Rapid Fire Learning for June

School's out, the summer is upon us. My oh, my! Phil Gerbyshak has kicked off this month's collection at the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog. What did I learn this month? 1 - Harvard students like to have fun too! 2 - The Golden Compass movie is coming. It is also a good time to start re-reading Harry Potter 1 through 6 to get ready for #7 due in July. 3 - I need to be more timely about celebrating my blogversaries. Yes, I do have a few of them but that is no excuse. 4 - The override is behind us but the real problems still remain ahead of us. 5 - I am putting my podcasting to good use and recording my father's oral history. You can hear him talk at Jerry's Story. What did you do this month?

Rapid Fire Learning - May 2007

Another month slips from us this year. Five down, seven remain. Taking stock of the learnings with a few days left this month I find: Good customer service is still possible Good news can be found Franklin took one step towards self-sufficiency but the road ahead is still fraught with troubles Surprise, I am not alone in believing in life, long learning Danny Meyer's "always be collecting the dots" What have you learned this month? Share it here in a comment, or write about it on your blog and trackback to Terry Starbucker's posting on Joyful, Jubilant Learning.

Reflections on blogging the override

Blogging the information on the override was fun. I learned a whole lot about Proposition 2 1/2. About town government. About town finances. About the school budget. About the workings of our government. Franklin is not a very online community. The student population is much more online than the adult population. The primary exposure of the adult population to online activity is email. They can follow a link in an email but are not sophisticated about RSS feeds, commenting on blogs, and other similar activities. The town does have an online forum but it seems to be limited to a small group. The forum allows anonymous profiles which does not foster a real good conversation. I hesitated to join but while I have tried to obtain access, several attempts are still pending acknowledgment. There is a good opportunity to use Web 2.0 tools like blogs, social network sites (Facebook, etc.), and to enable a healthy discussion amongst identified individuals in Franklin's future.

Light blogging alert

Franklin is facing a budget override and I anticipate that I will be busy helping to get the vote turned out for May 22. It really is a mayday call to Franklin. The Town Council decision to put forward a $2.7 Million Proposition 2 ½ override still leaves all departments short of their budget requests and will require cuts to the services provided for in the current fiscal year. Exactly what that means to Franklin is still being sorted out. Amongst the items discussed IF the override passes would still be approx 25-30 school personnel cuts, Fire, Police, DPW cuts, library shut. Stay tuned for the details. IF the override fails, the picture gets worse real quick! PS - check the scrolling headlines for Steve's 2 Cents to keep up with the override.