During Tuesday night’s meeting, the ConVal School Board rebutted public statements from the Francestown School Committee and the Dublin Select Board alleging the board presented “inflated”  numbers at a recent community forum about the two towns’ proposals to withdraw from the ConVal School District.

The letters, signed by Laura Mafera of the Francestown School Committee and Carole Monroe of the Dublin Select Board, included requests  “that the district disclose its supporting data and calculations behind this misleading presentation.” A column based on the Francestown letter was published in the Feb. 27 Ledger-Transcript.

Superintendent Ann Forrest said that she was in the process of gathering all relevant data used to create the information provided at the forum, including “assumptions, notes, emails and records of district Budget and Property Committee.”

Curtis Hamilton, School Board representative from Greenfield, read a statement addressing claims in the statements from both Francestown and Dublin.

“The first point their letter makes is to assert that ConVal has refused a meeting with their School Committee. To this point, I will note that we have had six months of discussions during the feasibility study. We had discussions during the community forum and we have had discussions when representatives from Francestown have come to committee meetings. Negotiations can only begin should withdrawal be approved by a district-wide vote. In the event this occurs, the Francestown Independent School District would form a school board and negotiations would begin between the ConVal District and the independent district,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton’s statement also responded to allegations that the district had not provided information as requested.

“This letter also points to numerous requests made by a Dublin representative to the Feasibility Committee for the source data used as a basis for calculations. A right-to-know request was submitted by this representative in October seeking a copy of the line item 2024-2025 district budget and project revenues. It was fulfilled on the same day,” Hamilton said. 

Hamilton also said that while the Francestown School Committee has recently stated its intentions to begin the process of also withdrawing from the SAU in order to reduce the costs to SAU 1, the process has not yet started. 

“I acknowledge that the Francestown School Committee has at this late date formally declared their intention to withdraw from the SAU, but they have not put forward a plan or a budget to do so. They did not state this intention in their withdrawal plan. Withdrawal from an SAU is its own distinct vote that would happen following the creation of a multi-district SAU. It would be the responsibility of the district’s town or towns to choose to bring that forward. This is an important distinction,” Hamilton said. 

Jim Fredrickson, school board representative from Sharon and chair of the Budget and Property Committee, read a three-page prepared statement in response to the letters from Francestown and Dublin.

“I now feel my own urgent need to respond tonight because the letter includes some inaccurate, confusing and frankly disappointing statements,” Fredrickson said.

Fredrickson reviewed the six-month process he and other members of the Budget Committee used for creating the financial model the district presented at the informational forum, acknowledging that at one point, an error had been made in calculating the capture of FICA, state retirement and health/dental benefits for SAU employees. 

“The calculation error in the model was corrected, and we decided to continue to use that estimate for the withdrawal presentation rather than replace it with a new and unexplained estimate  for charts used at the deliberative session and the community forum,” Fredrickson said. “What is most perplexing is that this updated model was shared with Francestown after they requested it the day after the deliberative session. I sent them the updated model on Saturday afternoon the 8th of February. Later that afternoon, I followed up with an email that specifically mentioned that the updated model included an update to the SAU costs. The forum discussion that led to their letter was held on Wednesday the 12th. At the forum, the Francestown School Committee publicly acknowledged both the receipt of the revised model and the error, which I openly disclosed from the stage during the forum.” 

Fredrickson said the district now has three working estimates for the cost of a multi-district SAU: $2.783 million estimated by Forrest, $3.088 million based on the costs of SAU 39, and $3.012 million based on the model created by the Budget and Property Committee.

“I now publicly apologize, again,  for the inadvertent calculation errors I have made. I only wish the folks from Dublin and Francestown had done their homework before casting aspersions on my work,” Fredrickson said.