HANOVER — If MCAS improvement placed all students at the 10-yard line on a football field, South Shore Tech students would have advanced to the three-yard line this year.

Principal Mark Aubrey outlined the improvement in last year’s scores for the School Committee at its Wednesday, Oct. 17 meeting.

Aubrey reiterated that the state is looking more at how any students achieve proficient and advanced ranking, rather than how many pass the test.

“We’re focusing on learning,” he said. “We’re trying to take a hodge-podge of different curriculums [from sending schools in and out of the district] and put everybody on the same page and move them forward.”

In the English Language Arts (ELA) test, there were 43 students who scored as advanced in 2017 out of 143 students tested, this year 63 students achieved those scores. In math — Aubrey said, using percentages because the data was reported differently — the school went from 79-percent proficient/advanced to 84 percent over the same period.

“Student growth percentile (SGP) measures how far we’ve moved them down the football field,” he said. “This school in ELA was 12^th in the state … on moving SGP. That is a phenomenal effort by your staff, every single day, coming to school.”

Still, one student did earn the perfect score of 280 on the mathematics MCAS test this year.

“The math department [based on SGP] was number three in the state,” Aubrey said. “That is teaching and that is learning and that is what this building is about.”

In science, 109 students scored proficient/advanced last year, this year there were 125 scoring at that level.

“We’re moving in the direction the state wants us to move in,” he said. “It’s not just passing. We are moving kids further up the ladder to where they need to be and where the state expects them to be. … This is done by the entire staff.”

Related instructors use math and ELA skills, through reading and bookwork in the latter case, to reinforce classroom instruction.

Hickey thanked School Committee members who were able to attend the Saturday, Oct. 13 open house, during which 265 students were registered for 175 to 180 available places in next year’s freshmen class — 161 applications were completed and 125 interviews were also completed. Of the 265, 198 were eighth-graders and 44 were seventh-graders taking an early look at the school.

“When we only have so much room and we have to turn around and say to parents ‘I’m sorry, but we don’t have room for your children,’ We should be able to get them all in the school that are looking to be here,” said Whitman School Committee member Daniel Salvucci.

Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey said the data received from MCAS scores and the number of applicants the school receives should help SSVT’s position when the Massachusetts School Building Authority makes its decisions on statements of interest in December.

School Committee member Robert L. Molla Jr., of Norwell agreed with Salvucci’s comments about the number of students that are placed on waiting lists.

“The parents, especially, were positive [at open house] about this school, that’s why the students are here,” Molla said. He noted tat parents from Rockland have been disturbed that SSVT has not been allowed to go to Rockland to conduct interviews with student applicants during the day.

School Committee member Robert L. Mahoney of Rockland said he has already spoken to his town’s school officials.

“The bottom line is public education has become a competitive market and we are in that competitive market a lot stronger than we used to be in the past,” Mahoney said. “What the towns are not realizing is we have to be held to the same standards as they have to be held by the state.”

He said the competition public schools are now experiencing from private, charter and parochial schools are costing them a lot of students and the state funding that goes along with them.

“The frustrating part of this is it’s not about kids, it’s about money,” Mahoney said. “It’s about the money they’re losing, and it’s about the money we’re losing because we’re not big enough to take in more.”

Vocational schools are, however, public education, Mahoney stressed.

“We are the second public school,” he said. “We are succeeding in the public market out there, that’s the problem.”

In other business, the school’s new vocational coordinators, Keith Boyle of Hanson and Robert Foley, reported on their new initiatives at the school.

“These gentlemen are responsible for overseeing and being the direct supervisors for half of our vocational-technical programs,” Hickey said. “Their job is to get to know the teachers and the students, the advisors in these programs and they have both done a phenomenal job from Day One.”

Boyle, formerly a horticulture teacher at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Bourne, is also a cranberry grower in Hanson. Boyle is a graduate of Norfolk County Agricultural High School. He is developing SSVT’s horticulture program as well as serving as a vocational coordinator where he is working to expand the cooperative work program.

Right now 33 seniors are working at approved coop sites and have earned a collective $22,000 in the first month of the school year, Boyle reported. He has also started a school chapter of the Future Farmers of America (FFA) program, a career and technical student organization, based on middle and high school classes that promote and support agricultural education from horticulture and animal husbandry to forestry and agri-business.

Horticulture students have already been working to improve the outward appearance of the school, Boyle said, including planter boxes at the restaurant/salon entrance and are working to install a well at the front of the building to provide irrigation.

Foley, a former lead carpentry teacher at Blue Hills Regional Vocational Technical High School in Canton, is a Kingston resident. He was president of the SkillsUSA Board of Directors, which he had to forego the position as he is no longer a teacher. He is still a board member and will soon become director of the state SkillsUSA competition.

“I’m excited to help invigorate a very rigorous program that’s already in place here,” Foley said.

A licensed builder with a heavy construction background, he is assisting with construction of the new greenhouse for the horticulture program, and is planning a pre-apprentice vocational school training program sponsored by Mass. Laborers International Union, on Monday, Nov. 5.

That program, part of the UMass Transportation Committee and Workforce Development Program funded by a federal transportation grant through MassDOT. Instructors will work with 25 students from various shops for week, after which students will be certified in first aid, CPR and AED with all hours involved qualifying as pre-apprentice hours transferrable to carpenters, laborers, electricians, sheet metal workers, pipefitters and operators unions. A free CDL license will also be offered through the New England Tractor-Trailer Training School.

“It’s a great opportunity for our kids,” Foley said.

“This is a very exciting time to be in voke-ed,” said Assistant Principal Sandra Baldner. “We’re really in a good spot right now and I think you’re going to see lots of growth in our school.”

An additional Chapter 74 grant is being sought to offer a license in web design and programming, which could help students throughout the school.

HANSON — Bridges over sometimes-troubled political waters — and the late Charles W. Mann’s role in spanning political divides throughout his career in public service — was the theme of the Oct. 12 dedication of the Hon. Charles W. Mann Bridge.

“Today, we come together to commemorate a man who built bridges between communities, parties, people … that when we leave, in the days to come, we would be able to help build bridges, as well,” Pembroke Assembly of God Pastor Joe Quaresimo prayed in his invocation.

The Charles W. Mann Bridge, spanning the Drinkwater River — which flows under Winter Street — connects the towns of Hanson and Hanover. Mann’s public service, too, spanned the two neighboring towns. A very short distance downstream the Drinkwater joins with Indian Head Brook to form the Indian Head River and further downstream it is joined by Herring Brook in Pembroke and there turns into the North River.

Most of Friday’s emotional ceremony was moved from the bridge to Hanson Town Hall, where a collation had already been planned in the Selectmen’s Meeting Room. But once the morning rain abated, the actual unveiling of signs took place at both ends of the bridge.

“It’s very evident that Charlie did not have many ‘fair weather friends,’” quipped host and Hanson state Rep. Josh Cutler, D-Duxbury, about the large turnout as torrents of rain fell outside. “I think it’s very appropriate that we’re here at Hanson Town Hall in the Selectmen’s Room. … We know that Charlie was a consummate public servant who served his district and Commonwealth for five decades.”

Cutler added that the only location that would be as appropriate was Sandy’s Coffee Corner, where Mann often held forth over coffee with members of the community.

“He loved to talk to people, connect with people and help people,” Cutler said, noting that Sandy’s is where he first met Mann while campaigning for Mann’s old Sixth Plymouth District Seat. “Even though we were from different generations, different towns, different political parties, I’ve always admired him, and respected him and appreciated the civil discourse he brought to his endeavors.”

Friends and political colleagues and family members spoke at the ceremony about Mann’s dedication to reaching across the political aisle in the interest of serving his state and constituents back home.

Fifth Plymouth District state Rep. Dave DeCoste, R-Norwell; state Sen. Mike Brady, D-Brockton, Hanson Selectmen Chairman Kenny Mitchell and retired sheriffs Peter Flynn and Charles Decas shared memories of their work and friendships with Mann before his daughter, Karen Barry spoke for the family.

Brady noted that Mann’s service in the State House in 1966, “when I was only 4 years old,” noting that Mann was an Army veteran who epitomized bi-partisanship.

“Unlike what we see in Washington today, we were very fortunate to have people like Charlie Mann, because he was able to work across the aisle,” Brady said.

Cutler and DeCoste — who co-sponsored the bill to name the bridge after Mann — also alluded to the bipartisan effort to honor Mann, whose legacy was one of bridging the political divide.

“I was a strap-hanger in this whole effort,” DeCoste demurred. “Josh is the guy who did it. … There were so many people who came out of the woodwork [to support the bill]. They saw it on the agenda that the [Hanover] Selectmen were going to approve it.”

DeCoste said Mann’s legacy has lived on as one of the people who went to Boston to get something done and not for political perks.

“Your dad was able to put together coalitions of people on a broad political spectrum and make things happen,” he told Mann’s daughters Barry, Theresa Cocio, Debbie Stauble and Jennifer DiCristofaro.

Mitchell also continued the bridge metaphor in his remarks, while noting Mann also served on the School Committee, the North River Commission and as a Town Moderator.

“I think it is very fitting that we are dedicating this bridge in his memory,” Mitchell said. “Charlie was a uniter — someone who tried to bring people together and bridge divides, just as this bridge does now.”

He thanked the Mann family for sharing him with Hanson all these years.

Flynn and Decas, who were close friends of Mann’s shared personal stories of the Charlie Mann they knew — a guy who loved a card game and a good cigar with a close friend who was fighting a losing battle with cancer, Flynn’s brother David.

“I was on the periphery, but they were really friends,” Flynn said In a choked voice. “David was dying … I’m sure they talked about the past, I’m sure they talked about the present and I’m sure they talked about Dave’s future.

“I think that was one of the toughest bridges that Charlie had to build — the bridge, for my brother, between here and there,” he said, pointing skyward. “Charlie probably didn’t know how much he meant to our family for what he had done.”

Decas said passing over the bridge will be sure to bring back memories of Mann to all who knew him.

“When special people touch our lives, then suddenly we see how beautiful and wonderful our world could really be,” he said.

Barry said Flynn and Decas were a tough act to follow, and thanked all those who attended. She also thanked Mitchell and the selectmen in both towns who chose to dedicate the bridge to her father.

“More than anything, it’s the wanting to do this that’s most meaningful,” she said. “I believe that our father considered his public service as a privilege, not a job, he loved these communities, never left them … and he loved the people in them.”

She said the bridge was a fitting legacy to a man who believed in bridging divides.

“He made it clear that he represented everyone,” she said.

Among the people thanked by Barry and Cutler were the Hanson and Hanover town administrators and boards of selectmen, Hanson Selectmen’s Assistant Meredith Marini, the Hanson Historical Commission, Hanson Police, Fire and Highway departments, Plymouth county DA Timothy Cruz, the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department, Country Ski & Sport, Legislative Aide Cole Angley and the staffs of Brady and DeCoste.

WHITMAN — It was a literary homecoming.

Author Edwin Hill spoke about the process of writing his debut novel “Little Comfort” at the Whitman Public Library on Thursday, Sept. 27 — to a crowd that included old friends and family members of the writer whose grandmother Phyllis Hill was the librarian in Whitman from the 1940s to the late ’60s.

Many in the room had not yet read the mystery-thriller featuring Hester Thursby, a petite Harvard librarian who takes care of her 3-year-old niece, her non-husband Morgan Maguire and a Bassett hound named Waffles while working on missing persons cases in her spare time.

The book has been out for just over a month with Hill still a bit nervous in only his fifth book talk, and the first without a moderator, in support of the novel.

His talk focused on how the novel developed, focusing on three main characters — Hester, Sam Blaine and Gabe DiPuriso.

“I actually worked on the novel so long [eight years], that I actually forgot a lot of this and it’s been fun over the last month to just discover it,” Hill said, noting that the Clark Rockefeller case was his entry point. Christian Gerhartsreiter — AKA Clark Rockefeller — was a professional imposter who kidnapped his daughter and was later convicted of murder.

“I saw that story and I thought, ‘I always wanted to be a writer, I’m going to write something,’” he said. The resulting two-and-a-half-page theme sat on his computer for years. He knew his villain would be named Sam and that he had “done something bad, and left town.”

Hill would open the file occasionally, read it and think to himself, “That is terrific.” Then he would close it again.

In between jobs he started to write a novel on it, but ended up keeping Sam, but needed a foil. Thus Hester was created.

Hester’s living situation with her non-husband in a three-family home where they kept separate apartments, and her fondness for dark films featuring strong women, informed her character, Hill explained.

He read from his book to illustrate how he introduced each of his three main characters.

Hester, for example, drinks her coffee with cream and seven sugars — a passage that has drawn knowing laughter in each of his talks so far.

Sam is based on that friend everyone seems to have who can get away with anything, but he’s also a serial killer who always knows when to get out of town.

“He really knows how to get into these people’s lives,” Hill said, explaining that Sam’s crossing paths with a librarian like Hester, for whom finding information is her job, illustrates how information has changed life in the Internet era. “If you wanted to disappear right now, you’d really have to work at it. It’s really hard.”

That also serves to shift the theme from the search for someone to what happens after Hester finds him.

Gabe, meanwhile, is Sam’s human collateral damage.

“For me, he sort of turned into the heart of the novel,” Hill said. “He’s the character who changes the most — from someone who seems very lost, who seems very disconnected from the world — and he changes in the novel in a way that, I think, he and Hester certainly have a strange bond at the end.”

He uses narrative discourse for all but the most essential dialogue from Gabe to keep the reader at a distance from the character, especially at the beginning of the story.

Audience members asked if the characters — or story — came first and are they based on real people, how he picked Boston/Somerville as the setting and how Hester ended up being so short.

The title has nothing to do with Whitman, save that it used to be called Little Comfort and he always liked that phrase.

Hill put a bit of himself in Hester’s love of horror movies and her sloppy habits and used his understanding of loneliness in creating Gabe, but tries not to base whole characters on real people.

He said the scene he wrote all those years ago, while not in the book at all, was his gateway to finding Hester.

A writer who likes contrast, Hill was looking for traits that made it hard to not notice, an occupational drawback for someone who follows people for a living. He also wanted her to be someone who has to fight a little bit.

“It was story first, then character, then story, then character, and with a mystery novel, you always want to make sure that there’s tension and that there’s forward momentum in that story,” he said.

Hill lived in Somerville for several years and works in Boston.

“The easiest reason is write what you know,” he said. “Hester basically lives in the [imaginary] house next door to the one I lived in. … Somerville has a nice mix of population.”

Beacon Hill gave him a chance to “play with class” and in Boston one can travel from an urban to suburban or rural area easily.

Hester returns in Hill’s next book, “The Missing Ones,” due out in September 2019.