Amended Agreement
October 28, 2004
Bridgewater
Raynham
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Opinion/Analysis
Joseph Gillis Jr.
You can do something!
Most in the community are probably not aware of the work that North River Collaborative performs on behalf of the B-R School District for some of our students. The Collaborative services special needs students from seven area school districts.
It was recently determined that the Agreement that all communities must sign should be updated. Many of the corrections proposed are 'text' - in other words, simply putting the rules into a different terminology. A couple of the changes could have dramatic financial implications.
1) It was proposed that a withdrawing entity (a school district) would only be entitled to a distribution of assets and libilities based on its most recent year of participation. The logic was that at each year end, funds are distributed to members based on their current participation. Therefore, any past gains or losses would have already been factored into previous years. This seemed reasonable.
2) It was proposed that if the Collaborative were to terminate, then a different formula for the distribution of assets and liabilities would be used. A formula would be used to reward long-tem membership. Mathematically and financially, this would be a disadvantage for Bridgewater-Raynham. I protested this language pointing out that we should not easliy go along with something to our detriment, especially when the rationale for the 'withdrawal' rules clearly points to better logic. Supt. McIntyre assured us that this point had been discussed in the meeting of Superintendents for the Collaborative, and that it was felt that this change would encourage member towns to remain stable in the program. Ultimately, I conceded that if there was not support to press this point, I would agree to the porposed changes.
I included this issue to show that there are many important issues that come before the B-R School Committee that may not be immediately clear to those not at the meetings. We are elected to champion education - including all of the underlying finances. And, while anyone can propose grand intentions and ideas, it ultimately comes down to the money to pay for those plans. So, in addition to our own direct budget, we have a responsibility to exercise care in the agreements that we are party to.
I believe that it is a great thing that we have the North River Collaborative to provide services to some of our students. I was simply concerned with the language specified in the proposed new agreement - language that could be costly to us.
