The Standard Times reports here that Lakeville voters will take up full regionalization of their schools again. Their high school is already regional with Freetown. Combining the two districts will reduce transportation and administration costs. I think it shokld be done.
I also believe that Dartmouth should form a regional district with Westport. The resulting school district would have about 6000 students, 7-8 elementary schools, ...
... two middle schools, and two high schools. The new district would save millions in transportation and administration costs. Hard to see a down side from my point of view.
Why do that now you ask? Well, while our finances are not in dire shape at the moment, the long term outlook is that the required school spending is outstripping revenue. This is not a criticism of the school department but a fact of life due to the school funding formulas in place. Regional schools get state help with transportation costs. This is one way of getting the state to kick in more funding of their unfunded mandate to the town..
What do you feel about a regional district and why do you think it would be good or bad?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Lakeville tries again
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2 comments:
Bill, I believe in principle with the concept, where it is viable. I disagree with it when it comes to almost anything with Westport. Their school systems is a joke with high dropout rates, poor MCAS results, high turnover of teaching and administrative personnel, etc. Similarly, other services (where they even exist) are also a joke in Westport. Most recently, there has been a big controversy about getting funding for putting lines down on their streets. Yikes!
We are very fortunate to have excellent school systems and other public services here in Dartmouth. Why would we want to consolidate with anything to do in Westport where we would wind up "carrying" them at our taxpayers' expense?
Finally someone making sense . Westport needs to straighten out westport before trying to regionalize with Dartmouth. Only ones that will benefit is Westport Dartmouth residents will pay the price both in $$$ and service lost. The recent disaster with those animals on Rt. 177 is a perfect example of Westport ignoring a problem far to long and then exspecting others to clean up the mess.
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