Here are some brief thoughts on recent happenings in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region.
Many parents of fifth-grade students at Northfield Elementary School have been protesting the PVRSD School Committee’s proposal to move sixth-graders to Pioneer next fall. This is not a new issue that has been suddenly sprung on them. The idea was first broached at least as far back in February 2019 and there are many good reasons why it has gotten serious. Proponents cite increased educational and enrichment opportunities for sixth-graders at Pioneer.
What is new, however, is the unexpected upheaval in schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. The dynamics of going to school every day with a consistent cohort of classmates has been interrupted.
This is a big deal because friendships spring from regular contact and shared activities. Once these students move to Pioneer, that cohort of classmates is diluted. New friends are made and new groupings are formed. This is the natural course of education and part of growing up.
But in this case, this year’s fifth-graders had that final year of togetherness taken away from them. Purely on a social level, something is lost.
Susanae Glovacki, a retired elementary school therapist and clinical social worker, said she supported the idea of keeping sixth-graders in an elementary school close to their home. “I think they certainly could take advantage of great programs at the high school, but I think their social and emotional development is more important than the activities thing right now,” Glovacki said.
We agree, and encourage the School Committee to postpone what will ultimately be a great move — just not this year.
With the recent award of an $895,000 Agriculture Innovation Center grant funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Franklin County Community Development Corporation vaulted into the top tier statewide of resources for food and farm businesses. The grant will fund the hiring of two professionals, who will be available throughout the state, with experience in financial and marketing plans.
“A lot of farmers, they know how to farm and they do that really well,” said Executive Director John Waite, “but they may not have the business experience to create and sell products.”
The grant — one of three awarded nationally — acknowledges that our local CDC is among the best in the country at doing this. Its commercial kitchen and 2,800-square-foot refrigerator and freezer have launched retail enterprises and created new markets for flash-frozen vegetables from family farms. Now, fisheries in Gloucester and farmers statewide will be able to coordinate with the Franklin County CDC to help grow their businesses, too.
Since its founding in 1979, Waite and his staff have grown the CDC into a powerhouse of opportunity for farmers and entrepreneurs. Waite said, “We’re really proud that little Franklin County, we’re a bigger player in the state now.”
This grant acknowledges their success and extends our local CDC’s expertise statewide.
The message to the state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) couldn’t be clearer: The French King Bridge needs to be safer. Specifically, a safety barrier to thwart suicide attempts is long overdue.
Town officials in Erving and Gill have lobbied for safety improvements to the bridge for years — since 2014, in fact, when the French King Bridge between Gill and Erving was added to Boston’s Tobin Bridge in a Department of Transportation suicide prevention study. That was more than six years ago.
Since then, safety improvements planned by the state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) have been scheduled, rescheduled and delayed, to the disappointment of town officials in Gill and Erving. The project was listed in MassDOT’s four-year rolling infrastructure plans published in 2019 and 2020. But this year, in the draft of the 2021 update that was circulated to town officials, the installation of the safety barriers had been removed, leading to some worry that it is not a high priority.
Last June, Gill Town Administrator Ray Purington, on behalf of the Gill Selectboard, wrote an open letter to MassDOT saying, “In 2018, after many years of lobbying, pressuring, and (finally) collaborating, a group of state legislators, MassDOT representatives, and town officials completed a study on strategies for addressing this issue. The MassDOT put forward a preferred solution, a curved picket barrier extension behind the existing railing, and our Town supports this solution. Using other sources of funding, the MassDOT District 2 has started some of the design and engineering for the barriers.
“However, the work is slow and the timeline is uncertain, largely because there is no guarantee of construction funds since the project is not included in the CIP. The safety and security of this bridge is the most important transportation priority for our town.”
Last Thursday, state Rep. Susannah Whipps (I-Athol) and state Sen. Jo Comerford (D-Northampton) led a public comment session in advance of an anticipated announcement at the end of the month from MassDOT regarding the bridge. All said the bridge needs to be safer. Thursday’s meeting was recorded, to be sent to MassDOT as part of its public comment process.
We applaud Whipps and Comerford for their preemptive action and urge MassDOT to restore this project to the Capital Investment Plan.
As Whipps said, “We have to focus on life.”