Pelham Elementary School District

Superintendent of Schools 413-362-1810 (phone)

170 Chestnut Street 413-549-6108 (fax)
Amherst, MA 01002

August 7, 2017

Dear Mr. Alcorn:

Thank you for including me on your email message.

Candidly, I had a difficult time identifying the intended audience or purpose for your letter. Perhaps the
fact that I was contacted by the press, who received a copy of the letter from you shortly after I did,
offers some clarity. While I am including the same cc list as your original message, I hope we can work
out any future differences without including DESE leaders, including the Acting Commissioner, on this
email loop. I am confident that they have more pressing matters than reading email disputes between a
charter school director and school superintendent.

Two things have been abundantly clear in my communication, to both DESE and the press, about the
charter school reporting issue: that I was expressing a concern about information included in formal
DESE reports we receive multiple times a year indicating charter school enrollment and tuition, and that
I had no evidence of where the issue in the reporting occurred. It is a fact that the official reports we
received from DESE identified no Pelham students or funds as going to any charter school as late as
March, which was the last report we received prior to the June 22 report that listed four students. The
official communication from DESE on charter students and costs is what we utilize to make budget
plans, as per their guidance. The state (wisely, in my opinion) put in place a process through which they
receive information from charter schools, verify the information, and then send the accurate information
to districts to avoid awkward communication between charter school operators and local school
districts. For the record, I did not make an assumption that the reporting error was PVCICS's fault. I
would have no way to investigate or gain knowledge on this matter. If you have an issue with DESEs
statements about the reporting error, as you indicated in your comments to the press (He takes issue
with the state laying blame with the school from http://bit.ly/2vFkPZZ), I would encourage you to take
up the matter with them without including me on the email loop as it is frankly none of my business.

I am also unclear why you included two paragraphs about the Pelham Public Schools budget in your
email. If the intended audience was indeed the addressees, the most positive interpretation I can come
up with is that you are suggesting that the School Committee Chair and Superintendent of the Pelham
Public School District do not understand the budget and cost drivers that influence a small, rural school,
and you are intending to assist us in our work. We share all of our districts longitudinal budget
information prominently on our website (a standard that I believe all public schools, charter or not,
should meet), for both the sake of transparency and to receive feedback from our community. If you
have feedback to share that would authentically assist me in providing the best education to the students
at Pelham School, I encourage you to do so.

In terms of your statement about being initially notified by journalists on the reporting error, I had been
in touch with DESE about this issue starting on June 23, long before any press coverage occurred. The
reason I was in touch with DESE and not PVCICS on this matter is because districts receive the
referenced reports directly from DESE, not from charter school operators (as mentioned earlier). You
state that no one from DESE was in touch with you from June 23 until the first press coverage of this
issue came out on July 14. Is that claim accurate? If so and you find this frustrating, as it appears you
do, I would again recommend that you take this issue to DESE to better understand your collaboration
with the Department.

Finally, I did not reach out to the Press to cover this story. Rather, I was contacted by a reporter from
the Daily Hampshire Gazette in his ongoing series about financial struggles faced by small districts,
which you may have seen as multiple districts have been covered, and he asked about Pelham School.

All the best to you and your team on the upcoming school year.

Sincerely,

Dr. Michael Morris

Interim Superintendent, Pelham Public School