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Hancock and Warwick seek exemptions from school‑choice cost rule; committee urges a statutory fix
Summary
Small rural elementary districts Hancock and Warwick told the Joint Committee on Education that the department’s enforcement of a decades‑old interpretation of M.G.L. ch. 76, § 12B(k) is creating untenable tuition liabilities and asked for home‑rule exemptions while committee chairs asked the districts to propose a universal statutory fix.
Officials from Hancock and Warwick urged the Joint Committee on Education to grant local relief from a state regulation that, they say, unexpectedly requires accepting districts to pay secondary tuition for choice students through high‑school graduation.
Hancock Superintendent Rebecca Phillips and Warwick Superintendent Carol Learned Miller (testifying as Carol Lernit Biller in the record) said districts historically accepted school‑choice students for elementary grades and relied on long‑standing tuition arrangements for secondary placement. A recent Department of Elementary and Secondary Education interpretation, witnesses said, requires accepting districts to pay for choice students’ high‑school tuition if the student continues in that receiving district — a change that could impose sums that small towns cannot absorb.
Why it matters: witnesses said the obligation can create fiscal exposure in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for towns with small populations. Hancock reported asking the school committee to opt‑out of choice this year because the town faced potential per‑student costs of roughly $17,800 in tuition while receiving only $5,000 in choice funds. Warwick’s town finance modeling estimated multi‑year exposure that would overwhelm the town budget if the district accepted and retained choice students through secondary school.
Parents, teachers and students — including Samantha Lincoln, an early‑childhood teacher, and sixth‑grader Ariana Perkins — testified that school choice had supported educational opportunities and classroom balance; they urged relief so smaller community schools could continue to participate in the choice program.
Committee reaction: Chairs Kenneth Gordon and Jason Lewis said they prefer a single statutory fix rather than many local home‑rule petitions but agreed the districts could seek home‑rule relief in parallel while the committee examines broader statutory language. "If you could take that back…to coordinate, at least between yourselves and Hancock, that might be a good start," Gordon said.
Ending: The chairs asked Hancock and Warwick to draft proposed statutory language or alternative fixes; committee staff asked for written materials and fiscal impact charts to be submitted for the record.
