10/1 Regional School Committee meeting started with moment of silence for John Musante
Only you overly dialed in folks probably know about the Amherst Regional Public School sponsored forum tomorrow night (6:30 PM) at the High School Library.
With all that is going on in the schools -- merging the Middle School into the High School, renovating or replacing Wildwood Elementary -- it's hard to keep track of major issues.
This forum is regarding regionalizing the entire four town District from the current 7-12 all the way down to kindergarten through 6th grade.
The move requires ALL FOUR TOWNS to vote yes to reopening the Regional Agreement, but then a town could still vote no to actually joining the expanded Region.
One of the biggest mistakes school officials have made over the past FOUR YEARS on this particular subject is not embracing transparency and outreach on this important topic.
The Regional School Committee heard a report at their October 1 meeting from a hastily appointed sub-committee on the Public Relations efforts used to promote the forums, which will be held in all four towns: Amherst goes first tomorrow, Leverett on October 21, Shutesbury on November 18. Pelham has yet to schedule theirs.
The presentation will, naturally, rely on a Powerpoint presentation. Superintendent Maria Geryk said the goal is "to make the presentations as short as possible and spend as much time as possible answering questions."
Regional School Committee members will also be on hand to answer questions as well, although a quorum is not necessary.
Interestingly presenters will include Sandy Pooler the town's Finance Director, not Sean Mangano the School District's top finance guy; and Select Board Chair Alisa Brewer (the town's highest elected official), who was formerly a School Committee member. And Town Meeting moderator Jim Pistrang will moderate.
Lets hope all the town/school officials don't outnumber the audience.
24 comments:
The ARPS web page on regionalization is buried multiple levels down on the site, under School Committee, plus most of the regionalization info shown there is years old at this point (that's how much the regionalization subcommittee has been meeting..... ). There has been so little outreach until now throughout most of the process. It seems a bit like too little, too late at this point.
On a related topic (public attendance & participation in public forums) at the one last Tues on the elementary school study & possible consolidation, at the 3:30 pm forum, the number of ARPS & town staff almost did outnumber the parents & members of the publidc who attended. Fortunately, the numbers were a little better at the 7 pm forum.
Also, I have heard that for the Nov 7th Hurricane Visioning Summit with Ellen Story (on the MS-HS consolidation & more), attendance is limited & RSVPs required Do the ARPS administrators think that many people wil want to spend 6 hours on a Sat on these topics? & what kind of public process is it when the public is told up front that only chosen people will be able to atttend. it would be nice if it were open to all.
A high school student expressed to me the thought she said was prevalent: we're in High School now. We don't want to see middle-schoolers here. What kind of scheduling of the use of equipment for, say, music ensembles like chorus has been worked out? Too early to say?
Attendance at the Elementary school project was pretty terrible. Not many people in the town know about this project that could potentially close Fort River and Wildwood schools. They are making a decision on the town's behalf on November 3 without properly getting the word out or doing enough research on the affects of a large consolidated school.
Just got a robo call about this meeting. 4:32 pm. The first time I've gotten the actual date. 27 hours of advance notice. Lol.
Why are all these meetings and decisions on all these changes being held separately--closing Fort River, moving the middle school into the high school, adding Shutesbury, Leverett, Amherst and Pelham elementary schools into the regional district, moving Amherst elementary students into Crocker pre-1 and a new building 2-6, etc? Why is Revisioning different from Wildwood rebuilding and regionalization? Why isn't detailed information on these proposals being sent out to parents and the community? Do we have to go to all the meetings to get information and participate? Why do you have to be a White House insider to know what is going on?
Janet McGowan
Nov 3rd? That is less than a month away. yikes!
I have heard repeatedly that regionalization will cost the town of Amherst & Amherst tax payers more than the schools cost now.... even as, as the slides say, regionalization will promote financial stability. The powerpoint presentation for the forum tomorrow is short on the details about the costs or savings to each of the towns of the regionalization. Will regionalization indeed cost Amherst more? If so, why is it such a good idea for Amherst?
& if the School Committee votes in Nov to consolidate the Amherst elem schools from 3 to 2, how could this impact elementary school regionalization? (aside from the fact that a 750+ student school, as the proposed grade 2-6 town school would be) is more than 4-5+ times the size of the individual Pelham, Leverett, & Shutesbury elementary schools. In 2014-2015, according to the state's school profiles, Pelham had 120 students, Leverett 133 students, & Shutesbury 155 students.
I hope no one thinks these forums are a process through which your opinion will be considered. These are all presentations. Save yourselves some time and bullshit and just read the reports. The forums are a place for disinformation and obfuscation. The ONLY time that community members (and then on Town Meeting members) will have a say in ANY of these decisions, is regionalization. In TM, DOA. How's that new IMP math going for your 9th graders? Confused? Frustrated? Angry?
Janet McGowan, I've talked with School Committee members who themselves are confused by all that's going on ... & all these BIG decisions being made in a short time. It's way too much for anyone... except those administrators who are just trying to push it all through.
I agree with you: who has time to go to multiple public forums every week/month..... especially when as Anon 7:25 pm suggested they are merely a formality. I was really surprised when the superintendent sent out a link last month to a survey asking parents/community members which GCC classes they would like to see at the MS in the spring 2016 semester, & what days/times should those classes be rescheduled.... this even before the very first public forum on the MS-HS consolidation has been held. It's scheduled for Nov. The survey made it all just seem like a done deal, no public input necessary. Has anyone even looked at what the demand for GCC classes would be at the MS and/or inventoried the other community college type classes that are already been offered in the area?
" I was really surprised when the superintendent sent out a link last month to a survey asking parents/community members which GCC classes they would like to see at the MS in the spring 2016 semester, & what days/times should those classes be rescheduled.."
Cart before horse- Someone needs to pull the reins on all these conflicting plans!
Sounds like the recommendation will actually be made on the Oct 20! Is that really enough time for a good discussion or proper research?
And who pays for the GCC courses, parents? To get courses that the admins have dropped over the years, or you can get for free if you opt to go to Smith Voke. SV provides a more thorough training too
Anyone remember the point of regionalization?
The GCC stuff you hear about now has nothing do to with moving ARMS to ARHS (yet) because it is all about NIGHT courses, not during the day. That is why it is not “cart before the horse”. If ARMS does move to ARHS (yes, probably likely), then GCC may run courses during the day. But night courses is all that will happen before then.
The 3 big things going on are not “conflicting”. There is really no connection between them and can happen independently. And yes we can do these all at once.
Regionalization
The point of regionalization, in my opinion, is mostly simplification. One district is MUCH simpler than 3. That simplification will free up time for education and make it easier to track how we do versus other districts. Another factor is money, but the short story there is that for Amherst it’s a wash (no gain or loss) but for the other three towns, it’s cheaper. Why that could be good for Amherst is that we are very close to 2 of the other towns not approving the regional budget, which means we would have to cut more than Amherst alone would like to cut in the ARMS+ARHS budget.
Status: Regional SC needs to decide whether to send this to the 4 town meetings by sometime early 2016. There is some discussion that in Amherst it might require a town wide vote, not sure yet.
“Wildwood” School Building Project [bad name because it is more than just about WW]
The point is to replace Wildwood, which along with Fort River needs replacing. The key is which of the 3 options: renovate WW, replace WW or build a new school to replace WW and FR that would be grades 2-6 (Crocker would be PreK-1). The pros and cons of those have been very well explained. Look for info here http://www.arps.org/ and here https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1004059369645721&id=968374979880827&fref=nf
Status: Amherst SC has to vote on which of the 3 options to go with on November 3. Eventually town meeting would have to vote on funding the 32% that MSBA does not fund (and/or debt exclusion override). If all is a go, construction compete around August 2019. The next public forum on this is October 26, 3:30pm and 7pm (see arps.org).
ARMS to ARHS
The point of ARMS moving to ARHS is to save somewhere around $800,000 - not unlike how Amherst elementary saved $850,000 by closing Marks Meadow. But a secondary benefit is how the ARMS building could be used for the community, including possibly GCC courses during the day as part of that, which our students and all of us could benefit from - but other possibilities also. There is a lot of space in the ARMS building. FAQ is here: http://www.arps.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_926729/File/7-12%20Revisioning%20FAQ%20(updated%209-18-15).pdf
Status: decision being made sometime in January 2016 and if it is a go, implementation in fall 2017.
ah-ha! has the real reason behind why Amherst Admin wants to regionalize been revealed? "Why that could be good for Amherst is that we are very close to 2 of the other towns not approving the regional budget, which means we would have to cut more than Amherst alone would like to cut in the ARMS+ARHS budget." Of course, the next budget will be reviewed and voted on long before any regionalization could happen. Rick, I guess I don't understand how regionalizing down thru the elementary level would prevent the small towns (their Town Meetings) from not approving a budget?
And I guess the idea that the change is a $ wash for Amherst? Could be from $120k-~400k more/year. Hardly a wash, especially where educational improvements aren't even a part of the discussion.
@ 9:32 AM
"I guess I don't understand how regionalizing down thru the elementary level would prevent the small towns (their Town Meetings) from not approving a budget? "
It would not prevent it, but make it less likely, since they would have more money work with, thus less pressure to ask for more of a reduction in the regional budget. That is just one factor in this, as I mentioned.
Rick, it seems one of us doesn't understand: How can "they would have more money work with, thus less pressure to ask for more of a reduction in the regional budget" if in all, but two, configurations assessments for each town go up. How would that persuade the Town Meetings to vote for the budget? From where does the "more money" come from? It comes from increased assessments. Who is misunderstanding here? There is no "more" money as in your suggestion. It will not create more money to increase education efforts, such as adding additional programs, etc. Is that what you've been told (I mean sold)?
@10:54am
Assessments are lower in almost all cases. The red numbers are lower - see the chart on Larry's most recent post.
But one thing is Shutesbury does not see that decrease, and it goes up in 2 cases for them, so what I said does not apply to Shutesbury.
Shutesbury also does better (and other towns worse) under the statutory method as opposed to the alternate method of assessment, but that's another story.
"The 3 big things going on are not “conflicting”. There is really no connection between them and can happen independently. And yes we can do these all at once"
I see a FAQ quite regularly which asks "why can't grade 6 move into the middle school?" And the answer is "because K-6 are not part of the regional school system".
Isn't regionalization of k-12 what last night was about??
@1:45pm
Yes a K-12 region was what last night was about. If there was a K-12 region, then 6th grade could move to ARMS, if we wanted to do that.
But doing that does not solve the problem that 2 of the projects are trying to solve:
- WW and FR needs replacing
- saving money in the regional budget by not using the ARMS building and fully utilizing the ARHS building which is way under capacity
The only connection I can see is that if the 6th grade was moved to ARMS, then a 15% (approx.) smaller new elementary school could be built, if we end up going ahead with that. But that cost savings would be way outweighed by having to keep the ARMS building going.
Rick, why have the $ amounts changed from those in RAWG report. In that report in many of configurations, Amherst pays more (in others less)? Which are we supposed to believe? If any?
@6:00pm
It was explained last night that the numbers were updated by a year (more recent).
In the RAWG report of January 13, 2015, 3 of 8 scenarios have Amherst paying more, with the range through all scenarios of $136K more to $582K less. In last night's presentation 1 of 6 scenarios had Amherst paying more, with a range from $63K more to $419K less.
As far as believing the numbers, I believe Sandy Pooler and Sean Mangano provide correct numbers. One issue is they change a lot in part because of changes in population that shifts allocations.
Why can't the Middle School which is a great building be used as part of a k-8 district? The FAQ says it's because it's owned by the region but why would the RSC let the GCC use it and LSSE but not Amherst elementary kids? Why give up the best school building?
Rick Hood, re: the elementary "Wildwood" study, I have heard that even with the state MSBA paying over 65% of the construction costs of a new elem school or a renovated Wildwood, the town & school district may need town voter approval for a budge override to pay the Amherst share of the project. that seems like it could be a serious challenge to the project.
Also, why does the SC vote for a preferred option have to happen so soon? Parents have a lot of questions about the options now, including the one that the district seems to favor most, the new 2-6th gr town wide school option. Can the vote be delayed 6-12 months? What happens if there is a such a delay?
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