Our View: Transparency Needed In School Talks

At the request of members of the Harwich Select Board, Chatham officials will be meeting with their neighbors to discuss the financial provisions of the Monomoy Regional School District regionalization agreement. Harwich officials have expressed concern about their rising share of the cost of the two-town district, currently at 76 percent compared to Chatham’s 24 percent, based on the current funding formula.

 The meeting will include two members from each town’s select board, the towns’ finance directors, Chatham’s town manager and Harwich’s town administrator. In the past, sessions like this — with town staff and maybe one or two elected or appointed officials — have been held behind closed doors, with officials claiming that “working groups” like this do not fall under the state’s Open Meeting Law.

 We urge officials to meet in open session. This is a critical issue for both communities’ residents, and everyone’s cards should be laid on the table for all residents and taxpayers to see. Just a few years ago, the financial provisions of the agreement were amended to basically give Harwich a nearly $1 million break — and adding a similar burden to Chatham taxpayers — by shifting the cost of the operation of each town’s elementary school to the host community. 

 Harwich officials are understandably concerned about the $6 to $12 million cost of repairs to the middle school, which is located in Chatham, but because it serves both communities is subject to the agreement’s financial formula. And there’s skepticism in Chatham about giving further concessions to its neighbor after the meticulously negotiated funding formula was implemented more than a decade ago. Harwich was, after all, the community pushing hardest for regionalization, which saved the town from having to finance and build its own high school.

Recently Harwich officials have said they consider this group a subcommittee that will follow the requirements of the Open Meeting Law. If this happens, we applaud their willingness to keep the process open. What happens at the meeting of the two towns has significant implications for both communities, and residents deserve complete transparency.