First Student retracts commitment to bus students to Newfound, Plymouth

BRIDGEWATER — Prior to signing a transportation contract with First Student in May, the Pasquaney School Board received assurances that students “that need to go to Plymouth and that need to go to middle school and need to go to high school over at Newfound ... won’t be a problem.” By June 18, Superintendent Russell Holden had a different story.

“They will not be able to provide [transportation] for four families that have indicated they’d like to go [to Plymouth] to high school,” Holden said. “They just don’t have enough buses; they don’t have the availability of the drivers to be able to do that.”

He noted the company is not required by law to provide transportation to the high school, “which the bus company said it would potentially be able to do.”

The solution Holden offered was to discuss with the Plymouth school district whether, if they were able to get students to a stop on the Plymouth bus route and there is room on the bus, Plymouth could accommodate them.

“I wanted to have this conversation before I step too far forward,” Holden said.

The Pasquaney School District, which broke off from the Newfound Area School District and formally launched its first academic year on Tuesday, serves students from Bridgewater, Groton and Hebron up through sixth grade, after which time they have the option to attend middle and high school in Newfound, or the high school in Plymouth, through tuition agreements.

As part of the bus contract, First Student staff also said “half-days, full days won’t be a problem,” Holden told the school board in May. That also changed.

Holden noted the school calendars between Newfound and Pasquaney do not totally align, with Newfound having more half-days.

“The problem would be getting kids out of the middle-high school, getting them all the way, let’s say, up to Groton, and then getting back here on time to pick up the students here, to bring them home after a full day of school. And so what we came up with as a compromise would be to look at, again, a community stop.”

The bus hypothetically would take students to the town halls in each of the three towns, where someone would be responsible for getting them home. Alternatively, “we would have to figure out how we facilitate, potentially, kids here for an hour and a half or two hours under some sort of guidance, supervised supervision, and then they get on the bus here and go home. So not ideal, but certainly no one’s walking home,” he said.

The school board approved his plan to approach the Plymouth district and notify parents of the changed situation.

The board and its attorney had a meeting scheduled with representatives of Newfound on June 23 to settle the disposition of physical items and financial accounts as a result of the three towns’ withdrawal from Newfound.

“I’m very hopeful that we’ll have a resolution on that,” Holden said during the June 18 board meeting.

On July 10, he will meet with the state Board of Education to talk about an amendment to the Pasquaney district’s assessment agreements with the towns to set a base assessment around the cost of 15 students per town, rather than a calculation based on average daily membership.

Over the summer, technology coordinator Catherine Roman will supervise the replacement of the computer system used while the Bridgewater-Hebron Village School was part of Newfound. The main server, equipment, filter, firewall, switches and internet access points will be entirely new for Pasquaney. Teachers remaining at the school will transfer their Google Drive accounts from Newfound to the new district.

The school board has been putting policies in place to govern school operations, and Holden spoke of one under development to ensure protection of student data.

“Any time in the school district that we use an online program — an app, a survey, a third party, if you will — they have to sign what’s called a VPN, which talks about they’re now responsible for protecting our data, and if they violate that data, what happens,” Holden said. “And I’ll give you a great example of that. Folks might have heard of Power School. Power School is a student management system.”

VPN stands for virtual private network. Holden said Power School is required to put in place safeguards to protect staff and student data.

“Anytime that we go to use an outsider or third-party agency, they have to have that VPN signed,” Holden said.

Board Chair Jennifer Larochelle asked for clarification about the type of information shared.

“When third parties access our data for educational purposes, it’s anonymous, right?” she asked. “There’s not names attached to it.”

“It would depend,” Holden responded, explaining some state legislation requires an opt-in or an opt-out by parents.

“Either way, we sort of have to give parents that opportunity, one way or the other. So obviously, a college board, your name and things are there because that’s being released, right? But then they’re held to that standard of protecting that data.”

The school board signed an amended agreement with the Bridgewater-Hebron Village District to allow the school district to use the school, while the village district continues to maintain the building.

“I made some recommendations, specifically around the use of the greenhouse, to make sure we could utilize that for any science, not just horticultural, but any science to use that space, and they were fine with that,” Holden said.

Last month, Groton’s board member, Stephanie Sharp, resigned because she was hired as a paraprofessional by the district. Since then, only one person had applied for the position, and the board will be interviewing her just prior to its next meeting, on Wednesday, Aug. 27.

With all of the unresolved issues facing the school district, Derry Riddle, a commissioner of the Bridgewater-Hebron Village District, questioned why the board was not planning to meet in July.

“Are you concerned at all that your next school board meeting is after the next school year starts, in case you have any business that needs to be attended to?” she asked.

Larochelle responded, “I trust our superintendent to call us to order should he need to between now and then.”