Downsides discussed of plan to split super’s salary in Region One

FALLS VILLAGE — Gary Brochu, the Region One Board of Education attorney, said that the seven school boards in the regional school district need to agree on a joint employment agreement for the Region One superintendent in order to comply with state law.

Brochu was at a joint meeting of the Region One board and its All Board Chairs (ABC) committee at Housatonic Valley Regional High School Wednesday, Jan. 21.

Region One was created by a special act of the Connecticut General Assembly in 1937. The act authorized the towns of Canaan (Falls Village), Cornwall, Kent, North Canaan, Salisbury and Sharon to create a regional high school and a regional school board with a member from each town.

Historically, the Region One board has had an employment contract with the superintendent. That agreement has been administered by the ABC committee, which is made up of the chairmen of the six town school boards and the regional board.

But Connecticut General Statute 10-157a states that “the boards of education of any two or more towns, or the board of education of any regional school district and the board of education of one or more of the towns comprising the district, or a committee formed and authorized by agreement of such boards on behalf of such boards may jointly employ a superintendent of schools, and said superintendent of schools shall have the powers and duties for each of said boards as provided in section 10-157.”

Brochu said that the 1978 statute indicates that while Region One hasn’t changed the way it operates, “the legislative landscape has. You need to bring the arrangement up to date.”

He emphasized several times over the course of the meeting, in response to questions from board members and the audience (which included First Selectmen Pat Mechare of Canaan/Falls Village, Gordon Ridgway of Cornwall and Bruce Adams of Kent), that the statute requires the region to create a joint employment agreement. 

The statute does not specify how the superintendent’s salary should be divided up between the parties.

And that issue continued to pop up, despite Brochu’s repeated statement that the matter is a policy decision, to be decided by the (elected) school board members.

Currently, the superintendent’s salary is part of the Region One budget. The Region One budget is divided between the six towns based on how many students each town sends to the high school.

In the discussion of the joint employment agreement, the idea of dividing the superintendent’s salary in equal parts has come up. Each of the seven boards would be responsible for one seventh of the salary.

If this were the case, then the smaller towns — Canaan/Falls Village, Sharon and Cornwall — would pay more than they do currently for the superintendent’s salary. The larger towns — Salisbury, Kent and North Canaan — would pay less.

An audience member asked where the one-seventh idea came from.

Ned Gow, the Region One board member from North Canaan, took credit for it and said, “I am, frankly, looking for a way to reduce the expenditure of North Canaan, and this is one way I saw.”

Judith Dixon, attorney for the town of Canaan/Falls Village, raised a number of points, including the possibility that if the joint employment agreement specified a committee as the employer of the superintendent, there would be costs associated with that, such as an annual report and audit.

She also said it might be difficult to obtain insurance for such a committee.

Dixon also used the analogy of a group of friends who regularly meet for dinner, and routinely split the check evenly, even though some members of the group consistently order more expensive items than others.

She said that arrangement might work between friends, spending their own money. But when it is the taxpayers’ money, the potential for a taxpayers’ lawsuit arises.

Louis Timolat of Falls Village expressed a concern, backed by his own attorney’s opinion, that if a committee winds up being the superintendent’s employer, that would create a new governing entity that would in turn have to be approved by voters in the six towns — not just by the school boards.

The planned discussion of the 7000 policy series, which the Region One board and ABC committee have been wrestling with for some time, was tabled as the meeting ran well over 90 minutes.