Town Council Meeting agenda for 3/5/08

The agenda for the Town Council Meeting 3/5/08 has been posted to the town web site here. The PDF File with the details, previous minutes, etc. can be found here.

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Worthy of note in this agenda is the acceptance of Executive Session minutes from 1/23/08 (maybe a mistake as the copy is not actually included, and the copy that is included references the notes as of the meeting 1/9/08), October 27, 2007 and September 5, 2007.

What makes these note worthy?

The contract for the Town Administrator was approved with a 9-0 vote on 9/5/07. During the meeting 10/27/07, the contract still had not been signed so it could not be announced.

Were there other Executive Meeting minutes where this was discussed before the announcement finally became public?

Ah, maybe that is what is in the 1/23/08 minutes that weren't included?

Recap of School Budget situation

The School Committee meeting on 2/26/08 was long and eventful. The audio sections for the meeting are available here.

If you can't spend three hours listening to the meeting, you can skip to the appropriate section to get the original voices for the following items:

• Franklin is receiving $2.4 M from the Dept. of Education, effectively a 9% increase over FY08 for the schools
• The Town, however, is planning for the schools to only receive a 1.5% increase in funding over FY08 which results in the expected layoffs of 45 teachers, increased busing fees, and increased class sizes.
• Rep Vallee does a wonderful job obtaining money for Franklin but it won't last forever.
• The High School renovation options cost $90-100 million which is cheaper than building a new school which would cost $120-130 million.
• The FHS accreditation is on "warning" status now due to the inaction in addressing the high school facility shortcomings. This was expected.
• The Forensic Report has triggered a number of actions by the School Dept amongst them cost center based budgets (each school is now a cost center), improved accounting of funds in the budget, and interviews for a new finance director were scheduled for 2/27/08.
• The KCD Policy passed by a vote of 6-1 which now requires all donations to be applied to non-operating expenses and rejects funds previously targeted for specific operational efforts (i.e. the Brick classroom).
• The communications campaign about the real health issues amongst the Franklin school population as reported in the MetroWest Survey is about to begin with a gathering of representatives from the various groups and organizations in the town. The report will be reviewed in that forum. That group will then make plans for communicating and taking action to address the issues.

from the School Committee blog - FY09 Budget

FY09 budget presentation

By Jeffrey Roy on Budget

On February 26, 2008, Superintendent Wayne Ogden presented the proposed FY09 budget to the School Committee. During the presentation, Ogden explained that the school department needs a 6.7 percent budget increase to provide level service, but is slated to receive only 1.5 percent from the town. This includes the loss of about $400,000 in projected [...]

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Completing the Superintendent's Report (audio)

The remaining items of the Superintendent's report for this meeting. Wayne Ogden has already covered much of them with the prior presentations, here he gets into (1) an update on the MetroWest Health Study and next steps and (2) an update on the actions from the Forensic Report.

The meeting goes into Executive Session with a roll call vote.

Time: 7 minutes, 12 seconds



MP3 File

FHS Accreditation Warning Received (audio)

During the Superintendent's Report, Wayne Ogden talks about the warning letter received by the High School from the accreditation body due to the lack of progress being made on the issues with the facility that were brought up previously.

If progress is not made, the next step would be "probation" and the final step could be removal of accreditation from the high school.

The School Committee is looking to form a building committee in the next several weeks.

Time: 12 minutes, 25 seconds



MP3 File

KCD Policy - Gifts (audio)

The School Committee gets to the final discussion and vote on the policy. Matt Kelly attempts to amend the form and when that fails he remains as the lone negative vote when the policy passes 6-1.

Deb Pellegri speaks on behalf of the Brick School Association.

Time: 23 minutes, 23 seconds



MP3 File

Some of the Actions items (audio)

Some were covered with the budget transfers, these are the first action items before they get to the one big discussion on the KCD Policy.

Time: 1 minute, 11 seconds



MP3 File