The Six-Town Regionalization Planning Board (STRPB) was formed by, and serves, the six towns of Bernardston, Gill, Leyden, Montague, Northfield, Warwick, (and Erving a non-voting representative).
The six towns are concerned about the educational and financial sustainability of the Gill-Montague Regional School (GMRSD) and Pioneer Valley Regional School (PVRSD) districts. Our members include concerned citizens, current and retired teachers, school committee members, town officials, and a retired principal/superintendent.
Over the past three years, the board has done extensive research into the feasibility of combining the elementary, middle, and high schools of the two districts into one district with the additional goal of merging the two middle schools into one regional building and the two high schools into the other. The board has generated many reports and findings that summarize the potential impacts on education, finance, facilities, and transportation.
In response to the Recorder article published Aug. 26 by reporter Chris Larabee on the Special Commission on Rural School District’s report and school district regionalization, I would like to provide more context and clarification regarding the work that the STRPB Board has been doing over the past three years. Although state Rep. Natalie Blais and PVRSD superintendent are correct when they state regionalization is not a panacea, or one-size-fits-all solution, for rural school districts (especially those regions that serve large geographical areas), the board has found in its research that there can be significant educational benefits for smaller regional districts to combine into a larger district albeit in the case of GMRSD and PVRSD it would still be a small district in the eyes of the state.
What we found in our research and through our discussion forums with students, parents, teachers, staff, and administrations is that there would be significant educational benefits gained by the combining and merging of the middle and high schools; educational benefits such as more course offerings and scheduling flexibility, more robust arts, athletics, clubs, and extracurriculars, better support for services, more student diversity, more opportunity for teachers to tap what would be otherwise untapped skills, and more opportunities for students to make peer connections.
There also has been concern over a larger district’s student bus rides, but our research on transportation for the GMRSD/PVRSD combined district found that the length of student bus rides would not change much. For some students bus rides would be a little longer and for others it would be a little shorter depending on how the bus routes were designed.
PVRSD Superintendent Patricia Kinsella commented to the Recorder that, in her experience, regionalization has been mostly about funding. Although the challenge of funding our schools is always important, and even may be the impetus to initiate a regionalization study, the STRPB found itself shifting its focus over time from funding and cost savings to a cost-benefit analysis of the impacts of regionalization on the quality of education. It is the quality of education that is central to our mission and research. I would encourage Superintendent Kinsella to join one of our meetings to discuss this further. Funding is one piece of the regionalization puzzle, and it is an important one, but it is not the primary focus.
Furthermore, Superintendent Kinsella’s comparison of our regionalization study to those of Boston urban schools and mentioning school closures is not helpful in educating and informing our towns as to what might be possible if GMRSD and PVRSD combined into a larger region. Boston urban schools face different challenges, the districts are much larger, and in the case of the STRPB’s study, there are no school closures (mothballing of a building) being proposed. Our focus has always been to analyze the impacts of combining the two districts with merging the middle and high schools into one middle and high school serving the two student bodies within the existing two regional buildings. The goal would be to maximize the specific benefits that each building brings to our six towns and leverage those benefits to enhance our students’ overall educational experience. By doing so, the hope would be to retain and attract more students.
It’s important to note that increased rural aid, as proposed in the Rural School Commission Report from the state, would ease some of the financial challenges that small rural towns and school districts face, but more funds would not address these educational issues that can only be addressed through increased enrollment, especially at the secondary level with school with enrollments of under 200 and are in decline.
To give just one educational example would be to compare a high school instrumental band of 6-10 students in a smaller high school with that of a band of 30-40 students in a larger one. The student experience would be vastly different as to what musical pieces and arrangements could be used as educational material, the kinds of performance opportunities available, and the overall in-class ensemble experience. The same kinds of issues arise when comparing the size of athletic programs, sports teams, daily schedule flexibility, course offerings, and services. These are not insignificant differences when assessing the quality of education and can’t be addressed through more funding.
Because of the pandemic, public outreach has been difficult for us over the past two years, but we plan to address this in the coming months through more articles, informational press releases, and public meetings. We encourage the public to access our website https://sites.google.com/view/strpb/home, which includes posted meeting agendas, minutes, financial, education, and transportation reports, and other useful information regarding our work and who we are. On our homepage, there is also a weblink (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqgfBINE93RI2MALYzYM7lw) to our YouTube channel where the public can find videos of our remote meetings.
Greg Snedeker is secretary and treasurer of the Six-Town Regionalization Planning Board and member of the Selectboard in Gill.