After Leading Monomoy Through Growing Pains, Carpenter To Retire

When Dr. Scott Carpenter became superintendent in 2013, the Monomoy Regional School District was barely a year old and Monomoy Regional High School was not yet finished; students were still spread among elementary, middle and high schools in both Chatham and Harwich.

Although both communities had approved the school merger, there was still a deep streak of doubt running through both towns.

“That first year I spent a lot of time going to different meetings, discuss the promise of Monomoy,” Carpenter said in an interview last week. Those promises included raising academic performance, the ability to expand extracurricular and sports offerings with the combined enrollment; and do so at a cost lower than if the two districts had remained separate.

Those goals have been met, he said, as he discussed his plans to leave the position next June, at the end of the current school year. The conflicts that have persisted are mostly related to financial issues, which he pointed out were a strong motivating factor in the formation of the district.

When the two towns’ school districts came together, Carpenter noted, students were ready. “It’s the adults that needed more support at the time,” he said.

Within a short time, however, the district’s success was evident. Prior to the merger, both towns had been losing many students to other districts through School Choice. That "hemorrhaging,” which translated into hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost funding, slowed as families saw improvements in academics and other programs and an expansion in sports and other opportunities, he said. 

The slowdown was diminished even further during and after COVID, as the district led local school systems in addressing both remote learning and a return to classrooms. Many students who had choiced out came back and new students enrolled.

The other big challenge during his tenure unfortunately persists: the struggle to keep young families in Chatham and Harwich. When he began his tenure, for instance, the district had nine kindergarten classes. This year, there are four in Harwich and one in Chatham. Both towns continue to see a slow reduction in the number of students, Chatham more than Harwich.

“Housing and affordability for young families is as serious a problem as it ever was, and continues to get more challenging,” Carpenter said. That will be a significant challenge for his successor, he added.

The decrease in the student population over the past 12 years shows the wisdom of Chatham and Harwich merging schools. Neither town could have continued to afford a stand-alone district, he said.

“The smaller you get, the more expensive it gets to have the same level of programs,” he said.

Finances are still an issue, however. A few years ago the regionalization agreement between the two towns was amended so that each community now pays the operating costs of its own elementary school. Because Chatham’s elementary school population had shrunk so much, Harwich was essentially subsidizing Chatham. The change shifted about $1 million from Harwich to Chatham.

Harwich officials have recently raised concerns about their rising share of the Monomoy district budget, which is based on enrollment; currently Harwich pays about 76 percent, with Chatham covering the remaining 24 percent. That’s a 3 percent shift over 13 years, relatively small in a district with a $50 million budget, Carpenter said.

Officials from the towns are expected to enter into discussions with the school committee about possible changes to the funding formula in the coming months. He said he hopes that “rational minds prevail and it doesn’t decay into dysfunction and school budgets are held up.” If the district’s programs begin to suffer because of financial issues, “all of the gains we made getting families to come back here will be lost,” he said.

Carpenter gave the school committee a year-and-a-half notice that we would be leaving at the end of the current school year to provide adequate time to find a replacement who will ensure that Monomoy continues to be a “solid, strong district.” While he is technically retiring, Carpenter said he will remain in the area and may do some consulting or serve as an interim superintendent if the opportunity arises. His kids — a son in the Air Force and a daughter who is a college senior — consider this their home, he said, and he feels it’s important to maintain that connection.

“I love it here,” he said. “I love the communities and the people I work with.”

He will help with the transition, although choosing a new superintendent is up to the school committee, which last week held a series of forums to get input from staff, parents and community members regarding what they’d like to see in a new district leader. The committee has engaged the Mass Association of School Committees as a consultant in the search effort.

The position opening was expected to be posted today (Oct. 23) with a Nov. 21 deadline for submitting applications. A search committee is being assembled to help the school committee review applicants. According to a superintendent search timeline, candidates will be interviewed by the search committee on Dec. 1, 3 and 4, with the finalists being announced Dec. 11. After district visits and interviews, the school committee is expected to vote on a finalist on Dec. 18. The new superintendent will start work July 1.