Much to the consternation of many local officials, Worthington’s withdrawal from the Gateway School District appears to be heading to completion. DESE Commissioner Chester approved Worthington’s education plan, contingent only upon contract approvals by the Worthington, Union 66, and Hampshire Regional School Committees, which should not be a problem for the Town of Worthington.
While this moves Worthington one step closer to their goal of having their own public elementary school, it still leaves a great deal of work for everyone involved in the process. As I shared with the School Committee, we were told in a conference call with the DESE that amendments to the Regional Agreement should be developed with the goal of presenting these at this spring’s annual town meetings. These include the makeup and election of the school committee, the makeup of the district—including monetary allocations—and a withdrawal amendment. In this phone call, DESE staff clearly indicated that a failure to approve the amendments would not halt Worthington’s withdrawal. In addition, the school committee will have to modify several policies to reflect the new status of a six-town regional school district.
The question of how Gateway will move forward, both financially and educationally, will be taken up by DESE staff at a “Needs Conference” which is tentatively planned for shortly before or after Thanksgiving. This conference (by legislation) will provide an opportunity for students, parents, town officials, the school committee and staff to give input on the challenges facing the district including: “(i) the impacts of the withdrawal; (ii) the impacts of the withdrawal on current and future enrollment in the district; (iii) an inventory of all educational facilities under the jurisdiction of the remaining communities in the district; (iv) plans for the reimbursement of the commonwealth’s capital expenditures for facilities located in the town of Worthington; (v) the requirements for continued assessments to the town of Worthington for district facilities previously paid by the town of Worthington; (vi) the administrative structure of the new district; (vii) the long-term fiscal impacts of the withdrawal of the town of Worthington, including detailed analyses of transportation, special education, vocational education and personnel costs; and (viii) fiscal recommendations to hold harmless the remaining communities.”
In a written response to questions posed by the committee to our legislators, we find that they want the needs conference to be held quickly so that they can work on providing financial assistance to Gateway as they develop the FY’16 state budget to mitigate the financial impact of Worthington’s withdrawal from the district. They also indicated a placeholder amount was put into the FY’15 state budget “to mitigate 1-time municipal cost increases associated with the withdrawal of a member town from a regional school district” which may be a short term solution to a much longer, and greater, funding problem. Our legislators also wrote that additional potential fiscal impacts (the question involved Gateway’s ‘Other Post Employment Benefits” or OPEB obligations that currently exceed $14 million) were not included as part of the legislative intent thereby leaving this issue up to potential negotiations and litigation between the district and the town of Worthington.
I have heard from a number of town officials and residents of their displeasure with Worthington’s withdrawal and the way in which this is being handled by our legislators and the DESE. We will certainly keep everyone informed regarding the date and time of the needs conference and hope that everyone will share their concerns at this conference as well as directly with your state legislators.
