Helping Others Could Be Graduation Requirement

Sunday, 467 seniors from Framingham High graduated. Future graduates could be expected to help others, as well as succeed in the classroom to earned their diploma. 

The Framingham School Committee is asking its policy subcommittee to look into community service requirements for Framingham High students, and possibly link it to graduation. 

At Monday night's School Committee meeting, School Committee Chair Beverly Hugo suggested Framingham adopt a community service policy like some otehr school districts in the Commonwealth. She suggested 10 hours a year, 40 hours to graduate. She said the guidance department monitor the hours, in many school districts. 

The School Committee voted unanimously to refer the matter to its policy sub committee. It also voted unanimously to refer updating its graduation requirements to its policy sub committee. 

The School Committee also discussed its policy on parking fees at the high school. School Committee member Rick Finlay made a motion to eliminate the fees. He said the $20,000 collected is not enough to warrant the fee. Finlay has been a strong opponent of school fees, of any kind.

Finlay also read a legal opinion that strongly suggested that any fees collected by the parking fee, if it stayed in place, need to go in a revolving account that can only be used to maintain the parking area, including lights and paving. 

School Committee member Andy Limeri made a motion to table the policy vote on parking fees until the School Committee could hear from the high school principal. 

School Business Director Ed Gotgart told the School Committee he has had discussions with the town's Chief Financial Officer Mary Ellen Kelley on the collection of parking fee money and how it is handled afterwards. 

Presently, the fee is $75 for the lower lot and $125 for the upper lot.

School Committee Chair Hugo said she understood the high school principal requires that students maintain a grade point average to be eligible for the parking sticker and she too wanted to hear from him before taking a vote, as he uses it as an incentive to students. 

School Committee member David Miles said "we installed it and we can rescind it," referring to the policy on collecting parking fees at the high school. 

Miles then said since he may have a child who could want the sticker, that he should recuse himself from the rest of the discussion and the actual vote. Hugo also then recused herself, as she may have a child who want the sticker. 

The Committee then voted unanimously, with two abstaining, to table the matter, until the high school principal could be present and report on the issue. 

School Committee also voted unaimously to ask its policy subcommittee to devise a school book loss policy.

Gotgart said the district has been charging for loss books, but working with the auditors and accountants they realized that there is no formal policy.

On a side note, the sound quality for the School Committee meeting was poor at the beginning of the meeting. At times, some speakers were muffled, others echoed, and some were hard to hear at all. Other moments, the speakers were as loud as a commercial in between a TV show, that the remote was needed to turn the volume down.

Later, during the School Committee meeting, just after 10 p.m., some lights went out in the room. For those viewing at home, the image quality was miserable and hard to see. The lights came back on about 10 minutes later.