Category: News – Teens

Forest Park Branch: “Gun violence, equality: The raw concerns of Springfield’s youth” (WWLP)

Outside the Forest Park Library are dozens of lawn signs with the raw concerns of Springfield’s youth.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – They can’t vote yet, but Springfield’s youth has a good handle on what issues face their community and their country.

Outside the Forest Park Library are dozens of lawn signs that look like the ones you typically see during election season. If you look closer, however, you’ll see the raw concerns of Springfield’s youth: gun violence, racism, and sexual harassment.

The project was spearheaded by Forest Park Library’s supervisor Alex Remy and allowed Springfield middle and high schoolers to fill in what they wanted ‘Freedom From’ and ‘Freedom For.’ It was inspired by a similar project at Waltham Public Library.

Click through for article and picture gallery.

Springfield children clock over 500,000 summer reading minutes… so far

MassLive highlights Springfield kids’ summer reading totals so far – join our Summer Reading Club to contribute!

From the article at MassLive:

So far this summer, Springfield children have read 27,919 times at 20 minutes a session, amounting to 558,380 minutes of page-turning as part of the Springfield Reads to Build a Better World summer reading project. The results were announced at an assembly Tuesday at Central High School.

“We’re more than halfway there, and we have a few weeks left of the summer,” said Goren-Watts, a principal planner and manager of data, education and municipal technology at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. “We need you all to keep reading, tell all your friends to keep reading.”

Springfield Reads to Build a Better World started in 2017. It is made up of 13 summer reading programs throughout the city along with the city’s summer schools.