State Department of Education to Propose Legislative Amendments

By Wiley Wood

The Norfolk-Colebrook Study Group, formed in the wake of town referendums in December 2012, is nearing its second anniversary. State statutes give the group two years to propose a plan for regionalizing the towns’ primary schools, renewable for a second two years. The boards of selectmen of both towns voted in October to extend the group’s life.

An early draft of the regionalization plan was circulated last spring, but indications from the State Board of Education suggested that it would not be approved. A provision to weight the cost of the new regional school unequally between the two towns for an initial period ran afoul of existing statutes.

State approval is the first hurdle faced by the regionalization plan. It must then go to referendum in both towns. Only if both towns vote in favor will the plan be adopted.

At its meeting on October 23, the study group heard from Matthew Venhorst, an attorney with the State Department of Education, that a legislative proposal to amend the cost-sharing statute would be drafted by his department and sent to the state legislature in time for the opening of its 2015 session in January.

“We make many legislative proposals every year, and this would be one of them,” said Venhorst. He cautioned that the passage of a bill through the legislature was “a messy process,” and that legislators might reject or modify it for reasons difficult to predict beforehand.

“The issue,” said Jonathan Costa, a consultant to the group from Education Connection, “is that the laws were made in an era of expanding student populations, and that they no longer work so well when student populations are declining.”

Strong incentives were put in place in the 1960s to encourage communities to build new regional schools, Costa pointed out, whereas no comparable incentives exist now to help communities deal with repurposing a building that is no longer needed.

The State Department of Education encourages regionalization as a cost-saving measure and set aside $100,000 this year to promote regionalization studies. The Norfolk-Colebrook Study Group is largely funded by this program.

The committee also considered a revised draft of its plan. Fourteen pages of specifics about the new regional school’s educational program were scrubbed. “It seemed both unnecessarily detailed and potentially constraining,” said Costa.

The new educational plan states in two paragraphs that a pre-K to grade 6 program will be formed that will “meet all current state requirements for elementary education” and “will consist of many of the elements that are currently available to both schools.” The 14 pages of specifics will be appended to the document as recommendations, not requirements.

Asked for a timeline, Costa suggested that fall of 2016 was the earliest a regional school might open. It would require the state legislature to pass a bill during the 2015 legislative session—either a special bill exempting Norfolk and Colebrook from existing statutes or a more general one loosening the constraints on regionalization agreements for all Connecticut towns. This would allow the plan to be presented to the State Department of Education for approval in the summer of 2015 and to the towns for a referendum vote in the fall of 2015. That would give a year to form a new regional board and plan for the new school.

The lease agreement that would govern the regional school’s use of the Botelle building is currently being worked out by the two towns’ first selectmen, who will make a preliminary report to the committee at the next meeting on November 20 at 7 p.m. in Room 104 of the Botelle School.