The editor indicated that without some explanations, many people would

simply not understand what we were talking about.  I therefore added

introductory info to produce the following School Board Report.  If you

want any changes (IN CAPS) send them so that I have them tomorrow by mid

morning since the paper goes to press tomorrow.

                Thanks ..... Wavell



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. We’ll 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 won’t join the proposed contract 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.