By Avice Meehan

It takes less than five minutes to travel the distance between Town Hall on Maple Avenue and Botelle Elementary School on Route 44, yet the gulf between these two pillars of Norfolk life is substantial.

First Selectman Matt Riiska has become a vocal proponent of restarting conversations with the Town of Colebrook about better aligning programs at Botelle Elementary School and the Colebrook Consolidated School. He expressed that perspective in a summer column in Norfolk Now and has reiterated that view in the months that followed. To Riiska’s surprise, “nobody has said a peep to me.”

To be fair, Riiska has not spoken with anyone on the Board of Education, which is responsible for governing Botelle and has the legal authority to enter into a cooperative agreement with another school district. Nor has the Board of Education engaged with Town Hall.

“I have not been approached and am unaware of conversations he may be having with other board meetings,” responded Virginia Coleman-Prisco, board chair. “Matt is always welcome to any meeting and does not need an invitation. If he wants an item on the agenda, he is free to reach out.”

Riiska has decided to take matters into his own hands and is planning a meeting in November with his counterpart, Colebrook First Selectman Bradley Bremer, to jumpstart a process for bringing the two school districts together. Enrollment at each school is low—59 students at Botelle and 60 at Colebrook—and has fallen below the projections made a decade ago when consolidation was last considered.

“Once we come up with our ideas on what could happen, we could start the process for a cooperative agreement or consolidation,” said Riiska. “The two of us could go to the Norfolk Board of Education and the Colebrook Board of Education.”

Riiska, who describes Botelle as an “unbelievable” building, said the issue for him is not the money Norfolk taxpayers invest in education. But he is prepared for resistance.

“Is it going to hurt? Yeah,” said Riiska. “Change is not easy and sometimes it’s painful.”