Rift Deepens Over School Project

HARWICH – At Tuesday afternoon’s meeting about the Monomoy regional school funding agreement, the Harwich and Chatham select board delegations faced each other from opposite ends of a long dais, as if illustrating a philosophical rift between the two partners.

 Under the regional agreement approved by voters in 2010, Chatham and Harwich share school expenses by a formula based on the student enrollment from each town. Because Chatham has seen enrollment decline, Harwich is paying proportionately more for both the district’s operating budget and for capital projects like the upcoming roof and siding replacement at the middle school. The Harwich select board voted to recommend that voters at the upcoming annual town meeting shelve the multimillion dollar project; the Chatham board voted unanimously to support it. 

 Harwich select board Chair Jeffrey Handler said he hoped both sides could agree to hold future meetings to further explore the funding formula, with the goal of providing more equity while preserving the excellent education the towns’ children receive from the Monomoy district.

 “We are absolutely all here for the same purpose: to continue to provide a top-notch educational experience for our children,” Handler said.

 Chatham board Chair Michael Schell said he’s impressed by the accomplishments of the Monomoy district. 

 “This is a little bit painful for me that we need to figure out how to restore, a little bit, the partnership that has produced this phenomenal school system,” he said. 

 Chatham select board member Jeffrey Dykens, one of the original architects of the school agreement, said the two towns came together for mutual benefit. 

 “Harwich needed a high school. We needed kids,” he said. As part of the deal, Harwich had a partner in building Monomoy Regional High School, and Chatham essentially gifted its junior-senior high school to the district to create Monomoy Middle School.

 “We freed up your middle school so you could do other creative things with it,” Dykens said. “We didn’t ask for a dime out of that.”

 Harwich board member Peter Piekarski agreed that the partnership was mutually beneficial and said the regional agreement was designed to be reviewed and potentially adjusted every five years.

 “There isn’t a regional school agreement I’m aware of that hasn’t gone through its ups and downs, [with] one community feeling as if they’re not being fairly represented at the table when they’re overpaying for certain costs,” he said. “We’re not asking the town of Chatham to subsidize Harwich students, Harwich residents. Not at all. But we’re also not sitting back, just willing to subsidize the Chatham population,” he said. Piekarski and Handler showed figures that they said illustrated that Chatham realized the most savings from the high school project, while Harwich will end up paying more than it would have paid for its own high school under the arrangement. The figures could not be verified at press time. 

 “Is it unreasonable for us to come to the table knowing that, capital assessment goes up and debt for repayment on the high school construction continues to elevate,” as Chatham’s number go down or stay the same, “and our numbers go up?” Handler asked. “I don’t think it’s an unreasonable ask.”

 Dykens said it seems like the Harwich select board gets involved in the school budget discussions late each year and regularly argues that school spending should be reduced. Dykens said he doesn’t understand Harwich’s financial situation, with some saying publicly that the town is financially strong, and others saying the town is maxing out its property tax levy limit. 

 “Well, what is it?” he said. If there are financial problems, protecting the school budget should be among the town’s highest priorities, Dykens said.

 “There’s a sentiment in town — I’m not going to say it’s unanimous and I’m not going to say it’s the vast majority — but there’s a sentiment in town that the town of Harwich is paying too much for the school assessment” and for capital projects, Piekarski said. “Whether that matters to you folks doesn’t matter to me. I represent the people in Harwich who have this concern,” he said. 

 Dykens said many Chatham voters feel that their town did its part to support the district by voluntarily taking on the cost of operating its own elementary school in 2022. “We took $1.3 [million] from your side of the ledger over to our side of the ledger,” he said.

 “That was at your request, if I’m not mistaken,” Handler said.

 Chatham voters understood that the expenses were “out of whack,” and agreed to take on the cost of the town’s elementary school to support the district, Dykens said. 

 Schell said the most pressing issue is the deterioration at the middle school, which has caused water leaks that have prompted air quality concerns in the building. The cost of replacing siding is estimated at $6.3 million, with a new roof and windows expected to increase the price tag to close to $12 million. 

 “I appreciate that that’s a bitter pill for Harwich voters to swallow,” Schell said. “But it’s a lot less bitter than the one somebody’s going to have to swallow a year or two or three down the road” if the work is postponed, he said. Schell and Dykens used the meeting to appeal directly to Harwich voters to support the middle school project. “We are bound together as partners, we have to fix this,” he said. “But holding a threat not to approve that, over the district, is not likely to help.”

 “Our recommendation on town meeting floor can absolutely be changed,” Handler said of the board’s position against the middle school project funding. “I’ll speak for myself: I would like to change that recommendation. We’re going to need to see some kind of insurance that we’re going to have future meetings with the town of Chatham. Thoughtful, honest, transparent meetings,” he said.

 “As I understand what you’re telling us, you have to have that in order to have any prospect of there being a change of the recommendation with respect to the middle school project?” Schell asked.

 Handler replied that, with Chatham’s agreement to meet again, he would evaluate his position on the project, and his fellow board members would do the same. “I’m not going to speak for the rest of my board,” he said. They will review the tape of this meeting and then make their own decisions, Handler said.

 “It doesn’t give me great comfort, Jeff,” Dykens replied.

 Schell said he would always take a call from Handler, “but I think, from Chatham’s point of view, until we see what happens with respect to the middle school project, it’s going to be very hard for us to lay out an agenda or a set of talking points or anything else.”

 “So if I heard you right, I’ll just plan on calling you after town meeting,” Handler said.