NORTHFIELD — Groundwork is still being laid by the Pioneer Valley Regional School Committee for school closures this year, even though a major vote that had been scheduled for last week was canceled due to a legal issue.
Previously, the School Committee’s plan was to make its final decisions on closing either Warwick Community School or Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School at its meeting on Jan. 10, in the belief that there was a Feb. 1 deadline to notify Leyden or Warwick if they would have to take back ownership of the school buildings.
But two days before the scheduled vote, the legal ground for the decision fell through, and the vote was canceled. To confuse things further, it turns out the Feb. 1 deadline may not even exist, the district’s lawyer said last week.
District administrators now say the decision will happen in March, probably. In the meantime, the School Committee and its lawyer are re-examining the legal context, and will meet again on Jan. 22 in case some decision does have to be made by the end of the month.
Normally, the School Committee does not have authority to close schools. Each town is guaranteed its own elementary school by the agreement that governs the School Committee and the schools’ interactions with the towns.
That has changed since a financial audit of the district last spring revealed a deficit that’s now known to be worth about $450,000. State lawmakers then granted the School Committee special authority to close schools, as part of a larger piece of special legislation intended to help the district make itself financially sustainable.
The main function of the legislation is to allow the district to borrow money to balance its budget, while working on the deeper problem of financial sustainability. The secondary parts of the legislation, including the special authority to close schools, don’t kick in until the district actually borrows the money.
The problem now is: the district hasn’t actually borrowed the money yet. So, the School Committee doesn’t yet have authority to close schools.
This interpretation of the legislation wasn’t immediately apparent, frustrated School Committee members said at multiple meetings this week, and apparently none of their contacts at the state Department of Education ever mentioned it. Early last week was the first anyone in the district realized it, when Superintendent Jon Scagel was reviewing the legislation with the district’s lawyer in preparation for the meeting later in the week.
“I’ve had a lot of problems with how this has come to light,” School Committee Chairwoman Sue O’Reilly-McRae said.
At its meeting, the School Committee voted to approve the exact amount for the district to borrow — $453,274 — and to allow administration to pursue the borrowing process. Finance Director Tanya Gaylord expects to have the note in hand some time in March.
This brought a new urgency to the problem of the Feb. 1 deadline for notifying Leyden and Warwick if their schools are closing.
The deadline was thought to come from the leases of the buildings. But the leases were never signed, the district’s lawyer said, voiding that particular requirement.
The schools may be month-to-month tenants in the buildings, he guessed, in which case they would require only a month’s notice. But the fact of the matter hasn’t been established yet.
To be safe, the School Committee told the lawyer to investigate the issue thoroughly, and scheduled a meeting for Jan. 22, in case, for some reason, the towns need to be notified this month.
Contact Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261 ex 261.