Hildreth, Bromfield announce improved websites

It just got easier to find out when the middle school dance or the Math Olympiad will be held. Both the Bromfield School and Hildreth Elementary School have newly designed websites that feature detailed calendars, among other improvements.

Principals Linda Dwight and Jim O'Shea reported the launch of the improved websites at the School Committee's Jan. 23 meeting.

For the time being, the school district's home page at psharvard.org is unchanged. But users who then click on the elementary school or Bromfield will find much more information, arranged in a more convenient format.

Technology purchases to be funded from budget, Devens money

The School Committee will use money from the school operating budget and the Devens revolving fund to pay for equipment and services outlined in the schools' five-year technology plan, according to a letter sent by Superintendent Joe Connelly to George McKenna, chairman of the Capital Planning and Investment Committee.

At its Jan. 9 meeting, the School Committee had approved expenditures totaling $362,000 for new or upgraded technological hardware and software. The committee had then submitted a request for funding $56,250 of the plan in fiscal 2013 to the capital committee, but Connelly's letter withdrew that request.

The two biggest-ticket items slated for the next fiscal year are a fiber optic connection ($25,000) and a wireless local area network, or LAN ($20,000). Both began as requests to the capital committee but will now be financed out of the operating budget or the Devens fund.

School Committee chairman Keith Cheveralls, who is also a member of the capital committee, said in an email to the Press, "As our new total operating revenue and expense budget and long range financial planning processes evolved under Joe's leadership we established that we had the financial resources to effectively self fund the entire technology plan."

Cheveralls noted that the remaining fiscal year 2013 capital requests for the schools, still pending before the capital committee, total $238,100.

World language program set to begin

The Global Child program will begin providing weekly Spanish lessons at the Hildreth Elementary School next month for students from kindergarten through fourth grade. Later in the year, fifth-graders will have a two-day exploratory program in three different languages (French, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese). Elementary Principal Linda Dwight announced the new program in a letter to parents last week.

Global Child is a Massachusetts company founded in 1992 and based in Canton. It has been providing language classes before and after school for Harvard elementary students since 1993. Parents currently pay a fee for these classes, which are administered through Harvard's Community Education program. This after-school program will continue, in coordination with the new school-day program.

—Marty Green