AMHERST — Amherst and Pelham elementary schools will not be regionalizing any time soon.
On Tuesday, the Regional School District Planning Board voted to not recommend regionalization after examining the issue for more than a year.
“The goal from the beginning was to determine if this was a win-win for both towns. In the end, we concluded that it wasn’t,” said Peter Demling, the board’s chairman.
The vote was unanimous, with five of six board members in attendance at the meeting. Since early 2018, the board has met regularly to discuss the issue — 41 times by Demling’s count.
Amherst and Pelham already share a middle and high school, along with a superintendent, but not elementary schools. Financial stability was a draw for Pelham to regionalize.
“For Pelham as a small town, with a small school budget, regionalizing would have, I think, provided additional financial stability for the school,” said the board’s vice chair Emily Marriott, who is one of three representatives from the town.
Marriott and Demling said Pelham’s school budget can be affected by small changes, like a few students leaving to attend charter schools.
“Being part of a larger budget would help in that stability,” Demling said.
Lack of support from Amherst officials was a reason Marriott voted no Tuesday, she said. At a meeting last month, for example, Amherst Town Council members worried that regionalizing could interfere with their funding application sent to the state to fix elementary school buildings in Amherst. Amherst town officials “clearly expressed that they did not want to move forward,” Demling said.
Other complications arose in the process as well. The regional school committee would need to have proportional representation from both towns, according to state rules, which would be difficult for Amherst and Pelham as they are different sizes and the committee would give Amherst much more voting power than Pelham, Demling said.
Joining into one district could potentially save on transportation costs, as regional school districts are entitled to be reimbursed for those costs, but the state government has “consistently fallen short of this benchmark,” according to a 2017 study from the Office of State Auditor Suzanne Bump.
“It really turns down the incentive of regionalizing,” Demling said of the state’s shortcoming on transportation funding.
The board must write up a report, he said, and then its work is done.
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.