BERNARDSTON — A prescribed process for closing schools is in the first draft of a new agreement for the four towns of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District.
A public forum on rewriting of the district agreement will be hosted by the HEART Committee, the inter-town group tasked with overseeing the rewriting process. The forum is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 15, starting at 6:30 p.m. in the Pioneer Valley Regional School cafeteria. Expected to be present are members of the School Committee, consultants who are rewriting the district agreement, and selectboards of Northfield, Bernardston, Leyden and Warwick.
The consultants’ work also includes analysis of potential closures of each of the district’s four elementary schools, data on the district’s school choice enrollment and a review of central administrative office functions, all of which will be discussed at the forum.
A school closure, per the draft of the new district agreement, would be decided by a two-thirds vote of the School Committee, with members from at least three towns voting in favor.
Before the final decision to close a school, it would be necessary to complete a study on the educational impact for students, the fiscal impact on the district and alternative organizational schemes; which would be followed by a public hearing before the School Committee’s vote.
The decision to initiate the study, and thus the process of closing a school, would be made by a two-thirds vote of the School Committee, with members from at least three towns voting in favor. It would have to be started probably about a year before the final decision to close the school. The required amount of time is not yet agreed upon by the HEART Committee.
However, the requirement for the study would be satisfied by the similar-sounding study that the HEART Committee’s consultants have been working on since the summer, which they will discuss at the November forum, said Stephen Hemman, one of the consultants.
That would allow the School Committee to decide to close schools this spring, provided that all four towns approve the new agreement at their spring town meetings.
Discussing school closures while reviewing the new draft agreement at the HEART Committee’s meeting on Wednesday, the district’s Finance Director Tanya Gaylord was confident that it would be financially possible to close a school in time for the start of the 2019-2020 school year, if the School Committee were to make the decision this spring.
The HEART Committee reviewed the first half of the new draft agreement at its Wednesday meeting. Other notable changes include adding to the School Committee’s membership a 13th “at-large” member to prevent tie votes, and a School Committee term limit of two consecutive four-year terms.
The HEART Committee also requested wording in the new agreement regarding how the School Committee will deal with unanticipated vacancies, but is not yet sure if in such cases a new member should be appointed by the town’s moderator or should be voted by the town’s Selectboard and remaining School Committee members.
Originally, the HEART Committee had wanted the new agreement to include a recall process for School Committee members, but that is scrapped for now after HEART Committee members at the Wednesday meeting suggested to one another that for the School Committee to have a recall process, all four of the district’s member towns would have to have the same recall process for their municipal officials. This was deemed to be too politically difficult to accomplish in time for the spring town meetings.
Contact Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261 ex 261.