House Education panel presses Agency of Education on Act 168 BOCES rollout

At a Feb. 12 House Education committee meeting, Agency of Education officials updated lawmakers on implementation of Act 168, the law authorizing boards of cooperative educational services (BOCES), and said the secretary of education has not approved any BOCES formations and no startup grants have been awarded.

The update matters because Act 168 is intended to give districts a mechanism to pool services and reduce costs, particularly for special education. Committee members and agency staff said the statute sets a multi-step process — districts must vote to explore a BOCES, negotiate and vote on articles of agreement, then submit those articles to the Secretary of Education for review — but that steps beyond those procedures remain constrained by agency capacity and budgeting.

Jill Briggs Campbell, interim deputy secretary at the Agency of Education, said the agency has received articles of agreement informally from districts and that staffers are prepared to move to a formal…