Breaking: Grafton Rejects School Choice

The School Committee shifted gears tonight and voted not to offer school choice next year after all.

This counteracts an earlier vote to accept school choice starting this fall.

The committee voted 4-0 (Peter Carlson was absent) to support Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings’ suggestion that the district should wait until next year “to see how things shake out.’’

Starting this fall, the school district will open a new and the grade levels will be shifted among the remaining town schools.

“Once things play out for a year, we will have a clearer picture’’ of what positions might be available, Cummings said.

Cummings had earlier suggested adding school choice as a way to add revenue to the school budget. He said earlier this year that the added space from the new school and subsequent changes would make school choice viable.

This would have been the first time that Grafton accepted school choice.

In the previous vote to accept school choice, Daryl Rynning cast the sole dissenting vote. She said she thought the district was undergoing so many changes that accepting school choice would have been a poorly timed decision.

Cummings suggested the committee revisit the discussion next year. “In a lot of ways, Grafton is ripe to be a school choice system,’’ he said.