BUCKLAND — What happens if Heath hasn’t made arrangements to send its students to an out-of-district school before next school year?
Could its sparsely enrolled Heath Elementary School stay open another year, at a cost to be shared by all member towns in the Mohawk Trail Regional School District? Or should a contingency plan be set up, so that Heath could send its 34 students to either Colrain Central School or Buckland Shelburne Elementary (BSE) School, until a tuition agreement to out-of-district school, Rowe or Hawlemont Regional, is in place?
After a public hearing last week, where Heath residents opposed budget cuts that would leave inadequate funding for running the Heath School for one more year, Superintendent Michael Buoniconti and Heath Principal Jesse Porter-Henry worked out a contingency budget for running a leaner school in Heath, but it was an option that would add $200,000 more to Mohawk’s $9.4 million budget. The options were either to raise town assessments, with the towns to see a collective 5 percent budget hike instead of a 3.5 percent overall increase, or the district could pay out of dwindling “rainy day” funds.
But this week, Mohawk’s budget subcommittee rejected the budget increase and instead recommended Heath send its students to either Colrain Central or BSE until it has a completed a tuition agreement with Rowe or Hawlemont, schools nearer to Heath but outside the Mohawk district.
Heath will have to vote to close its elementary school at annual town meeting this spring, and Heath school board member Budge Litchfield said the budget subcommittee “just made the task of getting a ‘yes’ vote ridiculously more difficult.”
“This was a bit of a surprise,” he said of the subcommittee’s decision. “We do not want our children to be human pinballs. No other children in the district are being treated this way. This heavy-handed tactic from the budget subcommittee did not help.”
“The issue was that simply putting additional money into the Heath School doesn’t fundamentally correct the problem that there aren’t enough students for a good education,” said Martha Thurber, chairwoman of the Mohawk Trail Regional School District. “It would still have only one or two students in several grade levels. … We came to the conclusion we were not willing to raise other towns’ assessments to perpetuate that — or cut other programs in the district to make up the difference — affecting the remaining 950 kids.”
“If, for some reason, the district-to-district tuition agreement doesn’t happen, (sending students to) Colrain and BSE are the closest options,” she said.
“We’re totally committed to Plan A,” she added, “but if there has to be a Plan B — among the awful options — it would be to ask Heath to send its kids to another school where there are lots of kids.”
“But the best answer to any of this is Plan A.” Plan A is for Heath to reach a tuition agreement with Hawlemont or Rowe, secure Mohawk town meeting votes to approve the new district-to-district tuition and the Heath School closure, and to work out an agreement with Mohawk over costs needed to “mothball” Heath’s 22-year-old school.
Besides getting Mohawk towns’ approval for a tuition agreement, Heath will also need approval from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for the unusual tuition agreement.
Wednesday night, the full Mohawk committee voted unanimously to support the Ad Hoc Heath Tuition Subcommittee, which is working with the Heath Education Initiative Task Force on a tuition assessment formula, and how long the agreement should run.
Also, the full school board voted to reaffirm its mission to “provide the highest possible quality of education to every district student while wisely managing the financial resources available to do so.”