The Needham SEPAC is a parents’ organization that provides information to parents and advocates collectively for children in the Needham special education program. This includes special needs children educated within Needham Public Schools and those with out-of-district placements.

There is no membership fee to join Needham SEPAC and we hold monthly public meetings designed to inform parents on issues of general interest and topics specific to Needham. We also hold special events which may incur a charge.

We meet regularly with the Needham school administration to ensure parental input in curriculum, policy, budget, and other issues. Our growing membership has made us more effective advocates for our special needs children.

If you are not already on our email alerts and newsletter list and wish to be so, please register using this form. Our email list is confidential, and email recipients do not see other email addresses.

We also have a Yahoo newsgroup for postings of interest to Needham parent members of the Needham SEPAC. Please join to ask questions and share resources and community meeting information.

We look forward to you attending Needham SEPAC meetings and special events!

Needham SEPAC's Social Skills Survey findings are presented in this document with written recommendations here.

Needham Public Schools' Social Emotional Learning Survey results are summarized in this document provided by the school system.

New Growth Model to Measure Student Progress As you may have heard in last week's news headlines, Massachusetts has developed a statistically valid method of measuring growth in student, group, school, and district performance over time, using the MCAS System. This is called the "Growth Model." Clearly, measuring student progress is of great interest to all stakeholders. As PAC leaders, you will want to talk about the growth model with school district administrators.

The state's new website on the Growth Model can be found here: http://www.doe. mass.edu/ mcas/growth/ [If the link does not work, please paste it into your browser.] The website includes an Interpretive! Guide, a PowerPoint, a tutorial, a report on the Spring 2009 Pilot of the Growth Model, etc.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Growth Model can be found here.

The official October 27th press release on the Growth Model (with some very interesting information! ) can be seen here.

ESE and WGBH/WGBY Link Online Resources for Educators Teachers Will Have Access to Free Digital Resources Linked to State Standards

MALDEN - The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has partnered with the WGBH Educational Fou! ndation and WGBY in Springfield to launch a new online resource for teachers to provide free access to more than 2,200 classroom-ready media tools.

Massachusetts Teachers' Domain (MTD) is a localized edition of Teachers' Domain, a nationally used database of digital resources for educators, and contains lesson plans and media clips that have been developed to align with the state's curriculum frameworks. MTD is linked directly to MassONE, the state's existing online portal for educators, which offers web-based tools and resources to support and connect teachers across the Commonwealth.

The link for the complete news release can be found here.

Earlier news can be found here.

Complete information is available on our calendar page.