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MARS Board Meeting Minutes
January 15, 2008
Present: Michael Wood, Christine Lynch, David Papagni, George Guasconi,
Stephen Hemmen, Paul O. Schaefer, Paul A. Martin, Peter Dewar, Gene Carlo, Mindy
Kempner, Lynn Ryan, Michael Fitzpatrick, Donna Harlan, Maureen Marshall, Cliff
Fountain, David Tobin, Paul Gagliarducci, Dee Dee Niswonger
State Overview
House One is expected out the week of January 23. It is possible that Chapter 70
will increase by 230 million and that 140 million will be distributed through
grants. You can go to the DoE website, Finance and go to Target Share and see
how close your district is to your target. The legislature wants to meet its
obligations. Target shares for ’09 are now calculated.
We don’t know about the lottery money, whether it is more “uncapped” than in the
past and just how much is being talked about there. The lottery money is very
important for our cities and towns.
Although we expect House One to be aggressive we don’t know what the vision is
from the Governor’s office yet, directing that aggressiveness. We do know that
the problem of adequacy of the Foundation Budget is not going to be met. The
legislature does not have l.4 billion to use to build the Foundation Budget to
an adequate amount and without the money in hand there is no use talking about
it. They (the legislature) know the Foundation Budget is inadequate. What no one
knows is when or if, McDuffy will raise its head again. Health insurance is the
one single most out of control expense currently for districts. However, our
towns are very short as well, with overrides not passing even in affluent
districts. This indicates that regions need to work hard at home to build
support and rapport, as well as districts keeping their need for regional
transportation reimbursement alive in the minds of their legislators.
Be careful about pricing for fuel. Use the dock price from Rhode Island and New
York—not the pump price.
Issues involved in negotiations
GIC has been very useful for some and is questioned a bit by others. Unions have
to give up a lot of authority. Health insurance is a huge piece of negotiations.
Joining GIC means a district loses its history because by joining and becoming
part of a huge group no individual record as a district entity remains.
Individual district numbering to allow for individual records to maintain
history is being sought.
The difference between bottom and top step can be 26% or more. Some are trying
to reduce that span because so much of the salary money is used by the step,
with four % between steps not uncommon.
Transportation
SPED TRANS
I thank Christine Lynch, DoE for the language below, filing out what was said at
the meeting.
Collaborative Transportation Pilot:
Funding to initiate a three year pilot program
for special education out of district transportation was approved in the FY06
state budget based on a recommendation by a Task Force on Special Education
Transportation, comprised of Superintendents and Collaborative, Private School
and Transportation Directors. The purpose of the pilot program is to test the
concept that transportation of students to out of district private placements
can be accomplished at a lower cost and with improved quality of service by
delegating the planning and contracting for such transportation to educational
collaboratives. The Department of Education awarded grants to three test
sites: Assabet Valley, Accept and Lower Pioneer Valley Educational
Collaboratives based on their involvement with special education transportation
and their geographic locations. Funds were initially used to purchase routing
software and administrative support in order to gather and coordinate the
information needed for the subsequent implementation phases. In FY07 and in
FY08 additional funds were awarded to the three test sites to continue and to
expand the effort. The pilot now includes nine inter-collaborative
transportation networks throughout the state with the initial three
collaboratives serving as the lead in their geographic area and providing
technical assistance and support. This three-year pilot has provided the
support needed to establish the initial networks and to compile data to show
savings for the pilot areas and potential savings on a state wide basis. The
initial three collaboratives and their immediate surrounding neighbors have all
developed coordinated routes and have realized cost savings and efficiencies.
At the end of FY08 this three year pilot will be at an end. The Special
Education Task force is developing a final report and the Department of
Education has contracted with an independent evaluator to analyze and compare
initial cost and services against current implementation costs and services.
The final report and the evaluation results will be shared at the end of this
fiscal year. The Special Education Task force is now developing a FY09 budget
request for additional funds in order to expand this service delivery
mechanism to other developing network areas across the state.
Transportation Survey
Budgetary language in the FY07 transportation
line item required the Department of Education to study methods to improve
cost-savings and efficiency in regional transportation. In order to accomplish
this task, department staff first looked at all the information that is
currently collected on school transportation and determined that more
information would be needed. Staff concluded that a survey would be the most
efficient way to collect this information. The survey was developed with the
assistance of a representative study group and distributed last summer. Staff
are in the process of compiling and analyzing the responses. We hope to elicit
information that will help us to determine how best to support districts in
providing the most efficient and cost effective transportation delivery
system. The results of the survey will also help us to determine if there are
districts that could benefit by using route-planning software and whether there
is a need to implement a pilot program on its use to assist these district. The
results of this survey should be available within the next several months.
Regular regional transportation for 09.
59 million is in the DoE budget for regional transportation but the western part
of the state and the Cape are pushing very hard to increase that. The 59 m is
not designed to increase the percentage reimbursed but maybe keep up with
current percentage. However, some contracts have increased by 63% this year.
The transportation survey was proposed to inform the legislature about best
practices, and efficiency districts use to keep costs down. The best practices
may be shared with all districts. Many don’t have software and let their
contractors to develop their routes without very necessary oversight from the
districts.
It was expressed that it is distressing to hear of the wide spread notion of the
legislature that regions don’t care about the cost of transportation. Most
districts are trying hard to keep costs down. Unfortunately there is wide spread
belief that regions don’t care and see the 100% as a free lunch. Even if most
districts are responsible, it only takes one example to spoil the belief in
their care.
Concern was expressed that some districts have not received their 1st
reimbursement for transportation. That is because they did not fill out their
end of year report. Both transportation reimbursement and Chapter 70 will not
come if the end-of-year report is not done.
State Aid
Governor Patrick is very positive about education but the revenue stream is not
strong. He wants taxes, tax structural changes along with dealing with
loopholes, to raise more money. His requested $223 million for Chapter 70 would
allow the formula to flow with target shares in 3rd year with adjustment being
33% of gap, with 2 more years in cycle. (Note that this is driving down Required
Net School Spending.) If your budget is stable or growing you will probably get
some aid. It also would include increases in low income and ELL in the
Foundation Budget.
The Governor’s total request is $363 million with the difference after Chapter
70 for grants, probably to encourage full day kindergarten, among other things.
The inflation factor is uncapped in Governor’s proposal at 5.15%. It had been
legally capped at 4.5%
Past practice on much of education funding is by resolution, not by law and
putting language into law makes the policy people nervous.
For the proposed $363 million to flow to districts requires the legislature to
approve it and fund it. This present proposal probably includes $50/pupil for
everybody and it includes fairly wealthy districts moving up in the state aid
they receive toward 17.5%. The cost of $50/pupil for 09 will probably be higher
than it was for ’08.
Support for MASS lobbying team, and E & D
Gene Carlo requested MARS to support the MASS lobbying team, also supported
formally by MAVA. A formal motion to support MASS legislative team in spirit and
effort through the 2009 process was made and seconded.
Discussion followed on E&D in particular as to whether there would be a
legislative attempt made here.
There was an unsuccessful attempt by MARS to file some legislation on E & D and
the meeting expressed relief that the attempt was not successful. 35 years of
successful use of current practice is seen as sufficient support to continue the
current practice. It cannot be stressed too strongly how important following the
correct practice for use of E and D is. When the DoR senses a shaky area
fiscally they get nervous and want to clarify or correct the issue. If regions
are careless about the way they access E & D they bring upon themselves some
notice. So following correct procedure will save a lot of grief. Regional
accounts are all audited. Make that audit trail clear by following the suggested
practice.
First, certify your E & D account annually. This money has come from your
budget, and has been part of previous amounts voted upon by your member towns.
When it is certified, notification of the amount of E & D the district has is
sent to each member town.
To access the account, the superintendent puts forth a request to the school
committee for a vote to expend a specific amount on a specific project. The
meeting minutes must reflect the vote. The money is then removed from the E & D
account and transferred to an account for the specific project. At each step a
paper trail is carried along, so a copy of the minutes with the school committee
vote, of the costs of the project, of the transfer of the dollars, of the follow
through on the vote at each stage should accompany your accounts for the
auditor’s use.
This procedure reflects the position of MARS. A letter from MARS will be sent to
all regional superintendents fully describing MARS position on this. It is hoped
this letter will be both a useful instruction, and a tool to add to the papers
for each use of E & D when building an audit trail.
Following this agreement on how to handle E & D a positive vote was taken to
support the MASS legislative team.
Providing information to all superintendents through MASS drive-ins or drive-bys
is one of the services MASS provides. Because information can be hard to come by
MARS joins with MASS in urging superintendents to attend these events when they
occur.
Commissioner
A final appointment is expected by the end of January.
Board of Education
A careful reading of the Board of Education minutes over a period of years has
lead to the conclusion that 40% of the past Board’s time was spent on Charter
School issues, and also, unfortunately, that the Board spends very little time
on what districts deal with every day. The choice of candidates for commissioner
indicates that the Board may have no particular vision and the Board minutes
indicate that the Board is very unclear about its identity and that shows in
their peculiarly varied choices.
Regional Incentives
As the voice for regions, MARS is urged to advocate for the expansion of
incentives for regions, for the expansion, thereby, of regions. The argument
that there is too much difference between towns financially for a region to work
smoothly is belied by the long -term success of many districts of varied makeup.
In other states there is a lot of discussion about the consolidation of
districts. In Mass. the number of districts continues to proliferate with
charters the most recent layer to be added. In Mass. the financial incentive to
regionalize is only transportation reimbursement; previous incentives were
apparent but now are rolled into Chapter 70 and are no longer apparent or even
there. MARS needs to identify incentives of value and advocate for them as well
as advocate for the delivery system itself.
SBA
New guidelines for projects having to do with referendum language have come out.
SBA wants the wording to be specific. The change is due to communities early on
in the development of the SBA program tinkering with language. Now this new
language is supposed to be used without any tinkering.
A growing issue with SBA that needs to be addressed by regions is how bonding
assessments are being made. 70B is community specific, in contrast to most
regional agreements. Some districts have changed their agreements to work with
70B. But now, the reimbursements are not seen as correct. This is confusing and
breeds dissent. The Law has trumped in past, but if you have a project coming
down the road, address the reimbursement issue before you get into a problem:
the Law earmarks the reimbursement. One solution is to go to court for summary
adjustment but in court the Law trumps. Regions can avoid this aggravation by
studying and altering their agreement before getting into a morass.
Minutes respectfully submitted by
Dee Dee Niswonger
For More Information Contact:
Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools
P.O. Box 334, Williamsburg, MA 01096-0334
Tel: 413-268-3607
E-mail:
niswonger@comcast.net
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Massachusetts Association of
Regional Schools