De-Regionalization Disturbing

De-regionalization of Region 12 Disturbing,
But May Be A Necessity

It is interesting that Irene Allan, former Chairman of Region 12 BOE, would write a letter calling for reuniting the “Region 12 Community”.

Under her leadership the Board of Education became polarized and relationships with the town officials were seriously damaged. Ms. Allan used questionable tactics to get approval for investing in the Mundy property, first for authorizing the feasibility study and then for the option to purchase the land. Ms. Allan ignored the 2007 building committee recommendation for a thorough study of the consolidated school proposal in order to force a referendum in June 2007.
What Ms. Allan and other BOE reps need to review are the facts:

The “No To Consolidation” votes cast was 80% Bridgewater, 54% in Roxbury and 38% in Washington. This vote was in March of 2006.
The “Yes to Consolidation” votes cast was 15% Bridgewater, 26% Roxbury and 55% Washington.

Roxbury voters in the last BOE election voted by machine vote 2-1 to elect representatives supporting Roxbury’s majority vote of “NO” to Consolidation.

The primary reason to continue local schools is student achievement. There are 20 small town school districts in Connecticut consisting of a total of 31 schools. Comparing the 2006-7 CMT results for all 31 schools, each school was ranked from 1-31 based on the percentage of children achieving the Connecticut goal.

The results:

Burnham 3rd grade ranked 1st in Math, 6th in Reading and 2nd in Writing.
Burnham 4th grade ranked 2nd in Math, 1st in Reading and 1st in Writing.

Booth 3rd grade ranked 4th in Math, 1st in Reading and 3rd in Writing.
Booth 4th grade ranked 1st in Math, 2nd in Reading and 5th in Writing.

Dedicated effective teachers and strong parent involvement are keys to achieving these results. Why would you change anything? Why bus our youngest students farther away from home and their community? It doesn't make sense.

If reuniting the region is really the desire, Ms. Allan and others must honor votes already taken and stop the crusade to close the local schools.

We could then renovate the schools and focus on further improvements to the education process where it is needed.




Sharon Benedict, Ed Wainwright,
Roxbury, Ct. Bridgewater, CT.