WARWICK — Residents at Town Meeting on Saturday approved the town withdrawing from the Pioneer Valley Regional School District.
The Annual Town Meeting, which took place outside Town Hall on Saturday afternoon, also saw the unanimous approval of all other articles on the 19-article warrant — including a $2.2 million budget.
The affirmative vote to withdraw from the district followed an hour-long discussion on what was expected to be the final article on Saturday’s warrant.
That’s because Article 19 — which sought to approve the withdrawal from the regional school district as “expeditiously as possible” — was pushed forward in the warrant after a resident made a motion to address the article of “utmost importance” sooner rather than later.
Withdrawing from the regional district has been discussed by members of the Warwick Selectboard and Warwick Education Committee since the Pioneer School Committee’s January vote to close the Warwick Community School.
“(The region) is using the closure of the elementary schools to protect the larger towns in the district,” said Selectboard member Lawrence “Doc” Pruyne. “As the person who has to safeguard the fiscal health of Warwick, I cannot in good conscience recommend that the town remains associated with a district that would do that to us.”
Although the discussion on Article 19 seemed to center largely around statements in support of withdrawing from the Pioneer Valley Regional District, there were a few questions and concerns expressed regarding costs associated with leaving the district, as well as what would happen to the middle school and high school students.
In response to voters’ question about cost, Finance Committee member Diana Noble said the town would have a continuing responsibility to pay for the town’s portion of the retirement expenses for those who have already retired; but otherwise, she didn’t anticipate a major change in expenses to the town.
One or two residents raised concern for the middle school and high school students, noting the town would lose its say in their curriculum and what happens to them.
Selectboard member Brian Snell explained that the town plans to meet next week with the district to discuss a tuition agreement that has bussing costs built in for middle and high school students who wish to continue at Pioneer.
“I do not anticipate the district having concerns about us reaching into that agreement,” he said. “A real concern is that we have a closed elementary school in a building that we own.”
He added that the town has already “lost control” in much of its say with the district.
A number of parents, such as Shauna Mallet, offered their concerns with remaining part of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District.
“The superintendent told us to think outside the box; Warwick did, and they closed our school anyway,” Mallet said. “We don’t have a voice. I for one am not putting my children on that road for 45 minutes to an hour, two times a day, to go to Northfield. So my vote is to leave the district.”
Tom Wyatt of the Warwick Education Committee said were the town to leave the district, the current consideration right now is to join a superintendency union.
“This is a proven model, and it provides more local control,” Wyatt said. “There are several towns near us … that are part of unions. We’ve already had preliminary talks with these towns, but the idea is for us to be part of a superintendency union where we can share some of the administrative costs.”
He noted that it’s hard to fund a school, which is why sharing the costs seems like “a very good option.”
Pruyne said he wasn’t aware of any downsides to joining a superintendency union, but that local control is a key component in joining one.
“The upside,” he said, “is that we have … local control over the management and the running of our school while we’re sharing administrative costs at a level that we need.”
Ultimately, the article passed with just a handful of down votes.
“If there was a better choice, I think we would have come up with it by now,” said Adam Holloway of the Warwick Education Committee. “I hope we would have. I’m confident we would have. If there was something better we could have done with this district to make it work, I can assure you … we would have come up with it by now.
Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 263. Twitter: @MaryEByrne