School Choice
Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 76, section 12B, paragraph d
(d) Each city, town or regional school district shall enroll non-resident students at the school of such non-resident student's choice; provided, however, that such receiving district has seats available as stated in said report; provided, however, that this obligation to enroll non-resident students shall not apply to a district for a school year in which its school committee, prior to June first, after a public hearing, adopts a resolution withdrawing from said obligation, for the school year beginning the following September. Any such resolution of a school committee shall state the reasons therefor, and such resolution with said reasons shall be filed with the department of education; provided, however, that said department shall have no power to review any such decision by a school committee. If the city, town or regional school district operates an intra-district choice plan, non-resident students may apply for schools on the same basis as resident students, but the intra-district choice plan may give preference to resident students in assigning students to schools.
Jeff Bennett
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Perhaps it is time for the Narragansett Regional School Committee to stop the buying and selling of kids. Time to stop using kids as a commodity. Time to stop using them as pawns to fund their budgets. If you do not think this is a problem, if you do not feel this is big business, I would suggest you look at the NRHS budget document, page4, under funding sources, school choice; $1,064,330.00. The school committee simply has to vote to not accept or to opt out of school choice and the district can stop this practice.
They then can concentrate on providing a good basic education to the kids of the district, as in the towns of Templeton and Phillipston. As a community that recently voted to take on a 50 million dollar debt load for a new school, I think we should figure out how to fund it, how to have a balanced budget and how to live within it, without robbing kids from other towns to do it. If you think about it for a moment, to take or accept children from outside the district, you should have room or capacity for these "extra" kids, which means if you did not take those kids in, you would have fewer children in the classroom, a smaller child to teacher ratio. I believe in the past, we have been told that fewer children in the classroom equals more time with the teacher for each student and that is suppose to be a good thing. I would think teachers and administrators would be all in for smaller class size. Of course if you have 800 students rather than 1200, it gets kind of hard to justify such a large administrative work force. I am putting that question at the top of my list for any school committee candidates that show up for candidates night.
Jeff Bennett
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