Massachusetts Association of
Regional Schools
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MARS Board Meeting MinutesSeptember 12, 2006The MARS meeting to start the new school year was well attended by superintendents, school committee members, business managers and some town officials. Gene Carlo, superintendent of Assabet, MAVA, MASS and MARS Boards member, started off the meeting by describing the several differently colored sheets handed out urging attendees to read the pink sheet which is Mass General Laws Chapter 71, 16B dealing with regional schools. In some cases the DoE proposal conflicts with this law and those conflicts will have to be resolved. Gene reminded us that the DoE is not an enemy of education. They have come to the meeting to help us understand what they are proposing and to hear from us what we think needs to be changed or retained. We each need to carefully and thoughtfully read the proposal and 16B to see any discrepancies and to contact MARS with our responses so that MARS can join with MASS, and MAVA to build a suitable response to the Board of Ed. Assessment issues and E & D issues are the key areas of difficulty. The meeting then turned to Jay Sullivan from the Department of Ed. Not until August did we know what the outcome of the veto and override of the Governor’s veto was. Both House and Senate accepted the Conference Committee’s addition of five million to the reimbursement of transportation and 400,000 for a pilot program for looking at more efficient delivery methods of transportation, and 100,000 for auditing existing programs. Jay explained that he prefers to use actual expenses reported for transportation, not the estimates in schedule 19. The cherry sheets are an estimate and the DoE “grossly” over estimates amounts for charter schools, sending out less for the first payment so that more is available for the second payment. This method seems most helpful to regions. Last year’s estimated cost for transportation was about 62 Million so the 55 million for this year should be about 90% of full. Jay built in some inflation when he gave the legislature an estimated sum. $400,000 for the pilot program is to study methods to reduce costs by using more efficient delivery systems, including car pooling and other ideas that have not been part of school transportation for many years. At this point the DoE is not sure how to deal with some of the suggested areas of study, like car-pooling. But since the DoE is supposed to have a report on it’s study ready for the legislature by March 1 Jay wants to put together a group from MARS and MASBO to talk about next steps to see where to go. This would be a one day sit down in Oct or Nov to mull the situation over and see what results. Several suggestions were made at this time that Jay recognized as the kind of information needed. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BEING PART OF THIS DISCUSSION PLEASE CONTACT JAY SULLIVAN AT jsullivan@doe.mass.edu The other $100,000 for auditing is the result of the first legislation to require audits for transportation. Someone will be hired to deal with these audits though the actual audits may be done even before the person is hired. The audits are not an attempt to “get cha’!” but will be as discrete as possible, as non-invasive of time and staff as possible. Letters will go out to districts about them, probably not before November. Although no criteria are yet in place for choosing which districts to audit those with the highest per rider costs will most likely be done. Geography may be another factor. The DoE has not yet selected criteria for selection. The DoE will check with the legislature about their intent in this legislation to implement intent as fully and accurately as possible. At this point in the meeting Rep. Cleon Turner who was attending the meeting indicated he thought the legislature needed to be reassured that the 100% reimbursement for transportation did not encourage carelessness among regions in their contracts and that the audits could be a positive source of information to counter that old concern. Jay once again underlined his awareness of the over auditing going on and that these new audits would be done with as little disruption to any district as possible. After applause for Jay Gene Carlo urged us to co-operate as fully as we can, understanding that the DoE is not acting as a watch dog coming upon us, and seconding Rep. Turner’s positive take on the usefulness of the audits and the whole process. Gene urged districts to file their end-of- year reports accurately and in a timely fashion so that real data is available for use for us. He reminded us that we are being invited to the table so we can participate for our own benefit, and urged that we make lists of those issues which are important in transportation such as Fuel escalation, or the arrangement partial regions have piggy backing with elementaries, and so forth. Editorially, with the news of about 90% reimbursement and the opportunity to participate in the work on looking for greater efficiency in transportation methods, we seem to have had very positive news from Jay, and thank him for coming to the meeting to inform us and include us. MARS looks forward to participating in the work going forward here. Next on the agenda was Jeff Wulfson, introduced by Gene Carlo who gave Jeff, Roger Hatch and Rob McDonald great credit for work on numbers during work on Chapter 70 this spring. Without their work we would not be where we are and now, even though there are some who may not like their numbers, at least they can be explained. Jeff Wulfson’s presentation today can be seen as the first of two parts, the second to be a presentation on Sept 27 at 9:30 at Assabet. Today he gave an over view, with some details, and on the 27 he will give, during the MASS drive by, a more in depth presentation. The meeting on the 27 will be in the auditorium. In preparation for the 27 please read Chapter 71, 16B, and the proposal and for those of you who attended today’s meeting, the other handouts as well. MARS apologizes here for having no access to other copies of the handouts as they were generously provided by Gene Carlo and MARS does not have an electronic source for them. In acknowledgement of some dissension over the proposal and Gene’s friendly introduction, Jeff spoke in appreciation of being seen as friends, saying lightly that regional finances are complicated! He then indicated that regional finances are the same as cities and towns’ but have layers on top of what they have. As part of these layers are some decades’ old statutes. 16B has been subject to interpretation over time so it is not always clear. There are all kinds of arcane questions that come up at budget time. DoE does as much as it can during budget time to answer those questions and tries to be consistent with DoR and others. They had never tried to put down material in a document and DoE realized they were not as helpful as they could be. There is enough friction during budget process already. They didn’t want to exacerbate that with answers that differ, office to office. The intent of the document is to codify what they have said during the past. The new pieces were put in to fill some unexplained gaps in procedure. Some districts are doing fine and not necessarily following what is in these regs—for every district doing well there must be 2 or 3 not doing well, regions are so important to the state’s educational system that it is vital to assist them. For all these reasons above the DoE has put out the proposal. Feedback is essential so they can get the proposed regulations right. If necessary the arbitrarily set deadline, already once extended, can be extended again. There is a lot in the proposal, and some is not controversial, but two areas Jeff talked about that are controversial. Chapter 70 for assessment versus regional agreements. He gave a brief history of assessments governed first by regional agreements and then changed by the 1993 ed reform law, indicating that in some instances the change was only on paper and some districts went on with the regional agreement method. These districts ignored the Chapter 70 change to ability to pay. Ability to pay pre-empted the regional agreement. Although it has taken 13 years to get it right the intent was and is that poor communities need not be at a disadvantage because of their wealth. We may now have solved that long problem but the full effect is slow to see because of the 3 to 4 year phase in of some parts. While a lot of districts ignored the change others followed it and soon complained bitterly resulting in the change that allowed a unanimous agreement in a district among member towns to return to the agreement. A few high profile court cases have publicized the ability-to-pay versus agreement requirement. DoE may have been remiss in helping districts to obey. The least DoE can do now is to make clear how to follow the current laws. Jeff indicated he agreed that in some areas the proposed regs are unwieldy and unclear. He needs constructive suggestions on what the process should be. Should it be the school committee to decide on agreement versus ’93? Majority of towns? How should the process work? Suggestions from the audience were to put a check box on schedule 19 to indicate whether district used ability to pay or agreement. Another indicated concern that an earlier solution in his two town district would now be compromised by actions bringing even more lack of clarity to the process, in his district. Jeff recognized that towns resent “subsidizing” the other town/towns but that it is necessary for all towns to understand each one is rated, tax wise, independently. Wealthier towns pay more per student because they can, up to a point. He referred to the wealth measurement problems of the past and repeated that until this new formula has time to be fully in place we will not know if it is working as we think it should, if it has been done right. Even though when the phased in parts are in place there will still be some disparities between member towns, the DoE will be able to explain why. There were a lot of communities that were being asked to pay too much—this is easy. They will gradually pay less. But it is much more difficult to tell communities traditionally under paying that they have to come up with more. It is slow but should happen over time. A remark from the audience brought up the divisive effect of the alternative assessment and destructive outcome as proposed and Jeff agreed, saying that it isn’t right yet. The alternative assessment stuff is designed to assist what the process should be to assess differently but is not yet ready to do that. He noted that in cases where the legislature has legislated something it supercedes local control. But how a judge would rule in these cases is not known. An assessment template was requested from the DoE to show what they are recommending. The discussion then moved to E & D accounts. Part of the proposal has tried to distinguish areas where a district goes for funds: member town authority or school committee. The practice in some districts has been to allow the school committee to go directly to E & D without going back to the towns. Jeff sees and agrees with the policy of this. The issue here is not a policy disagreement but a legal consideration. DoR has been very consistent saying that E & D expenditures have to go through budgetary process. There are no court rulings on this. He wants to avoid DoE advice being different from DoR on this. So the contingency item in budget, as proposed, is an agreed upon solution. Money can be transferred from the E & D account to the contingency line item in the budget, which is voted upon by the member towns, and then drawn on by the school committee during the year. Because the money is already in the E & D account it is not money the towns’ have to raise, merely agree to have moved from one account to another, after which the towns have no direct responsibility for it’s expenditure. This is designed to avoid the question of who the E & D money actually belongs to, the school district or the towns. If we want to see E & D available without this process the DoE is willing to go back to DoR and A& F but the DoE needs some legal argument to use. If the MMA supported us it would be useful. MMA could say they don’t want to be bothered by this whole thing and they would prefer E & D to be accessed by school committee. MAVA has been working with Henry Hall and Rick Manley and they have a different opinion from the DoR. There is also a question of how to report a contingency line item. Someone addressed a longer term change to statue for multi year use of left over money. DoR is not particularly interested in changing. Jeff finished his presentation followed by applause. These complicated issues will be worked out through participation in the upcoming sessions and thoughtful commentary from the regional community. You are all urged to send your ideas, questions, and solutions to MARS and they will be transferred to the discussions for use in the final presentation of position to the Board of Ed. MARS greatly appreciates Jeff Wulfson’s presence today and his willingness to work with regions to build a sound document. Once again, as did Jay Sullivan, we are invited to the table and have the opportunity to craft these regulations to describe best our procedures. Gene Carlo then spoke. 16B is the law. It is the heart and soul of how we do business. When the school committee has a recommendation from the superintendent to move money out of E & D and the recommendation and the vote to spend it are in the school committee minutes you can spend it because the school committee is the authority. The DoR is playing this role because some school committees delegate authority to expedite business. Some school committees say to a superintendent they can spend some sum from E & D without a clear paper trail of authorized dollar spending and when auditors come in they can’t figure out the authority. School committees can’t do this. Although the DoR can interpret language, only the legislature can make law. MAVA is working to craft this E & D language the right way. Gene asked MASBO members to help him by providing information on how E & D accounts are used. Gene’s e-mail is ecarlo@assabet.org. He expressed confidence that E & D will get fixed. He went on to say that assessment is a more serious issue because it is about relationships. You have to be able to explain why one town in a district pays a very different amount per student that does another town. We should see a closing of gap in the breadth of assessment spread. The history of assessments in a district will show how winners and losers change year by year. Seeing this change can be helpful. Some things in the formula are not fixed yet. The foundation budget is not fixed. We are robbing from one line item in the foundation budget to cover another line item. But the state is now paying 41% of the foundation budget, an increase of 5% over the 36% they were paying last year. We must work to increase this percentage because as the minimum contributions of most towns go down, we need state aid to go up. Until we see if it will go up, it is very important to have good local relationships and conversations with your towns to encourage them to continue to put in the dollars they have been spending even as their required contribution amounts fall. MARS wishes to thank Gene Carlo, and in the back ground Dave Tobin, for the work they continue to do for all regions. Without them we would all be much more vulnerable. MARS encourages you to check about whether you have paid your annual dues. For some reason this year districts are very slow in making their payments, If you have not done so, please do so as soon as you can. MARS’ backlog will only carry the costs of the organization a few months before being exhausted. It may be impolitic, given the above dues requests, to say that the MARS office will be closed until September 25. All your e-mails will come in, and those needing to be sent on will be sent on the 25, but I will be away from the office during that time during a much-anticipated vacation surrounding the marriage of my son. Respectfully submitted by Dee Dee Niswonger, Executive Director, MARS For More Information Contact: |
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