Outsiders were shocked when Hawlemont balked at accepting the displaced students, but it’s all part of a bitter history between the two school committees.
A firefighter from Greenfield pours water on some of the hot spots in a fire that the Rowe Elementary School recently.Officials at Hawlemont Regional Elementary School had still not decided Friday evening whether the school will take in the students who were displaced when Rowe Elementary School burned down on August 4.
Rowe Elementary was struck by lightning, and much of the school was destroyed.
Outsiders were shocked when Hawlemont balked, but it’s all part of a bitter history between the two school committees.
Fortunately, what everyone agrees on is that the children of Rowe will get an education this year.
“It’s my intention to find a way, no matter what it takes,” said Michael Buoniconti, Superintendent of the Rowe, Hawlemont (a combination of Hawley and Charlemont) and Mohawk Regional School districts, on Friday.
“If we have to delay school for a week, that’s not off the table,” said Lisa Miller, chairwoman of the Rowe School Committee. “Everything is on the table. Whatever we have to do, our kids will get their education.”
Hawlemont was all set to welcome the children from Rowe, according to Hawlemont School Committee vice-chairwoman Ivy Palmer. They were planning on T-shirts and an ice cream social.
Then, at the last minute, Rowe appointed a close friend of former Rowe School Committee chairman Bill Loomis to the Rowe committee.
When Cynthia Laffond was appointed, that was a deal-breaker.
The history of the three-district school system is long and complicated. “This has been called the most complex regional school system in the state,” says Noel Abbott, chairman of the Select Board in Rowe.
The three school districts encompass nine towns. Rowe is the wealthiest. At some point, the other, poorer towns realized that without Rowe they would have better access to funding from state government. In 1982, they asked Rowe to withdraw from their system for that reason.
Rowe agreed. The deal was that their kids would still be able to go to Mohawk Regional after they left elementary school, that they would pay tuition, but they would have access to all the services of the Central Office, including transportation.
Then things changed. In 2011, Rowe’s assessment was increased by 37 percent. Rowe wound up suing the school system. Several of the people in this story said Rowe has withdrawn its lawsuit, but if it’s true it seems not to have dampened the flames.
There’s more. In 2010, Buoniconti did not renew the contract of Robert Clancy, who had been principal of Rowe Elementary School for 14 years and happens to be married to Miller.
About a third of the town’s population signed a petition in support of Clancy, according to a report in the Greenfield Recorder at the time.
Palmer, the Hawlemont committeewoman, said that after Clancy left, his supporters zeroed in on the Superintendent’s office, “harassing them with endless requests for old information.”
Prominent among them was Loomis. He is a close friend of Laffond and her husband, and in Hawlemont there’s a suspicion that she has been planted to do Loomis’s bidding, which Miller vigorously denies.
“All I was doing was asking for information,” said Loomis. “What I’m dragging up people don’t like.”
Many say the conflict is one of personalities. Whatever it is, it feels toxic to the Hawlemont School Committee, and Palmer said she doesn’t want it to affect the children.
“I’m thinking of the 100 Hawlemont kids, and what’s going to happen when we bring the animosity and hostility of the Rowe School Committee into our school,” said Palmer.
“We’re going to be in close quarters and everyone has to be working together,” she said. “Kids are so sensitive to underlying tensions. We have to make sure that when they come to school they have a good, positive experience.”