At the Dec. 11 Quabbin Regional School District School Committee meeting the superintendent highlighted several administrative items that could affect enrollment and programming across the five-town district.

On homeschooling, the superintendent said the district has "over a 100 students that are homeschool students" and is tightening procedures for approving yearly homeschool plans and reviewing evidence. She described joint home visits with a district officer that helped staff understand why families opt to homeschool and to offer district resources should families choose to return.

The superintendent also summarized a tiered monitoring review of the district's English learner (EL) programming that identified three areas requiring action: staffing patterns that currently concentrate EL students across multiple schools with limited dedicated staff, translation/communication workflows that sometimes bypass established translation oversight, and parental notification processes that need policy updates. The superintendent said an action plan will be produced for three of the ten monitored areas and a policy change on parental notification will be submitted by Jan. 27.

On interdistrict options, the superintendent and Chair reported recent meetings with North Brookfield officials to explore a tuition agreement. The district presented a per-pupil base figure of about $17,000, excluding transportation and extraordinary special-education costs, as a starting point for negotiations. The superintendent said the number was derived by removing transportation and additional special education expenses from per-pupil spending to establish a base.

The report also covered workforce and programming items: the NJROTC captain and a lieutenant plan to retire within the next school year, prompting active recruitment, and the superintendent said a meeting with MassHire Central MA, CMRPC and DESE produced strong interest in creating an agricultural vocational program. The district aims to survey stakeholders and, if feasible, launch one program by September 2027, exploring partnerships with local farms and potential use of New Braintree Grama School facilities.

Committee members asked for more detail about student counts, potential timelines and whether a tuition arrangement would be tuition-only or lead to a town joining the regional district. The superintendent said the district remains open to multiple configurations but that any regionalization would require town votes and likely additional staffing if student numbers grew materially.

The committee took no immediate action beyond asking for follow-up materials and timelines; the superintendent will circulate related reports and slides to the committee.