CBRSD to Reconvene Regional Agreement Panel
DALTON, Mass. — After an outcry of concern from residents in several small towns in the Central Berkshire Regional School District, the district will investigate how to adjust its proposed update of the regional agreement.
The district has been functioning without an approved regional agreement since 1968. The agreement was updated in 1997 but received approval only from the towns, not the state commissioner.
For over a year, the district has been working to bring the agreement up to date with state law.
"It's been a long time we've been operating without approval. State law is we're supposed to be operating with approval," School Committee Chair Richard Peters said.
"Obviously, we operate under the state law, and that trumps anything we do in a regional agreement."
Although state law requires that a district have an approved regional agreement, the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education does not penalize a district that does not have a state-approved regional agreement, Vice Chair David Stuart said.
"The way it was explained to me is that it's essentially a legal review to make sure that we're not doing anything that's against the law," he said.
The district established a Regional Agreement ad hoc committee and received aid from Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools consultants Stephan Hemman and Jay Barry. MARS consults districts on creating regional agreements between towns.
After a year of work, however, the proposed draft failed last spring in three of the district's seven towns over concerns surrounding its voting method.
The towns that voted against the regional agreement wanted the vote for debt incurrence to be town-by-town rather than a popular vote.
The concerns stem from the School Committee's 2019 decision to vote by popular vote for the approximately $72 million Wahconah Regional High School building project.
"The [ad hoc] committee did work for a very long period of time, endless hours, and hashed everything out with the town people as well; however, that being said, I don't think it's a good idea to return the regional agreement and vote on it without addressing it again," said School Committee member Barbara Craft-Reiss.
"I think it's almost a slap in the face, and I wouldn't support that at all. I think the community is telling us they want to talk about it more, and I think we have to respect the community."
Fellow School Committee members agreed and voted during the December meeting to reconvene the ad hoc committee to adjust the draft based on the communities' comments.
The committee was comprised of representatives from the seven towns and School Committee members.
This new ad hoc committee would be composed of different people because most of the School Committee members involved have since left.
The main issue in the agreement is Chapter 71, Section 14D, which outlines the methods for incurring debt.
"The proposed regional agreement right now does have both methods of voting in it. And then the way it reads right now is that a town-by-town is the preferred method," Superintendent Leslie Blake-Davis said.
"So, you could take that back to a regional ad hoc, and you could work on that language so that that language is more acceptable to some of the towns."
Rather than starting over, the ad hoc committee can work on strengthening the language around a default voting method for incurring debt since that is the communities’ primary concern.
Hinsdale Town Administrator Robert Graves emphasized the history behind the concerns some towns have regarding the proposed language for incurring debt.
The concerns stem from a decision to vote by popular vote for the approximately $72 million Wahconah Regional High School building project. Most of the present members of the School Committee were not in office at the time of this vote in 2019.
The vote in favor of the high school project was just over 51 percent of which more than half was from Dalton. Becket and Washington voted in favor but Cummington, Hinsdale, Peru, and Windsor voted against.
Graves explained that some of the communities considered filing a lawsuit following the 2019 decision but didn’t have the resources to do so.
Communities have been urging the school district to work toward reducing its budget because district towns are also trying to improve infrastructure and road work, among other expenses, Graves said.
So, when the vote for the new school came around, some people felt blindsided, he said.
Graves highlighted the importance of looking at that history to prevent it from happening again in the future.
Tags: CBRSD, regional agreement,
