The Nobleboro Board of Selectmen and the board of directors of Alternative Organizational Structure 93 have written to the Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen, protesting the assignment of two high-school aged, out-of-district students to Nobleboro, for the purposes of charging tuition to Lincoln Academy.
Dept. of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin said Dec. 11 that one case involves a student who lives in Regional School Unit 40 whose parents feel that he or she would be better serve in another school. Connerty-Marin said he could not identify the student.
In their letter to Commissioner Bowen, the AOS 93 board said the Waldoboro student previously attended school in Nobleboro. The other student is from Boothbay, in AOS 98, and appears to have been assigned to Newcastle for the purpose of paying tuition costs.
The letter was signed by the chairmen of all seven school boards that are part of AOS 93.
“This happens all around the state,” Connerty-Marin said.
In school districts that have public high schools, such arrangements are made through the agreement of the superintendents of both the sending and receiving districts, with the sending district transferring funds that follow the student to the receiving school district.
“Either both say yes, or one or both say no,” Connerty-Marin said. “School board’s don’t weigh in. It’s not policy. It’s about the best interest of the child. If the superintendents agree, the kid goes to the other district and it’s treated as if child were living in new district.”
“Normally, this is what happens,” he said. “Normally, everybody ends up more or less whole, financially.” Connerty-Marin said the sending district would see a change in its budget the following year, in the form of a loss of that portion of its state subsidy that pays for part of the child’s education.
“The receiving district would, with a one year delay, get that child figured into their formula.” He said it was not that simple, but the description covered the essential financial issues in most of the approximately 1500 superintendents’ agreements in Maine.
“A couple of issues make this unique,” he said.
“If one superintendent doesn’t agree, the parents can appeal to the commissioner,” he said. Connerty-Marin said the only criterion the commissioner can use is the best interest of the child. “Different commissioners have treated it differently over time.” He said Bowen has been “fairly deferential to parents” and has has overturned a higher percentage of those cases where superintendents did not approve than did his two most recent predecessors.
“He is also asking for more clarity in the law,” Connerty-Marin said.
In the current case, there are two complicating factors.
“Lincoln Academy is not part of a district,” he said. “It is a private school. There is no superintendent to agree to a transfer.”
“In both cases, the students live in school units that have public high schools which they are able to attend at no charge,” the AOS 93 board wrote. “In both cases, the students have never attended the high schools in their home districts. Therefore, there is no evidence whatsoever that their interests cannot be appropriately served by those high schools.”
“… the Boothbay student has never attended school in an AOS 93 school unit, and you would transfer him to an AOS 93 unit solely so that unit would pay his tuition at Lincoln Academy,” they wrote. “The choice of a ‘receiving’ school unit is thus random and arbitrary; s/he could be transferred to any school unit in the state that lacks a high school and the result would be the same.”
Connerty-Marin said a parent in this situation has only two options in such a case.
“One is to shell out tuition,” Connerty-Marin said. “The other option is to find another school district, that doesn’t have its own high school, have the kid become a resident of that district and have that district send the student to a private school.” He said such residency is only on paper and it is not necessary for there to be any real connection between the student and the town that has been asked to accept the student as a resident for the purpose of a school transfer.
While not speaking to the specifics of this case, Connerty-Marin said the requests to AOS 93 were denied by the superintendents.
“But cases are appealed and the commissioner overrides and approves transfers,” he said.
“The other complicating factor is most times a receiving community would end up more or less whole, because the additional student would increase the allocation from the state to cover at least a portion of the costs,” Connerty-Marin said. “It happens that Nobleboro is one of a small number of minimum receivers in the state.”
Minimum receivers are those municipalities where property assessments are so high that the local cost of education is carried almost entirely through property taxes, with only a nominal amount coming from the state. Newcastle is also a minimum receiver.
“In an effort to mitigate the cost, the DOE has suggested that Jefferson, one of the AOS [93] school units, be designated the receiving unit for both students, because Jefferson has the highest rate of subsidy within AOS 93,” the board wrote. “We appreciate the effort to mitigate the expense, but this proposal simply highlights the arbitrariness of these transfers. They are not being made because the student’s best interests can be served by the receiving unit; they are being made solely to access local taxpayer dollars to pay tuition for the family’s school of choice.”
“In their case it is true that if they take a child from RSU 40 it will come out of local taxes,” Connerty-Marin said of the Waldoboro-Nobleboro decision. “It is very unusual.”
RSU 40 Supt. Susan Pratt said she was familiar with the situation but had no idea why the commissioner approved the transfer. She said the mutual agreement she and Bailey made, to deny the request, was based “on what we thought was the best interest.”
Pratt said parents have a wide variety of reasons for making such requests.
“Medomak Valley High School has a very comprehensive program,” Pratt said. “It’s the larger high school in the region. In general, I believe we can serve these children and serve them well.”
Pratt said it was good for parents to explore their options and provide superintendents with detailed information to support a claim that the home district cannot adequately serve a student. In this specific case, she said, she and Bailey were agreed in thinking the student would not be better served by tuitioning in to Lincoln Academy.
“Many, many of Nobleboro’s children already come to Medomak,” she said Pratt estimated that more than 20 students from Nobleboro attend RSU 40’s high school in Waldoboro. Nobleboro also sends high school students to Erskine Academy in South China and Wiscasset High School, she said.
She would not discuss the specifics of the case.
Bailey said he also could not provide any information that might inadvertently help identify the students involved.
“All I can say is that they’re requesting programs that they felt were better suited by attending Lincoln.” Bailey said. He said he believes those programs are available in the sending districts.
AOS 98 Supt. Eileen King said she was not sure what town her student was designated to. She said out-of-district tuition agreements are often related to extenuating circumstances that make it harmful or dangerous for the student to remain at the school that serves the town in which that student lives.
King said the letter from parents in the current case did not give a reason, but only said it was in the student’s best interest, due to programming. She said Boothbay High School offers a comprehensive program
She said the law allows parents to appeal a rejected request and that the commissioner’s decision in such cases is final.
“We have a new commissioner that has a different way of looking at it,” King said. “He’s overturning decisions that normally would have stood.”
“Your interpretation of the superintendent transfer provision, however, is inconsistent with the decades-long interpretation applied by superintendents and former commissioners of education,” the AOS 93 board wrote. “The bedrock principle regarding school attendance in Maine is that the student has the right to attend school where his or her parents or legal guardians reside.”
“There are limited exceptions to the basic school attendance rule, including a provision saying that two superintendents may approve the transfer when ‘they find that a transfer is in the student’s best interest.’ Typically a transfer is proposed when a student is not doing well in the home district and it is agreed by both superintendents that he or she has a better chance of succeeding in a different district.” This may happen due to trauma at home or at school or for academic, social or other reasons where a fresh start is needed, they wrote.
Connerty-Marin said superintendents approve approximately 1500 tuition agreements each year. He did not know how many are rejected.
“A small number are appealed to the commissioner, about 60-70 a year,” he said. “In the past there’s been varying practice by commissioners.” Decisions on such requests are made after being reviewed by members of Bowen’s staff, Connerty-Marin said. He said the last two commissioners typically upheld a denial, but that Bowen has said he was going to approve far more of them.
“Basically his feeling was the law is very vague,” Connerty-Marin said.
“As interpreted by you, the exception swallows the rule,” the AOS 93 board told Bowen. “Your interpretation is that a student should attend school wherever the parent wants the student to attend school. For those who believe in unlimited school choice, this may well be a worthy standard, but it is completely at odds with the clear legislative intent of our longstanding school attendance and school funding laws.”
“If the people of Maine and the Legislature wish to have unlimited school choice, the proper way to do that is through legislation, and not through a new, unfounded administrative interpretation of a limited exception to the school attendance laws,” the AOS 93 board wrote.
