Posted by MontagueReporter - Sun, May 20, 2007, 2:47 A

Folks in Turners Falls, do you recall how you felt when you heard your community elementary school would be closing? You felt like the heart and center of your community would soon be shutting down, didn’t you? Well, the folks who live in Montague Center feel that way all the time.

Parents in Montague Center are constantly put in the position of feeling as if it is somehow a privilege to have a school in the center of your village where your very young children can walk with you to school. Wouldn’t the parents in Turners still be assured of having that, and all the positive associations that spring from having a community school, even if the grades in Hillcrest and Sheffield were combined in one school?

Children learn best not simply by being drilled until they can pass an MCAS test. They learn best by being in the middle of a loving, caring community of supportive parents, teachers and staff. That is what the children of the whole town have enjoyed - up until now - while attending Montague Center. As all parents of children who have attended Hillcrest can attest, the same is also true of children who go to Hillcrest.

This attribute of our children’s primary school education is in fact a very positive common bond that should unite our school district. Recognizing this, isn’t it possible for us to proceed in unity to settle the difficult questions outstanding on school configuration, rather than in discord and division?

This past weekend, it was disorienting to drive through Montague Center and see lawn signs urging people to come to a benefit school fundraiser in Turners Falls to raise money for physical education and reading programs for the entire district, and then to drive through the Hill section of Turners Falls and see signs that said “Vote Yes to Close Montague Center.” (They didn’t even bother to include the word “School.”) Which lawn sign campaign represents the spirit of community our schools need now?

The folks who put forward the petition seeking to “Close Montague Center” ought to have the grace to withdraw their support from the referendum drive. They should extend a hand of dialogue to all parents in town who love their kids and care about their education.

In cooperation we can best solve the problems that beset our schools. The costs of operating our school system have escalated beyond our ability to pay them. Property taxpayers are being saddled with the steady rise in school assessments, whether or not they are living on fixed incomes. A high proportion of our students live in poverty or come to school with special needs. Our high school has one of the highest dropout rates in the state. We are losing over a million dollars in state aid a year to school choice out. Those who believe closing Montague Center - and dividing one end of town from the other - is a method of solving any of these very real, very intractable problems, are kidding themselves.

Those who believe that saving the $150,000 a year that could be gained from closing Montague Center will do anything but worsen our school choice losses are not being realistic. Taxpayers who are unwilling to consider the one time capital costs of renovating Montague Center School, in light of the impact this would have on the annual loss of state aid for the more than 150 students who already leave Gill-Montague for neighboring school districts, are being plain foolish. This path leads one way: to enrolment decline and further financial burdens for all the taxpayers in town.

Turners Falls, did the taxpayers of Montague Center complain when they were asked to help pay for the renovation of the high school, middle school, and Hillcrest?

Two possible futures are emerging for our schools, and we have reached a decisive point. In one future, our school system thrives, balances the budget through fiscal discipline, retains and attracts school choice students, and realizes the full potential of the renovated classroom space in the high school and middle school by first filling the rosters of vital elementary schools, supported by their school communities. Another possible future sees a school system in accelerated decline, with further loss of enrolment and the millions in state aid that follows, with closing schools and empty classrooms at an underfilled high school and middle school. Montague can do better than that.

The schools’ endemic budget shortfall is solvable, if the good will of the community is brought to bear on it, not squandered in anger and division. As we balance the budget, we need to weigh the needs of our elders equally with the needs of our young.

Attention must focus mainly on the operating side of the budget, rather than capital costs, for that is where the huge deficits are accumulating and rolling forward.

With nearly 90% of the schools’ operating budget tied to personnel costs, it does not require a new math curriculum to figure out where the solution to the schools’ structural deficit lies. The mantra of the “Yes to Close Montague Center” supporters has been, “Money for Teachers, Not for Bricks and Mortar.” But after the dust settles from Monday’s vote, we are all going to have to take a hard look at just how much more money we can afford to pay those teachers - and the staff and administrators who support them - each year.

According to town administrator Frank Abbondanzio, G-M teachers get joint step and cost of living increases each year totaling 6%. The price for teachers’ health insurance - the district pays 85% of the cost of this benefit - will climb by 20% this year. Yet the town needs to hold the increase in the school budget to no more than 3% a year if it hopes to manage within the constraints of new growth and Proposition 2½. How will that be possible?

Of course, the school district needs to look for efficiencies, and the move to close a school is part of this analysis. But school closing needs to be weighed carefully - by the policymakers elected to do so - or we will easily end up losing more than we gain.

To cut the budget significantly, we are going to have to save more than the one or two staff positions that can be gained by closing a school.

In a union town with high employment and good paying jobs, it might be easy to support the steady increase of teachers’ and administrators’ salaries and benefits. But these are tough times, and the local economy is hurting. With personnel costs making up the lion’s share of the operating budget, it is time for school (and town) employees to take a hard look at financial reality in Gill and Montague and forego a percentage of their benefit package to make a balanced budget possible.

This editorial appeared in the May 17th issue of the Montague Reporter. For Montague, polls are open tomorrow, Monday the 21st, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.