GREENFIELD — Mayor William Martin wants the state to reimburse the city for the transient population in the Greenfield public schools, something he says Massachusetts has neglected to do — not just here, but across the state.
Martin is calling for about $710,000 to pay for the 47 students placed in the district by the state Department of Children and Families. And with the assistance of Diane Ellis, the school’s director of pupil services, and John Lunt, he has coordinated with the Office of the State Auditor Suzanne M. Bump and its Division of Local Mandates to make the city part of the research on the matter.
“As you know, our office is involved in a study of this very same issue. We would like to address your inquiry about whether this constitutes an unfunded mandate within the context of that report. We would also like to highlight your situation as a case study in the report,” Ben Tafoya, director of the Division of Local Mandates, wrote to the mayor in an email this week.
The state and Greenfield will now move forward to study and possibly pioneer a new way to reimburse the local communities as they try to handle students coming and going into their districts.
The research could take several months, Martin said, leading School Committee Chairwoman Adrienne Nunez to say she’s not anticipating any potential funds from the state to influence the current proposed budget.
But that’s not the case for the future.
“If we did get any reimbursements, it could potentially have a really dramatic effect on the district,” Nunez said.
Nunez is considering putting forward a motion at the April 11 full body meeting to see if the city can get the support of a local legislator, like state Sen. Stan Rosenberg, to back these efforts.
This whole process stemmed from an interest in what was the actual cost of students coming in and out of the schools after being relocated by DCF, Martin said.
While he was School Committee chairman last year, Martin said, he asked Ellis and Superintendent Jordana Harper to assess that cost, because he saw the budget was taking a hit from having to support something that is often an unknown.
“It’s something we just have very little control over and we are paying for it,” Nunez said. “It definitely impacts our budget considerably. It ultimately comes down to that.”
Nunez made it clear this is not a call to halt DCF from placing students in Greenfield’s schools, but rather an opportunity to address the financial burden it can have. She said it can be difficult to plan for because students can be moved quickly across the state and at different times of the school year for various reasons.
“We’re a small city, and we’re doing the best we can to have a robust set of services,” Nunez said. “It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to do that.”
As Greenfield was looking into how the state is supposed to support these students monetarily, Martin said city officials noticed the funding wasn’t comparing where they thought it should.
There was supposed to be a Massachusetts Department of Education form for reimbursement, but they could not find it and Martin said, in a letter to the auditor’s office, relevant questions to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education have gone unanswered.
The letter Martin sent to the state auditor’s office March 28 said he spoke with its Division of Local Mandates about this issue and was told there is a ruling from the state Supreme Judicial Court about it, which may mean the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will have its own point of view on this — but Martin argued in the letter the “nonreimbursement of the tuition for the children placed by DCF in our school system represents an unfunded mandate.”
Martin also brought in a couple of other concerns, including oversight and transportation costs.
“As an aside, I am concerned that our out-of-district tuition rates have little oversight by the state for cost, quality, measured outcomes or monitoring,” Martin said in the letter. “From a distance, and admittedly I have scant knowledge … of the total process, the cost per student is inclusive of those facility expenses that raise suspicions of equal treatment for all districts.”
Nunez said if the state finds grounds for additional funding for Greenfield, it could mean additional money for other communities in the area that see large numbers of DCF children placed in their districts.
“I ask, also, that this inequity in cost, including transportation, is reflected in our unfunded mandate fees for the district,” Martin continued in the letter.
Martin said he has also learned the federal government is supposed to provide transportation funds to DCF and, “If that is the case, DCF has never offered funds to the city of Greenfield for transportation.”
The situation with DCF to date has been a “very uncoordinated, poorly managed communicative event,” Martin said, but he’s satisfied the auditor’s office has heard his request and there may soon be more answers on how places like Greenfield can financially support these state programs.
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264