HUNTINGTON – Posters for Gateway Regional High School’s spring musical “Much Ado About Nothing” plaster the walls of the Huntington school.
Yet at a meeting of the Gateway Regional School Committee Wednesday night, when the issue of reopening dialogue with the Town of Worthington entered the conversation, “much ado about nothing” was exactly what was made.
After just receiving word from the office of State Senator Benjamin B. Downing (D-Pittsfield) that the Worthington Home Rule bill would be moving forward in the Senate next week, residents from the school district’s member communities urged the School Committee to reopen talks with Worthington in hopes that their pending withdrawal could be averted.
“My understanding is that they’re going to be working on amendments to the legislation, just kind of a first step along the way,” said School Committee member Ruth Kennedy of Russell.
After hearing impassioned cases from Montgomery Selectman Dan Jacques and Huntington Selectman John McVeigh, who read a vitriolic statement at the start of the meeting about treatment he’d received from the school district regarding screening for his daughter, the committee neglected to even put forth a motion on the matter, much to the dismay of many in attendance.
“Right now the way the bill is written, it talks about the educational plan of Worthington and that is it,” said Jacques. “It was done that way because it’s home rule legislation, when in fact, it impacts all the towns and leaves a lot of questions unanswered.”
Jacques said that the six remaining town select boards in the district are looking to write to their legislators suggesting amendments to the bill in hopes that it can be more equitable for all the district’s remaining communities and Worthington.
“This could end up convincing the other six towns that this is the best thing or it could end up convincing Worthington to stay,” he added. “But until you go through this process and do due diligence, there is not enough information. The language we’re suggesting includes a review for the plans of Worthington and the other six towns, which are part of the DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) regulations.”
Jacques, who was selected as an additional liaison for the communities during this process, then read a regulation from the DESE regarding reorganization.
“Those procedures require a reorganization needs conference and a long-range education plan of the department review, and we think the best way to do this is to have an independent board entity to kind of shepherd us through this, to mediate this,” Jacques said. “I’m asking the school committee to consider writing a letter that would essentially support an amendment that would encourage a thorough understanding and review of the process.”
Committee Chair Gretchen Eliason of Worthington stated that the Committee couldn’t get involved because of votes they took in January to not send Superintendent Dr. David Hopson to the community to present the proverbial olive branch.
“The School Committee is completely aware that Worthington has been pursuing this for five years, ever since the school (R.H. Conwell Elementary) was closed,” she said. “They’ve been very vocal and plain about it. I think if we haven’t been able to get there after five years of very concerted effort, I don’t see how attempting to force Worthington to the table would move that process any further along.”
Sue Levreault, the other School Committee member from Worthington, brought up a meeting the committee had with DESE Deputy Commissioner Jeff Wulfson earlier this month in which he suggested that three groups – Worthington, the other six district towns, and the Gateway Regional School Committee – needed to come to the table to discuss the matter, and blasted Jacques for suggesting amendments at the state level.
“What you’re suggesting doing is not solving this locally,” she said. “You’re suggesting putting together amendments at the state level when this issue has not been dealt with on a local basis. We made a motion in January to have conversation with Worthington and it hasn’t happened yet.”
Levreault acknowledged the efforts of community members seeking to reopen channels of communication and that it is the prerogative of district residents to slow up the withdrawal process because they know what a Worthington departure would mean for the district financially.
“The numbers of what is going to happen to the district if Worthington is not there are now very real,” she said. “It’s not about the other kids school-choicing out, because they already figured if the all the kids in Worthington school-choiced out, the district was not going to lose money because the town of Worthington was paying more money. But if you remove Worthington’s contribution from these six towns, that is a whole different picture.”
Leverault also stated that there were many community members who asked to see the numbers years ago but that they never surfaced.
In response, Jacques stated he wasn’t advocating state intervention.
“I’m asking for what we’ve talked about at GTAC (Gateway to Ag Careers) like MOPC (Mass. Office of Public Collaboration) to come in and shepherd a local effort as you suggest. This is not about relinquishing control,” he said. “However, it’s important to know that a lot of the factors that lead us to where we are are from outside our sphere of influence… Having an organization like MOPC, which is here at the behest of the DESE, could help us on other fronts that we need to resolve to move forward. When you do it this way, the DESE would have to pay attention.”
“This is not an attempt to force Worthington to reconsider: this is due diligence,” he added. “I understand Worthington has put a lot of effort into looking at certain things, but can you be absolutely certain you’ve considered everything? And in all fairness to the other six towns, don’t they deserve the same opportunity to do the same due diligence?”
School Committee member Jim Kronholm of Blandford recalled a time “30 years ago” when the Committee was forced to close Middlefield’s Elementary School due to low enrollment.
“This was a traumatic thing. The people from Middlefield came down and complained, but there’s no way you could have a class of two kids in first grade,” he said, adding that he had filibustered an attempt several years back to close Blandford’s Elementary School to no avail. “We managed to keep it open for awhile, but we didn’t have the population. Blandford and Worthington have around the same population, so do you really want to have a third grade class of eight students? I’ll never vote to open a school with that small a population.”
While School Committee members recounted past experiences with the closing of schools, audience members such as Darlene McVeigh sounded off on the issue at hand, delivering a tacit slam to the Committee.
“I’ve been attending GTAC meetings since July, and there have been people that have reached out to Worthington to try to open up discussions, and the one organization that Commissioner Wulfson mentioned needed to be in these discussions quite candidly voted themselves out of that process,” she said. “This School Committee was not willing to go to Worthington, to sit down and have discussion. This School Committee voted it down.”
“I’m really tired of coming here and listening to the School Committee rehash why they made a decision five or 10 years ago,” she added. “That’s history. It’s over. It’s done. We have concerns and issues that we need to deal with. For the School Committee to basically put their head in the sand and say they don’t want to be part of the discussion is unacceptable.”
McVeigh urged the School Committee to vote to participate in discussions with Worthington and to write the letter to legislators urging further amendments to the home rule bill, which Eliason acknowledged before moving on to the next item on the agenda without putting a motion forward.
“I’m appalled,” McVeigh said after the meeting. “The School Committee had a chance to write a letter to the state and did nothing. I will be sending my daughter to Westfield for school this year. This made up my mind tonight.”
“It’s certainly not the outcome we were hoping for,” said Jacques this morning. “It seems that (writing a letter) would be a way to show support for the bill but to also do the due diligence so that all the towns address the ramifications. There are so many pieces to this that it’s impossible to know everything, and if we’re going to take a step this drastic, we need to be prudent and all the pieces need to be laid out.”
