BERNARDSTON — Pioneer Valley Regional School District’s newly formed HEART Committee met for the first time this week, setting a course for creating a more financially sustainable school system.
The 15-member “Honest Education and Retaining Trust” Committee includes three members from each district town, two school committee members and Superintendent Ruth Miller, and it plans to meet every two weeks with a moderator, Debbie Lynangale.
The members are: Northfield Finance Committee and Community Preservation Committee member Tony Matteo, Northfield Selectboard member Tracy Rogers, Northfield Elementary School Parent-Teacher Organization Co-Chair Cheryl George, Leyden Finance Committee Chairwoman Michele Giarusso and member Ginger Robinson, former Pioneer School Committee member Richard Fontaine, Community Committee members Jack Killeen of Bernardston and Sue O’Reilly-McRae of Warwick, retired Greenfield Community College dean Robert Keir, former Pioneer junior varsity baseball coach Joseph Arsenault, Warwick Selectboard Chairwoman Dawn Magi, and retired superintendent for Rowe, Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont regional school districts Alan Genovese.
The two Pioneer Committee members on the HEART Committee are Sharon Fontaine of Leyden and William Wahlstrom of Northfield.
Seeking advice from members of the Mohawk Trail Regional School District on how to create a sustainable school system, the committee began its meeting at the Senior Center by hearing from Mohawk Superintendent Michael Buoniconti and two members of Mohawk’s BEST (Building Education, Sustainability and Trust) Committee, after which the HEART Committee is being modeled. The presenters spoke about how the BEST Committee operated, and the challenges it faced before recently dissolving.
“Be prepared for loads of meetings, lots of time,” Buoniconti advised. The BEST Committee, he said, met weekly for a year, and had five subcommittees: communication and student retention, education and revenues, facilities and finance, fundraising and transportation.
Buoniconti encouraged looking across districts at shared services such as a centralized payroll operation or sharing superintendents, though much of the discussion focused on consolidation.
Barrows explained Heath and Colrain, towns with low enrollment that could face school closures, formed task forces to come up with a consolidation solution the townspeople would support.
“Schools feel like the heart of the town to a lot of people,” Barrows said. “It’s difficult to think about losing jobs in our town that has very few jobs to begin with.”
“The tipping point really came when we had to combine three grades into one class,” Buoniconti said, referring to their situation in Heath. “Most of our schools are high performing, but they’re not going to be if we continue going down the road that we’re going.”
Still, a town meeting vote from all towns in the district is needed to close a school, and in Pioneer, the regional agreement under which all the member towns operate requires an elementary school in each town. Before the BEST Committee dissolved, Thurber said, it made recommendations for changes within the district to the School Committee and its subcommittees, which will “drive the process forward,” as could be the case with the new HEART Committee.
Meeting dates and minutes for the HEART Committee will be posted by all four towns. For its next meeting on March 15 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Bernardston Senior Center, Miller plans to bring enrollment statistics, budget figures and an idea of where the district will be in 10 years, at the committee’s request.
“We need to be clear on: what are the priorities of the district, what’s important over the next 10 years,” Genovese said. “That’s critical to understanding how to create a sustainable school system.”
Miller is also looking into getting one or more representatives from the teacher’s union to join the committee, similar to the BEST Committee.