Franklin Matters

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Live reporting - School Committee 2nd Mtg

Attending: Armenio, Kelly, Roy, Rohrbach, Trahan, Mullen, Cafasso

1. Routine Business

Citizen’s Comments - none
Review of Agenda - move guests and presentations up, going into executive session shortly

a. Dan Telhada – All Scholastic Award
b. Coach Carmen Colace – Coach of the Year

Motion to enter executive session with potential to return to open session
Motion approved

Live reporting - School Committee Mtg 1st

Attending: Armenio, Cafasso, Kelly, Mullen, Roy, Rohrbach, Trahan
Also participating: Jeff Nutting, all the school principals, Ogden, Sabolinski, Goodman, and others from the School Administration office

The meeting opened with a recap by Jeff Roy of the events leading to this particular meeting. Briefly, after the Executive Session at the 4/14/09 meeting, Jeff notified the FEA of the School Committee's reluctance to accept the full proposal. They would accept the deferral of the 2.5% cost of living increase. They would waive the requirement on requiring a reason required for personal days for the remainder of the year. They wanted to keep the 32 meetings. They wanted to continue to provide the teacher reimbursements.

A subsequent conversation between Roy and Creedon set up a meeting for 4/16/09 7:30 AM to further review. At that meeting it was discussed setting up the 4/28/09 meetings. FEA separate from School Committee with an agreement that when something was ready for the School Committee designated intermediaries would "knock on the door".

Those two meetings are still in session.

The FEA meeting is closed to all but union members.
The School Committee meeting after conducting some fact finding with the principals on the history of the 5 extra meetings has now gone into Executive Session.

At their request, the principals have remained in the session with them.

The School Committee meeting will return to open session at some time.

Help avoid a train wreck?

There is an interesting confluence of meetings scheduled for Tuesday at 3:30 PM at Horace Mann.

The Teachers have scheduled to hold a union meeting. This is a closed session, open only to union members. The union will be updated on the response by the School Committee to the teachers offer of the million dollar contract concession.
The School Committee have scheduled to hold an open meeting intending to participate in a discussion with the teachers.

Who remembers their chemistry lesson on oil and water? They don't mix do they?

Bottom line: These two groups have not been communicating with each other.

There are quite a few points of disagreement but the major one for me is:

Contrary to what the School Committee has stated and published, the teachers union meeting of 4/13/09 did have a vote of all teachers present on a deferment of the 2.5% cost of living increase for FY 2010 without any conditions. It failed miserably.
The vote that passed (80% for, 20% against) for was for the 2.5% cost of living deferment attached to three conditions. The three conditions have been reported in the Milford Daily News and here.

The union hired a parliamentarian to assist them with handling the protocol (i.e Robert's Rules) for the meeting.

The teachers feel that since the School Committee did send a letter to them asking for the salary concession, they have, in effect, opened the contract for negotiation. The three items tied by the teachers to their salary deferment were supposed to have been addressed in a side-letter after passing the current contract two years ago. For a few reasons, the most current of which is beyond the control of the individual assigned to lead the side-letter effort, resolution on these three issues has gone nowhere. As a result, these three issues were brought to the table with the salary concession and linked together.

So there seems to be a stalemate brewing.

For some reason the School Committee is hung on keeping the three items.
To the extent that they keep the three items, they will lose the million dollar concession.

Who wins?
No one, not the School Committee, not the teachers, not the children of Franklin.

In my unique position, I can not stand by and watch this train wreck occur.

Note: I am deliberately using the terms 2.5% cost of living increase deferment because that is really what it is. There are still salary increases possible for some on both the Town and School side due to "steps and lane" changes per the union contracts. In this case, the talked of "salary freeze" is a misuse of the term.

FPC - Information Session 04/27/09

The live reporting posts for the Informational Forum held to review the Financial Planning Committee report can be found here:

Rain Barrel discount for Franklin through 5/6/09

Consider purchasing a rain barrel and help reduce storm water runoff while gaining water to use to water your plants. The rain barrels are on sale for Franklin residents through May 6th and can be picked up May 13th.

Additional info on rain barrels:

Residential irrigation can account for 40% of domestic water consumption in a given municipality. Rain barrels not only store water, they help decrease demand during the sweltering summer months.

Only ¼ inch of rainfall runoff from the average roof will completely fill the typical barrel. A good formula to remember: 1 inch of rain on a 1000 sq ft roof yields 623 gallons of water. Calculate the yield of your roof by multiplying the square footage of your roof by 623 and divide by 1000.

Collection of water from rooftop runoff can provide an ample supply of this free “soft water” containing no chlorine, lime or calcium. Because it tends to have fewer sediments and dissolved salts than municipal water, rain water is ideal for planter beds for a multitude of applications, including biodynamic and organic vegetable gardens, planter beds for botanicals, indoor tropicals like ferns and orchids, automobile washing and cleaning household windows. Saving water in this manner will reduce your demand of treated tap water and save money by lowering your monthly bill.

Rain water diversion also helps decrease the burden on water treatment

Info found on the NE Rain Barrel web site.

Franklin residents can order their rain barrels here. All others can select their community to order here.

"The committee made several recommendations"

By Joyce Kelly/Daily News staff

GHS

Posted Apr 28, 2009 @ 12:26 AM

FRANKLIN —

Using the parable of the boiled frog to describe the possible trajectory of Franklin services and finances, Doug Hardesty told an audience of about 100 residents the town needs to immediately tackle its recurring fiscal deficit before the damage is irreparable.

When a frog is thrown into a pot of boiling water, it'll immediately jump out, Hardesty said. When it's put in a pot of room temperature water, and the heat is slowly turned up, the change is so slow the frog doesn't notice. The frog dies before it reacts.

"That's very much the kind of thing we're worried about in Franklin," said Hardesty as he began his presentation on the long-term financial committee's plan last night at Horace Mann Middle School.

"Because we're facing this slow structural problem, it creeps up on us. The question is, what and when do we jump," said Hardesty, an auditor and one of two residents-at-large on the committee.

Read the full article in the Milford Daily News here

Book Signing - LeeRoy U Bailey, Jr - 5/2/09

LeeRoy U Bailey, Jr will be at Treesavers Book Outlet on Saturday May 2, to sign his book; A Different Perspective on How to Reach Heaven: You Must Be Born Again.

LeeRoy will be on site at Treesavers from noon to 4:00 PM. For more information you can email LeeRoy at brnagain@gmail.com or visit his website here.