AMHERST (WWLP) – Amherst and Pelham have rejected a proposal to regionalize their elementary schools.

The Amherst and Pelham Regional School District Planning Board announced in May that it would not regionalize the town’s elementary schools.

The final report has come out, and it found that regionalization had insufficient financial and educational benefits to Amherst and Pelham.
This means both Pelham and Amherst elementary school districts will stay separate.

Amherst and Pelham already share a middle and high school, as well as a superintendent, but not elementary schools.

Board members expressed disappointment and frustration with the state’s failure to keep its promise of reimbursing 100 percent of regional school district transportation costs.

“The main incentive for districts to regionalize here in western Massachusetts where we have smaller populations and we are looking for efficiencies is this reimbursement of transportation and it was very frustrating when we had to project what the savings would be and we couldn’t rely on that 100 percent transportation reimbursement,” Planning Board Chairman, Peter Demling said.

The board was trying to make this work since Pelham only has one elementary school, but they did not see them saving money.

Comparison Time; Gardner in pipeline to receive MSBA funding with a reimbursement of 60% (60 cents on dollar for eligible costs), a while back, when the city began the process, it was stated there would be 80%, but as it turns out, that is not the rate for the entire project, so, it will be interesting to see the final numbers for Templeton's new elementary school, when we went in with about 62% rate, what the actual reimbursement turned out to be.

GARDNER — The city will soon see its first school built exclusively for elementary students. The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) board of directors recently voted to approve a grant of up to $42 million for a project to replace Waterford Street School and Elm Street School with a new building to be located off Pearl Street.

The proposed building, which will house about 950 pre-K through grade 4 students in its 147,120-square-foot facility, is scheduled to open in the fall 2022.

Superintendent Mark Pellegrino said he is excited that the city had taken one more step in its long journey toward getting a new school.

“Anyone who’s seen the inside of Waterford Street School knows that that school has needed to be replaced for a long time,” he said. “Elm Street School, as well, is just not appropriate for elementary school kids.” Pellegrino said he was pleased that the funding would not interfere with the ongoing $1 million renovation project at Elm Street School, because the city already had plans for it. “The goal is to have (Elm Street School) as Gardner Academy down the road.”

Mayor Mark Hawke said the grant presented is a great financial opportunity for the city.

“The reimbursement is going to be around 60 percent of the total cost, so 60 cents on a dollar in order to build a new school — that’s one of the best deals going because we are at one of the highest possible reimbursement rates,” Hawke said. “It’s a giant step forward.”

Pellegrino said the grant would allow the city to build its first-ever school designed exclusively for elementary students. He said the other buildings used over the years as elementary schools had presented students and staff with some unique challenges.

“We had kids that, in order to use a urinal, had to step up on a stool,” Pellegrino explained. “Not exactly healthy or safe.”

Another consideration officials looked at before approving the grant was the class sizes in the two schools, according to Pellegrino.

“When the MSBA saw the size of the rooms we’ve been working with, they (saw) that they were really undersized for a classroom of about 20 to 25 kids,” he said. “In terms of today’s standards, we are just way behind the times.”

Hawke said the idea of a new elementary school designed specifically for elementary school students had been a long time coming in the city.

“If you talk to all of the academic professionals, they’ll tell you that reusing high school or even junior high school space is not adequately sized,” he said. “And trying to retrofit Elm Street School for 21st century technology is incredibly difficult. (A new school) will go a long way toward improving the city as a whole.”

School Committee member Jennifer Pelavin agreed that it was long past time for the city to have a brand-new building for its elementary students.

“It’s great that the (new building) will be built for kids that age,” she said, adding that the need for the new school has reached critical levels. “Neither Waterford Street School or Elm Street School was originally built for an elementary school, so there were a lot of accommodations that the School Department had to do over the years to kind of fit them to that size of child.”

Pelavin noted that Elm Street School, which had originally been built as a high school, was designed with teenagers in mind.

“So the heating systems and other things were in places that you wouldn’t have them in an elementary school, where kids could possibly get access to, so we had to build things around them to block them off,” she said. “And it’s overwhelming for kids to be in a building that’s so much bigger and built for someone bigger.”

According to State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, MSBA chairwoman, and MSBA Executive Director/Deputy CEO Jack McCarthy, one of the next steps is for the school district and the MSBA to enter into a Project Funding Agreement, which will detail the school project’s scope and budget, along with the conditions under which the district will receive the grant.

“Gardner students will soon have a beautiful new space, which will undoubtedly enhance and improve their ability to excel in the classroom,” McCarthy said.

Sounds familiar:
And it does not appear to be caused by changing from a town accountant (town employee) to an accounting service. Looks like there are a few towns that struggle with "good numbers"

ASHBURNHAM — The fiscal problems of the small town are being untangled slowly, and the cause is being found and attempts being made to make it right again.

There was more to the fiscal story that floated to the surface at a recent meeting about troubles the town had filing with the state to have their finances approved and free cash certified. The town has not yet filed its fiscal 2018 audit. This problem centers around a change in accounting software from Munis to VADAR.

During a recent meeting of the Board of Selectmen, member Leo Janssens asked, “Where we were once on Munis, would it be costly to go back to it?”

Chairwoman Rosemarie Meissner told him that she had asked and it would be expensive to return to Munis, software that provides data management for municipalities and school districts.

The town moved on from Munis to VADAR, which Selectman John Mulhall described as trading a Cadillac with all its bells and whistles for a Kia.

Meissner said she was quoted $800,000 to return to the Munis software the town had once used.

She explained that when the town was running Munis, it received a reduced rate for upgrades, but now the town would have to buy the brand new package, making it extremely costly.

Interim Town Administrator Douglas Briggs described the problems of switching from the Munis software program to the new VADAR program.

“When the changeover happened, some of the numbers to Munis went over to VADAR, and they changed, so the numbers weren’t the correct numbers,” he said. “What we would have to do is have somebody go back in under Munis and see what the number is. ... How do you do that when the number is gone?”

Briggs said he will contact Munis to find a solution to retrieving the numbers and how much it will cost.

Meissner wondered if they could return to Munis and what would it cost for a short period of time to maintain the VADAR system so records can be transposed correctly. Meissner said it should take about three months to assure the numbers have transferred correctly.

Meissner explained that the town shut off Munis on June 30, and there is no way to access it.

“We didn’t have a backup, nothing. We went into VADAR and we didn’t have the full package. We did not buy the upgraded model,” she said. “We got the bare-bones model.”

“So we went from the full-loaded Cadillac to the stripped-down Kia,” said Janssens.

Meissner told Briggs that he should “make that call” to find out what can be done to rectify the situation where numbers in the budget disappeared. She said it also may impact other things down the line.

Briggs took over as acting town administrator after Memorial Day and immediately discovered that the town needed to complete the 2018 audit. Though they have tried to reconcile numbers between the treasurer and accountant before July, they soon realized they would not be in time to get free cash certified. Briggs said the town is getting close on finishing up the fiscal 2018 budget. He said the auditor was also willing to do fiscal 2019. They are still trying to determine the price, but Briggs said he’s sure 2019 will go much easier than 2018.

from the NRSD website:

“The Narragansett Regional School District in partnership with the communities and parents, Think about that for a moment.

"In partnership with communities and parents"

I think their partners just told them to do something, accept $19.5 million dollars as a budget base. Apparently that partnership is a one way street. Not only did the school committee just ignore their partners, they belittled them, chastised them and talked them as if they were little kids who do not know what is best or right. I mean, those partners only pay their bills.

As has been pointed out here before, using the dollars provided from DESE or Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and some dollar figures provided by the district, along with what two towns have said they will provide, added up, those dollars equal $19.8 million dollars.

Message to the school district - Take the $19.5 million before you really piss off your partners. Watch the you tube meeting of the last school committee meeting and you can view how they acted. Personally, I look forward to speaking to the district at the next district wide meeting, as opposed to being quiet at the last one. I hope they bring their car seats.

School committee wants to sit at a table and belittle Templeton residents; who paid for that brand new school, who provides the school resource officer, who is providing the fields that apparently the district is using for sports activities, where does the district office sit. The answer to all of those points is Templeton! So school committee, you may want to stop belittling Templeton by telling us we do not support the schools, we do not pay our fair share or someone pays more than we do.

I see in your spread sheet budget from first meeting in February, a dollar figure of $56,113.00 for practice bus to Gilman, as in Gilman Waite fields (you know, that long project to develop a recreation area for Templeton.

Lastly, I hope the district makes plans for many snow days because if Templeton has to make cuts, the roads may not be plowed in time for it to be safe to have school buses on the roads. Lastly, how about them wood chips, are they still at $28.00 per ton? Were they ever at $28.00 per ton?

The pile of dollars is only so big and there are more things to cover than there are dollars; hence, everyone has to feel the heat, even teachers and kids, it is called reality. Speaking of reality, if you live on Wellington or lower South Road, welcome to reality come the first day of school.

Something going on??

from the Town Administrator weekly report of August 29, 2019::

Town Clerk: – I spent a lot of time this week responding to a summons for documents from the State Ethics office. I attended the department head meeting. Continue to be busy with marriage certificates and vital records request. Posted the Attorney General’s decision on the general bylaw changes from the Annual Town Meeting.

In case you need some reading material, here is the Bump report, a study and conclusion by Massachusetts state auditor Suzanne Bump.

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/10/18/RegionalSchoolDistrictsMunicipalImpactStudy_1.pdf


A few of the things found in the report:

To address some of the challenges highlighted by the study, Bump has called on the Commonwealth to modernize its funding structure for regional schools by:

• Developing deeper incentives to encourage communities to regionalize, noting that the current incentives do not provide enough enticement for schools to give up some measure of local control;
• Fully funding its commitment to reimburse 100 percent of regional transportation expenses, offer stipends to encourage efficiencies to reduce transportation costs, and allow the use of regional transportation authorities to provide RSD transportation;
• Offering planning grants to explore the combination of existing RSDs into larger groupings; and
• Ensuring greater transparency from the Massachusetts School Building Authority on its decision-making process for districts that close school facilities.

Additionally, in the study, Bump calls on the Legislature to streamline the budget adoption process for RSDs and to examine and revise inconsistent funding formulas for children whose families choose educational options outside of their home community. Bump also called for RSDs to conduct periodic reviews of their regional agreements.

The Templeton Common Master Plan link.

https://www.templetonma.gov/sites/templetonma/files/file/file/final_report_1_22_10.pdf 


enjoy the read and trip down memory lane.