Last May, the organization re-accredited the school, but not without issuing warnings in three of their seven standards of accreditation: curriculum, instruction, and leadership and organization.

At Wednesday’s school committee meeting, DHS Principal John McCarthy reviewed a draft of the special progress report the school plans on sending to NEASC later this month to address 13 of the 24 recommendations the organization asked the school to work on.  The other 11 recommendations will be addressed in a separate report due this October.

Following a brief review of the accreditation process for new school committee members, McCarthy said that he and a team of other administrators and teachers have spent the past several months working on the NEASC recommendations.

“We value the accreditation process, even if we don’t always agree with it,” he said.  “It focuses on school improvement, so it can’t be all that bad.”

He said that the school did receive its accreditation in May 2003, meaning it does not need to be re-certified for another decade.  While the NEASC report did point out 13 short-term recommendations, it also featured 23 commendations, said McCarthy, which shows it was more positive than some may believe.

Regarding the authoring of a special progress report, McCarthy said that DHS was not alone as many schools across New England are asked to repeat this same step.  He pointed to statistics in 2001 where 67 percent of the schools NEASC accredited had to do such reports, citing changing standards and the schools’ efforts to keep up.

For the DHS report, McCarthy said that they had five options regarding the recommendations, ranging from completing the recommendation to rejecting it.  McCarthy pointed out that none of the recommendations were rejected, while three were completed, nine were in progress and one was planned for the future.

The 22-page report outlined to committee members shows that the three completed by administrators were training and sustaining the Understanding by Design model of curriculum development, providing professional development for staff and documentation of the meaningful involvement of the faculty in recent decisions.

Regarding the latter category, McCarthy said that teachers in the school are very involved in the form of various committees and often participate in the hiring of new employees.

Among the nine recommendations classified as “in progress” are incorporating the review and analysis of student work in curriculum development, coordinating technology support services and reviewing scheduling in the school.    McCarthy said that “nothing impacts high school more than its daily schedule” and that a scheduling committee is looking at other options than the current block scheduling used by the school.