Crash aborts school planning session.

Byline: George Barnes 

ATHOL - With his car blocking the road leading to Athol-Royalston Middle School last night, Superintendent of Schools Anthony T. Polito walked over to cars as they pulled up in front of Pleasant Street Elementary School.

"The meeting's canceled," he repeated over and over as cars drove up. "We don't have any power."

A truck accident yesterday afternoon on Main Street forced the rescheduling of what was supposed to be the unveiling of a strategic plan for the Athol-Royalston Regional School District.

The regional school committee was expecting up to 100 people at the meeting, including 35 members of the Strategic Planning Committee. Instead, Mr. Polito and school board members were on traffic duty, telling everyone who stopped by that the meeting would be rescheduled to next week.

"It will be on Wednesday," Mr. Polito said.

The tractor-trailer crash happened at 2:12 p.m., and power was lost to homes and businesses in much of the southeast and uptown sections of town and the west side of Phillipston. No injuries were reported. About 1,700 customers lost power.

Police shut down Main Street between Lake Ellis Road and the intersection of Routes 2A and 32, after the accident. Traffic was rerouted on a five-mile detour down Route 32 to Doe Valley Road, over Doe Valley Road to Pleasant Street and down Pleasant Street to Main Street. The road remained closed late last night.

Power was restored just before the 7 p.m. starting time of the School Committee meeting, but School Committee member Roberta Newman of Royalston said it was too late to reconsider.

"We've told too many people it's canceled," she said.

The rescheduled meeting will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

The strategic plan was created in reaction to mounting difficulties facing the district, among them Athol High School's tenuous hold on its accreditation and the possibility the state could deem the district underperforming.

"It has involved school people, including teachers, principals and administrators, also businessmen, town officials and people involved in social services and other organizations," said Town Manager David Ames. "What we tried to do was find one person to cover three or four groups."

Strategic planning is not new, Mr. Ames said, but it is new to Athol.

He said the plan created by the strategic planning committee lacks a timetable for the district to carry out its suggestions, but offers general suggestions.

"What it does provide is a road map saying this is the direction we, the towns in the district, see the school district going," he said. "It looks at what is working and what is not working, and where we expect the schools to be down the road."

Among the concerns in the district is the condition of school buildings. The plan is not expected to say which buildings should be repaired or replaced, but rather to say that, generally, buildings need improvement.

"What is extremely important in this process is that the strategic plan has to be on the front burner all the time," Mr. Ames said. "When we do budgets, we need to look at the strategic plan. For town meeting, we need to be looking at the strategic plan, and when they are cutting from their budget, they need to be looking at the strategic plan, because there will be dollars attached to it."

Mr. Ames likened the strategic plan to the town's capital plan, which has been followed by the town for several years, projecting as much as possible what major purchases would be needed in the town and trying to set aside money for them each year.

He said the capital plan is likely to be affected as the school starts its own capital planning and looks to Athol and Royalston to pay for those needs.