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A Brief Note On The Valley High School

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Medomak Valley High School, located in Waldoboro, ME, is the only high school in Maine School Administrative District #40 and serves students from Friendship, Waldoboro, Warren, Washington, and Union in midcoast Maine. For decades, the school district had two middle schools - A.D. Gray Middle School, which served students from Friendship and Waldoboro, and D.R. Gaul Middle School, which served students from Warren, Washington, and Union. In the fall of 2008, the year I started at Medomak Valley High School, the district opened Medomak Middle School to serve all seventh and eighth grade students in the district and closed A.D. Gray Middle School and D.R. Gaul Middle School. The new middle school was built at the Medomak Valley High …show more content…

In addition, the past several years have seen recent changes to administration at both schools. Three years ago the long-time middle school principal retired and a new principal was hired from outside the district. This principal was surprised at the lack of collaboration between the schools and would like there to be more. Last spring, the long-time principal of the high school passed away after a battle with cancer that brought the entire community together. The high school’s assistant principal, who was acting principal during the principal’s medical leave, was hired as the principal. He, too, seems ready to build better collaboration between the schools. Now seems to be a great time to begin the collaboration that is needed between the two schools. In 2008, when Medomak Middle School opened, both the middle and high school were very traditional in the delivery of instruction. Shortly after the middle school opened, however, the school moved to a standards-based approach based on the work of the Maine Cohort for Customized Learning. The middle school was the first school in the district to join this program, but this program has since been adopted by the five elementary schools, as well. The schools use an internet website called Empower (formerly called Educate) to track students as they move through Measurement Topics and Content-Area Strands. Since students will take varying

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