Tonight's Special Meeting of the School Committee

At tonight's meeting, the design teams for both proposed innovation schools presented information about their schools and answered questions from members of the School Committee.

The Esperanza School design team's presentation included the following topics:

• challenges within New Bedford Public Schools
• how dual language instruction can address those challenges
• an explanation of the benefits of dual language, specifically two-way immersion
• research on the educational impact of dual language instruction on various subgroups (ELLs, African American, low-income, special education, etc)
• the effect of dual language instruction on the graduation rate
• an explanation of innovation schools and how they maintain local control
• the requested autonomies

The team answered questions from the School Committee following our presentation and will look further into some issues raised during this question and answer period.

We would like to thank the members of the audience who congratulated us on a quality presentation and engaged in conversation with us about the issues discussed tonight. 


The Public Hearing will be held next Wednesday, March 27th at 6 pm in the Keith Middle School Auditorium.  This is an opportunity for members of the community to share their thoughts regarding the Esperanza School of Language and Culture with the members of the New Bedford School Committee.