WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — For the second time in four months, the Lanesborough-Williamstown Tri-District is looking to fill one of its shared administrative positions.

 

On Feb. 4, Business Manager Nancy Rauscher announced her intention to leave the central office in an email to the chairs of the school committees at Mount Greylock Regional, Williamstown Elementary and Lanesborough Elementary.

 

Representatives from the three committees will discuss the turnover at the post at a special meeting on Tuesday at 5:30 at the junior-senior high school. In November, another special meeting was called to discuss the tenure of second-year Superintendent Douglas Dias, whose departure was announced to the public in a brief public session that followed an extensive executive session.

 

Rauscher in her Feb. 4 email cited an email exchange with the chairwoman of the Lanesborough School Committee that Rauscher characterized as "unmerited and highly inappropriate."

 

"These kinds of threatening communications are clearly designed to create an untenable work environment, therefore please accept this as notice that my last day as business manager for the districts will be 2/17/17," Rauscher wrote.

 

The emails in questions started on Jan. 27, just eight days before Rauscher tendered her resignation from the post, from which she oversees the budgets for the three independent districts that share central administration.

 

Williamstown School Committee Chairman Joseph Bergeron said on Monday afternoon that he was surprised with how quickly the apparently acrimonious situation developed.

 

"It's very sudden," said Bergeron, who as chair serves as a member of the Superintendency Union 71 joint committee of the two elementary school committee members. "My first reaction was: I didn't see this coming. My second reaction was thank goodness we're as far along in the budget process as we are to wonder if everyone else is in the same position.

 

"When the response was, 'Yes,' then it's a matter of moving ahead in a business-like manner."

 

The dustup between Rauscher and Regina DiLego of the Lanesborough School Committee appears to have been over a $17,500 payment to school bus contractor Dufour Tours.

 

The email thread sent to iBerkshires includes a reference to that amount being left out of the fiscal 2017 budget in Lanesborough.

 

"[The] credit for the New Ashford Bus was to last for 20 payments — which would cover two school years at 10 payments per year," Rauscher wrote in reply to an inquiry from DiLego that is referenced but not included in the email thread. "My understanding is the credit would apply to 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. The FY17 budget did not account for the elimination of the credit."

 

Rauscher goes on to write that the district has the funds to cover the shortfall.

 

"To cover the difference, close to $17,500, I can request a budget adjustment at next SC meeting (along with a few other adjustments that are pending)," Rauscher writes. "We have money available in the Heat/Oil account to cover.

 

"I will adjust the FY18 draft budget to confirm we've accounted for the differential."

 

DiLego's reply, which appears to have precipitated Rauscher's resignation, challenges both the idea that money is "available" and the administration's oversight of Lanesborugh Elementary's transportation.

 

"The fact that we fortunately have the money in the heat/oil line to cover this does not make it any less of an issue, as the tone of your email implies to me," DiLego writes. "This is really a $35,000 hit to the FY18 budget as the anticipated rollover of funds will now be reduced. Think of what we might have done for children with that extra heat/oil money if we did not have to use it to recover from this error? Contingencies are for unforeseen expenses that occur such as building issues. They are not intended to be built-in mistake nets.

 

"This addendum came into being because the Business Manager, Principal and Superintendent at the time all did not bother to pay attention to how many buses we were actually using as compared to how many we were getting billed for yearly. I was horrified at the money we wasted on phantom buses. I am equally horrified by this."

 

Interim Superintendent Kim Grady was tied up in budget meetings all day Monday. The chairs of the other two school committees asked Williamstown's Bergeron to reply to questions on their behalf.

 

He emphasized the work that already has been done on the FY18 budgets at the three schools, although he acknowledged the timing of Rauscher's departure is difficult given the intensity of town-district budget discussions that begin in earnest in February with an eye toward the annual town meetings in Williamstown in May and Lanesborough in June.

 

"Fortunately, [Rauscher] had done an incredible job of getting us ready for budget season," Bergeron said. "The possibilities, the numbers, the contingency plans, all of that stuff has been worked on by the administration for many months.

 

"From WES' perspective, I can say ... we're way ahead of the game. We know the different scenarios that are possible and we're looking forward to the deliberations and seeing what the town can support and the School Committee can push for.

 

"There’s no doubt that missing your budget director in February is not an ideal scenario."

 

For the Mount Greylock School Committee, there is another consideration: This winter, the regional school district decided to reopen the discussion of expanding the region to include the elementary schools in its two member towns — a move that was studied for more than a year but put on hold to focus attention on Mount Greylock's building project.

 

The twin departures of the Tri-District's superintendent and business manager could be seen as a sign of turmoil at the central administration office.

 

Bergeron declined to speculate on how the latest shakeup could impact the regionalization talks but said the mechanics of the three districts' relationship likely will be on the table Tuesday evening.

 

"We need to figure out what about the current setup is not working, what is working and the topic of regionalization is part of that, of course," he said. "[If the districts joined one region], we would move from being a specialized school structure to one that everyone knows and understands. The opposite end of that spectrum is to separate all three schools.

 

"I would agree with the notion that we need to evaluate our structure."