The Board of Selectmen has formally thanked State Rep. Thomas Stanley in a September 13 letter for securing $100,000 for Lincoln to help offset the costs of educating the children of retired-military families living on Hanscom Air Force Base (HAFB) this year.
Gov. Charlie Baker originally vetoed the funding in the state’s fiscal 2017 budget, but Rep. Stanley successfully lobbied legislative leaders and restored the $100,000.
“The number of non-active, retiree families is projected to keep growing over time and will be unsustainable in the near future for Lincoln,” says the August issue of The Stanley Report, a monthly email newsletter produced by Stanley’s office.
HAFB has about 730 housing units, all within Lincoln’s municipal boundary, though the town cannot collect property taxes on that land, as explained in an FAQ published by the town. The federal government has an enrollment-based contract with Lincoln to educate K-8 children of active-duty Air Force and Defense Department employees living on the base.
About four years ago when the base housing was renovated, some retirees from active-duty military service began living there as well. However, the federal education contract with Lincoln does not cover their children, which now number about 30. Lincoln’s aggregate contract revenue has been sufficient to absorb the costs of the Hanscom retirees’ children in grades K-8 without additional money from the town, though costs would rise sharply if any of the students needed out-of-district special education services.
Going forward, however, the town will no longer be liable for any of those costs because the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will include the Hanscom retirees’ children in the enrollment figure that determines yearly state aid to schools.
“We were quite surprised and pleased about that,” Selectman Peter Braun said.
The town of Bedford has also receives subsidies from both the federal and state governments to educate children of active-duty personnel in grades 9-12 at Bedford High School, partly because of a deal in the 1950s whereby Bedford agreed to educate those children in perpetuity in exchange for a federal grant to build the original high school.
However, high-school children of retirees are another matter. The first retiree-family high school student emerged two years ago, and there were three more each in 2015-16 and 2016-17. Because the students live in the town of Lincoln, Bedford argued that they should enroll at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, while Lincoln argued they should be able to go to the same high school as their Hanscom Middle School classmates. Lincoln eventually agreed to pay Bedford about $17,000 per student to allow them to enroll at Bedford High. But Bedford has said it will not allow any more retirees’ children at its high school after this year.
Bedford Superintendent Schools Jon Sills did not returns calls on Friday and Tuesday.
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