Warrant Article 5 - Tuition Agreement

Warrant Article 5 will allow the school board to enter into a tuition agreement with other towns such as Mason. We had developed a preliminary draft of an agreement with them a few years ago, but they were unable to get out of their agreement with Mascenic.

It now appears that they will be able to withdraw from Mascenic and contract with another district such as Milford. They have roughly 90 students in grades 6 through 12 that would come to Milford. This is roughly 12-15 students per grade level, and we should be able to absorb them without too much in the way of additional spending.

The tuition agreement would be very straight-forward. Mason would pay a per student fee for the students to attend Milford. The fee is based on a formula that starts with our total per pupil spending, subtracts out some items such as special education costs, some transportation costs, and a few other items. Mason will be responsible themselves for the excluded items.

The idea is for the Mason students to become unified with Milford students. They would be eligible for all extra items such as co-curricular activities, clubs, and sports on the same terms as Milford students.

Mason would not have a seat on the school board or any other similar rights; this would be a straight tuition agreement.

This would raise perhaps $700k-$800k in revenue, depending on the number of students and the formula for the tuition. The spending that will be needed is harder to estimate. There will be some spending for consumable items such as workbooks and books and other variable costs, but the big issue as usual will be if we will have to hire new employees for any area. It is possible that there will be some grades or subjects where we are right on the edge of needing a new teacher, where the addition of 12-15 students in the grade might require that we hire another person where we would normally not have done so. In any event, it is expected that the total extra spending will be much less than the additional income.

It is important that we try to find additional revenue sources as much as possible in order to try to minimize the amount of money that we need to raise by local property taxes. The addition of Mason students to Milford would be a big help.

Please vote in favor of article 5.