By Alice Waugh
The Minuteman School Committee (MSC) has approved a new regional agreement that includes an expedited withdrawal from the district for Lincoln if residents say so at a Special Town Meeting scheduled for February 23, 2016.
At a special meeting on December 21, the committee also approved an intermunicipal agreement (IMA) in principle between Lincoln and the district to compensate the town as the new school building’s host community, with terms to be negotiated later between the MSC and the Lincoln Board of Selectmen. However, the approval included the provision that any payments must be equal to the cost of specific services rendered by the town of Lincoln to the school, and that the agreement must be revisited on a regular basis.
All 16 towns must ratify the new agreement at a Special Town Meeting by March 1, 2016. Lincoln is one of seven towns that may withdraw from the district without incurring debt for the upcoming building project if they vote to do so at the same meeting. The other towns with the expedited withdrawal option are Boxborough, Carlisle, Dover, Sudbury, Wayland, and Weston.
Any towns that withdraw by March 1 will still be represented on the MSC until July 1, 2017. However, other terms of the new agreement—including new formulas for calculating each towns’ share of capital costs as well as a new weighted voting method—will take effect in March 2016.
Selectman Peter Braun and Town Administrator Tim Higgins will form a working group to study the issues surrounding potential withdrawal from the Minuteman district, including a cost analysis and other vocational-technical options for Lincoln students in addition to Minuteman.
“I have no idea how the town will feel about this, but we have a lot of homework to do in a very short period of time,” Braun noted at the December 21 Board of Selectmen meeting.
Towns that withdraw will still be allowed to send students to Minuteman as out-of-district students, though they will not have representation on the Minuteman School Committee and will pay a higher per-student amount than district towns. About a third of current Minuteman’s enrollment are from outside the district, “and our very clear intent to preserve that option,” Selectman Noah Eckhouse said. “This is about funding and governance, not limiting options for children who want to go there.”
Also at their December 21 meeting, the MSC deferred a vote on authorizing a bond issue for the new school until it was known exactly which towns of the current 16 would still be in the district as of March 1—and thus liable for debt for the new building.
Intermunicipal agreement
Lincoln has been seeking compensation as Minuteman’s host community, first through the revised regional agreement and then through an IMA. Other towns in the district, however, have not been receptive to the notion. Braun and Arlington Selectmen Dan Dunn had proposed an annual payment of $138,000 from the district, but the MSC nixed that idea and mandated that any financial compensation must be tied to specific services that Lincoln would provide, such as added fire and police protection. The IMA would also have to be revisited at regular intervals.
It’s not expected that Lincoln will take over sole responsibility for public safety at the new school even though its footprint will be entirely in Lincoln, however. A recent discussion among Braun, Lincoln Police Chief Kevin Kennedy and Minuteman administrators determined that “there will not be heavy enough lifting to require additional staffing and costs,” Braun said at a December 17 selectmen’s summit. At the same meeting, he conceded that Lincoln was seeking compensation only because the assessment formula under the new regional agreement will result in a higher per-student cost for Lincoln (even if it were to stay in the district).
Sharon Antia, Lincoln’s representative on the MSC, said she would work to educate Lincoln residents on Minuteman issues before the Special Town Meeting. “Ideally, we would have this [IMA] or at least the bones of an agreement” in place before the February Town Meeting, she said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had the bones of an agreement in the past that haven’t played out,” Eckhouse said. An IMA “has to be specific, it has to be real and not just a promise, and it has to happen on a timeline where we need to be able to see our other options.”
Selectmen deliberately chose a date for the Special Town Meeting that would fall soon before the deadline. “We want our vote as close to March 1 as possible because something will probably change,” said Selectman Noah Eckhouse. Up until now, “we’re been forced to make the first move and that’s not in our favor.” Since the meeting will be on a weeknight rather than on a Saturday morning as with regular Town Meetings, they expressed the hope that there would be a quorum present. According to the town’s general by-laws, a quorum constitutes at least 100 voters.