DR. DAVID HOPSON
his Thursday, September 19, will mark the next step in the ongoing process of Worthington’s attempt to withdraw from the Gateway District, as the House and Senate Joint Education Committee hears public testimony on legislation to grant Worthington ‘Home Rule’. What this essentially means is that Worthington, through special legislation, would be able to withdraw from the district despite 6 of our 7 towns voting against this, despite a loss of revenue to the district without a corresponding loss of expenses, despite additional costs to the residents of Worthington (variously estimated at between $300,000 and $1,300,000), despite 50 years of history with the district, and despite the difficulties and costs around creating an outstanding elementary school with so few students.
While the current school committee was unwilling to take a stand on the withdrawal of Worthington from the district (and notwithstanding the ongoing difficulties arising out of the tumultuous process of closing three elementary schools) I would argue that the 2010 school committee made the only decision it could have on this issue. The bottom line is whether our students have better, and greater, opportunities now than they would if we had maintained all five elementary schools. My answer would be that they do by almost any measure one chooses to use. Certainly having more time for art, music, physical education, health, reading, and behavioral supports is a positive. I also believe that having classes by grade level, and more than one teacher per grade level, provides opportunities for collaboration that far exceeds schools with 6 grade levels and 2 or 3 teachers. Certainly many students spend more time on a bus than they did before, but none longer than what some Middlefield students had spent on the bus in the past (and remember the district closed Middlefield Elementary School decades ago for reasons that were very similar). I’ll also point out that Gateway is doing much to sustain student options in the middle and high school, which is becoming more and more difficult with decreasing student enrollment and continuous pressure to reduce the budget. Should Worthington be allowed to withdraw, the potential double impact of fewer students and fewer dollars will most likely exacerbate these difficulties.
Many of our local officials will speak to the issue of finances and financial impacts to the towns if Worthington is allowed to withdraw so I’ll only point out one issue. If you look at what the district may have to make up if Worthington is allowed to withdraw, it is essentially equal to, or slightly less than, what the cost would be if we had kept all three elementary schools open; our remaining district towns would be facing the same financial difficulties in spending roughly $800,000 more on education than they presently do. Some would say there was no need to keep all three schools open—after all, only Worthington is pressing forward with the issue of keeping their elementary students in their town school. Keeping just one school open, while closing two other schools that had more students, didn’t make sense then, and still doesn’t make sense. Given the continued drop in student birthrates, if we had kept all the elementary schools open, we’d be spending more money and facing multi-age classrooms across five elementary schools; with them closed, the only multi-age classrooms in the Gateway towns are at the private school in Worthington.
Valid reasoning led the state to create opportunities for regional school districts, provide incentives to regionalize, and support the idea of following a regional agreement. Despite the ongoing difficulties with funding regional schools, the idea of shared facilities, larger student numbers, efficient use of specialized staff, cost-effective bussing routes, controlled overhead, and many other benefits to regionalization continue today. The idea that a single town could, against the will of 6 other members of a regional school district, seek and gain support from the state legislature to unilaterally leave a regional school district to create its own, very small, very expensive town school system, seems to run counter to what the state has legislated and supported for decades. Will this also set a new precedent for other districts that may have a town that is dissatisfied with some aspect of their regional arrangement? However far-fetched this seems and however difficult to fathom how this would help education, the students, the Gateway District, or the state, we’ll all await the joint education committee’s decision on whether they move this home rule legislation forward for the House and Senate to consider before considering our next steps.
