Imagine my surprise upon reading in the Country Journal (7/9/15) that Blandford’s Board of Selectmen had made a decision to potentially move forward with expending funds to hire a ‘consultant’ to review options for Blandford to ‘withdraw’ from the Gateway Regional School District, after a prior meeting with Blandford’s school committee members and the superintendent in April to discuss the issue and officially requesting in writing that the school committee look into the sustainability of the district. Despite the lengthy discussion during that April meeting, and much additional discussion by members of the Selectboard and Finance Committee at subsequent GTAC meetings around researching what Gateway may look like in 5 or 10 years, it appears that some town officials are in a hurry to distance themselves from the school committee and its responsibilities under the law. This was further exacerbated in comments reported in the Country Journal (7/16/15) in which the Selectboard discussed the burden of financially supporting Gateway for only 15 eprcent of the population while appearing to ignore some of the more salient financial facts that Gateway provided in the budget document for FY’16.
Unlike Worthington, who’s Selectboard only took action after a vote at an annual town meeting to move forward with withdrawing from the Gateway District; it appears that Blandford’s Selectboard doesn’t feel the need to get town approval to spend money on researching leaving the school district. Worthington also voted each and every year to support the withdrawal process, including allocating money for a consultant to plan the process once the other towns voted against Worthington leaving, under the allowable and legal withdrawal process using the district agreement. It’s also important to note that throughout this process, Worthington voters were made aware of the additional cost of withdrawing from the district and were doing so to ensure that their town had its own elementary school.
Compare this to the quote attributed to Selectman Dolby in the Country Journal that “The last one at the table will be stuck with the check”. Unfortunately we can’t tell what they believe that ‘check’ will be for from the article. If this is an increased cost of education now split over fewer towns, we certainly don’t have enough information over time to determine that cost. Additionally, if we look at Worthington’s estimated increase of $400 per average property tax bill for withdrawing (not counting the yet unresolved issues of post employment benefits), it seems difficult to believe that Blandford will ‘save’ any money in yearly educational costs by leaving the district (especially as, as per the finance committee report to the town, the total percent of town funding for education decreased from 62.8 percent in FY’10 to 51.24 percent in FY’16 as passed and, even if Blandford approved the assessment amount without mitigation, the total would still be less at 53.8 percent of the budget for FY’16). Furthermore one must wonder how education is ‘bankrupting the town’ while town officials got the Annual Town Meeting and June Special Town Meeting to put substantial amounts of money into stabilization and reserve accounts (over $300,000) as well as using unexpended educational funds from FY’15 to pay for town over-expenditures in FY’15 ($43,900) rather than establishing an ‘educational stabilization’ account. In fact, if Blandford had increased its school assessment payment by 2.5 percent per year as allowed by Proposition 2 ½ the total for FY’16 would be $1,735,630, which is less than Gateway’s full assessment amount without mitigation funding and would still be a smaller percentage of the town’s total expenditures than Gateway’s share was in FY’10.
If instead the Selectboard was talking about leaving the district to avoid paying the town’s fair share of retiree benefits accrued over the years, than I would urge caution in assuming that leaving the district eliminates those costs and would also ask that they consider the high cost of legal fees that are being incurred by Worthington to leave the district. I also wonder how this plays into the district’s and Huntington’s lawsuit against Worthington’s withdrawal. While Blandford tabled the motion to change the by-law allowing the town to join the lawsuit after additional research, it did not defeat the motion. Does the action by the Selectboard effectively take Blandford out of being a plaintiff in this lawsuit and potentially put the town as a defendant in future lawsuits? Are these additional costs being considered?
While I can certainly support looking at alternatives, and have publically stated that in the past, the fact that the school committee is starting a “Gateway 2025” process to provide a ‘roadmap’ for the future of the district, I wonder about the speed in which the Blandford Selectboard seems to be moving forward, especially without any definitive vote by a town meeting and where this year’s annual town meeting overwhelmingly authorized a school assessment amount above that recommended by the Finance Committee and Selectboard. To a casual observer of town politics, this looks like a disconnect between the will of the town and those officials elected to serve the will of the majority.
