HUNTINGTON – The Gateway Town Advisory Committee (GTAC) met Saturday morning at Huntington’s Stanton Hall.
Derrick Mason, a member of GTAC and the Russell Finance Committee, said that the committee discussed the role it would like to continue playing in the community and in the impending reorganization needs conference between the Gateway Regional School District and the town of Worthington.
The conference will be mediated by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and hinges on the approval of the new education plans by Gateway and Worthington, which must be sent to DESE by the first week of August.
“Once all that stuff goes to the commissioner, DESE either approves or rejects those plans. If either one of those plans is rejected, the process is stopped and they go back to the drawing board,” said Mason. “If the commissioner approves both of those plans, then there is a reorganization needs conference, and that could take quite a while, in my understanding.”
Mason hopes that GTAC can be a part of the process in support of the Gateway Regional School Committee.
“We want to make sure that as many elements within the community are well represented,” he said. “The school committee primarily represents students and parents, but there are a lot of other players involved – taxpayers, businesses, senior citizens, a lot of other interests,” he said. “We want to make sure that everybody gets a fair hearing.”
Saturday’s meeting focused on what the group can do to raise their profile and exposure for the needs conference.
“Ruth Kennedy is the legislative liasion for the school committee and is functioning in that role for GTAC, and is in frequent contact with people at DESE, and will be able to keep us informed about whats going to be going on,” Mason said. “We’re also hoping that the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) can be brought in to help facilitate the reorganization needs conference.”
According to Mason, MOPC has worked with DESE on many occasions in the past, and GTAC has confidence that MOPC can play “an important role to make sure the process is civil and that various elements are fully engaged.”
“Hopefully, the outcome is something everyone can live with,” he said.
Also discussed at the meeting were other ways that the committee will try to raise community awareness of their efforts.
“We’d also like to increase our exposure by having booths or tables that we can share at more public functions, whether they’re athletic events, fairs, different things that theres good public attendance at,” Mason said.
The longtime GTAC member, who serves as a de facto leader of sorts with Huntington Finance Committee Chair Darlene McVeigh, is also very concerned with what he refers to as some of the more basic issues around the education in the hilltowns.
“We’d like to see – through this reorganization needs conference protocol – an in-depth look at what is appropriate for an education plan, sort of a visioning process for the district,” Mason said. “What can we do as a model for other districts? Because we know that a lot of other school districts are facing similar issues.”
“We want to look at the basic concepts of education and how can education play a more effective role in the community, not just for students but for people of all ages,” he said. “How can we be more engaged, more engaging, and more relevant to things like career development? School-to-work programming, so that students can come out of school better prepared for real-life and actual jobs, not just the basic academics.”
Mason and the committee realize that the schools are doing the best they can without a lot of community influences such as businesses.
“GTAC is meeting almost as frequently as the school committee is, and we’d like to be invited to report and share GTAC business with the school committee at their meetings,” he said, adding GTAC will meet again on August 16. “That will be after the education plans will be submitted, and hopefully we’ll have some idea what DESE’s reponse is or is likely to be.”
The committee is also planning to collaborate with the Jacob’s Ladder Business Association (JLBA) to host a legislative forum in October to invite legislators who represent the hilltowns and candidates for office.
“We’re expecting that forum to have a dual theme – economic development and education. Obviously we’ll be addressing the Worthington withdrawal and the Gateway education issues, but also looking at the role that education plays in economic development,” Mason said. “How can we encourage more economic development in the hilltown area?”
GTAC and JLBA hope to have a date set for the legislative forum within a week.
