My name is Selena Cousin and I have lived in Franklin for over two decades. Moving to Franklin to raise my family was definitely one of the best decisions I've ever made. I love our town and the wonderful people who live (and teach!) here. That said, lately I feel like Franklin has become A Tale of Two Cities. Just like in the classic work by Charles Dickens, "It was the best of times—it was the worst of times." It really just depends on our perspective and what we as a town value and support.
Tonight I'd like to focus our attention on the stability and continuity of town leadership over the past two decades from two different angles.
First, let's look at things from the municipal side. Since moving here in 2002, Franklin has had only 2 town administrators—Jeff Nutting served here for 18 years, and before his retirement he and the town council had the foresight to hire and train his successor, and Jamie Hellen has led our town ever since. So for town administrators in the past couple decades we have had a total of 2. That's it. 2.
This continuity and minimal turnover in town administration has afforded us the opportunity to benefit from having many experienced departmental directors who have also stayed here in Franklin for long periods of time. Recreation Director Ryan Jette has been in his position for over 25 years, Library Director Felicia Oti has served in Franklin for 20 years, and DPW Director Brutus Cantoreggi has been here for almost 20 years.
Alternatively, let's switch perspectives and take a look at Franklin Public School district's lack of leadership continuity. Since my family moved here in 2002, we have had 6 superintendents leading our Franklin Public Schools—Richard Warren, Dr. David Crisafulli, Wayne Ogden, Dr. Maureen Sabolinski, Dr. Sara Ahern, and Lucas Giguere.
We have also had many, many assistant superintendents, many, many principals, and many, many assistant principals serve under these 6 superintendents. I will leave the exercise of counting those up for someone else, but just to give you an idea let's consider the 3 schools that my 2 boys have attended since kindergarten.
In just 11 years at Kennedy, my boys had 4 principals and 6 assistant principals. That is a mind-boggling amount of turnover in a very short time.
For middle school at Horace Mann, over the past 7 years my boys have had only 1 principal (thank you Beckie Mottie!) but no less than 6 assistant principals.
Perhaps most glaringly, at Franklin High School (FHS), so far my older son has had 3 different high school principals in 4 years and an ever changing assortment of assistant principals.
If we look back over the full 2 decades, there have been another 4 FHS principals for a total of 7 FHS principals and even more assistant principals. 7 principals in 20 years—think about that for a minute—that means most of our FHS principals weren't even at FHS long enough to see a single cohort of freshmen graduate as seniors!!!
Meanwhile, this is only a snapshot of 3 of our 11 schools in Franklin over the past 2 decades. If we extrapolate the amount of leadership instability and turnover district wide, the numbers are indeed alarming.
It comes as no surprise that with a revolving door of educational leadership at the superintendent, assistant superintendent, principal, and assistant principal levels, we are also plagued in Franklin by a revolving door of teachers, which is particularly noticeable at the middle and high school levels.
So how does continuity of staffing (or lack thereof!) affect us all here in Franklin?
Clearly, on the municipal side our town has benefitted greatly from having very little turnover in leadership positions. These leadership positions are extremely well funded, with extraordinarily generous pay and substantial annual raises resulting in long term staff, continuity, minimal turnover, and the ability to plan effectively and even envision new ideas.
Accordingly, we have seen phenomenal growth on the municipal side over the past 2 decades. For example, our vision of becoming a cultural district has been realized and we recently funded and hired our town's first arts and culture director. Our recreation department has built new playgrounds, updated bleachers, and added pickleball courts in town. Our renowned public library underwent a major addition and renovation and hired an amazing children's librarian who creates programs and leads activities I only wish we had when my kids were little.
We built (and later expanded!) our beautiful new 2 story senior center that enjoys a full schedule of activities M-F including a professional chef and transportation. We have built a new state of the art municipal building, and have also already updated it with new technology, carpeting and window treatments.
We have even hired a full time assistant town administrator to help Jamie meet the ever increasing needs in our community. Undeniably, having well paid municipal professional staff with minimal turnover has allowed for some pretty impressive progress over the past 2 decades.
And yet, at the other extreme, our schools struggle with a glaring lack of funding which compromises our ability to retain staff and minimizes opportunities for continuity, innovation, and growth in our Franklin Public Schools. Thankfully, in large part to the generosity of the state, we do have a beautiful new high school. However, a school is just a building unless we can afford to hire and retain the teachers and staff needed to fill it. Unlike our town administrator's portfolio, our school leadership does not have the luxury of visioning new ways of improving and enhancing our schools.
Wouldn't it be great, for example, if we could help make college more affordable for families by offering programs where students can receive college credit and start college with a semester or 2 under their belts? At UMass, for example, starting college as a sophomore would save a student $38,000—at private universities a year of college credits could save upwards of $80,000.
Unfortunately, as Superintendent Giguere has previously mentioned at school committee meetings, programs like the Early College Program and Dual Enrollment Program require stability and resources and infrastructure —luxuries we just don't have right now at FHS. Instead, we are too busy making cuts, always trying to decide which cuts will be the least noticeable and/or detrimental to the community.
In fact, some of you may remember way back in 2008, Superintendent Wayne Ogden left his position with 2 years remaining on his contract (and without another job!) because he "couldn't in good faith continue to lead our district." He said, "Restrictive budgets and massive layoffs in the district preclude me from moving the schools 'from good to great.' In the last two budget cycles, I have been forced to reduce school staff by more than 70 employees, the vast majority of them teachers, and to abandon plans to bring our schools to the next level academically. Our investment in the education of our students is now below average in every single category."
Well, here we all are 17 YEARS LATER and we have continued to make devastating, very noticeable cuts in our schools each and every year since. As a result of inadequate budget allocation, we are plagued by a revolving door of educators, and unfortunately, lose too many promising and dynamic teachers to other higher paying, more stable districts.
We have cut our elementary and middle school foreign language programs despite all of the research that says the younger the better when it comes to learning foreign languages. We have eliminated options like Latin, electives, and AP courses at FHS.
Our music programs have been hit too many times to count, but when we moved here there were 20 music teachers (and even band in our elementary schools!), and now there are only 7 left and less music opportunities at every level. We have cut our theater director and the entire theater department at FHS.
We have cut art teachers, the dedicated full time art director position, and the unique and much loved Franklin Arts Academy. We have closed Davis Thayer Elementary School, and in just a few months, Kennedy and Parmenter will join Davis Thayer for a total of 3 buildings no longer used to house neighborhood-based elementary education here in Franklin. By now, it feels like our schools have been forced to cut just about everything unmandated that can legally be cut.
To be extremely blunt, the citizens of Franklin deserve at least the same kind of STABILITY, CONTINUITY, and WEALTH OF RESOURCES in our public schools that we enjoy in our municipal services.
Franklin, we are now at a critical point and we have some important decisions to make that will affect our town for years to come. Somehow, despite the revolving door of educational leadership in Franklin, we are incredibly fortunate to have an amazing superintendent who started his career here in Franklin over 20 years ago. Lucas Giguere is knowledgeable, experienced, well-liked and respected, caring, visionary, and totally committed to the town of Franklin . He is all in—our superintendent lives in town, pays taxes in town, sends his own kids to Franklin Public Schools, knows the community inside and out, and is fully committed to helping Franklin Public Schools succeed.
Let's do everything we can to keep this superintendent here as long as we can and let's FINALLY put an end to the revolving door of leadership that severely undermines the potential of our Franklin Public Schools. Let's give our amazing superintendent, his hardworking and talented leadership team, and our incredible teachers the budget needed to *FINALLY* bring our schools from good to great.
In closing, our public schools deserve the same opportunities for leadership retention and continuity as our municipal government. How can we expect our school leadership to effect positive change and make meaningful connections with teachers, students, and families if they aren't even here long enough to make a difference?
How can we vision and bring to fruition the newest and most innovative educational programs and activities, if we don't have the money to even fund a level service budget? How can we pay our town administrator one of the highest salaries of any town administrator in the entire state—even higher than mayor of Boston—while we begrudgingly give minimal raises, if any, to our educators. Right now, we are a "good enough" school district, but we have the potential to be great—even one of the very best districts in Massachusetts—if we as a town decide to properly fund our public schools.
Our students and families and educators deserve better. Let's commit to a significant override and fully funding and supporting our educators and our education programs like we do for municipal town employees and services. Because really, who wants to be known as the town that has great municipal services but deteriorating public schools?
It's been said that, "Education is our greatest opportunity to give an irrevocable gift to the next generation." (Ernie Fletcher) Let's finally commit to fully funding our Franklin Public Schools and see just how amazing our town, our *ENTIRE* town, can really be.
Thank you.
Selena Cousin
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