Norfolk, Colebrook Hold Joint Meeting About Schools

By Avice Meehan

The Hall of Flags at Botelle Elementary School has been the scene of many important Norfolk meetings, but few have carried as much significance as the Feb. 20 joint session with Colebrook to explore how the towns might work together to address declining school enrollments.

It wasn’t quite déjà vu all over again—to paraphrase the great Yogi Berra—but it was close. Norfolk First Selectman Matt Riiska opened the evening by citing his own involvement in various efforts at regionalization dating back to the 1990s. Last year, he joined with Colebrook First Selectman Brad Bremer to bring the issue of school collaboration to the forefront, and the two agreed to create a joint exploratory committee.

“This is not a finance thing. This is about what are we going to do to provide the best education for our children,” said Riiska. “We are not going to make any decisions tonight. This is a very long process.”

Colebrook’s representatives on the committee are Becky Roy, a member of the Board of Education; Ashley Gawricki, a parent; A.J. Ruwet, a Selectman; and Andrew Bakulski, a representative of the town and a vice principal at Regional 7.

Norfolk’s members are Virginia Coleman-Prisco, chair of the Board of Education; Walter Godlewski, also a board member; Henry Tirrell, a Selectman and a parent; and Jennifer Listorti, a parent. The members sat together at the front of the hall; they have yet to meet as a group.

Riiska said the joint committee would be tasked with exploring a variety of options for bringing schools in Colebrook and Norfolk into closer collaboration. The mechanics of how it might function were unclear when Norfolk Now went to press, including whether the committee would receive a formal charge from the two boards of selectmen and receive financial resources for clerical or other support.

“I would like to see both towns thrive,” said parent Bronwen Childs, who attended Botelle and coached a joint kindergarten soccer team. “I am open to all suggestions.”

That spirit, while hardly universal, set the tone for the meeting. Many speakers expressed respect for both Norfolk and Colebrook, while acknowledging the difficulties ahead. There were numerous suggestions of varying feasibility: sharing a superintendent; looking at the experiences of rural school

districts elsewhere in the country; surveying students to understand what they want; using one school for “regular education” and another for “special education;” and creating affordable housing to draw more young families into the area.

“No town wants to close their school,” said Godlewski, who suggested that a long-term relationship might begin with the towns sharing a superintendent and building trust over a period of years. “We need to think big, to think long-term and to make slow, progressive steps.”

The last effort to join the two school districts ended in failure in 2015 when Colebrook voted no. At the time, and again at the Feb. 20 meeting, some attributed the loss to negative comments made about Colebrook by members of the Norfolk community. Although boards of education can initiate collaborative agreements, regionalization requires a more formal process and can only be initiated by the Board of Selectmen.

“We should be very thankful for what we have,” said Tirrell. He praised the quality of both schools but added that the towns ran the risk of even tougher decisions “if we pretend that the future isn’t coming.” Both Colebrook Consolidated School and Botelle Elementary School have enrollments that now hover in the low sixties. Those numbers are expected to continue dropping over the next decade.