate Figueiredo, Maddy Haher, Shane Santana and Ana Clara Mota Finamore Santos.
“I want to thank these students for their amazing work,” added Schuck. “[The banners] are going to be mounted in each building in a specific area.”
A commemorative plaque will be placed under the banners, she noted.
School improvement plans
The School Committee also heard from the principals of different schools in the district about their efforts to enact a school improvement plan for their respective schools.
For the high school, Principal Jason Medeiros addressed the Choose Love goal of efforts to evaluate the curriculum.
“I know some of the feedback from the high school was probably [that] we need to work to optimize that,” said School Committee Chair Steven Smith.
He asked how that goal would be executed and how success would be measured. Medeiros said they looked at feedback from students and staff over the pilot run of the program. He said they examined how they could make social-emotional learning components of the curriculum tangible and relevant to students.
The goal was to make it feel less like a topic that lies “outside of the life” of the school and ground it in what is “really happening” for students day to day, according to Medeiros.
Individual efforts to increase student attendance in the district were highlighted. Medeiros described the academic performance, or failed and passed classes, over the entire year as sort of an up-and-down curve from the first term to the fourth one.
He added, “That’s not the ideal curve that we have.”
He said the challenge is to overcome the drop in grades they see in term two, tying this topic to attendance. There has been more of an effort to do interventions, such as more home visits if there is a concern.
Medeiros called it “a tough nut to crack.”
Smith asked what lessons were learned about attendance this year that could be used to improve the numbers next year. Melissa Provost, principal of C.A. Farley Elementary School, said they formed an attendance committee and created intervention plans designed for the level of support needed.
Principal of Mulready Elementary School Kelly Sardella said working with the nurses at the school to communicate to parents when students could return was important in reducing the numbers of absences.
In terms of students being in school, she emphasized how “important it is for those basic building blocks to fit” and help students be successful in higher grade levels.
