March 29, 2024

Will School and Town Officials Make Peace?

Posted

The ongoing feud between the Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School Committee and the Rehoboth Finance Committee has prompted observers to say: “enough.”

“I think people need to move on,” Rehoboth Selectmen Chairman Gerry Schwall said Monday. “Stop trying to litigate what happened last year. It’s counter-productive and doesn’t do anything to move us forward.”

Charles Paul Hart, a Dighton resident and the parent of a graduate of Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School, chastised the school committee at their January 14 meeting. “The name-calling, the blame games, the inappropriateness in social media, the attacks of individuals, is intolerable and just disgusting,” Hart said. “It actually blows me away the behavior (of school and town officials) is not normal. It’s not okay, it’s not acceptable.”

In a series of 2019 e-mails, Finance Committee Chairman Michael Deignan expressed concerns for the safety of his members who were invited to attend school committee meetings about the 2020 budget.

Deignan also took aim at the way Committee Chairperson Katherine Cooper ran the meetings. “They are nothing but bash Rehoboth sessions, and the chair does a piss-poor job of controlling the meeting,” Deignan wrote.

Cooper told the Reporter that Deignan’s allegations were “completely ridiculous.” “I think we need a Finance Committee that is able to understand multiple viewpoints and work toward solutions,” Cooper said. “Not this nonsense.”

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) assumed control of the school district in December as a result of the two member towns not passing a budget for 2020.

“Mr. Deignan needs to move forward as the School Committee and I have for fiscal year 2021,” School Superintendent Anthony Azar said on January 15. “He is still upset that DESE gave us the compromise budget that should have been in place back in April. Thus, all of the budgetary angst created by a majority of the Board of Selectmen and finance folks could have been avoided.”

Selectmen plan to vote on a preliminary budget at the beginning of March. The budget will be decided at the May 12 annual town meeting. “It's important to have respectful discourse as we go forward,” Azar said Tuesday. “Since becoming Superintendent, I have always had an open door policy and will meet with anyone. Our budget for last year was less than a one percent increase to the overall operational budget. The issue in Rehoboth is the state's wealth formula and the impact to how the state calculates the assessment, not the school budget.”

“I sincerely believe that through honest communication and collaboration, we can then engage Mr. Schwall and Mr. Deignan in meaningful dialogue,” Azar continued. “It would be wonderful if they could move on from DESE setting our budget for FY’2020 at the compromise budget figure.”

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