HUNTINGTON – During last night’s meeting of the Gateway Regional School Committee, a discussion was held regarding the upcoming reorganization needs conference between the district, member towns and the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The conference, which will take place Wednesday, December 3 at 6:30 p.m. in the Gateway Regional High School auditorium, will be held to assess the needs of the six remaining communities still served by the GRSD and the town of Worthington, which opted to withdraw from the district, chiefly due to the desire to reopen the R.H. Conwell Elementary School, which was closed in 2010 due to budgetary issues and has since been resurrected as a private institution.
DESE’s reasoning for facilitating the conference is to initiate a long range education plan to determine the overall impacts of the withdrawal, especially on the district’s current and future enrollment.
Additionally, the conference will serve as an inventory of all educational facilities under the jurisdiction of the remaining communities in the district.
Committee Chairwoman Michele Crane of Blandford said that strategy for the conference was one of the major topics of discussion yesterday.
“We talked about what we can prepare and present to the DESE,” she said. “The committee is hoping that town officials and town residents will come to the conference to offer oral or written testimony about what they think the impact of the withdrawal will be.”
Crane added that the meeting will be held on Monday, December 8, in the event of a snowday on the scheduled date.
Crane said that the district and committee are eager to get the ball rolling.
“We want to move forward through the process with DESE to satisfy what DESE laid out as the plan that we needed to do,” she said. “Unfortunately, the district and the committee have been distracted by two pieces of litigation, so we’ve had to deal with those in addition to trying to get ready for the needs conference and we’re beginning our budget process very slowly.”
“There are a lot of things on our plate right now,” she said.
