Gilbert and Winchester yet to agree on contract

WINSTED — Winchester Board of Education members want more fiscal control. Gilbert School Corporation officials want a long-term agreement.

These are the major issues as two sides continue to meet in an attempt to bridge the gap and write a new contract for the town’s semi-private high school before the current contract expires.

At a fourth negotiating session Tuesday, May 25, at Pearson Middle School, school board member Susan Hoffnagle led the talks for Winchester. She said her board’s most pressing concern is the need for a “mechanism� to allow the two districts more parity in sharing the pain of difficult fiscal times.

The current three-year contract, which expires on June 31, allows Gilbert to develop its own budget, which the town is required to fund. The school’s most recent budget amounts to $15,169 per student.

Hoffnagle said the Winchester school board needs to create a system in its next contract with Gilbert so that when its “budget is cut drastically, it will be spread out over the entire K-to-12 system.�

Kathleen O’Brien, chairman of the Winchester school board, echoed that concern.

“What ends up happening is that the K-to-eight system ends up eating all that [budget cuts], and we have no mechanism for equity between the K-to-eight and nine-to-12 system,� O’Brien said. “This is an absolute need from our issue.�

But Gilbert School officials appeared to be uncomfortable with the idea.

Charles Seaback, the Gilbert School Corporation member who led negotiations for his board Tuesday, said keeping Gilbert’s budget under private control has served students well, because it has provided an “independence� that allows Gilbert to determine appropriate funding.

Seaback said this has protected the school’s students from those who “don’t value education as much as Gilbert.�

“We are somewhat isolated from the whims of the taxpayer,� he said.

Gilbert School Corporation member Mark Svonkin added that he opposed providing the Winchester board more fiscal control because it would change the inherent nature of how the school is operated.

“In my view, control is equal to ownership. And that’s not compatible with a private school,� Svonkin said. “I will never agree to giving you any control. Then that is a public school.�

Gilbert School officials said their major sticking point in the contract negotiations is the need for a longer-term contract. Last week, the school presented Winchester with a draft contract that called for a 10-year agreement.

Hoffnagle said Tuesday she was “shocked� by the proposed contract length.

Seaback said his board is open to negotiating a shorter time frame, perhaps something more in the three- to five-year range.

But he reiterated several times during this week’s negotiating session that the corporation is not interested in forming only a one-year agreement with the town, as the Winchester school board has been discussing.

If the two sides were to move forward without a contract in place by the end of the current school year — which would happen if there is no new agreement by June 31 — Seaback said there would be drawbacks for the town.

“There would be zero fiscal control� for the Winchester Board of Education, and the town would be reliant upon the “good will of the Gilbert School Corporation� when it came to assisting with budgetary issues.

“Well, that’s no different than if we had a contract,� Hoffnagle said in response.

There were some areas of agreement between the two school boards. Both sides agreed in principle to the creation of a curriculum coordinating committee, which had been proposed by Gilbert officials last week. Both districts are also interested in conducting a study into the possibility of moving Winchester’s seventh and eighth grades from Pearson to Gilbert.

Last month, Gilbert School board members proposed relocating Pearson Middle School’s seventh- and eighth-grade students to the high school as early as the 2010-11 school year.

Gilbert officials said the move would result in a possible net savings to the Winchester school district of more than $700,000.

But, feeling the move was not something that could be properly implemented by late August, the Winchester school board voted to take the option off the table for the 2010-11 school year during a special meeting April 27.

Winchester school board members may consider the option in the future.

The two boards agreed to meet again June 3, 7 p.m., at Batcheller Elementary School.