Re: Transportation Policy

Wavel Cowen

Fri, 8 Oct 1999 13:02:31 +0000

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Material for Special Education Update: In earlier issues of Moretown Matters, the projected extraordinary increase in high cost special education children at Moretown elementary school was reported, with the expectation that in the next few years special education costs would skyrocket. The efforts of the Moretown school board to secure legislative changes in special education funding to help alleviate this anticipated large funding problem were reported in the last issue of Moretown Matters as being successful. This good news was premature. Representative Alan Weiss was incorrect when he informed us that the senate had passed a bill allocating $2.3 million to deal with exceptional special education costs in districts such as Moretown. What happened was that Senator Jeb Spaulding, who was planning to introduce just such a bill, ran into a problem when consulting Department of Education analysts. Special education costs at Moretown were not projected to rise into the exceptional category until 2000-2001 fiscal ! year. On that basis Jeb dropped the issue for that year, but failed to communicate with Alan Weiss. Alan then inadvertently misinterpreted an unrelated $2.3 million discretionary spending bill, and incorrectly passed that information on to us. Jeb has since organized a meeting with board member Wavell Cowan, and including Bill Talbot from the Department of Education The result is that the Department will develop a needs criterion for exceptional special education costs as a basis for Jeb Spaulding to seek appropriate funding for next year. Well keep you informed of progress. Harwood Governance: A Harwood 7-8 committee including members representing Warren, Waitsfield, and Fayston, and supported by superintendent Bill Riegel is seeking to devise a so-called contract district approach (a number of school districts contracting with each other to support the operation of a common school) whereby middle school students at Harwood can be placed under the control and responsibility of a new board consisting of delegated members from existing elementary school boards. The Moretown board have indicated that this proposed new Harwood 7-8 board does not have their support. The Moretown board feels that another layer of bureaucracy will only increase the current inefficiency of Harwood (7-12) governance. They believe the only viable solution to the Harwood governance problems is to develop an integrated K-12 or 7-12 solution. It has been suggested that the Harwood 7-8 committee should check with the State Board of Education for a legal opinion as to where the Valley towns will stand if Moretown wont join the proposed contracted district. The Moretown board believes the current Harwood board would then necessarily still govern the Middle School, since they cannot abrogate their statutory responsibilities and the articles of association require a unanimous vote of all towns for any change. This would mean that the Valley towns would have no governing authority but would simply tuition their students (pay the costs) into a Harwood district middle school composed of Moretown as the sole remaining sending school, not having withdrawn its middle school students. More to come as this situation unfolds. Harwood Assessment: A resolution of the Harwood assessment problem, the problem reported in the last issue of Moretown Matters (the Education department ruling confirming that the Harwood board has been improperly assessing member towns) has stalled at the Harwood board level. Motions responding to this problem are expected at their next meeting but there are only rumors of content and speculation of support for those motions. We await a concrete proposal from them before considering a course of action. This contentious issue will be with us for some time. Newspaper

Wavel Cowen

Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:34:43 +0000

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Budget Ideas

Wavel Cowen

Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:58:40 +0000

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Re: snowplowing

Roberta Barone

Mon, 4 Oct 1999 10:07:31 -0400

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Re: Plowing

Roberta Barone

Mon, 4 Oct 1999 13:06:41 -0400

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Re: Oct. 28th Board Agenda

Roberta Barone

Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:29:05 -0400

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Re: Material for Special Education Update: In earlier issues of Moretown Matters, the projected extraordinary increase in high cost special education children at Moretown elementary school was reported,

Roberta Barone

Tue, 5 Oct 1999 11:33:32 -0400

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Re: Info for Newspaper

Roberta Barone

Fri, 1 Oct 1999 15:00:49 -0400

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Re: Board Agenda

Roberta Barone

Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:33:46 -0400

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Transportation Policy

JKH

Thu, 7 Oct 1999 09:12:16 -0700

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Security Policy

JKH

Tue, 19 Oct 1999 05:15:50 -0700

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Revised Agenda

JKH

Wed, 13 Oct 1999 16:20:25 -0700

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Plowing

JKH

Sat, 2 Oct 1999 09:36:38 -0700

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Oct. 28th Board Agenda

JKH

Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:06:32 -0700

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Harwood Assessment

JKH

Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:47:54 -0700

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Harwood Assessment

JKH

Wed, 6 Oct 1999 07:23:00 -0700

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Board Minutes

JKH

Sun, 31 Oct 1999 15:04:02 -0800

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Board Agenda

JKH

Mon, 25 Oct 1999 13:10:01 -0700

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Re: Harwood Assessment

David Deutl

Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:54:36 -0400

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