BUCKLAND — If the Mohawk Trail Regional School District reconfigures its elementary school, should the issue go to annual town meetings or is the issue important enough to be brought before special town meetings?
A special committee has been studying possible new class configurations for the district’s declining elementary enrollment.
Some have suggested its recommendations be put before district towns in separate special town meetings before a school budget is adopted at the annual meetings in spring.
That was one issue discussed Wednesday by BEST (Building Education, Sustainability and Trust) Committee members, along with an overall time frame for consolidating elementary classes among its four elementary schools and reducing education costs for member towns.
The committee also wants to reduce its consolidation scenarios to just a few, so that budget calculations could be made and brought to towns as early as possible, along with the committee’s recommendations. Because school officials want to begin making changes by next fall, they hope to have a full Mohawk school committee vote on a recommended scenario by the end of November.
Ideas the group is considering include:
• Keeping pre-kindergarten to second grade in Heath Elementary, Sanderson Academy and Colrain Central schools; send all Grade 3 to Grade 5 pupils to the Buckland Shelburne Elementary School (BSE), with Grades 6 and up going to Mohawk.
• Having pre-K only at Colrain and Heath; Grades pre-K through 5 at BSE and Sanderson Academy, with Grades 6 and up at Mohawk.
• If Heath joins Hawlemont, having only pre-K in Colrain, pre-K through Grade 5 at BSE and Sanderson, Grades 6 and up at Mohawk.
• Pre-K through Grade 5 at BSE, Colrain, Heath and Sanderson; with BSE also housing all students in Grade 6 to 8, and Mohawk housing Grades 9 through 12, with available space to accommodate collegiate/vocational programs.
Mohawk officials would like to move the sixth-grade classes out of the four elementary schools and into the Mohawk Trail Regional School by next fall — both to save money on sixth-grade staffing and to engage the students in Mohawk activities, at a time that some school families think of moving their children into charter schools.
But it’s possible that the Hawlemont Regional School District, Rowe Elementary School and Heath won’t want their sixth-graders sent to Mohawk. Heath, which has 30 children enrolled in its elementary school this year, has been considering whether to leave Mohawk’s elementary district and join another regional district, such as Hawlemont, where Charlemont and Hawley have their elementary students.
Another concern is that the Mohawk regional district agreement legally provides for elementary (pre-K through Grade 6) and secondary (Grade 7 through 12) school assessments, but not for pre-k through Grade 5 and Grades 6 through 12 assessments.
Some school board members say a separate, special town meeting would allow voters to focus just on the school issues, instead of having to deal with significant school issues “at 10:30 at night” after a long town meeting. Also, if a reconfiguration proposal was voted on before annual town meeting, if would help in budget planning for fiscal year 18.
BEST Committee Chairwoman Martha Thurber pointed out that an adopted budget can always be reduced later, but it can’t be increased after a vote has been taken. Superintendent Michael Buoniconti suggested that bigger savings would probably come in later years of the phased-in changes — not in the first year.
On Sept. 21, the group is to meet with school staff to get feedback on the different proposals.