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 29th, 2009 at 11:22 am
I Agree With All the options that the superintendent
is recomending–needs to be done.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I agree with the superintendent’s suggestions as well and am a firm believer that there should not be a city side and a school side. The supt. should come under the city manager. Of course, we’d either have to increase the manager’s pay or decrease the superintendent’s. The school depart has so many areas where they can make cuts. The SPED department has two highly paid administrators who took early retirement a couple of years ago and are now back working at their same jobs… talk about double dipping!
May 31st, 2009 at 9:02 am
Jackie was a great guest. She was able to be forceful and point out her opinion, as well as listen to the ideas of others.
It was good to learn a little more of her background as well.
I hope we have her on again in the future.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Not aware of the sped administrators Right in Lowell mentions. Will look into it. As I said on the radio, if we had the supt reporting to the city manager regarding finances, who would be fighting for the city to pay up their fair share of the costs for educating our kids? Even with the current system of the sc making budget decisions and advocating for resources, the city has failed to meet its spending requirement for the last 17 years. Keep in mind, the manager’s recommendation to cut $5 million from last year’s appropriation of about $19 million is more than a 27% reduction. Is that how much city departments will be cut? I hope not!
May 31st, 2009 at 7:27 pm
“the city has failed to meet its spending requirement for the last 17 years.”
Although that may be correct, it appears that the City (with significant help from the State) was at 99.8% and 99.7% of its net school spending requirement for the past 2 years.
“Keep in mind, the manager’s recommendation to cut $5 million from last year’s appropriation of about $19 million is more than a 27% reduction.”
Yes, but only about 3.25% of the total budget for FY 09 - and although Ch 70 may be level-funded, there should be some ARRA funds to make up a portion of the difference.
The SUN reported LHS enrollment has declined by 9% over 5 years. Is that true, and what about the middle schools and elementary schools? If total enrollment is declining, how does that affect the required budget?
It appears that the School Administration is attempting to work with the declining revenue, hopefully without any significant loss in education. Given that fact, it is best to concentrate on how to improve the effectiveness of the money spent rather than argue over the percentages.