EAST BRIDGEWATER — Oct. 13, 2026 — The East Bridgewater School Committee on Tuesday tabled a proposed joint letter with the Select Board urging Gov. Healey to reverse a decision that school officials say bars the district from state education grants because of the town’s MBTA Communities noncompliance, sending the draft back for rewording with a vote planned Oct. 26.
The Full Story
The draft, read aloud at the meeting and to be signed by both boards’ chairs, would also go to the education commissioner and local legislators. It lists fiscal 2027 state grants the letter says East Bridgewater students are ineligible for, including two Partnership for Reading Success literacy grants — $162,000 for pre-K through grade 3 and $62,100 for grades 4 and 5 — a $50,000 Hate Crime Prevention grant and a $14,000 Safe Routes to School grant.
The letter ties the ineligibility to town voters’ decisions not to pass zoning bylaws that would bring the town into compliance with Section 3A of Chapter 40A, and argues the education programs have no connection to that law’s aims.
District administrators said the restriction first surfaced on the two reading grants, which the district applied for in the spring and had received in past years. The Hate Crime Prevention and Safe Routes grants were also named at the table as ones the district has received before.
It is now written into every state grant saying that we can’t even apply.
— Jennifer McPartland, Assistant Superintendent 1:14:56
Don McDougall questioned the framing, saying the letter dwells on the town’s votes and on children having no vote, when the argument should be that education grants should not be tied to the zoning statute. Members also suggested spelling out the money at stake. Superintendent Gina Williams noted the letter would be signed on the committee’s behalf and had not formally gone to the Select Board.
The letter was not listed as an action item, and members voted to table it to Oct. 26. As summarized at the table, the draft will add the newest grant the district has been shut out of, rework the paragraph on the vote to focus on grants being tied to it, and add the total amount potentially lost, then go through legal review again before the committee votes.
The committee separately tabled the 2026-2027 Massachusetts Association of School Committees resolutions to Oct. 26, ahead of the association’s Nov. 4-6 annual business meeting. The first resolution was described at the meeting as affirming that all children should be safe in school regardless of immigration status. McDougall said the resolutions include items that would minimize police and security, the opposite of the committee’s talk of increasing security, and could carry training costs.
In the business update, Director of Business Administration/Facilities John Shea said the news from Plymouth County Retirement’s newly published actuarial report was not good: the town’s fiscal 2028 payment, if made at the start of the year, would be $5,285,683, almost a 12.2% increase over this year. Shea said a new actuary lowered projected investment returns and pushed the end of the payment schedule from 2031 to 2032, and that the $574,000 increase would take up most of the town’s available 2.5% revenue growth, with an 8% to 10% health insurance increase also expected.
