Lanesborough School Committee to Adams-Cheshire: Thanks But No Thanks
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The Lanesborough School Committee on Thursday unanimously voted to send a letter to the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District saying they are not interested in further discussions about a tuition agreement. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Lanesborough Elementary School Committee on Thursday morning declined to enter into further discussions about a tuition agreement with the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District.
ACRSD Superintendent Kristen Gordon drafted a Sept. 30 letter offering to charge Lanesborough $9,200 for "regular students" and $16,500 for special education students for five years.
That letter came in response to a request from the school committees at LES and Mount Greylock to clarify tuition ideas first floated by town officials in Adams.
On Thursday morning, the LES Committee members cited several reasons to reject the offer before unanimously voting to send a letter saying, "Thanks but no thanks."
"The letter says that, with our money, they could possibly add on this programming," committee member Sheila Hebert said. "But if you're going to do this, what do you have already? What's disconcerting to me is they didn't already put what they have."
Gordon's two-page letter reads, "We feel it is important that Lanesborough knows how the tuition money will be spent in the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District if a tuition agreement is reached with Lanesborough. Below is a bulleted list of initial thoughts about this."
The letter than lists seven items, including "acceptable class sizes" and "additional AP courses."
LES Committee Chairwoman Regina DiLego echoed Hebert's concern about the lack of specficity regarding what currently is offered about ACRSD's Hoosac Valley Regional High School.
"Not anywhere have they shown us anything they can educationally provide for us that's better than what we have," DiLego said. "We're in the education business, not the money business. Not that we don't have fiscal constraints. We do."
For half a century, Lanesborough has been part of a two-town junior-senior high school district with Williamstown at Mount Greylock. Had Lanesborough moved forward with the Adams-Cheshire proposal, the Mount Greylock Regional School District likely would have been disbanded.
Earlier this week, Lanesborough Town Administrator Paul Sieloff told the Mount Greylock School Committee the town's Board of Selectmen has decided not to involve itself with the decision about the Adams-Cheshire proposal.
Committee member P.J. Pannesco pointed out that the Adams-Cheshire letter specifically mentions that the tuition figures cited "exclude capital and transportation" but does not specify whether capital expenses might be added at some point.
DiLego balked at the tuition proposal's segregation of students in the special education population.
"I don't even know if it's legal to set a separate tuition rate for special education students," she said. "That unsettles me."
DiLego also expressed displeasure that it appears Adams Town Administrator Tony Mazzucco "runs the region."
Mazzucco has been the public face of the overtures to Lanesborough. And after the LES Committee reached out to the ACRSD School Committee and superintendent, it received a reply under a cover letter from Mazzucco. Gordon's letter was addressed not to the LES Committee or anyone in Lanesborough but to Mazzucco.
The LES Committee members noted that Lanesborough residents already have the option to send their children to Hoosac Valley in the school choice program, and few do. Currently, three students from the Mount Greylock district attend Hoosac Valley under school choice; it was not known at Thursday's meeting whether those students are residents of Lanesborough or Williamstown.
The members of the School Committee recognized there might be some potential cost-saving to Lanesborough taxpayers under a tuition agreement, but they did not feel it was worth the tradeoffs involved.
"There may be people in Lanesborough who are upset that we're saying thank you but no thank you, but we can hang our hats on what [DiLego] just said: We want to be fiscally responsible, but our job is to make sure our children get the best program," Pannesco said.
In other business on Thursday, the School Committee joined its partners in the Williamstown-Lanesborough Tri-District in pledging financial support to the Berkshire County Education Task Force.
The task force asked each district in the county to pledge $500 to help support its county-wide initiatives.
The task force has representation from nearly every district in the county. As part of its work, it has issued a request for proposals from consultants to help analyze the risks and opportunities associated with four broad approaches to the county's education system: doing nothing, developing shared services agreements, formalizing partnerships between "geographically proximal districts" and reorganizing the county into "super regions," i.e. consolidating the current 19 districts down to one, two or three.
The money pledged from the districts, along with contributions from local businesses, will help fund that analysis.
DiLego explained that the task force wanted the districts to ante up so that it could demonstrate to state officials that the initiative has local support.
Pannesco mentioned that the $500 was one-tenth what Lanesborough authorized for a town study of its school system and administrative options a couple of years ago.
Tags: Lanesborough, Mt. Greylock High School, schools,
