525-4405

ajsmall66@gmail.com

Public supper Italian cuisine

The Monroe Community Church on West Main Street/Route 139, will be holding its next public supper on Feb. 23 from 5:30 p.m. until whenever! Attendance is by reservation only. Contact Joyce Hillman at 525-9908 or email her at goats.and.notes@gmail.com. Cost is $12 for adults and $6 for age 10 and under.

Individual antipasto plates will start your dining experience,followed by pancotto (an Italian bread soup). The entree is shrimp with fennel over penne pasta with roasted broccoli on the side and homemade focaccia. Bruce and Kathy Chamberlain of Stone Fox Creamery here in Monroe will be providing homemade ice cream for dessert, topped off with pizzelles.

RSU 3 happenings

There are many exciting, as well as controversial changes going on in our school district . Many of these things have to do with the new proficiency-based learning standards that the district has agreed to pursue, on top of what is called Big Picture Learning School-Within-a-School that  is being talked about and could be endorsed by the School Board. I am trying to make contact with our current School Board representative so that I might keep us more informed about things as they develop. Also, standardized testing, public charter schools and student-led learning are all issues that have been on the agenda this year at various meetings I know that we parents have been told that the superintendent planned on meeting with each town in an open forum and I asked to be contacted when this was going to occur here in Monroe. As I  have not received an email or phone call concerning this,  assume that has not happened. I will try to update the readers of this town column with any details when I hear them.

As parents of a child here in RSU 3, my husband and I recently got a letter in the mail concerning a survey that was going to be given to all students in our district. There were different questions posed to our children based on their current grade. This was asked to be administered by DHHS and the state Department of Education. Among the reasons cited for the survey were to better determine how  issues such as drug use, sex and domestic violence, just to name a few, are impacting and being dealt with in our area. Also state funding and its use might be better determined. All parents were given the option to allow their student to opt out of the anonymous survey. And students were told that if they chose to, they could skip any question that made them uncomfortable. We were also told that if we chose we could preview the questions ourselves before allowing our child to take the survey or not.

I can't imagine what kind of chit-chat the teachers must have had to quash after the hour-long survey, because, on top of everything, the children were told not to discuss their anonymous answers. Really, has the state of Maine and all of the "adults" in positions responsible for this forgotten what it was and still is like to be a child. My quite-mature-for-her-age 12-year-old even returned home to say how, in her words, "lots of kids got spoken to by teachers" for talking about the answers they gave.

On a personal note

I would like to thank all of the drivers who worked hard to maintain our town roads during the recent blizzard. From what I heard and also saw on social media sites and from talking to other folks in town, it was very dangerous to be on the road and the effort that was made by most to stay off the roads and out of the way during the height of the storm was greatly appreciated.

At one point there were three plow trucks off the road in neighboring towns, but, thankfully, no one was seriously injured.