ORANGE — Synchronizing contracts, curricula and professional development, while gaining more than $100,000 in transportation reimbursements from the state, are just some of the benefits of a plan to regionalize schools in Orange, New Salem, Wendell and Petersham.
There are plenty of particulars to be hammered out, particularly as it relates to town budgets, but a Regionalization Amendment Committee with representatives from the four Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District towns has been working on a model that would add elementary schools to the district.
Mahar already serves students from all four towns in middle school and high school. The model in development would add Orange’s elementary schools and the Petersham Central School to the district. New Salem and Wendell students would be included in the district for seventh through 12th grade, with those two towns opting to keep their own district for elementary school.
At a joint meeting between the Orange Selectboard and School Committee, as well as Mahar Superintendent Tari Thomas, the benefits of this plan were detailed. Thomas, who is also the superintendent for the Orange and Petersham elementary schools, said there are benefits to her office already serving the three districts, and that further regionalization would streamline things even more.
“The bottom line advantages are, we’re going to educate our kids together, we can provide a consistent approach to teaching and learning, we can get that vertical alignment going that’s really hard to manage, and some streamlining, yes, of organizational structures,” Thomas said. “But it’s really about taking care of our kids preschool through grade 12 together.”
In addition to more cohesion between the separate schools, the state will also reimburse Orange and Petersham for transportation costs, something not done for town districts.
According to Finance Director Dan Haynes — based on 2018 data — Orange would receive about $194,000 in reimbursements and Petersham would receive about $46,000.
But there are many financial questions to be determined, with Orange Town Administrator Gabriele Voelker saying it is “premature” to know how regionalization will fully affect Orange financially. Haynes detailed the complexities.
“Just briefly talking about the fiscal piece of this, it’s fairly complicated when you try to blend this elementary district into our larger district (Mahar) and we have two towns that won’t participate in the elementary district,” Haynes said. “So, we would be looking at health insurance considerations, district-wide salary schedules and trying to mirror those up, employee separation costs, making sure that grandfathered state aid stays in place.”
According to Voelker, the town, although it would save some money from the transportation reimbursements, should see the organizational efficiencies gained as beneficial to students and the main reasons for regionalizing.
“I think we’ve done a really good job getting there, and I don’t think we’re going to see a whole lot of savings in that area except for that income for the transportation,” Voelker said.
The Regionalization Amendment Committee consists of Selectboard Chairman Ryan Mailloux and School Committee Chairwoman Stephanie Conrod for Orange; Selectboard Chairwoman Nancy Allen, School Committee Chairwoman Lynn Peredina and community-at-large member Lynne Feldman for Petersham; New Salem members Randy Gordon and Jean Derdarian; and Wendell members Doug Tanner, Laurie DiDonato and Al McIntyre.
So far, the model the committee has come up with would create a regional school committee of nine members: five elected members from Orange, two elected members from Petersham, one appointed member from New Salem and one appointed member from Wendell.
The new school committee would use a weighted voting system, with Orange’s members having a collective voting power of 71.4 percent (14.3 percent per seat), Petersham a collective voting power of 11.4 percent (5.7 percent per seat), New Salem’s member with a weighted 9.2 percent vote and Wendell’s member with 8 percent.
Conrod has briefed the Orange Selectboard several times throughout the process of regionalization, and said Wednesday that more information will be available through public hearings once the model is developed.
The discussion on regionalization came after one about the recent issues at Fisher Hill Elementary School regarding student behavior. Orange Selectboard Vice Chairwoman Jane Peirce, after hearing about plans implemented to correct misbehavior and the details of regionalization, asked how any of this affects the children.
“I’m certain there are some costs buried in there that we haven’t been made aware of,” Peirce said. “I want to know what the kids get out of this. I went to Orange Elementary School, I’m a Mahar graduate, my mom was a kindergarten teacher forever, and I really think if we’re not focused on what the children in town are going to get out of this that they’re not currently getting out of the system, we are wasting our time talking about how we can restructure to make the state happy.”
Conrod said the “ultimate goal is the achievement of the students,” but the process unfortunately can make them look like a commodity.
“I apologize that it sounds like we’re here talking about money and jobs, but to affect student achievement that’s what we have to deal with,” Conrod said.
Conrod passed out a list of advantages to regionalization, which included “towns committing to educated their children together”; a “unified and consistent approach to education”; an increased scale to “offer a broader range of academic offerings, interventions and enrichments”; a streamlined structure of one budget, one school committee; transportation reimbursements; more effective professional development and the sharing of costs and risks like extraordinary special education costs, demographic shifts; and the effects of declining enrollment.
The list also noted that “regional districts function like a municipality,” receiving state revenues and reimbursements directly, incurring debt and including all salaries, benefits and costs in one budget. Issues to resolve include local control of budgets, local control of elementary schools and the state accepting the “hybrid” district model with New Salem and Wendell opting out of the district for elementary school.
The next regionalization meeting will be held Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the Mahar library.
Reach David McLellan at dmclellan@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 268.