Leominster Champion
As a nor’easter raged around them, crews from Leominster and surrounding communities fought a two-alarm fire Monday night into Tuesday morning in a vacant building at the corner of Merriam Avenue and Hale Street.
The first reports of flames at 291 Merriam Ave. came in at around 11:10 p.m. Monday, said Leominster Deputy Fire Chief Steve Rowland. The 2½-story building “appeared to be a vacant house being rehabbed,” Rowland said.
According to Rowland, a second alarm was sounded that brought firefighters from nearby departments, including Fitchburg, Lunenburg, Westminster, Lancaster, Sterling, Princeton, Gardner, Clinton, Shirley and Ayer.
Crews that entered the building were ordered to evacuate because of unstable conditions, but Rowland said “that was only for a short period and then they went back in.”
Leominster Champion
With COVID-19 infection numbers heading down in Leominster, public school students will be heading back to in-person classes on a part-time basis over the next few weeks.
In a letter posted Thursday night on the Leominster Public Schools Facebook page, Superintendent of Schools Paula Deacon wrote that students would shift from remote learning (with only online courses) to hybrid learning (with both in-person and online classes) starting on the following dates:
Monday, Feb. 1: All sub-separate programs (applied behavior analysis, Life Skills and the SSC program at Northwest Elementary School).
Thursday, Feb. 4: Leominster High School’s vocational-technical division and the Leominster Center for Excellence.
Leominster Champion
Like a lot of things over the last several months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Montachusett MLK Coalition’s 2021 celebration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was held virtually on Monday, Jan. 18.
A few dozen people gathered on Facebook Live to hear music, a roundtable discussion on racism, and keynote speaker and local advocate Irene Hernandez reflect on the 22nd annual event’s theme, “Antidotes for Fear.”
Hernandez is a longtime community advocate with a background in social work. She served for many years as the assistant to the former Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong. She was a project manager for the Tri City Anti-Gang Violence Program in Fitchburg, Leominster and Gardner. She now serves as a director of Active Life Adult Day Health Center in Fitchburg.
Leominster Champion
The MedExpress urgent care center in Leominster has closed after three years and it will reopen Tuesday under new ownership.
The facility at 241 North Main St. (Route 12), across from UMass Memorial HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital’s Leominster campus, shut down Dec. 31. It first opened in March 2018.
Annie Jamieson, a spokesperson for Pennsylvania-based MedExpress, did not provide a reason for the closure.
“It has been a privilege to serve patients in the Leominster community,” she said.
The building will not be empty for long, though, because on Tuesday it will become the first location in northern Worcester County of ReadyMED, a chain of urgent care centers operated by Reliant Medical Group.
Leominster Champion
The union representing Leominster’s public school teachers is part of a statewide effort expressing “no confidence” in how state elementary and secondary education leaders have handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Leominster Education Association joined 103 fellow teachers’ unions and three non-union teachers’ groups in signing a petition saying that they have “no confidence in the judgment or professional leadership capabilities” of state Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley and the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Eighty-seven percent of Leominster Education Association members who cast ballots electronically Nov. 20 voted to support the no-confidence effort, LEA President Leah Burns stated in an email to the