government

To the editor:

Tonight, the Vocational Education Options Working Group will be holding a public forum to discuss their findings and offer the opportunity to ask questions about Lincoln’s vocational education options in advance of the upcoming Special Town Meeting. I encourage you to attend the meeting and learn about the various options and their implications.

[Read more…] about Letter to the editor: CapComm recommends Minuteman withdrawal

By Alice Waugh

Town officials offered a preview Monday night of vocational-technical costs and options for Lincoln students in advance of a February 11 public forum at 7 p.m in the Hartwell multipurpose room and a Special Town Meeting later this month.

On February 23, Lincoln voters will be asked if the town should withdraw from the Minuteman school district. If the answer is no, they will then be asked to approve the amended Minuteman High School regional agreement. Selectman Peter Braun, a member of the Vocational Education Options Working Group (VEOWG), said last week that it would make sense for Lincoln to withdraw, in his opinion.

Earlier in the process of hammering out a new regional agreement, “we had never even conceived of withdrawing” from the district, largely because the new Minuteman school building will be on Lincoln land and the current agreement requires the school to be located within a member town. But as Lincoln’s dissatisfaction with the new agreement’s cost formulas became an issue, the Minuteman School Committee offered Lincoln (along with six other towns) an expedited withdrawal option, along with removing the school location requirement.

If Lincoln votes to withdraw, it can leave the district without incurring a member town’s share of the debt for the new building—assuming the agreement is also approved by the district’s other 15 towns. It would also forfeit representation on the Minuteman School Committee but would pay less overall for vocational-technical education.

The VEOWG gathered cost estimates for various scenarios such as staying in the Minuteman district, leaving but still sending students to Minuteman as an out-of-district town, or sending them to any of three other technical schools in the area (all of which have been recently renovated). They also compiled information on curriculum and career data for all four schools, as well as an FAQ with background on the issue and what factors to consider before voting.

“It’s been an eye-opening experience. We had absolutely no clue about what withdrawal would look like, or what other schools would look like, or the cost comparisons,” Braun said.

Lincoln’s estimated costs

Selectmen noted that Lincoln has always been in favor of a new Minuteman building and would have paid its share of the cost under the current agreement. However, Braun noted at Monday’s Board of Selectmen meeting that under the new agreement, which takes into account both enrollment and each town’s “wealth factor” as determined by the state, Lincoln’s debt obligation would double and its voting weight would be reduced from the current 6.25 percent (each of the 16 towns gets one vote) to less than 4 percent.

Assuming Lincoln sent five students to Minuteman in fiscal year 2020, the cost would be almost twice as much per student ($55,911 vs. $29,503) if Lincoln were a member of the Minuteman school district than if it were not. The cost for sending those five students to one of three other schools instead would range from about $21,000 to $24,000 per student.

Options at other schools

If Lincoln does withdraw from the Minuteman district (which would take effect July 1, 2017), “a future committee will have a year and half to focus in some preferential way on another school or Minuteman” for Lincoln students, Braun said. However, the choice will always rest with students, who are free to go anywhere as long as a school has capacity.

“Not being a member of a district creates the ultimate flexibility,” Braun said.

Based on site visits and discussions with Assabet Valley Regional Technical School in Marlborough and Nashoba Valley Technical High School in Westford “clearly have capacity… and indicated they would welcome having us,” Braun said. The working group has not yet been able to meet with officials from Keefe Regional Technical School in Framingham due to inclement weather, but members included cost information for all five schools in their cost estimate chart.

The VEOWG did not gather information on Shawsheen Valley Technical High School in Bedford because that school does not take out-of-district students, Braun said.

As an out-of-district town, Lincoln would not be guaranteed slots for its students at Minuteman. The new building will have a capacity of 628 students. The current enrollment is 673, but that number will decline if towns withdraw from the district. The school may also see fewer out-of-district students from Boston and Waltham. Boston has improved its vocational-technical facilities and Waltham’s planned new or renovated high school is expected to include voc-tech programs, according to the working group’s FAQ document.

At the selectmen’s meeting, resident and former Selectman Sara Mattes asked if withdrawing from the Minuteman district would amount to “treating vocational-technical kids differently than our other kids… is this not a version of school choice?”

“This has nothing to do with the school choice you’re talking about, with reciprocity between districts,” Braun responded. Many Massachusetts towns are not a member of a vocational-technical school district, “and it’s very common for towns to have multiple choices available for their [vocational-technical] kids. I’m comfortable with the sense that this is not an unusual situation we would be putting our kids in.” About 41 percent of Minuteman’s students this year are from non-district towns.

Based on questions and discussion at Thursday’s public forum, the FAQ document may be revised before the Special Town Meeting, Braun said.

To the editor:

Amidst all the information being distributed regarding the upcoming votes that Lincoln will take regarding Minuteman High School, the Lincoln Vocational Education Options Working Group (VEOWG) wants to ensure that accurate and consistent data is provided to the public. To that end, the VEOWG has reviewed Sharon Antia’s recent letter and the accompanying charts provided by Minuteman that projected Lincoln’s per-student cost for fiscal year 2020 (FY20) under the revised regional agreement. We have also inquired with Minuteman to clarify its methodology for its calculation, particularly its use of seven students as the applicable “HS Enrollment” used to divide into Lincoln’s total projected cost for FY20.

Minuteman has informed us that it used seven students because that is Lincoln’s estimated four-year average enrollment for FY16-19 (including the actual enrollment for FY16 and an estimated five students in each of the other three fiscal years). We disagree with Minuteman’s methodology and have so informed them. In order to provide an accurate per-student cost estimate for a particular year, the only accurate and consistent methodology is to divide the total cost chargeable to Lincoln for that year by the actual number of students enrolled that year. Since the estimated enrollment for Lincoln is five students in each of FYs 2017, 2018, and 2019, the only reasonable estimate for FY20 is also five students. We also confirmed with Minuteman that five students is the appropriate assumption for FY20.

Dividing five into the total projected FY20 cost of nearly $280,000 yields an estimated FY20 per-student cost of nearly $56,000. This is the number that the VEOWG will use to describe Lincoln’s potential cost of remaining a member, in comparison to the projected per-student FY20 cost on an out-of-district basis at Minuteman and the other vocational/technical schools we are considering.

We hope to see you at the upcoming public forum (February 11) and Special Town Meeting (February 23).

Sincerely,

Selectman Peter Braun on behalf of the Lincoln Vocational Education Options Working Group

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Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters must be about a Lincoln-specific topic, will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of letters about Minuteman Regional Vocational School District from Sharon Antia, Lincoln’s representative on the Minuteman School Committee. The previous letters were published on January 4, January 14, and January 24.  She invites readers with questions to email her at Sharon.antia@gmail.com.

To the editor:

On February 23, Lincoln will hold a Special Town Meeting at which we will be asked to vote on two things: whether to approve the amended Minuteman school district’s regional agreement, and whether to withdraw from the Minuteman school district.

Massachusetts evaluates a town’s ability to pay for public education based on property values and personal income (“wealth factors”). Using this information, the state determines the fair and equitable distribution of state funds for education by subsidizing schools serving communities with low wealth factors at a higher rate than schools serving towns such as Lincoln where wealth is determined to be high. This matter is determined by the state and is not something that can be controlled at the local level.

[Read more…] about Letter to the editor: Minuteman in dollars and cents

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of letters about Minuteman High School from Sharon Antia, Lincoln’s representative on the Minuteman School Committee. The previous letters were published on January 4 and January 14. She invites readers with questions to email her at Sharon.antia@gmail.com.

To the editor:

On February 23, Lincoln will hold a Special Town Meeting at which we will be asked to vote on two things: whether to approve the amended Minuteman school district’s regional agreement, and whether to withdraw form the Minuteman school district. The new Minuteman regional agreement, which all 16 towns in the district must vote on, has two important changes to the district’s governance.

1) Voting mechanism for school committee members—Under the current structure, each of the 16 towns in the district has one school committee representative, and each representative has one full vote. Some towns send many students and some only send a couple, yet each representative’s vote holds equal value.

With the new amendment, 50 percent of a town’s voting strength will be shared equally among members and 50 percent will be based on that town’s four-year rolling average enrollment. Recognizing that some towns may withdraw from the district and that Lincoln sends only a few students to this high school, it is difficult to determine exactly how this change will impact Lincoln, but it is likely that the value of our vote will be diminished.

At least as important as the actual vote is having a seat at the table and being part of the conversation in the district. As history has shown, we expect that some of our students will want to attend this high school, and the new school will be built in our town. The ability of the Lincoln Planning Board to manage building size, scale, and impact on abutters is constrained by state statute. However, as long as we are part of the district, our representative to the Minuteman School Committee has the ability to question program-driven design such as the proposed new theater.

2) Selection of school committee members—Unlike our K-12 system in which citizens elect school committee members, Minuteman School Committee representatives are appointed by town moderators. One of the proposed amendments will move this appointing power to the Board of Selectmen in each member town (or by the mayor in the case of a city), unless the community provides otherwise by bylaw or charter.

Minuteman School Committee members act, as do K-12 School Committee members, as advocates for public education in their respective schools. Without an election process for a Minuteman School Committee representative, an appointment by the town moderator has provided a balanced alternative to select strong advocates for education.

Minuteman High School has been part of Lincoln’s educational system since its inception in 1971. We have expected its School Committee, just as we expect our K-8 and L-S school committees, to be strong advocates for investments in quality education. This must be part of the conversation as we consider change.

Sincerely,

Sharon Antia, Minuteman School Committee
165 S. Great Rd.

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Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters must be about a Lincoln-specific topic, will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.