[S]everal school districts that have been studying merger options under the new education law, Act 46, have found it is less expensive to operate a school than it is to tuition students out to other districts.
Today voters in Westford will decide whether to let go of school choice and require all students to attend Essex High School by merging with Essex and Essex Junction. If approved, the districts will be the first to merge under Act 46, and the early decision would qualify Westford, Essex and Essex Junction for the full array of property tax incentives offered by the state.
Essex has a high school while Westford students currently enjoy school choice. A study committee developed a consolidation proposal that was approved in September by the State Board of Education. While exploring merger options, the committee found that it is less expensive to pay for the operation of the local high school than it is to pay tuition for students who choose to attend high school outside of the new district.
Even though they have choice, 64 percent of Westford students attend Essex High School, according to Committee Chair Brendan Kinney.
“Despite the fact that a majority of Westford students attend EHS, in terms of the financial analysis there would be a savings from phasing out tuitioning,” said Kinney.
The full savings would be realized in phases over four years. “We estimated $553,565 in tuition savings for Westford students but then added $180,000 under new expenses in the event that we needed to add teachers, which would then net out to $373,565 by the end of the fourth year (2020),” explained Kinney.
For more information about the Essex study, click here.
The four school districts that make up the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union explored plans to merge into a single school district last summer. They had hoped to be in the first wave of mergers to take full advantage of the most tax incentives offered under Act 46.
They wanted to collapse five different school boards and the supervisory union as a whole into one board, but when the State Board of Education ruled in September that all districts in the merger would have to either operate a school or offer choice, the situation got sticky. Middle and high school students in three of the towns take advantage of school choice but Windsor School District operates schools.
So, they performed a simple analysis to find out if they could save money if Windsor gave up their school in favor of tuitioning students. They divided the K-12 budget by the number of students in each district and found that the town that operated a school came out ahead.
Hartland spends $16,533 per student, Weathersfield spends $15,649, West Windsor is spending $17,208 per pupil. Windsor, which pays for the operation of its own school, spends much less per pupil: $13,731.
“Our conclusion was that there is a direct correlation with a higher per pupil expense in towns that tuition,” said David Baker, superintendent of the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union, who called the difference in cost “dramatic.”
“The study committee is going to have to look closely at these results because Windsor could handle all the students,” he said.
