The Relay for Life in Franklin, MA will be held on Friday/Saturday June 11th and 12th.
More can be found on the Relay for Life page here
http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?pg=entry&fr_id=23347
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Symphony Hall, here they come!
The 56-piece orchestra (some won't play because of April vacation) won a gold medal at the Massachusetts Instrumental & Choral Conductors Association concert band festival last weekend - also winning the opportunity to play in Boston's famous music hall.
"I was really surprised by it - not that we're bad or anything, but it's our senior year, and it was a big shock to win the gold and get to go to Symphony Hall," she said.All seven musical groups competing in the MICA competition last weekend won medals for Franklin. The High School Orchestra won the gold medal. Read the full article in the Milford Daily News here
http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/x53547516/Franklin-High-orchestra-to-play-at-Symphony-Hall
Franklin, MA
P2 of 5: "Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work"
2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition was just released this week. It lists five trends and develops a story around them. You can view the full report here
The second trend:
As the Franklin community gets into the discussion
1) around the Town budget and the School budget (which is about 50% of the Town budget)
2) on what priorities should be set (classroom instruction vs after school activities, etc.)
let's also consider how our current level service school budget meets the needs of the students. Yes, we are a high performing district. What do we need to do to remain one? (Besides obtaining appropriate funding!)
Franklin, MA
The second trend:
• Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed. Information technologies impact how people work, play, learn, socialize, and collaborate. Increasingly, technology skills are also critical to success in almost every arena, and those who are more facile with technology will advance while those without access or skills will not. The digital divide, once seen as a factor of wealth, is now seen as a factor of education: those who have the opportunity to learn technology skills are in a better position to obtain and make use of technology than those who do not. Evolving occupations, multiple careers, and an increasingly mobile workforce contribute to this trend.
As the Franklin community gets into the discussion
1) around the Town budget and the School budget (which is about 50% of the Town budget)
2) on what priorities should be set (classroom instruction vs after school activities, etc.)
let's also consider how our current level service school budget meets the needs of the students. Yes, we are a high performing district. What do we need to do to remain one? (Besides obtaining appropriate funding!)
Franklin, MA
Mansfield 'saves' sports for next year
... the Board of Selectmen voted last night to transfer about $890,000 from town coffers to the school budget for fiscal 2011, which begins on July 1.
In return, the committee will remove a property tax override vote from next month’s Town Meeting agenda. And, Miller said, the committee will reject motions from the public to transfer more funds from the town budget to schools.
The district made headlines this week when the School Committee voted to cut high school sports and clubs to help plug a $3.6 million deficit, prompting an outcry from parents and students in a district where 800 of the 1,500 high school students play at least one sport.Read the full article in the Boston Globe here
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/04/17/mansfield_will_transfer_funds_to_save_school_sports/
Friday's article in the Boston Globe can be found here
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/15/mansfield_votes_to_eliminate_high_school_sports/
Franklin, MA
Friday, April 16, 2010
Bill Glynn responds
In response to a post from Martinator, I have put my thoughts in context with his original posting below. Please keep in mind that these are my thoughts alone. I do not speak on behalf of the School Committee.
NOTE: I mention specifics when talking about cuts below. Please keep in mind that the School Committee is in the very early stages of creating a list of considerations. We are only in the brainstorming stage and the fact that something was mentioned only means that it was an idea – it does not mean that it has made a short-list or anything. We are casting a wide net and trying to put all ideas on the table before evaluating those ideas.
Short Term
Everyone in town pays a flat fee for Garbage Pick-up.
Would it be possible (legal) for the town to charge an Education Fee to disengage the funding for education from property taxes?
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BILL:
I’m not sure if charging an education fee is legal, but it is problematic. Our country has a long history of providing free public education. If we start charging for certain aspects of that education, we start to head down a slippery slope of wanting to charge more money for those things and establishing fees for more and more things. The concept of paying for full-day Kindergarten (sort of an example of a user fee) was put on the table at our meeting Tuesday night and it will be discussed further as we try and settle on the things we will cut if we have to.
The Academic User fee idea is similar in nature to “impact fees” and the town lost that lawsuit many years ago so I’m not so sure how well this type of fee would stand up in court. I think it has the potential to create legal issues for us, but it’s worth discussing. That would have to be a Town Council issue, but the School Committee can discuss it first and see if it’s something we want to ask the Council to consider.
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Since Everybody in the town benefits from better schools everybody should pay (property values, lower crime rate, and the fact that in 5-10 years the high school students will be our health care providers...).
Maybe this "flat fee" could be a structured flat fee if people balk at it.
Maybe the "flat fee" could help cover the "predictable" portion of the school budget, or maybe just the "unpredictable" portion (Special Ed).
Since Everybody in the town benefits from better schools everybody should pay (property values, lower crime rate, and the fact that in 5-10 years the high school students will be our health care providers...).
Maybe this "flat fee" could be a structured flat fee if people balk at it.
Maybe the "flat fee" could help cover the "predictable" portion of the school budget, or maybe just the "unpredictable" portion (Special Ed).
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BILL:
I agree that better schools benefit all but not necessarily in equal proportion. We need to find a way of sharing the burden without bankrupting our seniors (in particular) or forcing them out of town because they can no longer afford the taxes on their house.
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Long Term
I always tell people that the problem with education in this country it that there is a economic disconnect for the demand for educational services, and the money needed to fund those services. Especially with the Prop 2.5 law, which places and artificial cap on the towns ability to raise revenue. It's a "price control" and throughout history, price controls have been proven to have the opposite effect that is intended. But Prop 2.5 isn't going away anytime soon...
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BILL:
I agree there is a major disconnect in the system and proposition 2.5 is one of the problems that prevents us from balancing the school budget. However, there are other factors that are creating the problems to begin with. If prop 2.5 didn’t exist, the tendency would be to continue to raise taxes to pay the bills without addressing the root cause of the problem and that’s not a sustainable model.
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The town needs to find new ways of raising revenue. Franklin is right on 495, has 2 commuter rail stops for Boston, and is central to Boston, Providence, and Worcester. How can Franklin take advantage of these geographic realities and attract businesses and corporate tax revenue (Does Franklin have a separate corporate tax rate?)
Maybe it's not possible to find new revenue streams.
What about costs? This is hard when the school budget is already, I'm guessing, 80-90% of the town budget. The school budget also seems to be cutting more and more into "meat" and less and less "fat".
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BILL:
Yes we are and we have been cutting “meat” for a while now and it is going to catch up with us. More disturbingly, it’s going to catch up with the kids. Raising revenues is one possibility. However, the risk of a split tax rate is that we lose the corporate tax base altogether if they can easily move to some other town and get a better deal and this has happened. The other aspect to consider is that while it is possible and you may be able to retain the companies, is it fair to the small businesses?
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What about consolidating all the regional schools into a larger school district? Why does it have to be "Town-by-town"?
Franklin and Medway are already sharing resources among the rec departments. I think that goes for the libraries also. Would the scale of a larger school district reduce some administrative costs and make the unpredictable costs more predictable?
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BILL:
It doesn’t have to be town by town and there are regional districts in Massachusetts, but they tend to be west of Worcester. Many other states employ regional schools at a much higher rate than Massachusetts. That could save costs, but it does introduce other problems. If you needed to pass an override, do all towns have to agree? What if one of those towns will never agree? Then you’re playing down to the lowest common denominator and then who wants to partner with that town. The flip side is a problem too. What if the override is based upon a majority of voters from all towns and you have towns that always push for and pass an override? Then you’re living up to (perhaps) the most lavish goals of others. Again, you want out. Consider that we don’t have a common viewpoint on overrides and budget, etc. just within Franklin and then imagine introducing 2 or 3 other towns into the mix. I think it’s an idea worth discussing though and we already do some regionalization, such as Tri-County and some of the special education is “regionalized” and shared with other towns.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas.
Bill Glynn
Franklin School Committee
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Apparently, the comment exceeds the allowed length, hence I am posting this as a full post in response to Martinator's comment.
PHENOM
While on the education bandwagon, the conversation on the Facebook page revealed a group I wasn't aware of: PHENOM.
So you can read more about PHENOM on their website here:
http://www.phenomonline.org/
I'll bring some other of their writings, events, etc here as makes sense over time.
In the meantime, I'll stay focused on the local level where our individual tax dollars make the most sense, in that we have the most direct control over the results. As the saying goes, "All politics is local". I'll expand upon that and say "all education starts local." It starts at home and is fostered by the local community with a quality primary education.
If we want Franklin to continue to be a worthy place to live, then we need to be mindful of the core values that the School District developed:
The School Committee agenda and individual meetings open with a reading of the Mission and Vision statements from the Strategic Plan. The core values are just as important to repeat.
Note: I was a member of the community wide group that updated the Strategic Plan.
PHENOM is the leading organization advocating for affordable, well-funded public higher education in Massachusetts. PHENOM unites students, faculty, alumni, staff, parents and community organizations to do grassroots organizing, policy analysis, and advocacy.They ask for folks to sign a pledge:
Massachusetts must provide top-quality public higher education and must make it affordable for all. To these ends, the Commonwealth must ensure that per capita spending on public higher education is no less than the national average, and that student costs are no higher than the national average. Significant and measurable progress toward these benchmarks must be achieved by FY 2012.These are admirable and worthy goals. Higher education (i.e. college and post graduate) can not succeed unless there is a great foundation built by the primary levels of education (elementary, middle school and high school). And with the way the economy and world has developed, education does not stop when you get your degree. It is equally important to maintain a life long learning approach.
So you can read more about PHENOM on their website here:
http://www.phenomonline.org/
I'll bring some other of their writings, events, etc here as makes sense over time.
In the meantime, I'll stay focused on the local level where our individual tax dollars make the most sense, in that we have the most direct control over the results. As the saying goes, "All politics is local". I'll expand upon that and say "all education starts local." It starts at home and is fostered by the local community with a quality primary education.
If we want Franklin to continue to be a worthy place to live, then we need to be mindful of the core values that the School District developed:
Student Achievement
All students are entitled to academic excellence, appropriate facilities and quality materials and instruction.
Social / Civic Expectations
Students will become engaged, responsible citizens who respect the dignity and diversity of all individuals and cultures.
School Climate
Through our words and our actions, we create a culture of civility, thoughtfulness, appreciation and approachability.
School / Community Relationships
An active commitment among family, community and schools is vital to student learning.
Community Resources for Learning
We partner with all members of the community to exchange ideas, solve problems and build a comprehensive educational experience.
The School Committee agenda and individual meetings open with a reading of the Mission and Vision statements from the Strategic Plan. The core values are just as important to repeat.
Note: I was a member of the community wide group that updated the Strategic Plan.
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