HOWLAND – SAD 31 officials are seeking residents of the school district to participate in a daylong workshop to help identify educational values for students.

SAD 31 Superintendent Keith Cook said residents interested in participating must register by calling the central office at 732-3112 or by sending an e-mail to: kstone@pvh.sad31.k12.me.us.

The workshop will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26. Residents, teachers, school board members and students will participate in the workshop, which will be led by officials from the Center for Consensual Democracy.

“We expect this initiative will have a positive impact on our schools and on each of our eight communities,” said the superintendent. “This could include anything that positively influences our schools such as overcoming drug and alcohol abuse, elevating achievement of our students, developing recreational opportunities, eliminating harassment and bullying, developing local businesses and jobs, strengthening families, raising students’ aspirations and developing solid educational financing.”

Cook said participants will develop a priority list of educational values for students.

“We need a plan that will provide useful data for improving classroom instruction, for improving programs and curriculum and for improving decision-making, budgets and policy-making,” he said.

Cook said in order to develop an educational assessment plan, the district needed to know just what was most important. One way to learn was to ask the communities and educators, he said.

He hopes teachers, administrators, students, parents, town officials, businesspeople and interested residents will participate. “It is very important that someone is present to represent every part of each community,” he said.

Cook said the list of important educational values developed by the group would be used by teams of educators and others to begin the long-term project of developing ways to assess or measure the extent students will be able to fulfill each of the values.