School Committee Highlights the Positive

By Adam Swift

The School Committee accentuated the positive during its meetings last week.

During the committee’s regular and committee of the whole meetings, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Dianne Kelly and committee members highlighted a number of major student achievements at the high school and throughout the district over the past several weeks.

Topping that list was the NUTRONS Robotics Team, based out of Revere, which placed second in the world robotics championship in Houston recently.

“We’re just really excited to come in second place in the world, to beat 600 other teams from, I believe, 65 countries,” said Kelly. “It is an incredible honor. I think about them not having the best facilities to work out of and what they could do if they did have a nice, new state-of-the-art high school, they could go even further.”

Kelly said the district is blessed to have incredible students taking part in the robotics program with supportive families and terrific teachers. She also noted that the coaches have made the robotics program into a service project.

“One of the things that the robotics team is required to do is work with our middle school students, and they do it every Saturday, helping younger students understand the importance of robotics and the opportunities available through that program,” said Kelly.

Kelly also noted that Revere High School held its first musical theater performance in nearly three decades with the recent presentation of “In the Heights.”

“We’re just incredibly excited, despite some other comments, we’ve had the first musical in 30 years, which was incredible, and then we had the robotics team,” said Kelly.

Kelly also updated the School Committee on the long list of colleges graduates from the Class of 2023 will be attending next fall, including Boston College, Brown, Emerson, Fordham, MassArt, Mass College of Pharmacy, MIT, NYU, Northeastern, Princeton, Rutgers, Smith College, Trinity, Tufts,Tulane, UPenn, Wellesley, and Worcester Polytech, as well as a number of other local and state universities and colleges.

“It’s really exciting what is happening for our kids at Revere High School, and that’s a tribute to the incredible teachers, the incredible staff, the incredible families, and the students themselves for all of their hard work,” said Kelly. “We are really proud of everybody.”

School Committee member Stacey Bronsdon-Rizzo said she spoke to some of the students in the high school musical, and they stated it presented them with an opportunity they never thought they would get.

“When you have the opportunities for the students, the world is theirs,” she said.

School Committee member John Kingston noted that he recently visited the Beachmonth School for its Inventors Club presentation, and said several of the fourth graders will be taking part in the Eureka Fest at MIT in June.

Acting Mayor Patrick Keefe, in his first meeting chairing the School Committee, thanked Kingston and Kelly for highlighting positive achievements in the school system.

“There’s always going to be work to do, and there’s always going to be opportunities, but to paint the Revere schools with a broad brush is very dangerous and we need to elevate the highlights,” Keefe said.

Keefe added that the list of colleges that Revere High graduates will be attending in the fall can be stacked up against any public or private school in the area.