The School Committee plans to decide whether or not to continue to pursue the possibility of an administrative union with neighboring Boxborough next Monday, April 9, but first it took the opportunity to hear how Harvard residents feel about the idea with a public hearing Monday night in Volunteers Hall at the public library.
The members of the School Committee emphasized Monday night that a positive vote on April 9 would not commit them to forming the union with Boxborough.
“It is not about formally forming the union,” said School Committee chair Keith Cheveralls. “…Assuming we can come to a consensus next Monday, then the vote will be along the lines of moving to the next stage and signaling to Boxborough that we are interested in proceeding.”
This Monday, School Committee members Patty Wenger and Kirsten Wright, who served on the 12-member School Union Subcommittee, presented a report that attempted to answer several questions the subcommittee members raised during their investigation. That report is available on the districts’s website, www.psharvard.org.
During the current school year, the School Committee has been using the interim administration of Superintendent Joe Connelly to analyze four possible administrative restructuring models: a superintendent/principal model, a part-time superintendent model, an administrative union model, and the status quo model, a full-time superintendent. Connelly will be back next year on a nearly full-time basis.
While the superintendent/principal model has been taken off the table, the other three remain a possibility, the School Committee said.
“I just wanted to make it clear that [the union model] is something that we’re working on because we have this amazing opportunity,” Wenger said. “…But we are still looking at the other two models.”
Boxborough, whose superintendent also serves as the principal of the town’s only school, the K-6 Blanchard Memorial School on Massachusetts Avenue, is desperate to make an administrative change, Connelly said.
“They’re looking to move in a different direction,” Connelly said Monday. “They’re not quite sure what the direction is, but they can’t keep what they have now.”
Boxborough is also considering a full regionalization scheme with Acton, with which it currently shares a high school. Boxborough’s Town Meeting votes on that plan May 14.
Boxborough is proposing to share six administrative positions with Harvard: superintendent, administrative assistant to the superintendent, special education director, administrative assistant to the special education director, data/transportation clerk, and food service director. According to the School Union Subcommittee, all positions would be based in Harvard and the administrators would travel to Boxborough on an as-needed basis.
According to the model, the two towns would each contribute three members to a School Union Committee, whose major responsibility would be to hire a superintendent. That superintendent would then be responsible for hiring the other administrators. The local School Committees would retain control over every other aspect of their districts.
Because Boxborough has fewer students, the cost-sharing between the districts would not be equal. According to the subcommittee’s report, the split would be about 60 to 70 percent for Harvard and 30 to 40 percent for Boxborough. This would result in a savings of about $172,846 to $248,009, according to a preliminary estimate in the report, which is based on fiscal 2012 budget amounts.
Some of the Harvard residents who spoke at the public hearing Monday said the relatively low percentage of savings, compared to the overall schools budget, didn’t justify the extra work the union model would cause for administrators, the disruption of the school district, and what they said would be a loss of autonomy.
“I see nothing in this report that didn’t seem sort of obvious at the beginning,” said Maria Kaufmann, of South Shaker Road, “i.e., that there’s a tremendous advantage to Boxborough and almost none to us.”
Stu Sklar, of Scott Road, said Harvard would be giving up too much for a budget savings of under 2 percent.
Cheveralls said that, although the savings appears to be small, the district is projecting a $539,000 deficit in fiscal 2014.
“This is a very, very sobering number for everyone in this room,” he said.
Subcommittee member Mary Traphagen, of Still River Road, said she went into the study period biased against the union, and though she has become more objective through the process, she said, she’s still against it. “Given that we’re talking about five positions [besides the superintendent] that would be shared, that are people from Harvard, and they’re being asked to increase their responsibilities by quite a lot, and add a school population of about 450…To my understanding we’re not necessarily paying them more money, and that doesn’t sit well with me,” she said.
Jennifer Pinney, of Park Lane, said she and her husband moved to Harvard from Boston four years ago and one of the reasons for that was they valued the small town with a small school system.
“I’ve just been getting the sense lately that we seem to be moving in a direction that, to me, feels like we’re beginning to move away from what made this town special,” Pinney said. “I don’t think we should be apologizing for being small or for looking for ways to fill what may be seen as a void for being a small community.”
Betsy Williams, of Bolton Road, told the School Committee she had worked as a teacher in a school union district, but that district only shared a superintendent. She suggested Harvard limit the union to “large administrative roles that small towns have a hard time funding.”
“It was really very minimal impact,” Williams said. “I think, if you keep it to that, there’s real value there.”
Superintendent Connelly said that, although Boxborough has identified six positions it would like to share, the final union agreement would not necessarily involve all six.
