Providing accurate and timely information about what matters in Franklin, MA since 2007. * Working in collaboration with Franklin TV and Radio (wfpr.fm) since October 2019 *
Sunday, December 17, 2023
One Franklin’s New Years Resolution - Jan 11, 2024 from 6 to 9 PM
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Tri-County New Building Info Session - Oct 3 at Franklin Public Library
Wondering what the "Tri-County Election" on Oct 24th is all about?
Join Franklin's Tri-County representatives to learn more about the upcoming vote, the school building project, what it will cost and other important details about Tri-County Regional Vocational High School!
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
State Facts for Students: MA summary via Census.gov
"What’s your favorite flavor(s) of ice cream? Did you know there were 427 U.S. ice cream and frozen dessert makers in 2020, 23 more than a decade earlier (2010)?
Students can explore this and other cool data like the total number of kids in the U.S. ages 8 to 14 and the total number of U.S. amusement parks.
What better way to celebrate National Ice Cream Month than to enjoy a frozen treat while using our State Facts for Students data tool to discover oh-so-sweet stats!"
State Facts for Students: MA summary via Census.gov |
You can find this data (and more) online at -> https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/sis/resources/data-tools/state-facts.html
National Ice Cream Month |
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Medicare for You: What You Need to Know
"We invited the Administrator to share helpful information on Medicare coverage. This is part 1 in the two-part series.Your health is important and needs to be protected. If you are 65 or older, or have certain disabilities, or End-Stage Renal Disease, you can get health care coverage through the Medicare program. You’ll get access to health care services you need to achieve and maintain good health.It’s important to review your Medicare coverage options and find an affordable option that meets your health care needs."
Medicare for You: What You Need to Know |
Sunday, March 26, 2023
The News Literacy Project - info graphic on levels of scientific evidence
"#Educators: Teach students to evaluate scientific evidence with this resource created with @DrKatEpi 👇🏾
8️⃣ levels of evidence are ordered from weakest to strongest & reflect a spectrum of quality, so students can visually grasp differences: https://t.co/YQHK8ya4Al " or https://newslit.org/educators/resources/levels-of-scientific-evidence/?utm_id=Science-Infographic
Shared from Twitter -> https://t.co/ioYaGJTFj0
The News Literacy Project - info graphic on levels of scientific evidence |
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Franklin Public Schools seeks public input on proposed options amid redistricting analysis process
- March 7 at Franklin High School Media Center from 6 PM - 8 PM
- March 13 virtually via Zoom from 6 PM - 8 PM
Option 1 - Proposes that current district attendance boundaries remain the same while a Master Facilities Plan is conducted. ASMS/Keller spaces will continue to be used flexibly. Both administrative teams at the complex will continue to work together to utilize the available space to accommodate the needs of all students.Option 2 - Proposes a change to district attendance boundaries in an attempt to balance enrollment while also maintaining geographic contiguity and undertaking a Master Facilities Plan, which may result in further redistricting based on the outcome.Option 3 - While the current district attendance boundaries remain the same as Option 1, there is a consideration for including a "Buffer Zone" for designated areas of the former Davis Thayer attendance boundary, which could allow families to opt-in to Oak Street and/or Parmenter Elementary School for specific zones as a special consideration.
1. The District will not provide transportation, and parents/guardians of students who request to transfer must transport their child to and from school.2. Requests are taken on a first-come, first-served basis based on room availability.3. Families approved for the voluntary buffer zone opt-in may be subject to a reassignment of their district boundary pending the results of a Master Facilities Plan.
About the Franklin Public School District:The Franklin Public School District strives to nurture a safe, supportive, inclusive and collaborative learning environment in each of our 10 schools. We believe in providing an engaging and rigorous curriculum with exemplary instructional practices that will support and challenge students to reach their full potential through personalized learning opportunities. Our goal is to develop the necessary social-emotional, academic, and career skills for each Franklin student, so that they will be a productive citizen in an ever-changing world.
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Reminder: High school juniors you can be part of Distinguished Young Women, Info session scheduled for Jan 29
Distinguished Young Women, Info session scheduled for Jan 29 |
Monday, January 23, 2023
High school juniors you can be part of Distinguished Young Women, Info session scheduled for Jan 29
Sunday, January 1, 2023
GBH Forum Network: "Meme Wars: how the internet changed politics from Occupy to the insurrection"
Just published! 👉 https://t.co/kXqZEphvrK or https://forum-network.org/lectures/meme-wars-how-internet-changed-politics-occupy-insurrection/
A talk with @ShorensteinCtr @BostonJoan and @brianfriedberg moderated by @BostonGlobe @anissagardizy8 on meme wars and their impact on American democracy. https://t.co/w7BAfa3fe3Shared from Twitter -> https://twitter.com/GBHForumNetwork/status/1604964817072279582
Monday, December 26, 2022
The Visual Capitalist: "A Visual Crash Course on Geothermal Energy"
The Visual Capitalist: "A Visual Crash Course on Geothermal Energy" |
Sunday, November 27, 2022
CommonWealth Magazine: "Time to come clean about COVID-19"
RATES OF COVID-19 vaccination in this country are too low. Less than half of those over 65 have received a second booster and ,among children under 5, the rate of vaccination with any dose is in the single digits. Uptake of the new bivalent booster is worryingly slow, with just 31 million Americans (10.1 percent of those eligible) having received it despite the Biden administration having ordered over 170 million doses. In a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, only a third of adults said they had received the new booster or planned to.
Perhaps we should have expected this for COVID. After all, these are novel vaccines that were developed and rolled out under highly politicized conditions. But childhood vaccination rates for other conditions, including influenza, polio, and measles, are dropping as well, suggesting that people who would have vaccinated their children in the past are starting to think differently about vaccines. In addition to being a critical public health concern, this represents a serious issue with trust in public health authorities and their messengers. And it is these “science communicators” who need to take ownership of their messaging failures and fix the problem before it is too late.To be clear, misinformation surrounding vaccines has had a damaging impact on vaccine acceptance. Claims that have absolutely no basis in reality, such as the presence of microchips in the formula, or the ability of the vaccine to make you magnetic, somehow gained traction among a proportion of Americans who believe those lies. Certainly, there also was already a base of true “anti-vaxxers” – often naturopathy-inclined politically left-leaning people in the years before COVID-19 vaccines came on the scene, and primarily far right-wing followers of Donald Trump since COVID vaccines became available.
But it cannot be true that the over 90 percent of parents of children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years who haven’t opted into vaccination are anti-vaxxers, or even that they have fallen prey to nefarious misinformation spreaders. The messaging from public health authorities, government officials and doctors and scientists like us who speak to the media is simply not working. What could we do better?
CommonWealth Magazine: "Time to come clean about COVID-19" |
Sunday, October 30, 2022
The Franklin Voter Guide for 2022 is available
"The Franklin Area Voting Guide is intended to be a non-partisan resource created by private individuals to allow the people of Franklin, Massachusetts, and surrounding communities to cast an educated vote on issues that impact our community.
The Franklin Voter Guide for 2022 is available Information contained in this guide is provided by candidates and taken verbatim from their survey responses, or sourced from candidate websites/social media accounts, public statements, town halls, and past achievements."
Thursday, October 6, 2022
Resist misinformation: Join the RumorGuard!
The News Literacy Project has launched a new resource to help you stay informed and push back against misinformation: RumorGuard.
You can dig deeper into news literacy techniques on RumorGuard and take action for facts. We built RumorGuard to give you the ability to debunk viral falsehoods, but it's also the foundation for our shared future founded on facts. Help us push back against misinformation by signing up and sharing RumorGuard posts with your family and friends. |
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Tuesday, September 20, 2022
What is the sound of human knowledge?
"Sound helps shape our perception and how we learn about the world around us. Some sounds are quite simple to identify, like the sound of a rocket launch or the sound of waves crashing against the shore. But how about the sound of all human knowledge?
The Wikimedia movement is searching for a sound logo that will identify content from all of our projects, like Wikipedia, when visual logos are not an option — for example, when virtual voice assistants answer queries.
Through an open contest, organised by the Wikimedia Foundation, we are inviting the world to create The Sound of All Human Knowledge. This sound will help communicate what the Wikimedia movement stands for — trustworthy, reliable, open, and accessible knowledge for all."
What is the sound of human knowledge? |
Friday, September 16, 2022
The State Election 2022 Red Book is coming to your postal mailbox
"Check your mailbox for the red Information for Voters book, which has information on 2022 ballot questions. Books are being delivered to all households this month.Note: There will be 4 statewide questions on the November ballot.Questions 1-3 are included in the printed Information for Voters book. Question 4 was submitted too late to be included, but you can find it in the online version at http://VoteInMA.com."
The Red Book is coming to your postal mailbox |
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Sign up for the MASSter listing for more MA news
"The MASSter source for news and analysis about politics, policy, media, and influence in Massachusetts. Tips: Editorial@MASSterList.com"
Sign up online for this newsletter -> https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/aPTLucK
You can also go direct to a couple of my key MA sources, the Boston Globe and CommonWealth Magazine.
- Franklin Town Online delivers to each US Postal box once a month
- The Franklin Observer provides their views via a daily email
- The Milford Daily News & MetroWest Daily News sometimes will provide coverage
Sign up for the MASSter List for MA news |
Friday, September 2, 2022
Franklin High School News: Important Information and Dates
Important Information and Dates
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- New Student Registration >> click HERE
- Moving? Complete a Change of Address form >> click HERE
- School Bus Routes for the 2022-2023 School Year-click HERE
- Fall Sports Try-Outs and Practices click HERE
- Register your Franklin Public Schools Chromebook and purchase insurance for it HERE
Saturday, August 27, 2022
Dan Rather: We Should Not Become Inured to the Shock
The Department of Justice has released the affidavit it used to obtain permission to search Mar-a-Lago and seize files from Donald Trump. The document fills in some details but leaves many questions unanswered, largely because it is heavily redacted — as it should be. The sanctity of the investigation demands it. So does the security of the nation. What we knew before has been further confirmed — Trump absconded with hundreds of classified documents. We now know these were incredibly sensitive and included information on clandestine human sources and secrets not to be shared with foreign governments. We may never know the documents' exact contents — that's how sensitive this material is. What is so striking, as many others have observed, is that as president, Trump was notoriously uninterested in details. He doesn't read. He certainly doesn't pore over policy details. He is famous (or infamous, depending on who is assessing) for "not getting into the weeds." So why these documents? Why did he care so much? What, if anything, do they have in common? Can they point to a motive? We can speculate on what that might be, understanding that he has long ago lost any benefit of the doubt. The government said it gleaned the information it included in the affidavit from "a significant number of civilian witnesses." This detail will undoubtedly fuel Trump's paranoia, but it also suggests just how unsafe these national secrets were at Mar-a-Lago. As we learn more, as we look for clues, as we wonder and question, we should be careful not to lose track of the big picture. At the very minimum, this situation represents a major breach of national security. Do we really believe that any other citizen of this country, which is who post-presidency Trump is, would be walking free if found in possession of these documents? Rather than being persecuted, as Trump self-servingly claims, this affidavit makes it clear that the Department of Justice was extraordinarily patient — possibly to a fault. They gave Trump every opportunity to hand these over. And yet he didn't. Why not? At this moment, around the world, women and men are risking their lives for our country. We have a system of secrecy that protects the most sensitive aspects of our national security. It is in place for a reason. Because the lives of Americans and the future health and safety of the nation depend on it. That this saga has become "partisan" is not a reflection on the seriousness of these documents. Rather, it is a reflection of how unserious the Party of Trump is when it comes to our national wellbeing. As shocking as this episode is, we must not become inured to it. Shock like this should not wear off. It should propel us forward to ensure that justice is served and nothing like this ever happens again. Note: If you are not already a subscriber to our Steady newsletter, please consider doing so. And we always appreciate you sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for subscribing to Steady. This post is public, so please feel free to share it. © 2022 Dan Rather |
Friday, August 26, 2022
Senator Rausch: Sep 6 - Primary Voting Info
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