Saturday, July 25, 2009

Breaking the downward cycle

"In Franklin, you basically have a one-in-four chance of not making it through high school. That's a pretty scary statistic," said Light.
Read the remainder of this important point from FHS Principal Peter Light's presentation to the School Committee on Tuesday, July 21 in the Milford Daily News here

If you ever wondered why disciplinary action was taking school time away from the students who were in need of it, there is hope. Peter Light and the FHS faculty are looking closing at breaking the cycle where a student gets into trouble, is given detention, suspended, misses school, can't make up as they fall behind and eventually leaves school. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Now the cycle is about to get changed.

You can wait until several days after the School Committee meeting to read about what happened or subscribe to Franklin Matters and obtain the information as it is published during the meeting.

A subscription to Franklin Matters is free. There are no advertisements here.

This is a public service effort to share information about school and town issues to create informed voters. A voter that is well prepared with factual information will cast a better ballot when the time comes in Franklin.

Subscription buttons are located front and center on Franklin Matters. You can subscribe via email, RSS, or capture the podcast via iTunes.

Summer Art Institute

The Summer Art Institute conducted by Lifelong Learning held a brief open house to showcase the student works. Quite impressive!

The pictures do not do the works justice especially with the transition to the video format but hopefully this will provide some insight into the work produced this summer.




My thanks to all involved are listed in the credits of the movie.
If I missed some one, please let me know so I can make the appropriate correction.

Computer Recycling Event in Warwick, RI

If you have an old computer, monitor or keyboard that you'd like to recycle, you can drive down to Warwick, RI and watch the recyclers in action.

FreeGeekProvidence is holding this event at New England Institute of Technology today. The text of their email provides additional information:

Today we're having the Providence Bruins Mascot "Samboni" come in just for our recycling event, and HOT 106 will be giving away prizes and doing live cut in's all day. We'll have tee-shirts for sale and lots of recycling to do.

The Free for all Recycling Extravaganza is from 9-1 today at New England Tech. See www.freegeekpvd.org for more info.

That's 95 (either direction) to exit 13, the airport connector, to the end to Post Road. Take a Right on Post Road (or head South) and it's half mile on the right.

You can see on our News Room, we have lots of media coverage and that's not including the TV spots either.

So even if you only have an old keyboard, or a half ton-truck of computer waste, or you just want to meet all the geeks responsible for all the great things going on at Free Geek, join us at New England Tech.

Friday, July 24, 2009

NE Real Estate Journal features Franklin

As mentioned during the Town Council meeting of 7/15/09, the Planning and Community Development Dept worked to get a nice spread on Franklin in an issue of the New England Real Estate Journal. You can find the information about Franklin online at NEREJ or here in the PDF extract:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io


Great work Brian, Beth and team!

Farmers Market - Noon to 6:00 PM


The Farmers Market will be open today from noon to 6:00 PM on the Town Common.

This is your weekly opportunity to help the local economy and to get quality food items.

"dropped in rank, from 22nd lowest, to 28th lowest"


In 2008, Franklin's rank jumped to seventh highest, with the average Franklin teacher's salary at $66,361, compared with the total average of $63,520.

The group generally agreed that Franklin teacher salaries only appeared to outpace those of their peers because the district has laid off or lost a great percentage of its younger, lower-paid teachers.

Read the full article on the work of the Financial Planning Committee in the Milford Daily News here


Thursday, July 23, 2009

Trail meeting in Blackstone

Someday, wouldn't it be nice be able to bike from Franklin to Providence, or Worcester or to Western Mass without having to deal with the traffic on a road?

"It would be great if every community had a trails committee and would give it some support," said Lisa Mosczynski, president of the Metacomet Land Trust, a nonprofit conservation group dedicated to protecting open space and natural resources in south central Massachusetts.

The trust and the Grand Trunk Trail Blazers trail group are inviting the public to the gathering at Blackstone Public Library, at 86 Main St., at 7 p.m., to collaborate on establishing a non-motorized, 80-mile, east-to-west trail linking Franklin and Blackstone with the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts.

Help make this dream a reality!

Read the full article in the Milford Daily News here

Cafe Dolce's coffee source spotlighted


The idea behind stimulating one small business is that the company will then buy more things wholesale and help other companies and their employees, said Ted Welte, president and chief executive officer of the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce, based in Framingham.

“It’s all about the multiplier,’’ he said. “If people are spending money on a new roaster, say, that starts flowing through the economy of whoever produced that, and then more people can be serviced out of the coffee shop, and that means more money coming in.’’
The multiplier in this case is a federal stimulus loan recently provided to Red Barn Coffee Rosters of Upton. Red Barn is the coffee supplier for Cafe Dolce in Franklin.

I have tried several of the blends during my visits to Cafe Dolce and found them to be good and tasteful.

Have you visited Cafe Dolce recently? Try their Red Barn coffee and keep the multiplier effect going!

Read the full article from the Boston Globe West edition on the Red Barn stimulus loan here

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Downtown Partnership and Chamber of Commerce on LinkedIn

I have mentioned previously that I have joined the Franklin Downtown Partnership and the United Regional Chamber of Commerce in an effort to expand my knowledge about businesses here in Franklin.

Both of these organizations have groups on LinkedIn.

You can request to join the Franklin Downtown Partnership on LinkedIn here

You can request to join the United Regional Chamber of Commerce on LinkedIn here

If the links don't work for you, you can
  1. Sign in to LinkedIn with your account
  2. Go to Groups
  3. Search for each by name
  4. Request to join the group

The group owner will approve your membership. You can adjust your group profile settings (how many emails, etc.) at any time after your membership is approved.

Once a member of a group, connecting directly to others within the group becomes easier.

My LinkedIn profile can be found here

School Committee Mtg 07/21/09

The collection of live reporting from the School Committee meeting held on July 21, 2009 are found here:

Franklin School Position Reductions

The total number of position reductions for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 from the Franklin School Dept through layoffs is 12 per the School Committee meeting on July 21, 2009. The total position reductions since FY 2003 is now 139.



If teachers retired and weren't replaced, would that count as a lost position also?

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Live reporting - closing items

Cafasso - can we have an update on enrollment in August?
Sabolinski - the principals will be back, we'll look to do that for the meeting the 11th.


School Committee entering in Executive Session not to return.

Live reporting - Superintendents report

Sabolinski - It has been rather busy since the students have left. It feels like school hasn't really ended. There will be a whole new face to Franklin High School when it opens this September.

The summer programs are running, enrollment is off the chart.

The FHS Experience starts on Monday. Enrollment last year was 25 students, thus far it is about 75.

Pay-to-ride our enrollments are down slightly. We sent letters out three weeks late due to the potential of fee increases. Applications are still being accepted.

Fees - athletic, activity and pay-to-ride have not increased this year.

Cafasso - What would happen to extracurricular activities was hard to determine?
Sabolinski - We will have some, there is no late bus. We can do an update later on the offerings. There may be changes in offerings, we will work to offer as much as the students are willing to get engaged in.

Live reporting - Action Items

4. Action Items
a. I recommend acceptance of a check for $102.88 from the Franklin Music Boosters for a nurse for a field trip for the Middle Schools. Motion to accept, approved 6-0
b. I recommend acceptance of a check for $1,000.00 from the Franklin Country Club for the FHS Hall of Fame Award Scholarship. Motion to accept, approved 6-0
c. I recommend acceptance of a flowering magnolia tree, valued at $300.00 raised from donations, planted in the bus loop at the Oak Street Elementary School. Motion to accept, approved 6-0
d. I recommend acceptance of a check for $3,000.00 from the Horace Mann PCC for In-House Enrichment at HMMS. Motion to accept, approved 6-0
e. I recommend acceptance of a check for $90.33 from the Remington PCC for a nurse for their 8th grade celebration. Motion to accept, approved 6-0
f. I recommend acceptance of a check for $2,800.00 from the Parmenter PCC for supplies. Motion to accept, approved 6-0

Live reporting - FHS facility review submitted

The Town submitted the documents today to the MSBA.

The next step is to get the feasibility study signed off on by the MSBA. Then hiring and obtaining the project manager. The MSBA will tell and determine what we can do each step along the way. It will likely be more different than previous building projects.

Cafasso - The project manager is important, he/she takes over the communications with the MSBA.