CPC Meeting Cancelled

Tonight's Citywide Parent Council meeting at Lowell High School has been cancelled due to the coming snow storm. We will post further information about our LHS meeting once it becomes available. Again, tonight's meeting has been cancelled.

Budget concerns

Have you noticed that the local paper is stepping up its negative articles about the schools? The word is trickling down from Beacon Hill about what Chapter 70 money will be available to school districts, and the Lowell Sun is losing no opportunity to slam the school committee, teachers, unions and the superintendent (just see ‘The Column’ in the Feb. 13 edition.)

Meanwhile, the public schools have been level-funded for the past three years and our superintendent is among the lowest paid in the state.

Last year, in Hancock v. Driscoll, a lower-court judge found that the state was not meeting its constitutional obligation to provide equal funding for education to low-income districts. Lowell was one of 19 plaintiffs in this case, and many officials expected an increase in state funding to result from this decision.

However, the state supreme court recently overturned the ruling. Without new state money to ease the budget crunch, we can expect even more negative press about the schools.

We’ll be keeping an eye on the budget, too, so stay tuned.

Bullying, Safety, Discipline meeting rescheduled

The January 28th meeting on 'Bullying, Safety and Discipline', which was cancelled due to bad weather, has been rescheduled for April 25th. The meeting will be held at the McAvinnue School as planned.

There will be an expert panel, small-group breakout sessions where bullying concerns can be addressed by age-group, as well as a question-and-answer period.

As always, we will offer light refreshments and free childcare.

(The Internet Safety meeting, originally planned for April 25th, will now be held on May 16th.)