“Suffer the little towns…” The recent Greenfield Recorder editorial urging state officials to furnish full and fair reimbursement for regional school district transportation costs was spot on. However, state reimbursement to the rural regional schools (currently at 74.4 percent reimbursement) seems generous in comparison to the nearly invisible group of small towns who also furnish school transportation services — this year their reimbursement rate was slashed to 6.3 percent.
Who are these ‘invisible school systems?’ In the Mohawk school district alone, there are four towns that do not maintain a vocational education school and are not members of a vocational regional school district. Ashfield, Charlemont, Hawley and Plainfield maintain town school departments and are responsible for covering tuitions for students seeking a vocational or agricultural education to Franklin Tech in Turners Falls and Smith School in Northampton.
These towns must also, by law, transport them to school. Four other Franklin County towns and most Hampshire County towns also maintain town school departments for vocational education purposes. Take the town of Plainfield, for example. It can either establish a vocational school (obviously not an option for a town of 500 residents); join a vocational regional school district (not an option as Smith School is not a regional school); or have to join the roughly 100 mostly small towns in the Commonwealth who tuition their students to distant vocational schools … which they do.
The statewide appropriation for ‘tuitioning towns’ is tiny compared to regional schools ($61 million). Since fiscal 2014, it has been cut from $3 million to $242,500 for fiscal 2018 — a cumulative 92 percent reduction, which is incredibly unfair and completely unreasonable.
Several weeks ago, the fiscal 2017 payments were released and much to our surprise (and horror), we learned that a last-minute stealth cut had been made earlier, reducing the statewide appropriation from $1,750,000 to $250,000. Instead of receiving reimbursement for 54.6 percent of expense, the towns received only 6.3 percent. And to add insult to injury, we now know the fiscal 2018 budget has been cut further, apparently dropping the reimbursement rate to around 5 percent.
Ashfield, Charlemont, Hawley and Plainfield lost over $73,000 of expected reimbursement in fiscal 2017 and are projected to lose another $65,000 in fiscal 2018. But that’s not all! Take the towns of Charlemont and Hawley, who were owed $29,600 for fiscal 2016 reimbursement, but were paid only $3,985 due to the 2017 cuts. These cumulative losses to our four small towns exceed $164,000.
One problem with “vocational out-of-district transportation reimbursement” is that, unlike other town and regional school reimbursements, the estimated amounts never appear on town cherry sheets. While regional schools are able to estimate receipts from their cherry sheets, the ‘tuitioning towns’ are kept in the dark until the funds are released.
Regional schools deserve higher rates of reimbursement, because their transportation costs are greater due to their expansive geography and longer bus routes. Take Mohawk and Hawlemont as examples. Over $1 million is expended each year to transport their students — that’s $1,400 plus per student. Our four towns, however, are faced with even more daunting challenges.
A van ride from Charlemont to Northampton or Hawley to Turners Falls involves a lot more mileage and expense. It cost us $4,300-plus per student to transport our 30 students to Tech and Smith School this year. For fiscal 2018, the per-student expense for our four towns is projected to rise to more than $6,100 as, with increasing vocational school enrollments, we will need more vehicles for the upcoming school year. So while our expenses rise dramatically, the Commonwealth seems to have turned its back on us and allowed reimbursement rates to drop to pitifully low levels.
If regional schools are justified in receiving higher rates of reimbursement, then the vocational ‘tuitioning towns’ deserve at least the same. I call on the Commonwealth to furnish a supplemental appropriation, bringing the 2018 budget amount back to the 2014 statewide level of $3 million. I also urge them to take steps to make “vocational out of district transportation reimbursement” a cherry sheet line item, and to manage this program like other transportation reimbursement programs.
Lastly, as the regional school transportation reimbursement line is utilized as a vehicle to reimburse a number of charter schools for transportation costs, I suggest that our towns also be included and that the rate of reimbursement offered to the regional and charter schools be the same for all. What’s sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander.
These pitiful reimbursement rates are creating an unsustainable situation for many small towns across the Commonwealth. Our Chapter 70 aid, which offsets our tuition expense, has been level funded for at least eight years, while our vocational school tuition costs continue to rise. In August of 2016, our committee wrote to Lt. Gov. Karen Polito about our plight and the need for an improved partnership with the Commonwealth. Despite numerous contacts with her office since then, we never heard back from her.
Our ‘suffering little towns’ deserve some answers and help from both the executive and legislative branches and we need it now, not later. Let’s reestablish that one-time equitable partnership!
David Newell lives in Ashfield.