On Wednesday morning, Dec. 4, Susan Triolo and David Greenberg joined Bill Newman and Buzz Eisenberg from 9:00 to 9:30 to talk about the election and FCCPR’s response. Listen to the podcast here.

Join us THIS SATURDAY, May 13th, 10am – 12pm to stand out against Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Greenfield, an anti-abortion center!

Saturday, May 13, 10am-12pm

• Big thanks to all who came to the online forum on MA school funding we hosted earlier this month! Here is another webinar from Tracy Novick, who presented at the education funding forum, where she shares a more extended introduction to Chapter 70 funding in Massachusetts.

• Webinar: Tracy Novick, Explains Chapter 70 in Seventy Minutes

We postponed the forum this past week due to the weather, and we are pleased to announce that the forum is rescheduled for Tuesday, April 4th, at 7pm!

Register for the zoom link here: tinyurl.com/MASchoolFunding

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FCCPR is offering an online forum on April 4th at 7 pm focused on school funding.

Massachusetts is a very wealthy state.  It has close to eight billion dollars in its rainy day fund.  It has so much money on hand that it was required by law to send money back to taxpayers.

 And Massachusetts politicians say that they love our children, that children are our future, and that education is the key to unlocking that future.  

So why don’t we fully fund our schools?  Why are our teachers and instructional assistants working without a contract, our technology outdated, and why is the school district begging the town for more money, which the town does not have?  And what can we do about it?

Agenda for the forum:

1. A slide show that presents an overview of how school funding works (or doesn’t work) in Massachusetts, highlighting areas that may help us to understand why so many districts are struggling. 
2.  Overview with a panel discussion on issues raised in the slide show and by participants in the forum. 
3. Identifying action steps individuals and groups can take that will lead to more fully funding our schools.  

We have the money in Massachusetts, and our children, who are our future, deserve the very best education we can provide for them.  Please join us at our education funding forum on April 4th at 7 pm.  

Slide presentation that we will go through during the forum:

School Funding 101 (Greenfield)

Links and Source Material for the Slide Show:

• Education Funding 2019 Where We Stand
• School Foundation budget State overview chapter-2023-whitepaper
• MASC Budget and Finance for School Committees presentation

Register

Get the zoom link here: tinyurl.com/MASchoolFunding

Contact

Please contact Doug Selwyn with any questions you might have:  dougselwyn@aol.com

Facebook Event

https://fb.me/e/41ntam3RZ

We hope to see you and others you know concerned about local school funding there! Please help us spread the word!

FCCPR is offering an online forum on MARCH 14 at 7 pm focused on school funding.

Massachusetts is a very wealthy state.  It has close to eight billion dollars in its rainy day fund.  It has so much money on hand that it was required by law to send money back to taxpayers.

 And Massachusetts politicians say that they love our children, that children are our future, and that education is the key to unlocking that future.  

So why don’t we fully fund our schools?  Why are our teachers and instructional assistants working without a contract, our technology outdated, and why is the school district begging the town for more money, which the town does not have?  And what can we do about it?

Agenda for the forum:

1. A slide show that presents an overview of how school funding works (or doesn’t work) in Massachusetts, highlighting areas that may help us to understand why so many districts are struggling. 
2.  Overview with a panel discussion on issues raised in the slide show and by participants in the forum. 
3. Identifying action steps individuals and groups can take that will lead to more fully funding our schools.  

We have the money in Massachusetts, and our children, who are our future, deserve the very best education we can provide for them.  Please join us at our education funding forum on March 14 at 7 pm.  

Slide presentation that we will go through during the forum:

School Funding 101 (Greenfield)

Links and Source Material for the Slide Show:

• Education Funding 2019 Where We Stand
• School Foundation budget State overview chapter-2023-whitepaper
• MASC Budget and Finance for School Committees presentation

Register

Get the zoom link here: tinyurl.com/MASchoolFunding

Contact

Please contact Doug Selwyn with any questions you might have:  dougselwyn@aol.com

Facebook Event

https://fb.me/e/4oiKlR2Uh

We hope to see you and others you know concerned about local school funding there! Please help us spread the word!

On this 156th anniversary of Juneteenth, FCCPR celebrates the emancipation of African Americans, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States and welcomes June 19th as a federal and state holiday as it should certainly be. As welcome as this new holiday is, we must remember that there is still plenty of work to be done to eradicate racism from our society. We dedicate ourselves to that work.

Unity Action

Please join the communities of Sunderland and Deerfield as we observe one year since the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020.  We stand in solidarity with the many adults & children of color who have been violently insulted, attacked and for some, murdered at the hands of law enforcement and white supremacists.  We support the many people targetted as “other”.   We stand as one.

Fair Share Amendment Organizing Meeting

Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution joins the chorus of millions of individuals and groups in the U.S. and around the world who have spoken out against the institutional racism that, for more than 400 years has continued to claim the lives and livelihoods of people of color. We encourage all of our members and the public at large to challenge racism in whatever forms it manifests itself. White privilege is a subtle and not-so-subtle way of dividing people who are all struggling against the degradation foisted on us by the capitalist system that places profit for a few above the needs of the many. None of us will be able to live our lives fully until all are able to do so. 

Specifically, we support the efforts of Black Lives Matter and Defund413 in their demands to:

• • End the resource officer in the public schools. This position tends to criminalize difficult behavior of children rather than looking to the underlying problems and solving them. Statistics have demonstrated that children of color are more likely to be singled out for discipline by the resource officer. We support the use of these funds to increase counseling and support services for students in our schools.

• • End the use of money bail within our court system. The cash bail system penalizes low income people, who are disproportionately people of color, by preventing them from returning home while awaiting adjudication of the legal issues at hand. This is not only a difficulty for the arrested individual, but also the individual’s family as this causes the loss of employment and greater financial insecurity. And it reverberates through the entire community. People of means, even modest means, have the ability to continue employment while awaiting trial. This system criminalizes poverty and should be eliminated.

• • Reallocate funds from the police to mental health first responders, peer supports, substance abuse services, domestic and intimate partner violence advocacy and support. The police are presently expected to respond to situations for which they are not well trained. A task force should be developed to re-imagine the work of the police and direct funds to services that more appropriately deal with the issues at hand. When that plan has been devised, funds should then be reallocated to social service organizations or to the hiring of additional appropriately trained staff to deal with the social and human service issues that are often today part of the police portfolio.

• • Create a police review board with power. Install an independent citizens complaint review board that will have authority to review all complaints including the use of force and will determine disciplinary actions for offending officers. The review board would be composed of people with direct experience of police brutality or misconduct along with others concerned about equitable enforcement of the law. The board would approve de-escalation, racial justice, restraint and other training in an ongoing manner. 

We look forward to working with Black Lives Matter, Racial Justice for Franklin County–Solidarity and Action, Racial Justice Rising and other organizations in creating a more equitable and just society.

On Tuesday, June 16 FCCPR members and friends massed at a number of post offices around the County to show our concern about the future of the U.S.P.S., one of the oldest institutions in the country. A push toward privatization, which would almost certainly result in closures of rural post offices (not enough profit there!), is being resisted nationwide.

FCCPR is distributing ‘Save the Post Office’ stickers that you can put on your mail. To request some, use this link.