Email us!
LiL Fundraising for Elizabeth Warren!
Lowell Area Bloggers/Forums
- Art is the Handmaid of Human Good
- Blog from the Office of the City Manager, Lowell MA
- Captains Log (Paul Belley)
- Choosing a Soundtrack
- Corey Sciuto
- Downtown Lowell Blog
- Dracut Forum
- Dracut Musings
- Dracut Politics
- gerrynutter'slowell
- JackieDoherty.org
- Lowell Deeds
- Lowell Police Dept WebNews
- Lowell Public Schools Blog
- Lowellest Common Denominator
- lowellresident
- Middlesex Community College Blog
- MV Homlessness Blog
- RichardHowe.com
- Right-Side-of-Lowell
- Tewksbury Issues
- The New Englander
Lowell Politics
Mass Bloggers
- - Leftyblogs MA Blogroll - Almost all of my favorite lefty blogs in Massachusetts can be found here. Linking here keeps my own blogroll short but still up to date! Below are some other MA blogs which are not listed at LB.
- H2Otown (Watertown, MA)
- MargeBLOG (Williamstown)
- Michael Forbes Wilcox (Western MA)
- The Gazebo (Worcester area)
Media in Lowell
- Chelmsford Mass News
- Community Connections The online archive of many of WUML's radio shows.
- LTC :: Our community cable access channel (8 & 10). Excellent people, I've worked with them before.
- Open Source :: Chris Lydon's new show, broadcast on WUML and WGBH locally.
- The Lowell Sun :: Love it or hate it, it's the big newspaper in town.
- WCAP radio :: Talk radio in Lowell - still locally owned, and in transition.
- WUML :: The student- and community-run radio station of UMass-Lowell. Lynne hosts a radio show, Thinking Out Loud, 10am on Fridays.
Media in MA
Other Daily Reads
Politics Online
- City Council Agenda Past City Council agendas, posted in a mostly timely manner
- Lowellma.gov Official city website
Progressive Local Orgs
Snark and politics
The Arts in Lowell
- 119 Gallery - Art gallery with exhibitions of many local artists, interesting events, and living, breathing culture.
- Arts League of Lowell (ALL) - Artist community group, a recent but welcome addition to the arts scene in Lowell.
- Brush Art Gallery - Come and meet working artists in their natural habitats!
- Cultural Organization of Lowell (COOL) - Great local calendar of events.
- Lowell Opera Company - Community opera.
- Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra - Local community orchestra.
- Lowell Poetry Network
- Lowell Rocks - List of live music events
- Merrimack Repertory Theatre - A local theatre "presenting an exciting mix of contemporary and new plays in historic downtown Lowell."
- OUtlET - Paper and online 'zine making a splash locally with events in art, poetry, music, and everything in between!
- Revolving Museum Contemporary, local, public art space with a plethora of children's programs and art by and for the community.
- The Fine Print - Socially aware, themed, arts and issues periodic publication available throughout Lowell.
- The Image Theater - Theatre company which puts on all original works by local playwrights.
- Whistler House Museum - A great collection of contemporaries of Whistler at his historic birthplace.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Now do we know if there’s actually a correlation between education spending and student achievement in Massachusetts? I really doubt that it exists.
Whether the money gets earmarked or not, it’s just going to go to the hiring of educational bureaucrats as opposed to some other useless bureaucrat.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I remember Lowell’s first Ed reform check $675,000.00. $600,000.00 went to salaries and $75,000 went to the children ( books, field trips, curriculum etc. This is the basic problem I have with Lowell school budgets. I’m not against teachers making money my question is, how much is enough? Take a teacher’s annual salary and divided by # of hours worked the same way the rest of the workforce does you’ll be amazed. Try using the argument of time off should count and watch the union’s blood pressure go up.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:56 pm
From what I understand, and I just skimmed Jackie’s original post so anyone can correct me, but the complaint was that the city’s payments into the school budget were cut by 8%. Given that the city contribution was pretty low to begin with and this was a good year for chapter 70, the overall amount of money in the schools certainly didn’t go down by 8% and probably went up - of course expenses go up year over year too.
Lowell gets a good rate off of chapter 70 though. In Tyngsboro, the state pays just over a third of our school expenses depending on how you do the math, in Lowell it’s like 85%.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:48 am
Eight per cent cut?? Eight per cent of what? I’m pretty sure that the school budget will be higher this year than it was last year. The question is by how much. Since when is a lowering in the rate of increase a cut?
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Here’s my question. Does the budget amount include the raises already offered to the teachers or will that be added on after the contract is settled? You can bet the city side of the budget will be hard pressed to get raises the teachers are seeking for next year.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:35 am
The city proposes the #s for the school side but the school committee and the (superintendant?) have to come up with their own budget on their side seperately. It may or may not match the number from the city. Then, the CC has to figure out how to reconcile. At least, that’s my impression of the process.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:41 am
It is an 8% decrease.
FY 07, the City’s Contribution was about $21,000,000; Chapter 70 Money, about $110,878,136 = $131,878,136. FY 08, the School Committee’s Proposed Budget, which is approved and given to the City before the City Manager presents the City’s overall budget asked for $136,758,089; with an anticipated Chapter 70 Money of about $115,758,089, that keeps the City’s contribution to about $21 M.
However, the proposed FY 08 City budget reduces the School’s budget to $135,175,089; making the City’s contribution $19,417,000. That is an 8% reduction from last year.
I heard the Superintendent on the radio this week and she did state that she was informed by CM Lynch of the reduction before he submitted his budget to the CC and to the rest of us. I am curious as to what she did with that information, if anything.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Jason:
I think the answer to your question is yes. The Superintendent in her narrative introducing the School Budget wrote: “The Recommended Budget will enable the School Department to meet all known and expected contractual obligation for…Anticipated Wage/Salary Adjustments.”