After a lengthy discussion Thursday about how much it could cost Francestown and Dublin to leave the ConVal School District, the ConVal Feasibility Study Committee has created a finance subcommittee to determine how the withdrawals could financially impact towns in the ConVal district.

School Board member Jim Kingston of Temple, Hancock Select Board member Betsy Villaume, Feasibility Study Committe Chair Mike Hoyt of Bennington, Dublin Select Board member Carole Monroe and School Board member Jim Frederickson of Sharon volunteered for the subcommittee. ConVal Business Administrator Brian Cisneros, who is leaving the ConVal district as of Aug. 2, supported the motion.

“You all need to start the crunching numbers. Very soon, I need to hand all of this over to you, and this committee will have to start doing these estimations,” Cisneros said.

At the outset of the meeting, Hoyt reported that the district’s counsel had communicated that according to state law, towns leaving the ConVal district would also be leaving the SAU. In New Hampshire, SAUs (School Administrative Units) provide administrative services for school districts, including human resources, transportation, payroll, curriculum, and special education.

“One option would be for the new districts would be to contract the SAU services with ConVal,” Hoyt said. “Or they could try to contract with a different SAU, or they could create their own SAU.”

After the June 13 meeting, representatives from Francestown and Dublin asked for further explanation on numbers provided by the ConVal School District that estimated the cost of running independent school districts would be close to $5 million for both Francestown and Dublin. Monroe expressed frustration at how difficult she said it has been to obtain specific data in the feasibility study process.

“We can tell you what it would cost roughly to send our students to Keene, because we have that information for Keene. They provide those numbers. ConVal won’t tell us what they would charge for tuition until we go into contract negotiations,” Monroe said. “I do not understand why leaving the district would not be feasible for Dublin. If a small town like Harrisville can do it, there is no reason Dublin can’t do it.”

Harrisville operates an independent school district for students in kindergarten through fourth grade and is part of SAU 29, which administers the Keene School District. Middle and high school students from Harrisville attend school in Keene.

“It’s not that we want to leave ConVal. What we are hearing from people is that want a guarantee that we will keep our elementary school in perpetuity, and they want a better quality of education,” Monroe said.

School Board member Janine Lesser of Peterborough noted that 75% of the cost of running the ConVal School district is teacher and staff contracts.

“We only have control over about 13% of the budget,” Lesser said. “We came up with the best option we could think of to try to get the budget in control, which was reconfiguration, and that is how we ended up here.”