HUNTINGTON – Chester selectmen John Baldasaro and Barbara Huntoon and Finance Committee member Andrew Myers reported to the Gateway Regional School Committee at a joint budget meeting Wednesday.
Baldasaro said there is not significant growth in the hilltowns right now, although a lot of people are working on it. He said both the towns and the regional school district need to be looking at level funding. He pointed to some of the action steps at the ongoing facilitated planning meetings between the district and the member towns as positive. One recent idea was using the towns’ green community grants to help the district.
“I don’t believe we’re going to see increases sustained by the six towns, without programs to attract people to Gateway,” Baldasaro said.
“That goes for the towns as well,” Huntoon added. “We’re all up against it, which is painful to everyone, the towns and the schools.”
Baldasaro said in Chester they go through every line item, “dollars and cents.” He said some of the salaried positions are so far behind the market, the town cannot attract professionals. “We’re not expecting any increases, except for a firetruck,” he said.
Chester School Committee member Shirley Winer asked the town officials about sharing financial services with other towns, one of the ongoing efforts of the Hilltown Collaborative. “How hard is that going to be to get done,” Winer asked.
“It’s going to be hard. We’ve tried to get elected positions (changed) to appointed to hire professionals, but it never passes,” Huntoon said. “For us, we know we need professionals. It’s a tough sell,” she added.
Winer said the School Committee has also tried to change the way members from each town are elected going back ten years, but it’s difficult to get all the towns to agree.
“Everything we say in public, every `no’ that we say needs to be phrased in a positive way,” said Chester School Committee member Diane Dunn. Baldasaro said at the last facilitated meeting, they discussed the need for a marketing plan for the towns that includes the school.
“We’ve looked extensively at shared accounting services. We’re not going to achieve these goals by cutting budgets as the only solution,” Myers said.
Dunn asked if the Council on Aging could assist the town in getting the message out of making the change to appointed officials. Baldasaro said the plan always passes on the floor at town meetings where they can address the issues, but is defeated at the ballot box.
Chester School Committee member Martha Otterbeck asked about getting students more involved in advocating for the towns. She said Gateway has an incredible music program and talented artists to draw from.
Huntington School Committee member Melissa Nazarro said that everyone contributes to the conversation. “It’s in all of our best interests. A lot of people like to perpetuate false information,” she said. She also referred to Gateway’s Business Manager Stephanie Fisk’s recently completed a 5-year comparison. “To be able to speak to these numbers will help us to dispel those myths,” Nazarro added.
Nazarro also referred to an earlier presentation by Pupil Services Director Kurt Garivaltis, which showed an increase in students with special needs, English language learners and economically disadvantaged students over the last five years despite declining student enrollment.
Since 2013, students with special needs have increased by 16% to 158; English language learners have increased from 6 to 20. Economically disadvantaged students have only been tracked for three years, and now total 251 students. The district’s total enrollment this year is 803 students.
Since Garivaltis started two years ago, the district has been able to decrease out-of-district placements for students with special needs from 14 to 4, by providing in-house training to educators and more programs.
“Those are people’s children. What an honor that is,” Nazarro said. She also said if some of the programs can be provided as day placements to students from other districts, something Gateway is considering, that would be a positive development.
Gateway Superintendent Dr. David B. Hopson said the district plans to do the budget differently this year. He said they plan to come up with a couple of line item budgets to present to town officials. “Everybody will be able to look at that, and make a joint decision,” Hopson said.
Baldasaro asked Hopson if he could delineate which items are mandated by the state that might not apply to rural communities. Garivaltis said one big item is translation services. He said last year they had to spend $20,000 to translate all the handbooks.
“We’re going to start hammering on these legislators,” Baldasaro said. Winer pointed out that the district has a lot of legislators as it spans two counties.
Huntington selectman Darlene McVeigh said that a lot of rural communities have put pressure on legislators to exempt towns under a certain population from some of the more onerous regulations. She gave the example of requiring teachers of more than one subject to obtain certifications for each one, which she said is “unaffordable” for small districts.
Baldasaro also requested the School Committee to add input from town officials on every agenda, which was agreed to after a short discussion.
