Attention Franklin Seniors!
Join in on a virtual coffee hour with State & Local officials next Thursday, December 17th at 8:30am.
Register in advance for this meeting: https://t.co/vf97BpBYPX?amp=1
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
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| Franklin Senior Center: Virtual Coffee Hour - Dec 17 |
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As with most meetings in this pandemic period, I took my notes via Twitter during the meeting reporting in real-time via the virtual session.
The Twitter hashtag can be found online #edc1209
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23edc1209&src=typeahead_click
Listening session #3 agenda
https://www.franklinma.gov/economic-development-subcommittee/agenda/edc-business-listening-session-3-0
Listening session schedule
https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif591/f/uploads/business_listening_flyer_-_final_2_1_1.pdf
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| EDC Business Listening Session #3 - recap - Dec 9, 2020 |
Attached you will find the promo for the next 50+ Job-seeker workshop we are hosting. Please feel free to forward and share the flyer with anyone who may want to attend.
There is a registration deadline for this interview practice event. We will organize the break-out rooms in advance and need a head count.
DEADLINE for to register with your Zoom Invite is Monday 12/14 at 12 Noon
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.When: Dec 15, 2020 10:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)Register in advance for this meeting:
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Sincerely,
Melody Beach and Ed Lawrence
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| 50+ Networkers: Practice Interview session - registration deadline Monday |
"The pandemic is pummeling New York City’s commercial real estate industry, one of its main economic engines, threatening the future of the nation’s largest business districts as well as the city’s finances.The damage caused by the emptying of office towers and the permanent closure of many stores is far more significant than many experts had predicted early in the crisis.The powerful real estate industry is so concerned that the shifts in workplace culture caused by the outbreak will become long-lasting that it is promoting a striking proposal: to turn more than one million square feet of Manhattan office space into housing."
"THE MASSACHUSETTS Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled on Thursday that Gov. Charlie Baker’s various COVID-19 orders were authorized by the Massachusetts Civil Defense Act of 1950, and did not violate the plaintiffs’ due process rights or right to assemble under either the state or federal constitutions. The court’s opinion is superficial and poorly reasoned at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst, and is hardly the end of the matter.
The outcome of the opinion could readily be predicted from its first words, which identified the justice who authored it. Stunningly, that justice during the argument of the case had asked the plaintiffs’ counsel whether he didn’t agree that the governor was doing a good job with his COVID-19 measures. Any first-year law student, and indeed most sentient citizens, would know that the job of a justice ruling on a legal or constitutional challenge to a government measure is not to agree or disagree with any policy underlying the measure, or the results achieved by it, but rather to rule on whether it is indeed legally or constitutionally valid."
SJC got Baker emergency orders case right
THERE ARE AT least two important takeaways from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Desrosiers v. Governor, in which the court upheld Gov. Charlie Baker’s authority to issue emergency orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
First, the court’s conclusion was undoubtedly correct. The plaintiffs argued that the governor had “usurped” the role of the Legislature and violated the state constitution’s commitment to separation of powers, as well as the plaintiffs’ rights to due process and free assembly. At bottom, the plaintiffs maintained that the governor lacked the authority to issue emergency orders under the Civil Defense Act. That law, enacted in 1950, gave the governor the power to issue emergency orders in the event of, among other things, “fire, flood, earthquake or other natural causes.”
"Today the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled for Governor Charlie Baker in a lawsuit underwritten by Charles Koch and sponsored by Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance/Fiscal Alliance Foundation in which MFA sought to undo the governor’s emergency public health powers—just as Covid-19 is raging across the land. It wasn’t close.This was really a case about conflicting ideologies. On one side is the view that government should be empowered to help people to do needed things the people cannot do for themselves (the view of Abraham Lincoln, by the way) versus Koch’s ideology, which is that government should do nothing except to protect private property."
"The Supreme Court repudiation of President Trump’s desperate bid for a second term not only shredded his effort to overturn the will of voters: It also was a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders in Congress and the states who were willing to damage American democracy by embracing a partisan power grab over a free and fair election.The court’s decision on Friday night, an inflection point after weeks of legal flailing by Mr. Trump and ahead of the Electoral College vote for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday, leaves the president’s party in an extraordinary position. Through their explicit endorsements or complicity of silence, much of the G.O.P. leadership now shares responsibility for the quixotic attempt to ignore the nation’s founding principles and engineer a different verdict from the one voters cast in November."
"HOUSE REPUBLICANS have faced what amounts to a choice between standing for or against democracy: whether to sign on to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s delusional lawsuit to overturn the presidential election. A large majority of them failed the test. More House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), on Friday signed an amicus brief supporting Mr. Paxton, just hours before the Supreme Court unceremoniously rejected the suit. This is a disheartening signal about what these members of Congress might do on Jan. 6, when at least some Republicans probably will object to the counting of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral votes.
Mr. McCarthy and the other extremists and toadies who have signed their names to President Trump’s antidemocratic plot may think their complicity is costless, because the Supreme Court was bound to reject the Paxton lawsuit, as it did on Friday, and there are enough Democrats on Capitol Hill to foil any GOP mischief during the electoral vote counting. They are wrong. Their recklessness raises the once-unthinkable possibility that a Congress controlled by one party might one day flip a presidential election to its candidate in defiance of the voters’ will, citing claims of mass fraud just as bogus as the ones Republicans have hyped up this year."
December 11, 2020
Dear Franklin Families and Faculty/Staff,
We hope you are doing well.
We are monitoring student and staff attendance very carefully at this time. We are experiencing a rise in COVID cases, increased quarantine requirements of close contacts, combined with other routine matters necessitating staff absences, and limited substitute coverage within our schools. We are striving creatively to provide classroom coverage at all of our school buildings in order to keep schools open for students. We also fear that all our creativity in the world and an “all hands on deck” approach may someday not be enough to feel we can appropriately and safely supervise students in school.
We may need to temporarily place one or more schools into remote learning (one day or a few days) if we are unable to supervise in-person learning safely. We do not always have a lot of advanced notice. We will aim, wherever possible, to notify the school community if a school is going to be remote for a day the evening before the following school day. Notification will go out through our Regroup emergency notification system by email, text, and cell phone and will be communicated through social media channels.
If someone you know is interested in serving as a substitute teacher in Franklin Public Schools, please contact our Human Resources office at 508-553-4840.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Sincerely,
Franklin Public Schools
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| Franklin Public Schools: Re-opening update Dec 11, 2020 |
