Few people like to see themselves on the front page of the local newspaper. It often means bad news, and that’s what School Committee members of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District have had to endure in recent weeks. The unfolding of the district’s budget woes has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion: You know what’s coming and you know that people will be hurt.
Moreover, there’s a sense of impending doom among parents in Leyden and Warwick, whose small elementary schools might as well have targets painted on the sides of their buildings. The effects of possible school closures are ubiquitous: Homesellers worry that talk of school closings deter families from moving into town; homebuyers worry about the viability and future quality of the school system; and homeowners calculate the impact on property taxes. Fault lines divide neighbors as the escalating price of educating our children is thrown into high relief.
Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School and Warwick’s Community School, with 33 and 51 students, respectively, have the highest per-student costs in the district. According to PVRS district Treasurer Tanya Gaylord’s estimates, Warwick and Leyden’s elementary schools respectively cost about $22,750 and $24,600 per student. Warwick Town Coordinator David Young, who is on the School Committee, said in his own calculations, Warwick Community School’s cost per-pupil is closer to $32,000. Statewide, the average per-pupil cost is about $15,500, according to the Department of Education’s expenditure report of September 2017. In Gaylord’s calculations, Bernardston and Northfield’s elementary schools cost about $16,500 per student, and Pioneer Valley Regional School about $17,500.
In an effort to maintain the status quo, there have been calls for the Selectboards of all four towns to hold Proposition 2½ tax cap override votes. The last time a Proposition 2½ override vote was held in Northfield was 2014, when the Pioneer district was threatened with as many as 46 layoffs, or 25 percent of professional and paraprofessional staff, according to then Superintendant Dayle Doiron. The resulting vote was tied. A recount netted four votes in favor, and the override succeeded — hardly a mandate. That same year, fiscally conservative Bernardston, sick of ever-inflating school costs, looked into leaving the Pioneer Valley Regional School District altogether. Leyden and Warwick have the most at stake, but an override vote solely to save the schools is a tough nut for any town, anywhere, to crack.
There are, however, some areas of agreement in the current situation. In the face of Draconian cuts to music, the arts, sports and extracurricular activities at Pioneer, more parents and residents seem to be wrapping their minds around the loss of the two lowest-enrollment elementary schools — Pearl Rhodes School in Leyden and Warwick Community School. The alternative would be a high school hollowed out by cuts to programs, making it less attractive to School Choice or, indeed, any students.
Failure to confront the problem could result in a state oversight board making decisions for the district. As School Committee Chairwoman Patricia Shearer put it at a recent meeting, “If they told us to jump, our only response would be, ‘how high?’”
Finally, per Shearer’s invitation, there is the opportunity to be part of the process by running for a seat on the regional School Committee. There are seats up for re-election in all four towns this fall. To get on the ballot, you have to be a registered voter in your town, pick up a petition form from the district superintendent’s office at Pioneer Valley Regional School, get at least 27 signatures of registered voters in your town, and turn in your petition to your town clerk by 5 p.m., July 24.
Northfield Town Clerk Dan Campbell advises candidates to get extra signatures because those forms are scrutinized by the clerk, whose ruling is in turn validated by two registrars appointed by the town. Signatures that are illegible, or not of registered voters, would be disqualified. Campbell points out that just living in town is not enough — you have to be a registered voter for your petition signature to count.
We second Shearer’s call to run for a School Committee seat. It’s a demanding job, but its members are shaping the future of the district’s schoolchildren. Surely that is worth the commitment.