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Groveland urges Pentucket/Whittier to reconcile school counts with DESE data after audit finds persistent discrepancies
Summary
Select Board member Kathy Castronellis presented an audit showing Groveland is consistently assessed for more students under the district’s numbers than DESE October 1 SIMS enrollment indicates. The board recommended adopting DESE October 1 counts for allocations, asked Pentucket for a reconciliation and sought a definitive DESE interpretation.
Select Board member Kathy Castronellis presented an analysis on July 6 that compared the regional school district’s enrollment figures with DESE (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) October 1 SIMS counts and found persistent discrepancies that make Groveland’s financial assessment higher than DESE numbers suggest.
Castronellis said she discovered errors in the district’s static budget pages — for example, subtotal and grand‑total numbers that did not reconcile — and noted a separate billing error for students listed under another technical school. She compiled a multi‑year spreadsheet comparing Pentucket/Whittier reported categories to DESE totals for fiscal years 2024–2027 and found Groveland was consistently paying more under the district’s counts than would result from adopting DESE’s October 1 enrollment standard.
Options Castronellis proposed included adopting DESE October 1 enrollment for the district allocation step; asking Pentucket to publish a line‑by‑line reconciliation showing how its categories map to DESE SIMS data; establishing an annual verification timeline tied to DESE releases; and authorizing the town to request a formal DESE allocation opinion if the district cannot explain the difference.
Town staff said they had contacted DESE and requested clearer guidance; DESE staff acknowledged the confusion and agreed to escalate the question to provide a definitive interpretation of which DESE report should be used for regional apportionment. Several board members agreed to ask the district superintendent to appear before the board and to continue coordination with neighboring towns to press for transparent reconciliation.
Ending: The board directed staff and its regional representative to continue pursuing a reconciliation and to request that the district or DESE provide an unambiguous, published reconciliation between district categories and DESE SIMS counts to prevent Groveland from being assessed more than DESE data indicates.
