How to Use Easton Patch for the Rest of the School Year

Five things staff, PTO members, parents and students need to know.

School is now back in session after the holiday break at the Easton Public Schools and elsewhere in the town and Easton Patch will be there to cover all the big news. But we can’t do it without your help. To make sure you get the most out of Patch for the remainder of this school year, we invite you to get active in the news-gathering process. There are five things you can do to make sure your school and its students get all the coverage they deserve from Patch: You can also become a blogger and share your school's news directly with Patch readers on a regular basis. To find out more about using Patch this school year, just email Easton-ma@Patch.com.

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Mass. Outside Top 10 for Graduation Rate, Easton Above State Average

Easton Public Schools have a graduation rate well above the state average. Southeastern Regional is also above the state average.

Massachusetts didn't make the top 10 high school graduation rates in the nation, according to preliminary data released by the U.S. Department of Education on Monday, but Easton schools have a higher graduation rate than the state average. The graduation rates released Monday are for the 2010-2011 school year—the first year for which all states used a common, adjusted four-year cohort graduation rate, according to a U.S. Department of Education press release. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) spokesman JC Considine told Patch in an e-mail that Massachusetts has been computing cohort graduation rates since 2006, which are available on the DESE website. According to the preliminary state-reported data, for…

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Back to School 2011

Richardson and Olmsted Begin Another Collaborative Year

Principals Gary Mazzolla and Donna Tobin begin their second year working together in the same building.

With the school-year starting this week, H.H. Richardson Principal Donna Tobin and F.L. Olmsted Principal Gary Mazzola are looking forward to another year with offices located just a few steps down the hall. "It provides more opportunities to have a colleague close by," Mazzola said. "It can be an isolating job, so it is nice to have another person that you can bounce ideas off or monitor issues with." Most importantly, both Tobin, who begins her second year, and Mazzolla, who begins his eighth year, agree that the two schools need to be on the same page academically. "We spent a lot of time last year with a lot of collaborative efforts between the two schools," Tobin said. "That will continue this year." No effort will be more apparent …

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