Back to School for Community Preservation Committee

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As part of its on-going “get acquainted” effort regarding various aspects of Franklin that could be targets for future Community Preservation Act funding (a measure approved by voters last year) the Community Preservation Committee held two “field trips” last week.

Both Wednesday and Friday, essentially identical visits were held for available members of the CPC and the public. The Wednesday afternoon event began at the Brick School, located at the intersection of Maple and Lincoln, one of the oldest one-room school houses in the nation and, for a long time, the oldest in continuous use, though arguably that use continues today with a robotics club that serves many young Franklin residents as well as others regional residents.

The robotics club, which takes its tech seriously, operates a full-fledged machine shop in the school’s single classroom. That garnered some negative comments from residents. Since the original floor couldn’t support the large Bridgeport milling machine, the town allowed a small section of floor to be cut out to allow completion of a concrete support pillar. However, visually, the interior of the facility is otherwise largely unchanged from its original configuration, according to two “graduates” of the elementary school in attendance.

What did garner comment and attention was the exterior, where paint on wood surface was visibly in poor condition and boards were rotted. Town Manager Jamie Hellen acknowledge that maintenance had not always been given sufficient attention in the past due to competing priorities but expressed the hope that more could be done with CPA funding. To that point, Town Facilities Director Mike D’Angelo is proposing complete removal of the decades of paint over the brick as well as repairs to doors and other parts of the building. He said that due to the near-certainty that lead paint is involved, an innovative technique involving ‘sand blasting’ with dry ice would be able to remove the paint safely without damaging the brick.

Lisa Oxford, a near-neighbor of the school, discussed her involvement with a committee that had focused on reuse in the early 2000s and also mentioned a group, the Friends of the Brick School, as a possible source of advocacy for the project. Town Councilor Debbie Pellegri, long active in that group, confirmed later that it is still “going strong.”

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