1967 Agreement Requires Local Schools in Towns

Board Does Not Respect Voters Rights!


I was amazed as I sat through my first Region 12 Board Of Education meeting on Tuesday evening. It is perplexing that the majority of the board members have no appreciation or understanding of the rights of the voters in the districts towns.
The Educational Plan for Region 12 that was written in 1967 clearly spells out that each town within the district have a school and that the primary schools remain in their respective home towns.

Edith Kinney then chairperson of Bridgewater’s School Board and a member of the Regional Planning Committee told me exactly what happened. “When we first put the plan out to voters at a town meeting it didn’t fly because there was no stipulation that the elementary grades would stay in their home town. It didn’t occur to us to spell that out in the plan even though we had no intention of ever sending our little ones out of town. So we rewrote the plan to be sure that it specifically said the elementary schools would remain in the towns. Once we put that in writing, the plan passed easily, first in Bridgewater then in the other two towns.

We never wanted the board to change that or have the authority to change that.” The records in town hall verify Mrs. Kinney’s statement. This 1967 plan, is the plan that the Board has been operating under for 40 years, but the majority of the board does not think they are bound by the plan. They don’t believe that taking away a town’s elementary school is considered a fundamental change to the plan.

The state of CT in its statute 10-47(c) has clearly stated that a fundamental change in the regional educational plan would have to be approved by the majority of the voters in each town. Doesn’t it make common sense that a small town within a region shouldn’t be forced to close its local school because another town within the region has more voters? Bridgewater voters should and do have the right to decide whether or not we keep our school!

Keeping the elementary schools in the local towns is repeated three times in the regions educational plan, but it does not site specific reasons why each town felt so strongly about keeping its elementary school.

As a mother of two in the Burnham School and an alumni of that school, I can site just a few. We have binders full of research from nationally accredited educational associations that prove the educational advantages of small, hometown schools.

Our CMT scores are higher than the state averages and in many areas significantly higher. At Burnham School every teacher knows every child and every child knows every teacher – not just their own – but all of them. Its not about economy of scale for kids in school, it’s about individual attention, personalized plans and small class sizes.

The bus rides would be too long for our youngest residents.

The school is the hub of our town, and the kids feel a strong bond and connection to our community. We (Bridgewater) would be the only town in the State of Connecticut without a school.

Our PTO raises tens of thousands of dollars each year to provide outstanding enrichment programs for our kids at no cost to taxpayers. I think the great people of our towns can figure out a way to keep our kids in their local schools without spending a fortune.

The towns of Roxbury and Bridgewater have build to suit plans on the table that will do that. As for the Board of Ed’s plan for consolidation - I can think of over 1,800,000 better ways to spend our tax dollars than on a piece of swamp land on a dangerous curve in which the Board of Ed. has already agreed in writing to allow hunting just outside of the perimeter!

Our kids deserve better.

Julie Stuart
Bridgewater, CT