Bridgewater votes to withdraw from Newfound School District

BRIDGEWATER — An overflow crowd voted, 291-28, to withdraw from School Administrative Unit 4 during Town Meeting on March 12. The overwhelming support surprised even proponents of the plan to form a “special-purpose” school district for the towns of Bridgewater, Groton and Hebron.

The two other towns also must vote affirmatively for the withdrawal measure to take effect. Groton voters will be deciding on Saturday, March 16, and Hebron voters will take up withdrawal at their town meeting on Tuesday, May 14. Should any of those towns vote against the measure, the three towns would remain part of the Newfound Area School District.

Attendance at the meeting was unusually high, with the crowd filling Town Hall and spilling over into extra meeting space at the fire station next door, connected by large monitors with sound that allowed them to participate. With the parking lot full, the town arranged for additional parking at the Bridgewater Inn and the Bridgewater-Hebron Village school, with a shuttle bus.

The agenda included only two items: the withdrawal and the town’s operating budget.

Selectboard member Terry Murphy offered a successful budget amendment that added $40,000, for a total budget figure of $1.8 million. Murphy explained the increase was to cover the cost of a new ambulance.

He said the town had to return the original ambulance body because Ford had sent one with an inadequate front vehicle weight capacity. The delay, coupled with price increases associated with the supply-chain issues from the pandemic, made it more expensive than originally anticipated.

Murphy spoke of other issues with highway equipment that also cut into the budget, but said the town expects $40,000 will cover the shortfalls, and he added, if there is any money left over, the selectboard plans to apply it to reduce the tax rate.

The amended budget passed on a strong voice vote.

The main focus of the meeting was the school district withdrawal. The selectboard unanimously supported the move, making a strong pitch for it in the Town Report.

Once everyone was seated — nearly a half-hour after the scheduled start of the business meeting — the article almost immediately went to a ballot vote. The only discussion was around procedures for the vote and how to protect the decision from reconsideration afterward.

As noted in the Town Report, it was a petitioned article seeking to amend the apportionment formula for school expenses that prompted the withdrawal effort. While the school formula study committee ultimately decided to let the existing apportionment plan to stand for the time being, “By the fall of 2022, the Select Boards of the (almost) impacted towns (Bridgewater, Hebron and Groton) fully realized our vulnerability to becoming potential ‘donors’ to the other towns in SAU4,” the selectboard wrote.

That was not the only issue prompting the withdrawal, which stretched back to when the Newfound Area School District was part of SAU 2 with Inter-Lakes and Ashland. The seven Newfound Area towns, like other communities in large multi-district SAUs, felt their needs were not being sufficiently addressed by a large central office, and broke away to form SAU 4, taking with them Assistant Superintendent, George Corrette. Corrette would go on to be the longest-serving superintendent for Newfound schools.

The seven towns shared common interests and the arrangement worked well, except when it came time to address building maintenance and expansion. When large spending projects required bonding, the individual towns were not always united in their willingness to pay for projects in other towns. It became a given that, in order to address one school’s needs, the school board would have to promise to make improvements to schools throughout the district, leading to higher project costs and reductions in the scope of the work — the “band-aid” approach to building needs.

Bridgewater and Hebron residents came to recognize the district as a whole would likely never agree to the construction of the school they wanted, and took an unprecedented approach: They used the village district formula to create the Bridgewater-Hebron Village District and built their own school, which they agreed to lease to the Newfound Area School District for $1 a year. Newfound would provide the curriculum and teaching staff, while the village district would handle maintenance.

In building the school, they designed it for future expansion, with the idea of eventually making it into a K-8 school, as an alternative to the 4-4-4 (elementary, middle, and high school) structure. John Davis, the superintendent at the time, was enthusiastic about the innovative approach.

Subsequent superintendents, however, did not support the idea of offering both middle school and K-8 options, and blocked the two towns’ efforts at offering an alternative to the existing structure.

Bridgewater and Hebron also saw a decline in student test scores once they entered middle school, and viewed that as evidence that middle school education was less effective than what they could offer in a traditional K-8 structure.

As the school district began experiencing declining enrollments, Bridgewater’s representative to the school board, Vincent Migliore, now deceased, proposed closing the middle school, which led to a K-8 study that ultimately failed to gain support. Meanwhile, middle school test scores starting getting better, making that argument less effective.

The formula study changed all that.

Parallel to those developments, the Hill School District withdrew from Franklin’s SAU 18 for many of the same reasons Newfound had withdrawn from SAU 2. The Newfound district welcomed Hill tuition students and, by last year, was looking to renew their 10-year tuition agreement with the possibility of accepting Hill into SAU 4.

When the three towns began considering withdrawal from Newfound, the leaders were hoping for a similar agreement to minimize the disruption creation of their own district would cause. They envisioned agreements for tuition and services that would keep them closely aligned with Newfound while giving them autonomy in decision-making.

Withdrawing from a school district typically requires all member towns to agree, but because of the Bridgewater-Hebron Village District’s special status, they would be able to do it on their own with appropriate enabling legislation. HB 349 gave them that authority, with up to four years to work out the transition.

The Newfound Area School Board opposed that option from the beginning and succeeded in pushing through an amendment to give the towns only seven months to develop an operational plan. The board then refused for three months to enter into discussions about what services it might offer to the new district if they withdrew. When members finally agreed to speak with the steering committee, they offered only to reach a memorandum of understanding to ensure students currently attending the various schools would be able to finish their educations at the schools of their choice. The board refused to offer administrative services, forcing the steering committee to refocus on the Plymouth Regional School District.

That obstructionist approach is what persuaded those sitting on the fence to decide they needed to leave the Newfound district, according to some of the voters who cast their ballots Tuesday night.

Tom Edwards of Hebron and Britta Matthews of Groton were the two most vocal school board members opposing withdrawal. Matthews did not run for reelection, and Edwards lost his reelection bid to Jennifer Larochelle, a member of the Bridgewater-Hebron-Groton Steering Committee. Edwards lost in six of the seven Newfound Area towns, achieving a win only in New Hampton.

William Jolly was unopposed to take Matthews’ Groton seat.

School Board Chair Melissa Suckling of Danbury was reelected, 1004-467, defeating challenger Anna Hullinger.

Fran Wendelboe of New Hampton unseated Nathan Saler, 644-527, with a third candidate, Michael Gilbert, coming in last with 369 votes. Saler prevailed in Bristol, Groton and New Hampton, but could not overcome his losses in the other towns, including coming in behind Gilbert in Alexandria, Bridgewater, Danbury and Hebron.

Ashlynn Hatch ran unopposed in Danbury, garnering 1,233 votes.