The Old Rochester Regional School Committee on January 22 held its first official review of the Old Rochester Regional School District agreement for the first time since the agreement was last amended in 1986.
Two years ago when the School Committee and the three towns realized the document had not been updated in over 20 years, the committee underwent a state audit of the agreement while the Town of Mattapoisett, through a grant it had received, sought an analysis of the ORR district assessments of the three-member towns to better understand the factors that influence the sometimes drastic fluctuations in the towns’ year-to-year assessments.
Rochester’s representative on the ORR School Committee, Tina Rood, gave a brief overview of the recommended changes resulting from the Department of Education’s review, and the committee’s own subcommittee compared the ORR agreement with those of other regional school districts.
The recommended changes include establishing annual town assessments based on a 3-5 year average of student enrollment to determine assessment totals to avoid sharp assessment increases that impact each town’s operating budget.
The other recommendation was to establish an ORR capital stabilization find that would be funded annually through the assessment.
According to Rood, these options seemed agreeable to the three town representatives during a sit-down with School Committee members last fall.
“It seemed to make sense to them,” Rood said. “We need a way to fund capital projects here at the district and we thought that a multi-pronged approach is a way that will help our district be able to address those smaller projects that come up before they become bigger projects.”
That money would be specifically used for capital improvements at ORR. But is this the be-all and end-all? Rood says no.
“It is not,” said Rood. “It is a start; it is a start to retaining a system… to be able to fund these capital projects,” like auditorium lights, a new track, and a new phone system at the school. Larger projects like roof resurfacing, she said, would still be brought forward through a debt exclusion request.
“And [the agreement] needs to be current,” said Rood. “The bottom line is, it’s not current at this time and it needs to be.”
Marion’s representative on the ORR School Committee, Heather Burke, introduced the seven findings and five recommendations of Mattapoisett’s assessment analysis of the fiscal years 2012-2019 undertaken by the Collins Center at UMass Boston.
The first finding is that annual assessments have only “moderately” increased since FY12, growing 13.18 percent, or 1.88 percent each year. Marion and Mattapoisett’s assessments have seen the most growth, averaging at 2.46 percent and 2.23 percent annually, respectively, while Rochester’s assessment has seen a slower growth of about 0.9 percent annually.
Marion’s assessments have risen steadily over the last three years while Mattapoisett’s has risen more rapidly since FY2016.
“We frequently hear about the size of the school budget within the Tri-Town – and it is significant – but the increases over the eight years have been modest,” said Burke.
The second finding is that Mattapoisett’s assessments actually decreased between 2012-2016, but then increased rapidly after 2016, which was mitigated in part by a Regional School Assessment Stabilization Fund the town had established.
The third finding shows that even slight changes in the ORR student population will impact the towns’ assessments. Burke further explained, “Variations, not only in one town’s enrollment, but enrollment fluctuations in the other two towns can have large unpredictable impacts on town budgets.” When ORR student enrollment drops on Mattapoisett and Rochester, for example, Burke said, that causes Marion’s assessment to go up, even though the town may be sending the same number of students as last year; the assessment is proportional, said Burke.
Between 2012-2016, Burke said there was, “an increase of 42 students from Marion to Old Rochester during that time, combined with largely unchanged enrollments from Mattapoisett and Rochester, [which] increased Marion’s assessment by over $290,000. If the other two towns had also sent more students, the increase would not have been such a significant hit to Marion.”
Then, after 2016, Marion’s enrollment decreased, saving Marion money but causing bigger hits to Mattapoisett and Rochester, continued Burke. “So this makes planning at the municipal budget level very difficult because, even though they might project that they’re sending the same number of students, they don’t necessarily know how many students the other two towns are sending, which is going to affect the dollar amount asked for from the town.”
The fourth finding is that both Marion and Mattapoisett’s total minimum contribution has been capped at the state maximum of 82.5 percent of the total foundation budget for ORR due to their high property wealth and income levels.
Transportation cost was at the crux of the fifth finding, with the determination that the ORR district’s above minimum and transportation spending has sharply increased since 2016, up by $1,337,000, or 32.5 percent, over the last three years.
“I think this is a critical finding because it points to the fiscal pressure that our towns and the school district… have been feeling since 2016,” said Burke. “This pressure is due to slow growth in both chapter 70 and foundation budget funds, requiring our school district to make up for the lower state funds by increasing the assessment funds simply to maintain the status quo operating budget…
“This is pressure that all schools and districts in Massachusetts have been feeling,” continued Burke. “It’s not unique to us, and it became intense enough that the legislation had to do something…”
The sixth finding is that Marion is the only member town that experienced total enrollment growth across all districts between 2012-2019.
“Many might be surprised by that finding because in this area we tend to think about Rochester having increased enrollment, not Marion,” said Burke. “But when you read the text of the report and look at the chart, one thing that really pops out is that Rochester sends so many kids to Old Colony that their enrollment to ORR through FY19 hasn’t really grown.
“We know that that actually hurts Rochester’s budget because it’s more expensive for them to send a student to Old Colony,” Burke continued, “but it also makes it a little bit more expensive for Marion and Mattapoisett to send their kids to Old Rochester.”
Finding 7 shows that ORR’s in-district spending in 2018 of $15,565 per student was slightly below the state’s $15,913 in-district average.
“And we have so many markers of student achievement, yet we spend less than the state average,” Burke said. “That tells me that Tri-Town taxpayers are getting an incredible return on their assessment at ORR, and we need to give ourselves a round of applause.
“However, it also tells me that other towns in the Commonwealth are investing more in their students than the Tri-Towns are,” Burke continued. “We’ve been able to do a lot with less, but our facilities are aging rapidly, academic standards keep growing, and competition makes it harder for us to fill some of our professional positions.”
The Collins Center recommends allowing for the 3-5 year enrollment average to control fluctuations in assessments, with the likelihood of choosing a 3-year average.
The three towns should also consider establishing stabilization funds to smooth out budget fluctuations, which all three towns have now done, and the towns should communicate regularly with the school district on fiscal issues and continue their participation in the collective bargaining process, the report recommends.
Furthermore, the report recommends developing a detailed capital improvement plan and establishing a stabilization fund for those expenditures.
“And that’s exactly what we put into the proposed regional agreement,” said Burke.
The final recommendation for the three towns to consider is a full k-8 regional school district, something Burke said is unlikely to be considered any time soon.
“[The report] helps explain some of the pressures that we have been feeling over the last five years,” said Burke. “It really quantifies how fiscally responsible the [ORR] school district has been over the last eight fiscal years.”
Changes to the regional agreement must be approved at each town’s Annual Town Meeting.
“I don’t think that you’re proposing any dramatic changes that are not reasonable,” Marion Town Administrator Jay McGrail told the School Committee.
The next meeting of the Old Rochester Regional School Committee is scheduled for March 11 at 6:30 pm in the junior high school media room.
Old Rochester Regional School Committee
By Jean Perry