HUNTINGTON – After months of discusion regarding the potential withdrawal of the town of Worthington from the district, the Gateway Regional School Committee took a vote last night to take an official position on the matter.
By a 7-5 margin, the school committee voted to take a stand against Worthington’s Home Rule legislation withdrawal, vowing to try and mend the bridge that it set fire to in 2008 when it closed R.H. Conwell, the town’s elementary school, along with two other schools in Blandford and Russell as a result of a $1.8 million budget deficit.
“The closing of the elementary schools was not the only issue the people of Worthington were concerned about,” said School Committee Chair Gretchen Eliason, herself a Worthington resident. “They were surprised and saddened by what they felt was a lack of respect and responsiveness paid by the district’s leadership to their concerns.”
To Sue Leverault, the other Worthington resident on the committee, the situation is getting dire for all parties involved.
“Right now, almost 70 percent of that town’s students are going somewhere else, to private schools, to charter schools,” she said. “Four years ago, 70 percent of them were coming here. We need to come up with a way for reconciliation, which we should’ve done a long time ago.”
According to Stefanie Fisk, the district’s Business and Finance Administrator, Worthington has 48 students in the Gateway District pre-kindergarten through grade 12, with 34 leaving with school choice, three going to charter schools and 13 leaving for vocational schools, along with an unknown number attending private institutions.
Earlier in the evening, State Representative Stephen Kulik (D-Worthington) met with a handful of residents from several Gateway communities at a Huntington Selectboard to talk about plans for potential mitigation should Worthington’s effort to leave the district be realized by the legislature.
“The only town that can stop this (Home Rule) is Worthington,” said Ruth Kennedy, a committee member from Russell. “Nothing is going to happen (in the Senate) until 2016, so we still have two years to work on this.”
An initial motion was made to force Gateway Superintendent Dr. David Hopson, who, according to Eliason, has not taken an official stance on the matter and was not present at last night’s meeting, to meet with Worthington officials and apologize for previous actions of the school committee.
The motion ended in a tie and failed, despite considerable vocal support from some of the district residents who packed the Gateway Regional High School library.
“I believe the School Committee should direct Dr. Hopson to go meet with Worthington,” said one woman from Russell, while another woman said that the situation is “the fault of the School Committee who was impaneled in 2008, not Dr. Hopson.”
“The school committee isn’t a legislative body,” said Kennedy. “If we vote, it means nothing in Boston.”
“I don’t know why there is so much reluctance to take a stand on this issue. The townspeople have asked us to discuss this,” said Committee Member Jeff Wyland of Huntington.
Blandford resident Tony Van Workhoven implored the committee to think of their constituents.
“You don’t see Blandford or Russell doing the run around… If the district doesn’t speak up, it’s headed for a slow death,” he said, adding that the other six towns in the district already voted against Worthington’s leaving. “Follow what your people voted for.”
“The people in Boston need to know how this district is feeling about this situation,” said another woman. “They don’t know that six towns are very upset and one is very content.”
The Committee’s differing opinions, especially regarding the validity of Worthington’s fierce desire to maintain it’s own elementary school, made it difficult to get a concensus on the language of a motion.
“The state allowed us to redo the schools because they agreed with us that there was going to be a population rise in the next 15 years,” said Committee Member Shirley Winer of Chester. “We fought hard for Worthington’s wooden school to get renovated, and then the population started to drop, the recession hit, and we started having three schools costing over $1 million each to run with 50 kids in them.”
“The days of a school of small numbers of students covering several grades with a limited staff is not the best education,” added Committee Member Ron Damon of Huntington.
According to Leverault, Worthington’s deep disdain for the district is rooted in how R.H. Conwell was closed.
“The school committee took a vote to close three elementary schools, but prior to that vote, at the hearing in Worthington on the building project, it was said ‘if we do this building project, you cannot close our school until the project has been paid for without the unanimous vote of all seven towns,'” said Leverault. “That vote never happened, because the school committee voted to close the schools. I know how the people of Worthington feel — six towns have voted to not let them go, but when they asked if it was going to take a vote to close their school, they were told ‘yes.'”
“When I first started, I compared this district to a weird marriage between seven parties,” said Eliason. “At this point, one of the parties is asking for a divorce, and the other parties are saying ‘no, you can’t have one,’ but they’re not doing anything to mend the relationship… Children have been pushed out of public education.”
“My biggest thing is that I just keep thinking how it’ll affect students and extra-curriculars,” said Jon Wyand, a Gateway Regional senior who serves as a student representative at School Committee meetings, following the committee’s vote and prior to the meeting’s executive session. “A lot of my friends from Worthington are going to have to use school choice to get back in, and that is expensive.”
“I can see things getting cut, and it’s too bad,” said Wyand, who is considering studying communications at Emerson College or Syracuse University. “It’s not fair to the students and it’s bringing a negative feeling to the district.”
