WARWICK — The Pioneer Valley Regional School Committee’s discussions of cuts and school closures are less urgent than they were a month ago, but in Warwick the issues haven’t gone away.
A group of residents concerned about the future of the town’s school have come together as the Warwick Community School Preservation Committee to explore Warwick’s options for adapting to whatever changes may come to the district in the next few years.
“As the pressure and urgency might be coming off a little bit, we were concerned that decisions might be made in a slow season that would have just as real consequences for all of us and our families and our community life here,” said Sarah Wells, who lives in Orange but has kids in the Pioneer school district. “We were hoping to coordinate it as a group so that all of us wouldn’t be feeling overwhelmed and personally obligated to attend every meeting of the HEART Committee or of the School Committee,” Wells said. “Instead, if we were working together, we’d know that (a committee member) would be going to the School Committee meeting and we could all trust her to do that and report back to let us know if we needed to mobilize after that, or if anything, especially related to the idea of school closure, was happening.”
One of the committee’s main charges is to explore short-term strategies to make Warwick Community School more cost-efficient, like supporting the special curricular programs through the community or finding ways to get more use out of the building.
“I’m not ready to support closing Warwick’s school unless all of these things are looked at,” said Warwick resident Diana Noble. “After watching a few School Committee meetings, I certainly wasn’t confident that all the corners for efficiencies had been looked at.”
The committee is also considering long-term options for making the school’s future more secure, maybe without the involvement of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District. The possibility of turning Warwick’s school into a charter school of some kind provoked the most discussion. Attendees were interested in the idea, but were cautious of the repercussions such change could have.
“It’s all great to say we’ll do our own thing, thank you very much, we’ll take care of our own kids, until you get one or two really complicated, very expensive kids that you are responsible for,” said Sue O’Reilly-McRae, a Warwick resident who is on the Pioneer School Committee. “That’s where sharing as a district is an important way of surviving.”
There were also concerns about how a charter school would affect the teachers as union workers.
“We don’t want to inadvertently support an idea that is detrimental to the teachers we are trying to support,” Wells said.
The committee also discussed how to respond as a group to the changes that will come to governing of the school district. Two of Warwick’s three Pioneer School Committee seats are open for election this year. Of those two, O’Reilly-McRae plans to run again, but Martha Morse does not.
Plus, with Dawn Magi having recently resigned from Warwick’s Selectboard, the committee floated the idea of finding a new member of the Selectboard whom the committee could work with and who would take an interest in the school.
Contact Max Marcus at
mmarcus@recorder.com or
413-772-0261 ext. 261.