The Dublin Education Advisory Committee will be focusing on options from their draft final report that call for leaving the ConVal School District, per the Dublin Select Board’s recommendation to “pursue research.”

The report provides five options: remaining in ConVal on a restructured basis that includes a different tax-sharing arrangement between the towns, renegotiating the district’s Articles of Agreement to never close Dublin Consolidated School and term-limiting the document; withdrawing from the district and remaining in the SAU; withdrawing, leaving the SAU and contracting with a different SAU; remaining in ConVal and turning DCS into a charter/magnet school where students from other districts could tuition in; and some combination of the first four options that would provide maximum middle- and high-school choice.

“I think [options] two and three seem to reflect the opinion of our group [DEAC] and it also seems to reflect what I’ve heard from the three of you [the Select Board],” DEAC Chair Jay Schechter said at Monday’s Select Board meeting.

Last week, attorney Dean Eggert of Wadleigh, Starr & Peters, which represents the ConVal School District, presented an opinion that towns withdrawing from the district “shall remain a part of the school administrative unit it was part of prior to withdrawal.”

The DEAC first introduced the drafted final report on July 15. Schechter and the DEAC returned to the board Monday to seek feedback on the report after two weeks had passed, and is set to return in another two weeks as it continues its research into the type of education children receive from the ConVal school district.

The DEAC was founded after a failed attempt in March to amend the ConVal Articles of Agreement that could have led to the closure of DCS. Its reported determined the district Articles of Agreement – which created the nine-town ConVal district back in 1967 -- no longer work for Dublin. After Dublin’s and Francestown’s Town Meetings each passed articles calling on ConVal to conduct a feasibility study regarding withdrawal, both towns have their own committees that are investigating future options, and the district is conducting a study.

During Monday’s meeting, the Select Board discussed looking at the Harrisville model as a way forward. Harrisville-Wells Memorial is an elementary school in its own school district in Harrisville, but is within SAU 29. After elementary school, students attend middle and high school in Keene.

Additionally, the board tasked the DEAC to clarify that the first option in the report is not viable. Given the timing, Select Board Member Susan Peters, said it is not.

“The way the feasibility committee is structured and the timing of November does not make No. 1 feasible before we have to give our opinion,” Peters said. “From what Carole [Monroe] has said and others have said, that’s not the agreement of the feasibility committee to do this, to renegotiate the [Articles of Agreement].”

Select Board members Chris Raymond and Monroe also agreed that option one is “not on the table.”

As for reasons to not stay with ConVal, Schechter cited cost increases and lack of educational quality, reasons that are also outlined in the report.

The report states that the ConVal district has a goal of 75% proficiency in math, reading and science, but DCS students averaged a proficiency of 57% in reading and 40% in math in 2023. In addition, ConVal High School students averaged 56% in reading, 28% in math and 35% in science, based on state Department of Education figures.

“As we get into more specificity and we take a look at our physical plant, maybe we would choose to take back a few grades and send the kids to middle school later,” Schechter suggested, noting it was just his own idea and not previously discussed. Schechter also suggested tutoring or after-school programs.

Raymond agreed with this idea, and said he thinks it would be able to be negotiated in the agreement. He suggested maybe even holding sixth and seventh grade. Peters supported the idea regarding the community support of the children in the middle- and high-school age groups, like tutoring, but asked if there were other  opportunities for enrichment beyond schooling.

“Is there more we can do to enrich their lives when they’re still and school still open to learning and still open to the world?” Peters said.

Monroe said she will have to present Dublin’s position in front of the district feasibility committee, of which she is a member, Aug. 8. The committee’s deadline is Nov. 1 to prepare a report for the state Board of Education to either recommend or not recommend withdrawal, with minority opinion allowed.

If the state board approves a withdrawal plan, residents will vote, and withdrawal can pass either by majority vote in a town looking to withdraw and across the district as a whole, or by three-fifths vote in a town seeking to withdraw, unless three-fifths of voters across the district disapprove.