State Board of Education Agrees to Recommend a 10-Year Waiver
By Ruth Melville

The plan to create a new regional school district for Norfolk and Colebrook got over a major obstacle on the road to referendum when the State Board of Education, rejecting the recommendation of a subcommittee, agreed to support the Regional School Study Committee’s request for 10-year waiver of two state statutes. Without the waiver, the regionalization plan would be financially unworkable.

On March 19, the subcommittee had decided to recommend only a five-year waiver of the two statutes. The first, the Minimum Budget Requirement, prohibits a school district from spending less than the previous year; the second concerns the allocation of funds based on enrollment.  Based on its financial analysis, the regionalization committee determined that five years would not be enough time to equalize the funding differential between the two towns, and that three or four years will be required before the plan starts to yield savings.

On April 6, a delegation from Norfolk and Colebrook went to Hartford to present its case to the State Board of Education. The delegation was composed of Jeanne Jones, chair of the Colebrook Board of Education and of the regionalization committee; Matthew Venhorst, a lawyer who is the state board’s representative on the committee; Jonathan Costa, an educational consultant who has been advising the group; Colebrook superintendent Jay Chittum; vice-chair of the regionalization committee Sally Carr Hannafin; Larry Hannafin; and George Counter, retired Norfolk superintendent and a nonvoting member of the committee.

Venhorst, Costa and Jones addressed the Board of Education, as did Kathy Dempsey, chief financial officer and acting legal director of the State Department of Education. After hearing arguments from both sides, the Board of Education voted to propose to the state legislature that the 10-year waiver be granted.

Jeanne Jones calls this “a good step forward,” but notes that the proposed amendment to the state statutes still has to be approved by the General Assembly. The current legislative session ends June 3. If the amendment passes, the next step would be to obtain the State Department of Education’s approval of the study committee’s draft plan for the new regional school district. If the Department of Education approves the plan, the committee then has 90 days to hold a referendum in each town. Both towns must vote yes for the plan to go ahead.