Financial pressures become stronger during budget season for our towns. For West County towns it’s particularly acute as they grapple with requests for school spending and what they can individually and collectively afford for their regional districts.
Admittedly, it would be nearly impossible to cover educational costs without the help of the state. Towns want to qualify for all the money they can while the state must balance those wishes with its own budgetary constraints.
That’s why it’s so important that there are no mistakes when it comes to state assessments. Too much is at stake.
Buckland recently learned to its dismay that its state-calculated spending requirement for education assessment, using a community’s median income, really hasn’t been on the money. What Buckland found instead is that the state assessment has been using just one section of town, with one particular ZIP code, leaving out three other areas covered by different ZIP codes.
These assessments are determined by property valuations and residents’ median incomes. In Buckland’s case, the state was only using income numbers from the town’s 278 residents who live in the 01338 ZIP code, which covers Upper Buckland. That left out more than 1,500 other Buckland residents under the three other postal code system designations.
And Buckland’s not the only community where having different ZIP codes within the town’s boundaries may hurt when it comes to state assessments. Heath has five different ZIP codes. Colrain may only have one ZIP code, but it is shared with three of its neighbors.
In this particular case, Buckland has sent in information and is now waiting to hear on any recalculation and its potential impact on education spending needs.
No matter how Buckland’s issues are resolved, perhaps the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education should consider if there are better data to use in this assessment. Too much is at stake in pinpointing what a community has to come up with on its own as well as how much aid it qualifies for from the state. The burden falls on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to ensure it’s done correctly.