HUNTINGTON – Members of the Gateway Regional School District Administration, School Committee and over 100 concerned residents of the district’s member towns packed the auditorium of Gateway Regional High School Wednesday evening for the long-awaited needs conference with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The purpose of the conference was to evaluate and assess the impact of the departure of the town of Worthington from the district. Worjtington began the process of withdrawing from the district earlier this year.
Thursday evening, members of the school committee and administration gave their take on how the meeting went with Christine Lynch and Jay Sullivan, governance and facilities program manager and executive director of school finance and district support center, respectively, for DESE.
“I think last night’s meeting went really well,” said School Committee Chair Michelle Crane. “I felt we had pretty good attendance and the back and forth with DESE was pretty good. People had a lot of positive things to say about the district.”
Crane said that parents and town officials were “very good” about articulating the financial challenges the district would face in the event Worthington goes to another regional district.
“The DESE were really able to get a good picture about how the local people felt,” she said.
“About 30 people spoke during the conference,” said Stephanie Fisk, business manager for Gateway Regional, adding that those in attendance included residents with students still in district, as well as parents whose children have graduated.
“People are going to want to sell their houses and the values are going way down,” said Jeff Wyand, a school committee member from Huntington. “Huntington has more houses for sale now than I’ve ever seen. There’s three on my street alone.”
“The values are going down and the tax rates are going up. They (DESE) said we have two of the highest tax rates in Massachusetts,” said Mary Ann Laurie, a school committee member from Russell.
Fisk added that DESE would be accepting written statements until the end of January expressing their opposition to the Worthington withdrawal, a move that would end up increasing the financial burden on the six remaining district towns of Blandford, Chester, Huntington, Middlefield, Montgomery and Russell.
“It would have been nice to have more legislators there and not just Smitty,” said Gateway Superintendent Dr. David Hopson, referencing state Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli, a Lenox Democrat who represents Blandford and Russell.
“We’re represented by a fairly large number of legislators across two counties and to only have one show up… When we spoke to Smitty at GTAC Saturday, he was going to invite everyone to come,” said Hopson, who added that state Rep. Stephen Kulik, a Worthington Democrat who filed the original home rule petition eventually signed by Gov. Deval L. Patrick, was not present Wednesday evening.
“I thought it was a very productive meeting. DESE’s got to really step up to the plate and resolve the educational issues we have that go way beyond Gateway. Gateway’s just the tipping point,” said Pignatelli. “The Governer cut regional school transportation, which is very severe for Gateway. (Gateway) was a late budget, so they budgeted 100 percent of what the legislature finally approved.”
Due to Patrick’s cuts, Pignatelli said the district is now “behind the eight ball” by over $100,000.
Wyand said Thursday night that the prospect of holding another meeting was something that DESE seemed open to, an idea Pignatelli doesn’t think is necessary.
“I think the issues were laid out very well by the townspeople and school officials. I think it’s time for DESE to get to work and fix this thing once and for all,” he said. “There are certain things the legislature can do to provide fiscal relief, but that is still several months away.”
“No more time for talk,” said Pignetelli. “It is time to fix the damn thing.”
