By Patrick Anderson
Staff Writer
December 16, 2008 05:40 am Faced with tightening budgets and the possibility of competition from a charter school, Cape Ann public schools are closely watching the flow of students — and money — between communities under the state's school choice program. For years, Gloucester has lost students and the dollars that go with them to neighboring districts under school choice, causing many to view the program as another structural advantage for wealthier communities in the funding of education. With the downsizing that would come with a charter school and a new $49 million high school under construction in Manchester, many educators and parents in the city are forecasting even greater student losses in the near future. But in Rockport, where out-of-town students have been used to bolster the district's small population, stabilize potential fluctuations in enrollment and supplement school budgets in recent years, choice has been seen increasingly as a blessing. As they begin work on next year's budget, Rockport school officials are looking to increase the number of school choice students in the district, leading to larger payments under the program that could help avoid cuts in services. In a preliminary budget request released at the beginning of December, the Rockport School Department included a $100,000 increase in revenue from school choice, an amount that would require around 20 new out-of-town students to enter the district. This year there are 120 choice students in Rockport, Superintendent Susan King said, bringing in around $600,000 for the town. Twelve of those students are scheduled to graduate from the high school at the end of the year. Yesterday Rockport School Committee Chairman Carl Engel cautioned that the town was in the very early stages of budget talks, but acknowledged that the main reason the town was looking for more choice students is added revenue. "We are trying to open up more spots — when you look at the quality of our school, there is a direct correlation between the quality and more students" Engel said. "This year we are looking at the budget and saying: lets look at choice to make up the difference." In addition to pumping new revenue into the school system, Engel said bringing in students from out of town allowed the district to keep valuable programs that would not necessarily be sustainable with Rockport's own population. Adding 20 new choice students to the system's current kindergarten through high school enrollment of 991 would create a student body with around 13 percent coming from outside the district. Massachusetts inter-district school choice allows schools to open themselves up to students from outside their district and receive a per-pupil payment from the district that the student comes from. The payments comes out of the state aid that goes to the sending district and is currently capped at a maximum of $5,000 per student. Gloucester in recent years has experienced one of the higher rates of students "choicing out" to neighboring districts in the state for a city its size. In the 2007-2008 school year, Gloucester paid for 216 students to attend schools in neighboring districts and only received 47 students. That flow of students led to a net loss of $924,000 that year. The majority of those students attend schools in Rockport and the Manchester Essex Regional School District. Many in Gloucester have said the system exacerbates financial inequities between the communities, with some of the best students leaving to attend schools in the wealthier towns, which can then pour even more funds into their classrooms and become even more attractive to parents. Both Rockport and Manchester Essex spend more per student on education than Gloucester. Gloucester School Committee Chairman Greg Verga yesterday expressed dismay at the possibility that Rockport would add more school choice students — and funds — from Gloucester. "We are just trying to hold our own here," Verga said. "I don't necessarily like the idea of recruiting students, but if you are going to take $100,000 out of our budget, along with the charter, it is not pretty." Neither school districts nor the state will provide statistics breaking down precisely where their school choice students come from. Founders of a proposed Gloucester charter school have often pointed to the number of students leaving the district as proof of a demand for education alternatives. They have described the charter school as one way to "bring home" those students to Gloucester. Gloucester school officials have warned that the diversion of funding from the district to the charter school and accompanying service cuts will make the choice exodus worse. Some Rockport officials have expressed concern that the charter school would cut into the number of students attending classes in their district. In Manchester Essex, the construction of a new high school scheduled to open in September 2009 has caused fear among Gloucester residents that choicing-out to that town will soon increase. But school leaders there say the new building will not necessarily result in an increase in open choice slots and the district is not including any revenue increases from choice in their preliminary budget. The decision to increase choice slots, made in the spring, if at all, is usually driven by class sizes and whether any grades are short of students, Manchester Essex Superintendent Marcia O'Neil said yesterday. The district is not expected to have the funding available to hire many new teachers, O'Neil said, and has made keeping class sizes small a priority. She said the district was also keeping open the possibility that resident students who had left for private school would come back to the district when the new building opens. "We expect to be pretty much the same and keep the same number of teachers at each grade level," O'Neil said. Manchester Essex currently hosts 136 out-of-district students and brings in a net of $676,850 from the choice program. Manchester Essex School Committee Chairman Susan Beckmann said yesterday that her district typically does not use school choice funds to balance budget gaps. "One of the rules and guidelines is that we do not use choice to fund operational programs," Beckmann said. "What happens is then you end up with a gap because you never know that it is going to be there." In Rockport, Engel pointed out that the town's strength in school choice had at one point been a weakness and that school leaders had worked hard to increase the flow of students to the district almost every year for the past decade. In the 2001-2002 school year, Rockport had 45 students choice-in to the district and 63 students choice-out, according to statistics from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. "It is important to note that it wasn't always this way," Engel said. "It wasn't that long ago that the shoe was on the other foot and we were losing money from choice." Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com.
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