Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, two representatives from the New England School Development Council visited several locations in the Tri-Town area to present their profile on the present state of Old Rochester Regional School District.
Marge Clark and John Kennedy of NESDEC were brought in by the district to help determine what its goals should be in going forward with a “strategic plan” that is currently in the works.
“If districts have a comprehensive plan, it really strengthens the district,” said Clark at the Rochester Council on Aging on Thursday afternoon, where she conducted a forum with some Rochester seniors in attendance.
Clark and Kennedy also traveled to both of the other COAs in the area to hold the forums, as well as to the junior and senior high schools, where they polled those in attendance as to what they believed were some of the positives and negatives of the school district.
The forums, which lasted roughly an hour, were to go over the district’s profile, and the feedback from the forums helped complete NESDEC’s study.
Clark said that she and Kennedy were at work with districts to “see what they need to work on, and how to do it. … We want to see if strategic plan will move forward realistically.”
She also noted that there may be a decline of around 225 students in next 10 years, which will potentially have an impact on the strategic plan of the system, but she was confident that the district would still be sufficient with a drop in students.
The report also stated that students’ 2012 MCAS results “continued to exceed state average,” and students in grade 10, who were in their last year of testing, showed indicators of “very high performance.”
“All of the district should be in good shape,” she said. “Plus , their test scores are indicators of high performance.”
By Nick Walecka
