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HOLDEN, Mass. — After community outcry over Monday night's announcement of the potential reduction of 15 elementary school teachers district-wide, the Wachusett Regional School District School Committee has added a public hearing on the matter to its Thursday night meeting.
The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the media center of Wachusett Regional High School, and will begin with a 30-minute public hearing.
In an effort to close a district budget gap now looming at $1.5 million dollars, Superintendent Thomas Pandiscio on Monday proposed sweeping cuts that included the reduction of 15 elementary school teachers across all five member towns, with eight to come from Holden schools.
At Thursday night's special meeting, the school committee will decide if it can avoid any of the cuts and prevent teachers from getting pink slips three weeks before the school year begins.
"The decision was made to endorse those cuts very late Monday night," said Holden Selectman Bob Lavigne. "When I heard that over half of them were Holden teachers, I wasn't very happy with it."
Lavigne was especially concerned about the effect the cuts might have on class size.
"I've read the studies about how you don't want 26 or 27 kids in classes, and that's why I fought so hard to try to work with the schools, so we could get the funding to keep class sizes down, and now all of the sudden we're faced with that because of this financial mishap."
Lavigne contacted school committee chair Duncan Leith as well as other members Tuesday to request that a public hearing be put on the agenda for Thursday "so that people who are concerned about this can address the school committee," he said.
While the initial agenda was posted without allowance for a public hearing, an amendment was made to give residents the opportunity to weigh in.
"I don't have any pie-in-the-sky dreams that we're going to restore all eight positions, but there's an inequity there, where eight out of 15 teachers are from Holden, and I don't want to see our kids give up a good education," said Lavigne. "I understand Holden puts in a big chunk of the Wachusett budget, we have a lot of kids in the school system, but it doesn't make it right. I have the job where I'm looking out for the tax dollars of all of our residents, but like I've said all along, I want to work collaboratively with the school committee and see if we can find a resolution to this."
Comments (6)
At least there seems to be some good civil discourse here. While I applaud Mr. White for his balanced comments, I would also point something out:
If the project was, as everyone must acknowledge, fully $15 million over-budget, what does this say of the likelihood that had an entirely new school built on the site, this might well have similarly been $15 million over-budget, if not $30 million ?
It is things like this that make so many of us cynical about these public projects.
And rightfully so.
A good deal of healthy cynicism coupled with citizen activism (what some locally refer to as "agitators") may well have saved the taxpayers of Massachusetts and America how many BILLIONS of dollars in the Big Dig?
Your question about overruns is valid and these are the reasons why I believe we would not have had these with a totally new building.
1. Many of the cost overruns were due to the phasing of a project when you are doing renovations. With a totally new building these phasing issues would not have come up. A new school would have been constructed without the need to shift contractors and students and then move into a completed school.
2. With a new site for the building there would have been much more site borings done before a bid was done for the project. Where the renovation addition project was done it was “assumed” incorrectly that the soils around the existing school were ok to build on. When it was determined that the soils were not suitable the removal and replacement of the bad soils became a change order which in construction terms almost doubles the cost over what the cost would be if it were in the original bid document.
3. The field’s portion of the project had great challenges as well and caused significant cost overruns. With a new building the plan was to demo the old school once the new school was completed and use the already flattened area where the old school was for playing fields. Since the school was not demoed the fields had to be pushed back and up onto the hill near Avery Heights which was very costly due to the significant slope of the hill.
Yes, the Big Dig. And the Taj Mahal (HAT's favorite perjorative for the public safety facility). Is the plan to resurrect one of these slams for Mountview or do you have a new one in mind?
We should have built a brand-new Wachusett Regional High School. Everyone knows it. HAT, Ed Meyer, Mark Ferguson, et al, forced vote after vote, delay after delay until it was whittled down to an ad/ren that required four years to build while kids remained in the building. Cost overruns? What a surprise! Thanks, and a HAT tip.
See how this works?
Where I would disagree with Mr. Meyer’s comments is regarding the high school project. It is true that the project was way over budget however the better and more cost effective solution to WRHS problem would have been to build an entire new school on the property then tear down the old Wachusett.
Many in the community fought very hard against this proposal which ultimately cost the district town’s millions. So the people that fought the correct solution need to man up and shoulder some of the “blame” for the huge price tag for the new WRHS.
Sometimes the best “value” is to go for the best project not the cheapest. In the case of WRHS the best value was a new building and as it turned out it most likely would have cost less and we would have ended up with more. So the responsibility for the 20 million of overspending at WRHS is a shared responsibility.
The other points made by Mr. Meyer are fair game in my opinion.
Let's see dwilliams, the MA Inspector General's Office investigates the district budget and finds $139,000 in 'Wasteful Spending' and you call us the bad guys.
The High School building project runs $15 Million over budget then we lose another $6.4 Million in lawsuits and again you call us the bad guys.
Last September the district admitted to making two mistakes totaling $383,645 and once more you call us the bad guys.
Last month the district admitted to making a $1.2 Million mistake which resulted in them overspending their budget by $1.2 Million and once again you try to claim we are the bad guys.
Later last month the district admitted to making another $1.5 Million mistake and, you guessed it, you claim we are the bad guys.
So we have $139,000 in ‘Wasteful Spending’ plus $21.4 Million in cost overruns and lawsuits on the high school building project plus a $383,645 mistake plus a $1.2 Million mistake plus at $1.5 Million mistake = $24.6 MILLION in mistakes and you call us the bad guys.
When do you get around to blaming Tom Pandiscio and Duncan Leith and Margaret Watson and Cindy Bazinet et al for not catching any of their own multi-million dollar mistakes? When do you get around to blaming the people who actually made all these mistakes?
You people--and, yes, I do mean "you people"--who fight so vigorously to "starve the beast" of public education and then complain with equal stridency about the results that your efforts bring continue to defy all reason.
No, Mr. Meyer and Mr. Ferguson, caring about the children is not code for wanting to spend more money; it's a fervent attempt by some to invest in our children by giving those who teach them--and those who support those efforts of instruction--sufficient resources to carry out their jobs.