BUCKLAND — The annual Mohawk Trail Regional School District spelling bee for elementary school students takes place on Thursday, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Mohawk Trail Regional School auditorium. This is an event in which the fifth- and sixth-graders compete for the championship.
BUCKLAND — The newly formed Mohawk Trail Regional School District’s “strategic planning steering committee” has a new name and has set its priorities in a year when the budget increases may require Proposition 2½ levy limit overrides.
The committee is now called Mohawk’s BEST (Building Education, Sustainability and Trust), its members include residents and school parents from Mohawk district towns, Mohawk and Hawlemont school committee members, and educators. Mohawk committee member Martha Thurber of Buckland will chair the group.
The first goal is to work to attract and retain local students who now go elsewhere to charter schools or to other districts through School Choice.
“The district anticipates transferring almost $850,000 to charter schools in fiscal year 17 and another $400,000 to regular public schools” (through School Choice) said Thurber. “This is money appropriated by our towns that does not go to our local schools. We need to understand why some of our students are choosing charter and choice alternatives and what we can do to keep them here.”
The second goal will be to offer educational programs in an efficient, sustainable way. This would include looking at whether the district has the right mix of students and teachers in the right buildings and how to reduce the $1 million now spent on transportation in the sparsely populated rural district.
The next Mohawk’s BEST meeting will be Wednesday, March 16 in the Buckland-Shelburne Elementary School at 7 p.m., followed by one in Colrain Central School on March 23. The group will hold meetings at each elementary school and at Mohawk.
For online information, go to:
sites.google.come/site/mohawkspsc/
“James, June and the Giant Peach” will be performed at the Heath Elementary School on Friday and Saturday, at 6:30 p.m. on both evenings. It’s free and open to the public.
The play is the school’s original adaptation of a 1961 children’s book by Roald Dahl, in which an orphan sent to live with cruel aunts is given a magical potion for saving the life of a spider. He accidentally spills it on a barren peach tree, which grows a gigantic peach. In this fantasy play, human-sized bugs and other creatures live inside the gigantic peach seed.
The play is directed by Jonathan Diamond, who has produced many plays in the elementary school; he also runs the Hilltown Youth Theatre program at the Academy at Charlemont.
Academy at Charlemont senior Allen Gabriel of Ashfield, and junior Benjamin Michalak of Hadley, were recognized for participating in the prestigious Dartmouth Model United Nations held Feb. 26-28.
Gabriel was designated third best delegate on the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Conference, representing Israel among several dozen nations. Michalak won for Best Position Paper on the Historic Security Council Committee, focusing on the Korean War, where he represented the People’s Republic of China.
They were part of a 20-member delegation from The Academy at Charlemont, composed of students in grades 9 through 12.