Stockbridge — The Berkshire Hills Regional School District Thursday (October 1) got down to the nitty-gritty, beginning a process that will clean up its regional agreement between the three towns in the district — Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge — and possibly change the way the district is paid for by each.
The School Committee voted to create a Regional Agreement Amendment Subcommittee composed of a total of 18 official and citizen representatives. All three town selectboards previously voted to form the committee. The subcommittee will be officially formed at the next two school committee meetings, October 22 and November 5, with citizen appointments on the 5th.
The first subcommittee meeting will be held November 12 .
The district is aiming for a new agreement that can be voted on in fall of 2016 at special town meetings. If that timing sticks, a new agreement will likely take effect after December 31, 2016, since the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education must approve it by then.
“When you open the agreement, anything could be changed…everything’s on the table,” said Mac Reid, a consultant from the Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools (MARS), who has worked on regional agreements in other districts.
Reid and MARS consultant Brian McDermott came to the meeting to help the district plot its way through a tender political and financial landscape over what is seen as unfairness in the method by which the three towns divide the costs to pay for the district schools. What school and other officials say is an unsustainably rising school budget each year has fueled taxpayer angst, but it is the regional agreement that was thrown front and center last fall as a primary reason why Great Barrington voted — twice in a row — against renovating Monument Mountain Regional High School’s deteriorating 50-year-old building.
Right now, Great Barrington pays about 70 percent of the total cost of running the schools because it has more students attending due to its higher general population. Stockbridge and West Stockbridge each pay about 15 percent. And this is what the agreement, as it is now, stipulates; that each town’s share of costs is to be based on student enrollment numbers from each. This section was last amended in 1979.
During the high school renovation controversy, many Great Barrington residents said that they didn’t feel this arrangement was fair, that it created an unwieldy tax burden, that enrollment numbers shouldn’t matter, and that it doesn’t make sense that money lines be drawn this way between three towns that sit right next to each other.
The district’s cost allocation, which Great Barrington residents feel is an anvil in their laps, prompted an attempt by a resident to propose a new division of school spending that was since tabled; and set off a controversial proposal by the chairman Great Barrington Finance Committee to shift the property taxes around to “make the town more affordable.”
Great Barrington residents have insisted the regional agreement at least be opened for possible changes, and last year MARS Executive Director Steve Hemman came to town to talk about just how that works. Hemman’s presentation drew officials and residents from all three towns, but mainly from Great Barrington.
The regional agreement was crafted in 1965 when, in the midst of a national and state push to regionalize schools, the town schools merged into one district. The agreement was amended several times over the years, the last being 1990.
The agreement is way out of date. It still refers to students attending Searles High School in Great Barrington, for instance, a school abandoned years ago and which a developer now plans to raze for a hotel.
At the Thursday meeting, school committee members each said what they hoped would happen. Chairman Steve Bannon began, and the rest echoed him. “First, to bring it up to date and clean it up, and second, to maybe find some consensus to find a better way of sharing the costs…at least exploring that.”
Stockbridge school committee member Jason St. Peter said he also wanted to have “something that won’t cause any division between all three towns.”
West Stockbridge school committee member Andrew Potter wants better communication between the schools and taxpayers on this issue. “That’s been a failure in the past,” he said.
There was some discussion about the sharing of costs to pay for the schools, and how equitable may not be equal, or vice versa.
“Equal is in eye of beholder,” Reid said.
This is the moment where the rubber meets the road, since this process, Reid explained, will take about a year, with selectboards then putting it on warrants for special town meetings, all three held on the same night. Reid said he did not recommend voting on the issue at regular annual town meetings, since it can get “buried,” and it would be difficult to schedule all three towns for the same night, which is recommended to avoid voter influence by another town’s decision. A majority must vote yes before the new agreement goes through the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, then hits the Commissioner’s desk for approval.
Committee member Richard Dohoney was worried about special town meetings. “They are terribly attended and controversial because they are expensive.”
Reid said that the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District recently got a grant for its special town meeting to change its regional agreement.
McDermott said a substantial change to the agreement, “something different with regional configuration” or funding formulas, for instance, may require an election. He said he would research that.
There were concerns about the size of the committee, and there was some debate about how many representatives should come from each town.
With help from Reid and McDermott, the committee decided on the following: two school committee members from Great Barrington, one from Stockbridge, and one from West Stockbridge; one selectboard and finance committee member from each town; and three citizens from each town. Town officials will be contacted immediately to see if they will serve, hopefully by the October 22 school committee meeting.
Bannon, who is also Vice Chairman of the Great Barrington Selectboard, said he thought it critical that selectboard and finance committee members represent their towns, despite the time involved. “We should compel them,” he said. “And if they can’t, they forfeit their vote.”
Reid said he and McDermott would come to the first subcommittee meeting on November 12.
The committee appeared to decide on a consultant to work on editing the agreement, and have the subcommittee iron out the deeper funding wrinkles.
“It’s going to have its own pace,” Reid said of the subcommittee’s work. “Let’s hope it gets done as soon as possible.” He added that the best committee members will have an “open mind and are willing to listen and willing to be part of a committee — knowing that it’s going to take time.”
He said there should be public forums to listen to ideas that can be incorporated into the process. He said the meetings are open to the public and subject to open meeting law.
He noted the struggle over a regional agreement — and who pays what — in another district. “Anytime you make a change there will be winners and losers,” he said. “If they feel it’s for the greater good, it works. If they stick to their guns, that makes it difficult.”
“My crystal ball says that it may need a little mediation,” said committee member Dan Weston.
“The bottom line…is money,” Reid said, and urged people to be “flexible.”
While Reid and McDermott headed back east, the conversation swung back to where it all began: Monument High, and the frustration with the struggle to keep the building going.
“I want to end up with a renovated high school,” said Fred Clark. “The big elephant in the room is the high school. It needs to be done.”
“My prediction is if we get an equitable distribution of costs in the district, Great Barrington will vote [yes] on the high school,” Dohoney said.
Buildings and Grounds subcommittee member Richard Bradway voiced his frustration with Monument’s constant repairs and those coming down the pike. “We cannot keep deferring things…we have an aging building.”
“Voters took that risk when they voted the renovation down,” said Kristin Piasecki, also on Buildings and Grounds.
