CHESHIRE, Mass. — Cheshire residents are exploring ways to keep their elementary school open even as the regional district prepares to relocate its students to other schools. 

 

More than 150 parents and community members attended a public forum moderated by the Board of Selectmen on Wednesday night to hash out possibilities to keep the school running or resurrect it later. 

 

The Adams-Cheshire Regional School Committee two weeks ago voted to close the pre-K through Grade 5 school in favor of keeping C.T. Plunkett School in Adams open. The vote was along town lines, with the four Adams' representatives on the seven-member board siding with Plunkett. 

 

That's riled up this small community, which believes the needs of the town and the education of its children is being sacrificed on behalf of the budget pressures of its larger partner.

 

When parent Justin Kruszyna, a member of the town's Advisory Board, called on community leaders to "step up and rise to the challenge to save our elementary school and the future of our town, not quit until all possible options have been exhausted," he was met with a standing ovation.

 

But it will be difficult for Cheshire to find a path forward. Selectwoman Carol Francesconi said her board is already reviewing the decades-old regional agreement and considering how it can be renegotiated. 

 

Others, like Jason Mendonca, are looking into ways to appeal the vote, if possible through the state Department of Education.

 

"This isn't the end-all, be-all. There's got to be somewhere else to go," he said. 

 

School officials say it all comes down to the numbers. Superintendent Robert Putnam, arriving late from a school budget review in Adams, said an elementary school had to close to keep the district's ever-increasing budget manageable.

 

"The difficulty in part is that the budget I presented was a 9 percent increase and I was told to cut it down," he said. "My first thought was not to lose positions."

 

School Committee member Darlene Rodowicz, a Cheshire representative, said it was a matter of choosing education over electricity and fuel. Consolidating resources at Plunkett will mean more funds for interventionists and programming to give the town's students a better education, she said.

 

"I understand the grief we're all dealing with here," she said, but rumors of rejecting the school budget at town meeting aren't the answer. "It doesn't help our community."

 

Rodowicz said Cheshire's not alone in its situation. Towns in Berkshire County are grappling with a declining and aging population, flat state education funding, rising budgets and looming levy ceilings. It's been exacerbated for Adams-Cheshire because it's competing with other schools for a dwindling student population.

 

"We are in this situation we are in because we have too many choices," she said. "There are very few communities that have a public school, a parochial school, a charter school and a vocational school."

 

The district is losing about $900,000 next year to public charter school; McCann Technical School's assessment for both Adams and Cheshire is close to $1.5 million. And Adams-Cheshire spends less per-student that comparable districts. 

 

Parents are already looking to school choice out their children or enroll in St. Stanislaus' School — potentially costing the district another $200,000 or so. 

 

"I feel my charge is to make the most of what we've got,"  Putnam said. "And to try to retain students." 

 

He's looking to develop educational pathways focused on coding, health care, engineering and manufacturing and law enforcement/military. Coding, for example, could start in the elementary grades to help in retaining students through Hoosac Valley High School rather than trying to compete with similar programs in place at McCann.

 

"Make us the canary in the coal mine, make us a place to experiment," the superintendent said he'd tell the state. "The rules of education don't apply to us because of our low population."

 

He's hoping to bring together selectmen, finance committee members and school officials from both towns to plot out the future of this now divided district. 

 

That doesn't fix the position the Cheshire currently finds itself in. Francesconi said the town will establish a school reuse committee to weigh options for the building. The board's also looking at the example of Worthington, which separated from Gateway Regional School District in 2010 after three schools were slated to close. R.H. Conwell Elementary School opened in 2015 in the new Worthington School District.

 

"Worthington pulling out took them five years and $1 million," said Francesconi. 

 

Mendonca thought it was worth learning from Worthington to see if it could be done faster and less expensively in Cheshire. Others thought it worthwhile to push for a revote to keep the school open another year even if it cost more —- though that would likely mean an override. 

 

John Tremblay, another Advisory Board member, said the town's leaders had to find out how to challenge the ruling and think about how to turn this situation into an opportunity.

 

"A school is an economic engine for a community, let's build around it, let's make it the center of our master plan," he said, and asked who wanted to keep the school open. 

 

Almost every hand went up. 

 

A Facebook page, Cheshire Citizens for Education, has been set up.