ASHFIELD — Annual Town Meeting voters authorized debt-exclusion borrowing of $100,000 to help purchase a $200,000 highway dump truck and they cast their vote overwhelmingly in favor of a zoning bylaw that would require rigorous environmental impact studies for anyone seeking to build a pipeline through town or come in with any other large scale industrial/commercial development here.
Townspeople also supported all requested financial issues, for an annual budget totaling $5,119,311 — about a $12,000 decrease over the current year’s budget. Overall, the town’s education budget decreased by $190,000 (8 percent) because its vocational school budget dropped by $234,000 (about 44 percent) from this year, due to a decrease in vocational school enrollment. Mohawk’s assessment increase this year was 1.7 percent.
Priority items included: $37,000 for broadband, $100,000 for bridge repairs, $50,000 toward the Town Hall/Steeple repair fund, $40,000 for the Belding Memorial Library roof repair, $50,000 towards a Fire Department tanker truck and $15,000 for the Senior Center Expansion Fund.
School spending is often a thorny issue at Annual Town Meeting, but this year, it wasn’t the budget that prompted heated debate; rather, the issue was whether the Mohawk Trail Regional School District’s implementation of heterogeneous classes in seventh-grade math was holding back students who would have qualified for “honors-level” math classes in past years.
Heterogeneous class structure is a strategy in which students of all competency levels are educated together, so that no one is “tracked” into a class for slower learners. The strategy for mixed classes is that higher-achieving students will motivate other students to work harder and achieve more — a “high tides lift all boats” approach.
“Are we getting the value in public education for the money we pay?” asked resident Wendy Keyser. “Different children have different needs.”
A group of Ashfield parents brought their concerns over the heterogeneous approach to math a year ago and are claiming the problems remain unresolved.
Superintendent Michael Buoniconti said Mohawk has more options for math classes than other schools, given its small size, and offers honors credit. He said the old classroom structure sets up lower-performing students not to achieve. “Teachers favor this,” he added.
Eighth-grade school parent Leslie Parker said more students are leaving Mohawk for school choice or charter schools. She remarked that “honors credit on the transcripts is ‘honors homework.’ There’s no additional instruction for that.”
“We’re being told in heterogeneous classes that ‘one size fits all.’ In my son’s (former sixth-grade) Sanderson class, seven have left (Mohawk) for academic reasons.”
“There is a very small group of moms in Ashfield that have a bone to pick they won’t put down,” said Emily Robertson, a school board member who did not seek re-election. “This isn’t happening in other towns. To them, this is just elitist Ashfield families. I think the superintendent and others have bent over backwards. I want this to drop,” she said of the heterogeneous debate. “I want this to end.
Annual Town Meeting voters supported Mohawk’s $2.27 million assessment, but the debate over heterogeneous classes spilled over into whether the town would support Mohawk’s idea to move sixth-grade classes out of Sanderson Academy and into Mohawk.
“Let’s solve this (heterogeneous class) problem before we send our sixth-graders to Mohawk,” one man said.
“I’m extremely passionate about not going forward with this move,” said Tina Miller, who has two children in Sanderson. “Why rush the kids through their childhood?”
The motion to send sixth-graders to Mohawk failed with 38 “yes” votes and 64 “no” votes. Shelburne also voted against this move, which defeated that measure for all Mohawk towns.
Phil Pless said Sanderson was built 20 years ago to accommodate up to 350 students and now, with the preschool enrollment increase, houses about 180 students.
Like Shelburne, Ashfield approved a zoning bylaw for large-scale industrial and commercial facilities “that use or creates 10 acres or more of impervious surface” or that alters 50 or more acres of land. It calls for a special permit process that may require baseline studies regarding air and water quality, ambient noise levels, traffic studies, and construction impact on town roadways and property. It also provides for the applicant to pay for independent consultants to assist the Planning Board, requirements for monitoring air or water quality and requirements to restore the site, if the development is shut down.
Townspeople unanimously asked the Selectboard to develop such a bylaw in 2014, when concerns were raised about Tennessee Gas/Kinder Morgan pipeline. The Planning Board, however, unanimously voted not to support this article, which was vetted by the town’s lawyer and the Franklin Regional Council of Governments.
When asked why, Planning Board Chairman Michael Fitzgerald said the Planning Board felt it needed more work.
“We have uncertainties about how to administer it, and how it’s going to work. If you vote it, it goes to the Planning Board, and the definition section is not mixed in with the rest of the (zoning) bylaw,” said Fitzgerald. “The application section seems to be somewhat incomplete. Throughout, there are references to pre-and post construction sections that we will need to keep track of. If you vote for this, the Planning Board is going to spend several days writing definitions of what we think you meant.”
He said some large-scale developers might see the bylaw as “an invitation to come to Ashfield,” if they can comply with the bylaw.
Ultimately, townspeople decided it was better to have a bylaw in place that can be improved upon than to be without any siting standards, should the pipeline proposal, or other large scale project come to town. Several people spoke about how the roads in Otis have been torn up during pipeline construction in the Sandisfield forest.
Fitzgerald, who abstained from voting, said: “We’re all expecting this to pass today. Vote your conscience on this, but I don’t want you to think the Planning Board told you this was a good idea — because we honestly don’t know.”