Blackstone-Millville school pact may get new language
Regionalization agreement needs clarifications, some officials say
BLACKSTONE – Cleaning up the language of the Blackstone-Millville Regional School District’s 51-yearold regional school agreement policy – described by some school officials as antiquated, convoluted and difficult to understand – may be the pathway towards renewed discussions on a previously proposed elementary school configuration that would allow students in kindergarten through Grade 5 to be educated collectively with peers from both Blackstone and Millville during the elementary years.
That was the consensus of town and school officials from Blackstone and Millville, who gathered Wednesday for the first of what is expected to be a series of occasional joint meetings to discuss school and school funding issues.
The original regional school agreement creating the Blackstone-Millville Regional School District was passed in 1967 and was described by School Committee Chairwoman Jane C. Reggio Wednesday as labyrinthine and tortuous to get through.
“It’s a difficult document to read,” she said. “It includes language containing an excessive amount of legal terminology.”
Reggio suggested that a first step would be for a panel of volunteers from the two towns to review the document and make suggestions not only for updating the document, but making it easier to understand and making sure it meets the current needs of the district. Those amendments would then be forwarded to the district’s legal counsel for a formal revision and then presented to voters in both towns for final approval.
“At the very least the language would be cleaned up to make it read better,” Reggio said.
Having an updated, concise and user-friendly regional agreement would also benefit any future public discussions the regional towns might have on elementary school configurations or de-regionalization, two concepts that have been put on the table for consideration by various town and school officials over the two past years.
Earlier this year, Black-
stone Finance Committee Chairman John Wozniak proposed a study that would look at de-regionalization of the Millville Elementary School, which would completely sever all educational ties with neighboring Millville. The second phase of the study would look at the possibility of de-regionalizing pre-kindergarten through Grade 8, while the third and final phase of the study would focus on de-regionalizing the regional school district altogether.
A year before that, former School Committeeman William F. Chaplin, Jr. of Blackstone proposed setting up a subcommittee to study the concept.
“We are hamstrung by some of the things in this agreement and I think we can at least start by looking at the
language,” Reggio said at the joint meeting Wednesday.
School Committeeman Jack Keefe said he hopes reviewing the document would lead officials in both towns to revisit the concept of a unified elementary school system, which would allow students in kindergarten through Grade 5 to be educated collectively with peers from both Blackstone and Millville during the elementary years.
After four years of extensive study, meetings and surveys, a Regional Agreement Subcommittee recommended two years ago that the Blackstone-Millville Regional School Committee amend the district’s regional school agreement policy to allow elementary school students pre-school through Grade 5, regardless of which town they live, to be educated to-
gether. The school board voted to support the concept and to submit town meeting articles seeking voter approval in both Millville and Blackstone. Voters in Blackstone approve it, but it was rejected in Millville.
The Blackstone-Millville Regional School District was established in 1967 and includes one elementary school in Millville (Millville Elementary School, pre-school-Grade 5); two elementary schools in Blackstone (John F. Kennedy, kindergarten-Grade 3 and Augustine F. Maloney, Grades 4-5); and a middle school and high school in Blackstone (Frederick W. Hartnett Middle School and Blackstone-Millville Regional High School).
The district serves 1,882 students, has a 135-member teaching staff and is overseen
by an elected eight-member School Committee, with four members from each town.
Right now, Millville students only attend the Millville Elementary School in Millville, while only Blackstone students attend the John F. Kennedy and Augustine F. Maloney Elementary Schools in Blackstone.
Had Millville approved the new elementary school configuration, it would have allowed all students in pre-kindergarten through grade 5, regardless of which town they live in, to attend the assigned school regardless of where it is located based on grade level.
For example, all pre-kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade students could be housed at one elementary school, while students in grades 3-5 could be at anoth- er elementary school.
Keefe said he hopes the proposal is eventually given a second look.
“I think it’s important that we take another look at the separation of our elementary schools because that is what is really hamstringing the performance of our youngest students,” he said. “Millville suffers the most because of the division in our elementary schools and I think one of the ways to make our regional agreement fair and equitable for everyone is to integrate those schools and get our students together.”
“I think if you were to go around in a circle and ask each of us on the School Committee, we would probably be in agreement that we should look at unifying the elementary schools as one,” Reggio added.