MANY TIMES THIS YEAR the bell rang at 10:30 on a Friday and the EHS student body sprinted out the door with the excitement of an early weekend. But how many students actually knew why?

“I don’t know [why we got out early]. Teacher development?” senior Yrv Camille said.

25 out of 30 students had no idea of the reason behind the early dismissals. However what was going on was important to the school’s future.

EHS has spent the last two years working on an ongoing process called Accreditation. The Accreditation process happens every ten years and is a result of the school’s membership in the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). NEASC is affiliated with many schools around the country as well as the world, and provides a guide to rate schools based on different standards.

Schools spend time creating their own reports, called the self-study, reporting on the strengths and weaknesses of their school. From October 30 to November 2, 15 educators from all over New England will visit EHS to follow up on those reports and write their own review of the school.

A few years ago, the school created a Steering Committee to be in charge of the process. Senior classmaster Mrs. Yebba is the chair of the Steering Committee, assisted by Mr. Shannon, Mr. Rinaldi, Mr. Lahey, Ms. Ellison and Mr. Sutera. The committee assigned each staff member in the building into one of seven committees to evaluate each standard.

Each committee met over a number of Thursday afternoons and Friday early dismissal days and was led by a chair and at least two vice chairs, who then assigned each member of their committee to a smaller subcommittee. Each of the seven committees produced detailed self
evaluations of each area and gave a PowerPoint presentation summarizing their findings for the entire faculty in April.

English teacher Mrs. Selmani, chair of the Instruction committee, worked with her team to find good matches for each teacher to work with. “The chair and vice chairs tried to match up teachers with more experience with new teachers,” she said.  Selmani and her committee tried to also match up teachers from different departments so that they could have diverse input.

“There is no specific leader in each team,” she said. “All the teachers collaborated so there
wasn’t one in charge of that subcommittee.”

Losing accreditation

So what happens if a school performs badly? Is it possible to lose accreditation? It turns out that most fears about a school losing its accreditation are unfounded. NEASC gives schools a lot of chances before taking away their accreditation.

“It’s very difficult to lose your accreditation,” Yebba said. “It takes a long time. Schools write sometimes 100 to 200 page reports on their self standards.”

However, if a school were ever to lose its accreditation, it could have disastrous effects. Losing accredited status would be embarrassing for a school and its city/town. Students who graduate from unaccredited schools might have great difficulty getting into college and poorly performing schools might face the possibility of a state takeover, although that would be related more to MCAS performance than a NEASC visit.

Yebba and the steering committee members believe students should know about the upcoming accreditation visit. “I feel that most importantly students should be actively involved in the process,” she said.

How will students be involved?

Some students may be shadowed, which means someone from the visiting committee will follow that student throughout their schedule during the day. Others may be interviewed or be involved in a presentation put on for the visiting team. Even if students don’t directly interact with the visitors, they will still see them walking around the school and observing all aspects of life at EHS.

Mr. Baldi feels it is important for students to know about this process and what goes on in the school.

“It’s your school,” he said. “Make it a better place to be in.”

Baldi believes that EHS will get re-accredited. “I will be shocked if we don’t,” he said.

Many students have a vague notion of the accreditation process and what it has to do with.

“It’s the thing with the teachers, right?” Nick Frati ’12 said.

Baldi thinks that because the visit is still over five months away, it isn’t in the forefront of students’ minds, but that should change.

“The closer to the event, the more that will be heard of it,” he said.