"start being more aware of their role (in the community)"

By Joyce Kelly/Daily News staff

GateHouse News Service

Posted Dec 22, 2008 @ 10:17 PM

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FRANKLIN —

Rather than Girl Scouts or the other clubs they would normally join, seven students at Annie Sullivan Middle School signed up to spend their time after school helping people and saving the environment.

In their first few months with the school's new service club, Communiteen, the young women have already collected more than 250 coats for kids, a roomful of presents and donations for needy families to open up on Christmas and started researching a new community project.

``I grew up always knowing it's important to feel responsible for other people and to help out other people,'' said Mariel Calnan, an eighth-grade special education teacher at Annie Sullivan who started and runs the group.

Read the full article in the Milford Daily News here

Safe Party Guide from MADD

If you are going to be hosting a party during this holiday season, please check out the Safe Party Guide from MADD here.

It may help to prevent something that would spoil the party or the season!

Financial Planning Committee Minutes - 11/20/08

FINANCIAL PLANNING COMMITTEE
November 20,2008

The meeting was called to order at 7:05 pm

Members present: Finance Committee members James Roche, and Rebecca Cameron, Councilors Deborah Bartlett and Steve Whalen. School Committee Members, Roberta Trahan and Matt Kelley. Residents, Doug Hardesty and Gwynne Wilschek.

Also present were Town Administrator Jeff Nutting, School Superintendent Wayne Ogden and School Finance Director Miriam Goodman.

Motion to accept the minutes of October 16, 2008 by Councilor Bartlett.
Second by Roberta Trahan
Vote: Yes all

The Superintendent of Schools gave an in depth review of the FY 10 budget requests.
The Schools will need a 6.45% increase or $3.2 million to maintain the level of service.
They would also need an additional $600,000 for the next five-years to restore the reductions in force over the last several years.

The School budget is 83% personnel costs, while SPED and health insurance make up a large portion of the remaining budget.

The Committee asks questions in attempts to understand the barriers and any potential ideas.

The meeting adjourned at 9:05 pm

Respectfully,

Jeff Nutting

"There's really been a culture change"

Over the past decade, Revere has seen significant statistical drops in the percentage of middle school and high school students who use and abuse alcohol, coinciding with what local officials, parents, and students themselves say has been a shift in attitudes about drinking.

That's no accident. Since 1997, Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare have spent $4.4 million to fund a program called Revere CARES, designed to reduce teen drinking and substance abuse in a community where adults themselves abused alcohol and drugs at considerably higher rates than the state as a whole.

....

The data show particular improvement among middle schoolers' behavior in the five years since Revere CARES launched a campaign called the "Power of Know," which included getting more than 1,000 parents of adolescents to sign cards pledging to talk with their children about alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, listen to their kids, and get to know their children's friends and their parents.

Bold for my emphasis

Read the full article in the Boston Globe here

Teacher Resources - Lab Out Loud

For science teachers and those interested in science, Lab Out Loud is a wonderful resource.

Why?
It highlights other good resources within the world of science.

For example: The Periodic Table of Videos hosted by the University of Nottingham



Enjoy!

stone tree in snow

stone tree in snow, originally uploaded by shersteve.

It is good to walk your route in reverse.

As many times as I have passed this tree, I was always coming the other way and never noticed the fine stone work where a limb once was.

Go the other way for a change.

Enjoy!

Prop 2 1/2 Limits Growth

This posting was originally made on June 26, 2008. Since that time, there has been an extended conversation going on in the comments. In order to bring those comments more to the light, I am updating this to bring it forward from the June archives.

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HIDDEN CONSEQUENCES: LESSONS FROM MASSACHUSETTS FOR STATES CONSIDERING A PROPERTY TAX CAP, is a report issued by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May. In part, it summarizes:

“Across Massachusetts, a number of communities have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees; close fire stations; shut libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers or sharply reduce their hours; and scale back public school programs. One town even turned off its street lights to save money,” said Iris Lav, the Center’s deputy director and co-author of the report.

According to the report, Proposition 2 ½, which limits the growth in communities’ property tax revenue for all services including education to 2.5 percent a year, has:

• Arbitrarily constrained local revenues without considering the actual cost of providing services. “The fundamental problem with property tax caps is that they don’t make public services any less expensive,” said Lav. ”Costs like employee health insurance and special education are largely beyond localities’ control, and they’re rising much faster than the cap allows. Nor does the cap hold down the cost of heating buildings and operating school buses when oil prices are skyrocketing.” When these things occur, as they have in Massachusetts, other services have to be cut to fit total expenditures under the cap.

Read the full posting on the Franklin School Committee blog

Read the full report as referenced here.