The text of the statement presented during the Citizens Comment portion of the School Committee meeting 3/25/08. The text was scanned from a printed copy provided by Amie Charlebois.
Hi, my name is Amie Charlebois and this is my husband David. I wanted to come before you tonight to ask that you make an assessment of my current situation with the FX O'Regan Early Childhood Development Center. I have approached the principal, Karen Seyfried as well as Wayne Ogden with this matter. Before I go any further, it has always been my understanding that the school department has what is in the best interest of each individual child.
I have 3 small children 5 years, 22 months and 4 months. My 5 year old son is at the end of his second year in attendance of preschool at ECDC. He attended 2 afternoons his first year and has been attending 5 afternoons this entire school year. My husband and I have been truly happy with his experience at ECDC and believe that it has laid a wonderful foundation for his education. I have faith that when my 2 other children attend ECDC, that they too will have the same wonderful experience.
Unfortunately, my family has recently undergone a severe financial hardship. My husband was badly injured in an accident at work and has recently undergone surgery due to that accident. The insurance company that deals with workers compensation has denied our claim and we are awaiting a hearing date. We have had a dramatic loss in income.
I brought my situation to Karen's attention and Karen told me there were scholarships available that I could apply for to assist with my sons tuition. I was very pleased to hear that we qualified for the highest level scholarship available with tuition that would cover 2 days and a reimbursement of my June deposit of $305. With the reimbursement, I would be able to apply that to the remaining 3 days for April and May and keep my son in the 5 day program he has been in since August. At a time in our lives when the reimbursement would be very helpful to put toward other household expenses, our priority is put that money toward our sons education. Karen informed me that I could not do that according to policy. It never once entered my mind that if I qualified for the scholarship, my son would only be able to attend school 2 days a week when he is enrolled in 5.
I signed an enrollment agreement last year accepting the 5 day program, a signed agreement, which is a binding contract between 2 parties stating my son is enrolled in the 5 day program. I am upholding my portion of the agreement and the ECDC is not. The policy states that scholarships are given out for 2 days and does not say anywhere that if you qualify for the scholarship your child can not attend the other 3 days as well. I told Karen that if I had known that was how the scholarship program operated, I never would have applied because again my son is in the 5 day program. Karen also informed me that the policy needs to be adjusted for next year and that she is in the process of "adding language" for next years handbook. Karen has stated to me the intent of the policy but I do not believe intent can be enforced.
But at this time, with 38 days left in the school year I am being told that in order to accept a scholarship that we qualified for, we can only use it by taking school days away from my son. My son who loves school and asks numerous times every morning "when are we leaving for school". At a time in my sons life when things are turbulent enough, I am being told that there is help available but that it will negatively affect my child if I accept that help. I feel that it is an absolute necessity to keep my sons school structure in tact, now on March 25, with 38 school days left in the year. My sons education is a priority especially in these early years. He would be devastated and confused if I had to take school days away from him at this point and I know that trying to explain to him that there are unclear policies that must be followed, will not help ease his hurt. Doing this to my son at this time would hurt him. My son is not taking a spot away from another child nor does it have any effect on anyone except for him. If this were October or November I would consider having to make certain adjustments with it being so early in the year but it isn't, it is almost April. I'm asking to be allowed to keep my son at the 5 day level, accepting the financial help from the scholarship that I qualified for to put toward the 2 days and I am asking ECDC to accept my money for the other 3 days of the week to keep my sons education consistent. There have been 3 different occasions, prior to our hardship that I have talked with my sons teacher about her feelings toward him attending the 5 day program, and she has said numerous times, that she believes my son is thriving in the 5 day program, he benefits from it and he needs consistency. I know his teacher of the past 2 years, has my sons best interest at heart. I am deeply saddened that amidst everything going on at home, I am required to fight in order to keep educational stability for a 5 year old boy, in a school that he truly loves. The ECDC Mission reads "The Francis X O'Regan Early Childhood Development Center's mission is to focus on the whole child and their family..." and every time I bring the attention and focus back to my son, I am told to refer to a handbook. All I am asking is for you to do what you already do when you make your decision, and that is to look at what is in the best interest of my child.
MASSACHUSETTS MAKEOVER | GLOBE EDITORIAL
At home in downtown Franklin
Fifth in a series
FOR MOST of its existence, Franklin looked like a New England town straight out of Currier & Ives. And in some ways, it still does. While the town center languished as the region's mills declined, it still boasts a compact business district surrounded by historic homes and the leafy campus of Dean College.
During the tech boom of the 1990s, Franklin, 25 miles from Boston, turned into something else: the quintessential Interstate 495 exurb. Flex-space buildings and shopping centers clustered along the highway, and new subdivisions sprawled across what had been open space.
But that rapid development has slowed, and in recent years Franklin began confronting the problems that past growth had left behind. Among other things, that meant knitting Franklin back together by revitalizing the town center. "We had a traditional dying downtown," says Town Administrator Jeffrey Nutting. Yet with an MBTA commuter rail station in the heart of town, Franklin was primed to capitalize on a movement toward transit-oriented growth.
So businesses and civic groups formed the Franklin Downtown Partnership to push for beautification and economic development. In 2001, Franklin rezoned roughly 40 acres in the town center to allow for mixed-use development; the old zoning forbade new housing in commercial zones. Because it's hard to get around without a car, Franklin joined the Greater Attleborough Taunton Regional Transit Authority and will inaugurate a bus line in March. Franklin is now using a $5 million federal grant to improve traffic flow and make other streetscape improvements downtown.
The goal, as the partnership puts it, is to make Franklin "the 'up and coming' downtown of the western suburbs." These efforts are starting to bear fruit. Since last summer, developer John Marini of Canton has completed two mixed-use buildings that are part of the $35 million Franklin Center Commons project. A third is underway, and a fourth is also planned.
Even so, this model of redevelopment remains an experiment, in Franklin and elsewhere. It gained currency during a period of economic prosperity. And to the extent that its power depends on the popularity of cute shops and upscale condos, its prospects are less certain now, as the economy falters.
Unsustainable development
Franklin grew faster in the '90s than all but a smattering of Massachusetts towns - from 22,000 residents in 1990 to more than 32,000 today. Eventually, spec houses with stiff pricetags were replacing green fields in the town, once an affordable alternative to communities closer to Boston. But this centrifugal style of development puts too many strains on public services and the environment.
As part of a project known as MetroFuture, an effort to promote sustainable development in Eastern Massachusetts, the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission studied how towns might evolve in the future. Had Franklin continued to sprawl as it did in the '90s, it would be on track to lose 2,600 acres of open space to development by 2030. In contrast, by steering development to existing population centers, areas near public transit routes, and previously developed land, the town can accommodate almost as much population growth - but would lose fewer than 1,000 acres of undeveloped land.
Ironically, the consequences of past sprawl may be helping downtown revival efforts. "The reason downtown fell into problems," says Bryan Taberner, Franklin's new planning director, "is that there was a lot of land available" elsewhere in the town. Now, he says, undeveloped land has become scarcer and more expensive, so downtown redevelopment looks more attractive than it used to. And while the construction of retail shops alone can be cost-prohibitive because of land prices, mixed-use developers can generate more revenue on the same parcel by adding one or more floors of offices and apartments above stores.
The Franklin Center Commons project suggests that the market has caught on to the advantages of such development. While the town used a grant to demolish a piano factory that once stood on part of the project site, Marini has otherwise relied on private money.
Cautionary notes
But as ambitious as that project is, it hasn't yet ushered in a mass movement back to downtown. While Marini now specializes in mixed-use development in town centers, Franklin officials say their efforts to revive their downtown haven't yet lured the kind of developers who normally build on undeveloped land on the outskirts of town.
While Franklin has been adding fewer than 100 single-family homes a year throughout this decade, about 350 such homes were built in each of the two peak years of the '90s construction boom. By comparison, the Franklin Center Commons project plan calls for only 77 condos. And even that number isn't firm; Marini says he may seek to replace condo units in one proposed building with office space, because of a weak housing market.
Moreover, while Marini thinks his new retail space will rent for a premium - about $20 to $24 per square foot, he says, compared with $12 or so in older buildings - he has yet to find tenants for much of it. Amid all of Franklin's exertions and aspirations, the laws of retail physics still apply: The town isn't just competing with other downtowns for upscale shoppers; it's also competing with nearby Wrentham Village - an outlet mall so popular that it shows up in Japanese travel books.
Of course, there's more to downtown redevelopment than just luring retail stores. "That's the easiest thing," says Marc Draisen, chairman of the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission. He stresses the benefits of luring corporate employers to downtowns instead of to anonymous office parks. Then again, Nutting says, the amount of vacant office space elsewhere in the region may make Franklin's downtown a tough sell.
Even so, he figures Franklin is keeping pace with other downtowns with similar aspirations. "It's not like we've done one thing and said, 'That's it,' " Nutting says. "This is in perpetuity." Downtown Franklin frayed over the course of decades. Efforts to revive it won't succeed overnight.
