The committee studying regionalizing all grades in Amherst, Pelham, Leverett and Shutesbury will present its report at Amherst Regional Middle School.
AMHERST - After 18 months, the committee studying regionalizing all grades in the four towns of the Amherst-Pelham region has completed its report and will present it to officials from the member towns Tuesday night.
The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Amherst Regional Middle School.
The committee will present four options, ranging from complete regionalization to leaving the structure intact.
The committee recommends further study of the effect the various options would have on education. It also recommends that the school and finance committees and select boards in Amherst, Pelham, Leverett and Shutesbury create an Education Study Committee to gauge public reaction.
Currently, the four towns form a region beginning in the seventh grade. The superintendent in Amherst oversees the region and Amherst and Pelham schools.
Leverett and Shutesbury are part of Union 28, a district that includes Erving, New Salem and Wendell, and is governed by its own superintendent.
The first option would be to expand the Amherst-Pelham union to include Leverett and Shutesbury so all would share the same superintendent, but allow each town to continue to have a separate school committee and separate elementary schools.
The second option would regionalize the district from kindergarten through 12th grade. That would eliminate Union 26 - a union of the Pelham School Committee and three Amherst members - and mean Leverett and Shutesbury would withdraw from 28 and all would be part of a single region.
Some Amherst committee members had expressed interest in looking at its union with Pelham even before this study was finished.
The third option would regionalize, but close Pelham Elementary School.
The fourth would leave the structure alone but “enhance coordination and communication ... and enhance educational effectiveness by assuring that all students reach the middle school with equivalent preparation and readiness to achieve that setting.”
One of the concerns expressed in the past is that students come to the middle school with difference levels of skills and readiness.
According to the report, complete regionalization could cost $20,000 more or save $230,000, depending on transportation reimbursements.
The committee concluded that “potential financial consequences are significant, but not sufficiently large to solely justify the regional option.”
The committee began looking at regionalization to see whether they could save money. State education officials have been suggesting that smaller districts regionalize. But the communities are also facing a possible a decline in enrollment.
In 1994, a proposal to regionalize was rejected after voters at a Shutesbury town meeting opposed it. The other three communities supported it but any change required all four to agree.