Committee supports potential constitutional amendment
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

The Ashburnham-Westminster Regional School Committee voted to send a potential constitutional amendment to the state Attorney General's Office to require funding for all state mandates.

The committee voted unanimously on Tuesday, Dec. 4, to support the first step in a proposal by committee member Ellen Holmes to try to change the state constitution. The first step is to send the draft language of the bill to Attorney General's Office to have the language reviewed and approved.

Holmes said in the simple English the proposal says to the state, "if you mandate it, you pay for it."

The draft language of the amendment is: "Whenever the Legislature or any state agency mandates a new program or higher level of service on any local government, the Commonwealth shall provide a subvention of funds to reimburse that local government for the costs of the program or increased level of service. The Legislature may, but need not, provide a subvention of fund for Legislative mandates requested by the local agency affected. A mandated new program or higher level of service includes a transfer by the Legislature from the Commonwealth to cities, towns, regional school districts or special districts of complete or partial financial responsibility for a required programs for which the Commonwealth previously had complete or partial financial responsibility."

"It's just great," said committee member Leonard Beaton. "I don't know how anyone can be against it."

After the language is approved, the School Committee members will get another chance to review it and determine if they want to continue their support. Then, 67,000 signatures will have to be collected from registered voters across the state to get it on the agenda for the Constitutional Convention.

The signatures need to be collected by the first Wednesday of August for the amendment to be put on the convention's agenda.

The amendment would be proposed to the Constitutional Convention as an initiative petition, which would require a 25 percent vote (50 votes) for two consecutive Legislative sessions. It would then get put on the ballot in the next general election.

The initiative petition must then be passed by at least 30 percent of voters who cast a ballot in the election and have majority of voters who vote on the item cast an affirmative vote on the question.

Holmes said the amendment would not be retroactive to mandates that already exist.

In other business:

• The School Committee heard a presentation at their meeting updating them on the cost of implementing full-day kindergarten instead of the current half-day kindergarten (provided at no cost for parents) and the tuition-based full-day kindergarten options currently offered by the district.

The expected cost would be more than $270,000 in FY09, or the first year of implementation, and the cost would then be reduced to about $30,000 in following fiscal years because of increased state funding.

The committee is waiting to hear if they received a grant to help them to transition to the full-day programming before discussing whether to implement the program next year.

"I think it's inevitable. It's just a matter of when we are going to be able to fund it," said committee Chairman David Christianson.

• Nurse Leader Marcia Sharkey updated the committee based on statistics on student visits to the nurses' offices she collects as part of a state public health grant. She said there were more than 28,000 students visiting the nurses' offices during the 2006-07 school year and that 10,875 were due to illness and of these that about 1,500 students were sent home. The figure includes 4,179 visits for medication administration. In addition to that there were about 5,500 health screenings completed.

Sharkey said this is the last year of the eight-year grant from the state Department of Public Health, which have provided significant funds for the nurses. She said that she will reapply for the grant if the state permits.

• The committee cancelled their Dec. 18 meeting and will instead meet with Boards of Selectmen and the Advisory Boards from both towns on Tuesday, Dec. 11. The five boards will meet at Mount Wachusett Community College in the North Cafeteria at 6 p.m.