Wilmington Receives Regional DESE Grant To Further SEEM Collaborative Work

WILMINGTON, MA — Wilmington Public Schools will be receiving a portion of a nearly $90,000 grant from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to improve student learning through the SEEM Collaborative.

The SEEM Collaborative is a 10-member organization that formed in 1986 to provide quality education to school districts and strengthen existing school programs and services that would otherwise not be accessible or affordable to local districts on their own.

Melrose, North Reading, Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield, Wilmington and Woburn applied for the DESE grant as a consortium, and will receive $88,900 to be allocated over a two-year period beginning in 2018.

The grant money will support each district’s work on improving inclusive practices. This includes providing identified teachers, administrators and members of child study teams with targeted professional development, coaching in Universal Design for Learning — a framework designed to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how we learn — and inclusive practices that support the achievement of all students.

The DESE agreed to fund just 9 of the 33 proposals it received. Other grant recipients include Andover, Berkshire Hills, Dighton-Rehoboth, Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical, Marblehead, Maynard, North Adams for Adams-Cheshire/North Adams/North Berkshire School Union, and Waltham. A total of $529,100 was awarded.

(NOTE: The above modified press release, originally written for Melrose Public Schools, is from John Guilfoil Public Relations.)