Pia Durkin

NEW BEDFORD - New Bedford Public School Superintendent Dr. Pia Durkin says she intends on completing her three-year contract with the city. There had been questions whether Dr. Durkin was seeking employment elsewhere, but she debunked those by saying she fully intends on continuing to serve the district...

New Bedford is unlikely to move forward with Innovation Zone plans for the city's middle schools. At Monday's School Committee meeting, officials announced the district would pursue a different middle school redesign as they try to improve grades...

NEW BEDFORD — The New Bedford Educators Association collected more than $3,900 in donations for their annual winter coat drive. With the donations, the school nursing staffs, who coordinate the drive, were able to purchase more than $5,000 worth of clothing and toiletries for students in need with discounts from local businesses...

Massachusetts Secretary of Education Jim Peyser visited New Bedford Monday to announce five Southcoast companies have signed on to participate in MA STEM@Workto engage high school students in the career fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

New Bedford Superintendent Dr. Pia Durkin presented the School Committee with her goals for the 2016-2017 school year Monday night.

State test results for New Bedford Schools were mixed, but Mayor Jon Mitchell is still looking for improvement. Speaking on his weekly radio program, the Mayor said faculty and administrators are working hard to attain higher academic acheivement in both the middle schools and high school...

Lots of buzz within social media over an incident at New Bedford's Hayden McFadden School. A child finds what some are claiming to be a syringe in the playground and jabs another student several times, with the needle. The school Superintendent tells a different story...

The mother of a student at Hayden-McFadden School in New Bedford has hired a lawyer after she says her daughter was stabbed with a hypodermic needle on school grounds. The claim stems from an incident on August 22, when Michelle Farland's six-year-old daughter came home from school and told her mother another child had poked her in the hand with a needle allegedly found on the playground earlier t

    A very nasty disagreement has developed between School Committeeman Chris Cotter and Superintendent Dr. Pia Durkin.  The public dispute has spilled onto the pages of Facebook where nothing at all will be resolved. Cotter, a New Bedford Police Detective says Durkin called his integrity into question by suggesting he may have used his police job to obtain confidential information about a student

It's not a new story, an all A student leaves grade school for middle school and somehow hits a wall.  How do you fix the problem and make middle school more engaging for students and keep them interested in their education going forward? Tha...