WILBRAHAM — All but one proposed change to the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional District’s regional agreement were approved by the School Committee at its Dec. 19 meeting. The changes are far less sweeping than the restructuring plan that was shelved earlier this year amid pushback from residents.
The first change proposed by the district’s Planning Committee, which includes members of the School Committee and town leadership, considered which schools students would attend. Under the existing language, students are to be educated in the town in which they reside. The new language would state, “Residents of member towns [in grades 6-12] shall attend schools within the district as designated by the [School] Committee.”
Later in the document, similar wording regarding students in pre-K to grade 5 was changed to “residents of the member towns shall attend schools within the district as designated by the [School] Committee, except as hereinafter provided.”
School Committee member Michael Tirabassi asked if the change would regionalize grades 6-12. Superintendent John Provost explained that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education already considers the district regionalized, despite students being schooled in separate towns. The change in language would allow the district to address issues like overcrowding and emergency situations. It was accepted by the School Committee.
On a related topic, the Planning Committee had recommended changing the current structure of student transfers between schools from approval by the School Committee to being at the “discretion of the superintendent for educational purposes only.”
School Committee member Tim Collins was adamant that when a school has reached the “maximum capacity for quality education,” students be put on a waiting list, rather than transferred there. When Tirabassi and School Commitee member Sean Kennedy said they disagreed with changing the existing language, Collins said the district needed to “put the brakes on.” He shouted, “I don’t want to see what happened at [Wilbraham Middle School] happen to any other school.” The school is over capacity by about 200 students.
Collins also wanted authority over transfers to be removed from the superintendent and the School Committee. “I want to take it out of the hands of politics,” he said. Kennedy countered that the reason they were elected was to make such decisions. Tirabassi said, “I don’t see anything wrong with requests being entertained.” For Collins, however, the concern was that parents would develop “an attitude about a school” and there would be an influx of parents pressuring the superintendent to transfer their children.
“I truly understand the desire for some guardrails,” Provost said, but said the “maximum capacity for a quality education” was subjective. Collins suggested the School Committee set that threshold for each school.
Kennedy told Collins that the principal of Wilbraham Middle School was consulted for each student transfer request, and they indicated there were no concerns. Provost said the existing language specified transfers should be made when “prudent” and “in the best interest of students.” However, Collins said that if the current language was enough, there would not be overcrowding at Wilbraham Middle School.
The School Committee voted 4-3 against approval of the new language, with or without Collins’s amendment.
The remaining changes were accepted unanimously. Provost explained that the next item would bring the regional agreement in line with current School Committee terms. Under state law, election winners should take office the following day. In practice, however, the district’s School Committee members begin serving at the start of the fiscal year, on July 1. The change added language specifying that member terms “continue until their successors are duly elected, qualified, and seated” and that ballots reflect this information.
Also pertaining to the School Committee, the next change changed the weighted voting system to align with the “one person, one vote” requirement of the U.S. Constitution. Instead of reviewing the weight of each member’s vote every five years, the change would review “the number of voting members and voting weight of each member” every five years to align with the towns’ censuses.
Another change that would bring the regional agreement into alignment with current practices concerns vocational education. While the agreement stated that the costs for that education would be borne by the town where the student resides, in practice, the cost of vocational education is split is rolled into town assessments. The new language indicates the inclusion of vocational costs in the district’s operating budget.
The last change would allow an alternate assessment method, based on a three-year rolling enrollment. However, while the Planning Board was unanimously in favor of this option, there were conflicting views on whether Wilbraham Middle School should be assessed regionally, as the high school currently is. Kennedy remarked, “I’m in favor of a Minnechaug Regional Middle School.” The School Committee voted to seek the district attorney’s legal opinion on how the school should be assessed.
The proposed changes to the regional agreement must now go to each community’s voters at Town Meeting, before being approved by DESE acting Commissioner Russell Johnston.
