As they prepare to present a final regional agreement to voters, members of the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board are wondering whether the decision can come in the form of a special election for the member towns rather than Town Meeting votes.
The board is working to see whether special legislation can be passed to allow the towns of Erving, Gill, Warwick, Bernardston, Leyden and Northfield to hold special elections next spring, in an effort to ensure as many residents as possible can voice their opinions on regionalization and to align procedurally with Montague, which, under Massachusetts General Law, must have an election because its Town Meeting is a representative one.
“To me, it seems like common sense,” said Greg Snedeker, vice chair of the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board.
Snedeker said the board is not sure if special legislation can be passed before the spring, when it had hoped to put a regional agreement to a vote, but “it’s still worth bringing up.”
Snedeker explained that under Massachusetts General Law, for five of the towns involved in the proposal to merge the Pioneer Valley Regional School District and the Gill-Montague Regional School District into a single Great River Regional School District, the regional agreement would need to be approved by Town Meeting voters.
However, in the case of Montague, its 126 Town Meeting members are elected, thus limiting the number of people who can vote on the regional agreement. To ensure all the town’s residents have the opportunity to weigh in on regionalizing the schools, state law requires the town hold a special election.
The topic came up at a Six Town Regionalization Planning Board meeting in October, Snedeker said. Now the board is hoping the Legislature will step in to ensure all voters in the six towns have an equal opportunity to weigh in.
“It seems a little unfair that Montague has a special election and people can vote all day long, at least while the polls are open, and in the other towns, people are limited to just when the Town Meeting is held,” Snedeker said Tuesday. “If you can make the Town Meeting, you get to vote, but if you can’t, you’re out of luck.”
If a regional agreement for the proposed district is approved by Gill, Montague, Bernardston, Leyden, Northfield and Warwick, it would establish a new, merged district and start the 18-month transition period. The new combined district would have around 1,500 students between preschool and 12th grade across eight buildings.
Under the regionalization plan, high school students from the six towns would be educated at the existing Turners Falls High School and Great Falls Middle School. Middle schoolers would occupy Pioneer Valley Regional School and elementary students would remain in their current buildings. The Regionalization Planning Board has said there is no plan for teacher reductions, but central administration positions would be consolidated.
On Monday, Leyden Selectboard members signed a letter to state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, asking for the special legislation to allow the towns to proceed with a special election. Selectboard members said they are hopeful, noting that the process to amend the general law requiring a Town Meeting vote would take longer.
“We don’t want to go through the whole legislative process because it takes too long,” Leyden Selectboard member Katherine DiMatteo said. “So we’re just asking, for this one vote, that all the towns that are involved in the six-town regionalization idea, for this one vote, could we do it by ballot instead of Town Meeting?”
DiMatteo added that elections typically see higher levels of participation than Town Meetings, and that town officials want to see as many people as possible weigh in on regionalization because “it affects all of the six towns.”
While the towns explore the possibility of a special act, Snedeker said the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board will continue working with the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to complete a final review of the regional agreement and make any necessary revisions.
“The regional agreement is complicated and we’re trying to iron everything out,” he said. “We’re hopeful we’ll have it done in January and ready to present to the public shortly after that.”