MAC: Good News for Schools

Editor’s note: The information pertaining to the FY17 school budget has been updated since the June 9 print edition.

Did you know …

The fiscal year 2017 school budget received a 5.01 percent increase over the current budget and was backed by the Finance Committee, Board of Selectmen, School Committee, and town meeting voters. It added the equivalent of nearly 11 full-time and/or part-time positions, including new classroom teachers at Canton High and at the Galvin Middle School, an elementary technology teacher, a district-wide nurse, instructional coaches, an elementary educational assistant, and an administrative assistant at the Rodman Building. Also the Galvin will be able to hire a desperately needed guidance counselor, and Canton High School can add a full-time home-school interventionist.

In this year’s Finance Committee report to town meeting voters, it was stated that the most significant and volatile state-mandated expense is special education, which can run as much as $250,000 per student per year.

Among the capital budget items approved at the recent town meeting was an expenditure of $610,000 for the replacement of the 10-year-old artificial turf and track at Memorial Field.

According to Massachusetts law, the town meeting must vote to appropriate all sums received over $20,000 recovered under the terms of any insurance policy. The town received a check for $1,787,051.52 for losses suffered by the damage to Metropolis Rink from the heavy snows of last year. The town meeting vote allows the town to take the insurance proceeds received and apply them toward repair or replacement of the rink. The rink is a state-owned building so that monies received may be paid to the state to replace the rink. The town is continuing to pursue additional reimbursement from the insurer.

Canton annual town meeting voters appropriated $100 million for the 2017 fiscal year.

Barbara J. Saint André is the chairman of the Canton Finance Committee.

Canton residents can call Republic Services at 800-222-5158 to request curbside pickup of one bulk item per week. Residents are asked to call 72 hours in advance of their regular trash collection day. In addition to bulk items, residents can bring excess bags of trash that do not fit in their regular container to the collection center at the Pine Street facility.

Bank of Canton recently donated $4,000 to help send senior high school students at the Massachusetts Hospital School to Disney World in Florida. According to a recent news release in the Canton Citizen, Bank of Canton is a longtime supporter of the Canton school’s 31-year-old tradition of sending graduating students to Disney World.

There were 30,805 participants in the recent 120th Boston Marathon: 16,685 men and 14,120 women. There were 5,190 entrants from Massachusetts (2,431 men and 2,759 women) and 21 entrants from Canton (12 women and nine men). The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon.

On April 26, the town of Stoughton officially swore in the town’s newest fire chief, Michael Laracy. Laracy spent the past 10 years as deputy fire chief in the town of Walpole. MAC wonders why no one in the Stoughton Fire Department was eligible for the position?

Canton Co-operative Bank is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. The bank has been Canton’s neighborhood bank since 1891 and is rated “five stars for strength and stability as one of the strongest banks in the country.”

From MAC’s trivia file: There were four presidents who lost the popular vote but won the election: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), and George W. Bush (2000).

As we all know by now, United States Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew recently announced that the front side of the $20 bill produced in the future will bear the image of Harriet Tubman, an African American abolitionist who helped hundreds of slaves escape on the underground railroad. Tubman will replace President Andrew Jackson, who will be relegated to the back of the $20 bill. Also over the next few years, the $10 bill will include five different women on the back side, while the back of the $5 bill will be redesigned to include opera singer Marian Anderson, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The Obama Administration wanted to add diversity to the currency, which they did.

And finally, in the United States, Flag Day, celebrated on June 14, commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened on that day in 1777. In 1937, the ceremony for disposal of unserviceable flags was outlined at the 19th National Convention of the American Legion. American flags will be destroyed by burning in a dignified manner. All faded, worn out, or unserviceable flags can be dropped off at the Canton American Legion Post 24 behind Canton High School where they will be destroyed in a respectful and honorable rite.

The best way to win an argument is to start by being right.

That is all for now folks. See you next week.

Joe DeFelice can be reached at manaboutcanton@aol.com.

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Posted by Joe DeFelice on Jun 10 2016. Filed under Featured Content, Man About Canton, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.