Selectmen Urge School Committee to Respect Will of the Voters

The Rehoboth Board of Selectmen are urging the members of the Dighton-Rehoboth school committee to drop their fight for additional school funding and to respect the will of the voters.

“Please accept the appropriation as voted on at the May meeting, the July meeting, and (the October 29) meeting,” selectmen chairman Gerry Schwall said Monday.

On December 1, the state will assume operational control of the school district if a budget has not been approved. Another tent meeting is still a possibility.
The school committee also came in for some criticism for the way they handled last Saturday’s cancelled district-wide (“Tent”) meeting.

An e-mail sent out on Friday afternoon by school committee chairperson Katherine Cooper said: “The district wide meeting regarding the Dighton Rehoboth Regional School District proposed budget, scheduled for November 2, 2019, has been cancelled. The School Committee did everything they could to hold this meeting and allow debate. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Selectmen did not find out until early Friday evening about the cancellation, which was due to an incorrect budget figure on the meeting warrant. The warrant article called for the appropriation of $29 million for the school budget. Dighton was responsible for $10. 5 million and Rehoboth was responsible for $19.3 million. The total school budget is $45 million.

Cooper and School Superintendent Anthony Azar did not respond to the Reporter’s requests for a comment.

The Rehoboth and Dighton boards of selectmen met on October 30 for the purpose of selecting a moderator for the tent meeting. When they reviewed the warrant drafted by the school committee, Rehoboth selectmen chairman Gerry Schwall realized the budget figure was inaccurate.

The town’s legal counsel, Jay Talerman, was contacted, along with Jeff Wulfson, Deputy Commissioner of the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

“The budget must include “all proposed operating expenditures, capital expenditures, and debt service payments to be paid from general revenues of the regional school district,” Wulfson wrote to Cooper.

The school committee could have called for an additional $16 million appropriation at the meeting, but if they had, it would have been considered an “illegal motion,” Schwall said.

Selectman Dave Perry believed there would have been “total confusion” if the meeting had been held, as well as “legal challenges” to the budget vote.
“It all worked out okay from my perspective,” Perry added.

Selectmen also defended their decision to compromise with the school committee. In exchange for giving the school department an additional $330,000 for the 2020 budget, selectmen had proposed $214,000 in cuts to town departments.

“Everybody on the municipal side did their job,” said selectman Skip Vadnais.