To the Editor:
As we begin our school year, we face the looming question of how to approach our budget and constraints on curricula. Rather than having discussions in February that devolve into hasty budget cuts, we need to focus on the difficult long-term issues that drive these discussions.
The growing consensus already is that Berkshire County has many more schools and administrative districts than it can afford. The situation will worsen as we experience an expected enrollment decline of 22 percent, according to the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. What are we doing about it? What are the challenges and potential remedies?
Currently, the economics of education are skewed by arcane Massachusetts Department of Education (DOE) statutes that obfuscate the issues. The DOE supports low, “out-of-district” rates for choice-in and tuition-in programs that allow school districts to supplement their enrollment, rather than deal with their overcapacity. Done at a large scale, these rates facilitate musical chairs in a “zero sum game” (one district’s gain, becomes another district’s loss) for the declining population of the county and its public school students.
Consolidation needs to be addressed, especially at the high school level where curricula need strengthening. However, interim steps would be helpful. Unifying the tuition-In and choice-In rates across the county would go a long way to financing schools that need support and sorting out schools that would benefit from the curricula of a larger school. Some small steps are being made.
In July, the outgoing Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee member, Fred Clark, proposed to unify the tuition rate for students who reside outside their school districts. (Mr. Clark has spent eight years on the Committee.) As reported by Great Barrington “The Newsletter,” the proposal was passed with the support of Rich Bradway, Kristin Piasecki, Christine Shelton, Jason St. James, and Bill Fields. Voting against it were Steve Bannon, Rich Dohoney, Andrew Potter. A letter was then sent to the State Commissioner.
We should applaud these efforts and encourage the DOE to support a “rural exemption” for Berkshire County so that a unified rate for choice-In students is also allowed. Even without a change in the State’s “choice” rate, this would enable towns to supplement the tuition rates to/from non-district towns with a rate closer to the actual cost of $15,000-$17,000 per student.
Why? Berkshire County with only 16,000 students represents 1.7 percent of the entire State’s 950,000 public school students. Our under-capacity schools are in dire need of support to provide students with a full complement of critical course and vocational studies. This is not a big issue in the eastern Massachusetts where most students reside.
The sooner the Berkshires, especially school districts in the Southern Berkshires, are able to budget and operate under unified rates, the sooner they will deal with the need to consolidate their resources. Hopefully, this will result in richer curricula with sustainable fiscal policies. With State aid, this step could also facilitate the creation of a much needed vocational school in South County. Instead, we are adding to our current over-capacity by building-in vocational facilities, using selective choice-In programs to attract students. Instead, a regional vocational school would provide students with access to these programs across districts as a matter of course.
What about shared services? In some cases, this works, especially in municipal services. However, schools carry large long-term liabilities in retirement health care costs and in some cases, building debt. These are not recovered when sharing services. The health insurance liability for Berkshire Hills School District as of their last audited statement is $54 million, covering 194 active employees and 291 retirees. These costs are solely the responsibility of the district’s three towns. This is typical for home districts, and if we continue to overbuild schools, we will overburden the next generation likewise.
The time seems ripe to plan our school systems strategically. In that way, the towns in South County would be able to provide a richer education for their students, deploy their facilities in a complementary, not competitive way, and financially support our educational needs equitably.
High schools should be our first priority with a goal to create broader curricula equally available to all. This includes creating a geographically-available vocational school which was recommended in a 2009 study, “Independent Analysis for Opportunities to Consolidate,” but not advanced. Elementary schools could be addressed in a second phase, since transportation and other issues are different,
We need to start now, if we are ever to resolve the dilemma of our high schools.
Sharon Gregory
Great Barrington
