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Photo Mary Ann Bragg
Robert Vetrick at a meeting of the Provincetown Finance Committee last week during which the members agreed to explore reorganizing the local school system.
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Bergman charged with attempting ‘hostile takeover’
Town manager’s plan to send PHS students to Nauset takes many by surprise
By Pru Sowers
Banner Correspondent
PROVINCETOWN — Provincetown school authorities were shocked on Feb. 8 when they received a five-page memo from Town Manager Keith Bergman, complete with footnotes, maps and charts, answering several questions posed by the Finance Committee about merging the local high school into the Nauset Regional High School in Eastham.
And they were shaken to their core when they found out on Tuesday that Bergman had placed a draft article on the proposed warrant for April’s Town Meeting that would take the proposed school merger to the next level.
Article no. 5 was submitted to the Provincetown Board of Selectmen Monday night when the Town Meeting warrant was opened. The draft article, which has not been discussed or approved by the selectmen, calls for the School Committee and the selectmen to ask the Nauset school system to hold a formal conference to discuss accepting Provincetown’s high school students.
“It’s a hostile takeover,” said Terese Nelson, School Committee chair, about draft warrant article no. 5. “The only way we’ve been able to have information is that I was told by the chair of the Nauset School Committee that this was a done deal.”
Nauset School Committee chair Rick Wood had written a letter to the School Committee, sent on Feb. 10, that outlined transition plans to accept Provincetown students grades 9-12 into Nauset Regional High School in the fall of 2007. When he saw the confusion his letter caused, Wood asked Nelson if her School Committee had discussed the transition issue and was told that the discussion of closing the high school had begun only a few days before.
“I was a bit surprised that School Committee members weren’t contacted earlier,” Wood said. “If I were expecting a request of this type, I’d have thought it would have originated with the School Committee.”
And it’s not just school officials who feel they were “left in the dust,” as Nelson says. Selectman Sarah Peake was thrown when she saw that no. 5 on a list of draft articles introduced at the Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday was reportedly requested by the selectmen and town manager.
When asked if she thought Bergman was getting ahead of the issue, Peake said, “I think he is.”
“The agenda item was put on by Keith,” she added. “We have had as a board no discussion on this. It is not endorsed by the Board of Selectmen. I haven’t had any conversations with the School Committee. Unfortunately, this [article] sends a message that there is a tacit endorsement by the selectmen.”
Bergman said that he was asked to draft the article by Board of Selectmen chair Cheryl Andrews and that the Feb. 8 memo was responding to a specific request from the Finance Committee for information about Nauset. However, he acknowledged that his research into the possibility of sending Provincetown students to Nauset began prior to the Feb. 6 FinCom meeting.
“I've been having regional school discussions with the Cape managers for a year in connection with the Cape Cod [Regional Technical School] assessment issue. In my preparations for our school summit discussions locally, I've been asking questions about how Nauset funding works, as well,” Bergman said.
But what Bergman calls being prepared, other officials are calling an end run around the people elected to make recommendations about the future of the school system.
“It was very hasty in my judgment,” said Provincetown school Supt. Janice Lachowetz. She said she was not aware of discussion about closing the high school until she received the Feb. 8 memo. “That is not a way to do business,” she said.
In all fairness, reorganizing a school district is a complicated issue, one requiring a great deal of research and analysis. And when the selectmen, and other town governing bodies, have questions about an issue, they expect prompt answers from Bergman.
“I don’t have a problem with him asking questions,” Peake said. “It’s important that we have information. But as far as the political decisions, those need to be made by the governing bodies, in this case the School Committee and the Board of Selectmen.”
But that’s what school officials are complaining about: that they, as elected guardians of the school system, have not been consulted. And even the chair of the Finance Committee, Ruth Gilbert, an advocate for opening the discussion of closing the high school, said she was unaware that her committee’s questions at its meeting on Feb. 6 had led to a draft of article no. 5 only a week later.
“Our meeting last week [Feb. 6] was the first time the Finance Committee asked Keith Bergman to provide something in writing. I haven’t seen the [draft] warrant. But the discussion has to be had and getting it as a discussion at this Town Meeting is headed in the right direction,” she said.
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