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Committee hears Essex Tech rep warn DESE lottery and admissions changes could shift costs

Danvers School Committee · January 13, 2026

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Summary

Danvers' Essex Tech representative warned that a DESE-mandated lottery and a preliminary ruling prioritizing sending-district seats over out-of-district agricultural seats could materially affect Danvers' student distribution to Essex Tech and the town's tuition payments (Essex Tech seats cost about $18,000 per student).

Mike Landers, Danvers' representative to Essex Technical High School, updated the committee on substantial proposed changes to Essex Tech admissions and a preliminary Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) ruling that could prioritize seats for the 17 sending districts.

Landers said Danvers had roughly 130 applicants and that systemwide the admissions process may see about 800 applications for roughly 400 spots. He warned that if DESE's preliminary ruling stands — which would allocate certain agricultural 'out-of-district' seats to sending districts first — Danvers could see a significant, and potentially unpredictable, change in the number of students attending Essex Tech from town, with consequential town budget impacts.

"It's $18,000 a kid," Landers said when asked to quantify the town's cost per Essex Tech student, and he described scenarios in which an unexpected increase of 60–100 students could translate into several hundred thousand dollars in additional district expenditures. He and others on the committee discussed proposals to base seat allotments on each district's percentage of the regional eighth-grade cohort rather than on prior-year enrollment averages to create cost predictability.

Committee members asked whether the region had plans for more vocational seats or alternative local programming; Landers said Essex Tech has incrementally added seats and facilities work but noted host-community impacts (traffic, parking) and the complexity of scaling vocational offerings. No formal action was taken; the update was informational with an expressed request for continued advocacy and monitoring of DESE decisions.