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Date: 10/7/2021
HAMPDEN/WILBRAHAM - After three and a half years and more than $300,000 in combined legal fees, the lawsuit between the Town of Hampden and the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District (HWRSD) has been settled with a pen stroke.
The HWRSD School Committee and Hampden Board of Selectmen (BOS) gathered together at Minnechaug Regional High School to discuss and vote on a settlement. The settlement began with a meeting between BOS Chair Donald Davenport, HWRSD Superintendent Albert Ganem and School Committee member Bill Bontempi in which common grounds were discussed, rather than the topics that separated the parties.
"What happened to turn the tide," Bontempi asked rhetorically in a statement made before the signing. He said the pandemic had "helped prioritize the importance" of "quality education. The litigation was an impediment." He added that in closing that chapter, the town and district could create a "shared vision of academic excellence."
Davenport said in his own statement that he understood the concerns of Hampden residents around the closure of Thornton W. Burgess School (TWB) and "the desire to have children educated in our town." Davenport recalled that he had voted against regionalization in 1993, closing TWB and voted twice for the litigation. That said, he explained his reasoning for moving forward with the settlement.
"We are at a different time and place," he said with emotion and cited enrollment changes, financial pressures, the changing nature of education and COVID-19 as factors. "Do we spend energy and resources to continue the litigation," he asked, "or do we wisely use our energy, resources, time, and the talent available to us in our two towns to build a better education system for every child?"
The Settlement
The settlement includes several "mutual promises." Among them, the first pertains to the strategic plan, the guiding document for the school district, the creation of which is in its infancy. As part of the settlement, the district agreed to host two public forums in Hampden for data collection and community input and another two for feedback on the final draft of the strategic plan. The committees working on the strategic plan must be made of members of both towns equally unless the focus of a committee impacts one town more than the other.
The School Committee has to return to hosting the first meeting of the month at Minnechaug Regional High School and rotating other committee meetings through other schools in the district.
Both parties are required to make "good faith" attempts at discussing amendments to the regional agreement governing the multi-town district, "for the mutual benefit of all parties." Topics for these discussions include using town line borders to assign students to various schools, language in the regional agreement concerning student transfers within the district, the way assessments are calculated and the introduction of periodic comprehensive reviews.
Another requirement of the settlement is that the district has to maintain at least one school in Hampden. While opening more than one school in the town is possible under the agreement, Hampden waives, "their claims to prevent the closure of TWB and to prevent the use of the Green Meadows School as a K-8 school."
Finally, in signing the settlement, Hampden and HWRSD have agreed to drop their remaining claims against one another.
Day in Court
School Committee member Sean Kennedy objected to the roughly 24 hours between when the document was released and the scheduled signing. He also said that his impression was that a "day in court is something that Hampden had been asking for from the beginning." Kennedy said he didn't want to tie the hands of future school committees. "I don't think it's fair to Wilbraham. I want peace between the towns, but it might have to be in court," he said.
BOS member Craig Rivest disagreed that Hampden wants its day in court. "All the parents I've talked to want to move past this," he told Kennedy. BOS member John Flynn agreed, saying the board is there to "partner" with the School Committee to "raise the level of education." Kennedy deferred to the board members on Hampden's feelings.
School Committee member Patrick Kiernan opined that the settlement was in the best interest of the students. "I don't think that any lawsuit makes for good neighbors," he said, adding that the focus needed to shift from "Hampden and Wilbraham" schools to "Hampden Wilbraham Regional" schools.
Ganem agreed when Flynn described the district as a business. "We need to settle this so we can be competitive," he said.
The BOS voted unanimously in favor of the settlement, while the School Committee voted 6:1 to sign the document, with Kennedy opposed.
After the settlement was signed, School Committee Vice Chair Maura Ryan commented, "And now we can get down to the real work."
Residents Push Back
Not all Hampden residents were happy to see the lawsuit come to a close. At the Oct. 4 Board of Selectmen meeting, former School Committee member Rita Vail asked the board members what Hampden gets from this settlement.
Davenport told her and the handful of residents who came to discuss the matter that the town "gets a larger seat at the table" in creating the strategic plan. He also noted it addresses the transfer issues that had been a major sticking point in the lawsuit.
Hampden resident and proponent of the suit, Mary Ellen Glover, stated that closing TWB was never the reason for the lawsuit, but added that she felt the district couldn't be trusted to uphold its part of the settlement because it had closed the school and sent kids to Wilbraham Middle School. "We want Hampden kids educated in Hampden," she stated.
Glover had also addressed the Hampden Board of Selectmen at its Sept. 27 meeting to remind it that the town passed a citizen's petition article at the October 2018 Special Town Meeting requesting any settlement be voted on at Town Meeting. While the article wasn't binding, Glover had urged the board to comply with it as a "wise thing to do - politically and strategically."
Hampden resident James Smith expressed concern with what he called "inconsistencies and vagueness" within the document. Specifically, he cited the language stating that at least one school would remain in Hampden, however, "This agreement would not serve as an impediment to exploration of any number of grade and school configurations across the district." Smith asked if this meant, "They could, in theory, only keep grade one in Hampden?" Like Glover, he wanted the settlement to be voted on at Town Meeting.
Flynn pushed back, recalling that Smith spent 18 years on the Board of Selectmen. "Did you want to have to go to Town Meeting for every decision?" Flynn asked. He added that the settlement doesn't change the regional agreement. It only obligates the town to discuss possible amendments to the agreement with the district.
Glover insisted that the town was "backing down" because it "did not have the courage" to continue with litigation. "The town needs to move forward with this process," Davenport told the residents. "We've got to get back to focusing on the education of our kids."