WARWICK — A fund for residents to support Warwick Community School is in discussion by the Selectboard.
The fund would provide a way to coordinate donations to the school and to direct them toward particular projects, said Warwick resident Clare Green, who brough the idea to the Selectboard at a meeting on Tuesday (Jan. 22).
“Historically Warwick has had their heart proven. Put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of thing,” Green said. “I was thinking, here we are at a critical crossroads … Isn’t there something we can go forward with in donations?”
It’s worked before, Green said. The original plan for the school building didn’t have a gym. So Green and several other residents started a group called Friends of the New School, and in the four years before the school was built in 1998, they raised about $92,000 in donations for a gym. The state matched 70 percent through a program it was running at the time, and when the school was built it was built with a gym.
Now, Green said, with the school’s future uncertain, donations could help to keep the building viable. The Pioneer Valley Regional School District is considering closing the school in its efforts to make the school system financially sustainable. Plans for using the building if the school is closed have not been discussed in detail, but ideas have included a special educational school or town government offices.
The official position of the Selectboard is that the school should stay open. Chairman Doc Pruyne said he liked Green’s idea.
“I think it will go a long way to demonstrating for the people in Boston that the community school here has a great deal of support,” Pruyne said.