How did we get here?
Whitman and Hanson select boards met jointly with the WHRSD School Committee via virtual Zoom meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 15 to review the history of town assessments in support of the regional school district.
“After we discuss that and get clarity, the object is to make sure we have systems in place so that it doesn’t happen again,” Whitman Selectmen Chairman Dr. Carl Kowalski said of the mistakes made that caused division between the towns in recent months. “What happened was unfortunate and caused each of the towns to see each other with suspicion and that’s not how the towns have behaved in the past.”
Kowalksi said the object is also to ensure that the new Regional Agreement Committee continues with its work.
Whitman Selectman Randy LaMattina outlined a timeline of the issue, which he has researched.
“We got lost in the effect, and didn’t get a solid explanation of the cause, and that’s my goal this evening,” LaMattina said.
He said his timeline has been verified by emails, meeting videos and minutes, and public record beginning with the 1993 Education Reform Act, which put in place a statute regulating how assessments are calculated.
“This was never addressed in any Whitman-Hanson agreement up until this previous year [when it] was finally the first year we’ve handled it correctly,” LaMattina said. He noted the confusion stemmed from a feeling that the alternative — or per-pupil — method was an illegal one.
“That absolutely was not an illegal method,” he said. “But what we clearly did not do was follow the statute.”
The towns should have been made aware they were using an alternate method and been afforded the opportunity to vote on the method used.
LaMattina said he didn’t know why the discrepancy played out since 1993, but noted the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) provided some clarity in 2007 with and a memo affirming the correct process and their position in response to questions from some school districts.
“We don’t know who got that [memo],” he said.
An “erratic fact pattern in the filing of year-end reports” at WHRSD began in 2012.
Whitman resident Christopher George began to question the process in May 2016 through an email to former Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ruth Gilbert-Whitner. George, active at the time in the pro-override Save Our Schools group, had included a link to the 2007 DESE memo in his email. Both George and School Committee member Fred Small have both said there was a follow-up discussion between George and Gilbert-Whitner.
In 2017, Gilbert-Whitner reached out to School Committee Chairman Bob Hayes about the need to revise the “antiquated” regional agreement that referred to closed schools and other outdated information. The Regional Amendment Agreement Committee was then formed and worked on doing so from 2017-18.
“This was obviously where a lot of our answers can be found and a lot of very deep questions start to come from,” LaMattina said.
Representatives of the Mass. Association of Regional Schools (MARS) attended the committee’s first meeting Sept. 25, 2017 in which the assessment method was mentioned as a “significant issue,” and stated the district “currently uses the statutory method.” It was stressed that to use the alternative method that the district was, in fact, using “both towns would have to vote on it each and every year,” LaMattina noted.
On Aug. 14 LaMattina called MARS representative Malcolm Reid to ask why they assumed WHRSD was using the statutory method.
“We asked Christine (referring to former Business Manager Christine Suckow), and that’s what she said she used,” Reid replied, according to LaMattina. “She was using a formula, but the numbers were wrong,” Reid told him.
“There was obviously not a nefarious intention,” LaMattina said he determined from his conversations with Reid. “It appears that, at this time, we had somebody employed by the school district that didn’t have a full understanding of what she was using.”
MARS representative Stephen Hemman on Aug. 17 told LaMattina Suckow was using her own hybrid assessment method, which did not use the minimum local contribution. A fact Hemman found out in a meeting with Suckow and Gilbert-Whitner.
LaMattina said the error was never mentioned to new district administration, and it continued for two more budget cycles. Hemman and the MARS assistant director came to W-H in June 2019 to meet with Hayes and Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak “where an actual pen to paper was put to Christine’s numbers and it was fully discovered what she was doing wrong at that time,” according to LaMattina.
School Committee member David Forth stressed that, while both the former business manager and superintendent were named in the meeting, the problems surrounding the assessment issue were in place for years before them.
“To blame these two people is just a narrative that’s being pushed,” he said. “I think you could say they were part of the issue, but this goes further back.”
Through the summer of 2019 “quite a bit of infighting” between the towns had started to take place and the school district began an investigation on the former business manager. In 2016-18, year end reports had reflected the alternative method and were “very erratic” in previous years, LaMattina said.
He asked Hayes whether the schools, indeed had followed the statutory method all along.
“If the answer is no, what are we going to do as partners to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” LaMattina said.
“I think everyone is much more schooled on it now, than they were in the past,” Hayes said, noting the district has a new business manager who is taking a different approach. “It depends on the correct information of those statements.”
Kowalski said he was not certain that the purpose of the meeting was to ask questions like that and asked Szymaniak if LaMattina’s assessment met his understanding of the issue.
“What we really need to do is look forward more than look back, and have some reassurance that we have systems in place that that can’t happen again,” Kowalski said.
“The timeline that Mr. LaMattina has presented is the timeline that I’ve been able to track back,” Szymaniak said, who took the helm at WHRSD in July 2018. “When things come from DESE they’re addressed to superintendents and charter school leaders, so that they’re covered. Business managers might have been on this one, but it usually goes right to the superintendent’s office and at that point, it was Dr. John McEwan, who was the superintendent.”
Whitman’s passing over the Regional Agreement article in May 2018 is when questions arose for him.
Forth, who also researched a timeline, starting in 1978 when funding cases began to process toward regionalization. He stressed that the regional agreement was intended to be reviewed every five years. He said Kowalski, who was chairman of the school committee in 1993 should also have been aware of the assessment issue.
“I don’t understand why we waited until 2016-17 to update a regional agreement that should have been updated every five years since ’91,” Forth said.
School Committee member Dawn Byers said when she began researching the issue, she was cautioned that proceeding would “tear the two towns apart.”
“I was intimidated, people tried to silence me, and I was lied to and told that we were using the statutory method,” she said. “I knew these numbers were exactly why these two towns were having budget issues.”
She said there has been a generation of students in W-H who have suffered as a result.
Szymaniak agreed that, going forward, the agreement should be reviewed every five years and joint meetings with finance committees and selectmen should be used to increase transparency in budgeting.
Hanson Selectman Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said she is questioning the checks and balances in this situation.
“To say that this is blowing my mind would be the understatement of the year,” she said. “We have got to make sure that people are held accountable.”
An open line of dialog should have been opened with town officials as soon as the problem was discovered.
Small advocated a clear action plan for the budget process and assessment going forward, including a complete audit.

WHITMAN — The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday, Sept. 8 voted to proceed with the purchase of a new ambulance to be submitted as a COVID-related expense to the Plymouth County Commissioners for reimbursement.

Town Administrator Frank Lynam said the Commissioners have told towns that they wish to finalize distribution of federal COVID grant funds in October and transfer funds from communities that have not spent all the money they received to financially overburdened cities and towns.

Whitman already has two reimbursement claims pending, and Lynam said, the purchase of an ambulance — the sole use of which for the duration of the pandemic is for the transport of suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 — is potentially a good move for the town. After the pandemic ends, the ambulance would become a fleet vehicle.

The cost of about $334,000 which may still leave the town with additional funds, depending on the claim from the school district to cover its COVID costs.

“We are slated to purchase an ambulance in two years,” Lynam said. “In fact, we put aside $150,000 in this year’s appropriations toward the purchase of the ambulance, so it seems to me that it would be advantageous to do that.”

The town must buy the ambulance before the county would reimburse for it. Two other county communities have purchased emergency response vehicles and received reimbursement, Lynam said.

“While we know there is some risk associated with this, we know that if we don’t do this, in FY ’22 we’re going to be looking at putting up more money for that same ambulance that we would then be purchasing,” Lynam said.

Joining the Zoom meeting, Fire Chief Timothy Grenno said the federal guidelines for the funds spell out that the money is intended to support purchase of equipment for medical or emergency transport.

“That’s what these departments are hanging their hats on,” Grenno said.

“I see no problem in it,” said Selectmen Vice Chairman Dan Salvucci, who conducted the meeting in Chairman Dr. Carl Kowalski’s absence. “Where there’s a number of towns that are doing it, why wouldn’t we?”

Grenno described how the Fire Department operated in the spring during the first wave of COVID cases, noting that a second wave is forecast by some health experts for this fall.

“We have two primary ambulances,” he said. “One … which has the powerload stretcher, which is a stretcher that keeps the attendant away from the patient, and that is the recommended [ambulance] for COVID.”

One ambulance was designated as the “COVID truck,” Grenno said.

“It was draped in plastic and parked out back, and that truck only went out on COVID responses,” he said. “That forced us to put the reserve truck into service.”

That ambulance, a 2008 or 2010 model has an old stretcher and HVAC system — and is the one the department had already planned to replace next year.

“We actually ran three ambulances, but one was designated as the COVID truck,” Grenno said.

“I don’t question the purchase, I think I was the one actually advocating the purchase of one this year,” said Selectman Randy LaMattina. “I know these take months to spec out … do you know what’s the order time, the lag time to get it? When do we actually pay for it?”

Grenno said the dealer he works with has a demo that fits the department’s needs and specifications that can be delivered to the town as early as next week.

As a COVID-related expense spent from a COVID account from which the town expects to be reimbursed, no town meeting is required to authorize the expenditure, Lynam said.

“This is great planning,” Selectman Justin Evans said. “I think it’s a great use of the funds to get ourselves a couple of years ahead in our ambulance replacement plan.”

He wanted to make sure the schools or other department did not have unaddressed COVID needs.

Lynam said there is currently more than $1 million available in the COVID fund right now, and while he expects to see a significant figure from the school district, “They’re so wrapped up in scheduling, I can’t get a number out of them.”

The chairman of the Plymouth County Commissioners has informed towns that he wants all reimbursement requests in by Oct. 1, in order to begin reallocation to other communities by Oct. 2.

“There are so many resources out there for federal funds and federal resources out there right now, that it’s actually pretty crazy,” Grenno said. “When this money dries up, there are grant opportunities out there for PPE and stuff like that.”

Grenno said he now has enough PPE right now if things do get bad this fall.

If the ambulance reimbursement is denied a town meeting would be required to authorize the balance of what is needed to pay for it, Lynam said.

Library trustee

In other business, meeting jointly with the Library Board of Trustees, the two boards elected Margaret McEwan to fill a vacancy until the next Town Election. It took two ballots as the boards’ votes were tied between McEwan and Katherine Getchell.

“I feel as though I’d like to give back to the community,” said McEwan, who has lived in Whitman for more than 40 years. “Both my family and I have used the library extensively, and at this time in my life I thought it’s an opportunity to give back to a community service that’s meant a lot to me.”

Getchell also pointed to a desire to contribute to the community as a lifelong Whitman resident who recently retired from WHRHS.

“I read all the time and am a huge patron of the Whitman Public Library,” Getchell said, noting she has joined a couple of groups at the library. “I like to participate in what the library has to offer.”

Getchell has also been active in the Arts Council and Whitman Youth Football.