The world’s a complicated place, even a relatively small corner of it like northern Franklin County, where Pioneer Valley Regional School educators try their best for the parents and students of the district.
So it should be no surprise that some residents who are passionate about their children’s education and their favorite educators, caused tumult at the end of the school year. May and June School Committee meetings were punctuated with sharp criticism of the new superintendent, Ruth Miller, under whose early tenure several well-liked, long-time staffers left.
Pioneer’s acting Principal Mike Duprey, Computer Network Manager Mike Holloway, Director of Special Education Sharon Jones and Bill Wehrli, principal of PVRS before Duprey, were all long-term staffers who resigned, some under not-too-transparent or rosy circumstances. Their champions let the elected School Committee know they were unhappy and some pointed the finger of blame at the new superintendent, not an unusual occurrence when any new leader takes charge of a long-standing organization.
One of the nice things about small-town democracy, though, is that regular taxpayers or parents can and should stand up to complain and criticize if they feel their money isn’t being spent wisely or their children’s formative experiences are endangered by decisions made in their public schools. They are our public schools after all.
Another of the nice things about small towns is we can work through our differences, or try to, and get past the negativity and ill will to solutions and positive outcomes.
So we were encouraged to see last year’s anger and upset followed by constructive, positive action — when an ad-hoc group was organized over the summer by Jack Killeen of Bernardston, who has had three children attend Pioneer Valley Regional School and whose wife and son are teachers there.
“This year has seen a lot of upset and it just seemed like that hurt a lot of things,” Killeen said. “I thought the best thing to do would be to move forward in a positive way.”
“Pioneer has a lot going for it,” he said. “We had a little hiccup, but people in the community thought that we wanted to accentuate the positive.”
Killeen sought out residents of Northfield, Bernardston, Leyden and Warwick with ties to the school and local governments who would be interested in serving on what he decided to call the Pioneer Valley School District Community Committee.
“I think anytime you can have better communication and collaboration, it’s important,” said Michele Giarusso, a committee member and chairwoman of the Leyden Finance Committee.
Killeen said the goal of the group will be to preserve Pioneer’s core values such as open communication within the school, diversity in the classroom, sound personnel practices and teamwork toward common goals. To do this, he said the group will meet several times a year to discuss topics members feel are important to be addressed at the next School Committee meeting.
We are all for keeping public educators’ feet to the fire — but in the form of constructive criticism and working toward compromise and the common good. Beats simply carping every time.