It is with a mixture of alarm, regret and questioning that many parents of Vernon Street School students are eyeing the construction of an addition to the Jackson Street School. The opening of the addition will mean the closing of Vernon Street School, one of the city’s oldest, and one which has a strong and vocal following. Ground has not yet been broken on the Jackson Street addition.
A boa constrictor that wandered away from home last week was retrieved from the Connecticut River yesterday by a man who spotted it while he was boating. Frank Fournier saw the boa on the riverbank on the Hadley side of the river, not far from its home. Fournier knew the snake because he is a friend of its owner, and he had handled it before “when it was a lot smaller,” he said today. He grabbed it and put it in a cooler until he could return it to its owner.
A social studies teacher from Great Barrington has been chosen to replace Frank Tudryn as the vice principal of Northampton High School. Diana L. Bonneville, 32, accepted the job offer from Principal Diane Stone Wednesday. The other finalist for the post was longtime Northampton High School Spanish teacher Arlene Kotowski.
Fifty new computers and nearly $14,000 in science supplies have been cut from the renovation budget for Northampton High School, the victims of a dwindling reserve account. The cuts totaling $145,000 will leave two new computer labs with old machines that cannot run certain graphics and multi-media programs, said Robert Hanna, the schools’ technology coordinator, a problem which he described as “serious.”
Municipal investment in public art that would make Amherst a more prominent destination for artists and people visiting cultural attractions appears to have wide-spread support in the community, with town officials beginning to examine the best ways to ensure such financing is possible.
Children’s book author Molly B. Burnham, of New Street in Florence, has announced her candidacy for an at-large seat on the Northampton School Committee. Burnham, 48, is author of “Teddy Mars Almost a World Recorder Breaker,” which was published in March.