The School Committee will hold a hybrid public hearing regarding School Choice on Wednesday, April 24 at 5:30PM, followed by a Regular Meeting. (Zoom link. Agenda.)
School Choice
The public hearing is on whether Newton Public Schools (NPS) should participate in Massachusetts’ Inter-District School Choice Program. As previously covered by Fig City News, the Committee Members, including the Mayor, appear undecided whether NPS should approve School Choice for the 2024-2025 academic year, and if so how many open student slots the district should offer. A final vote is scheduled for May 6.
A memorandum describing the School Choice program, presented at the April 1 School Committee meeting, contains several links to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website. Among other information, the DESE website contains a spreadsheet of which school districts are participating in School Choice this academic year. None appear to be in Newton’s close vicinity, with the majority being far outside of Boston, including many on Cape Cod and Massachusetts’ south shore.
Superintendent Anna Nolin has presented Newton’s participation in School Choice as a tool to give the district both financial and operational flexibility. Newton would receive a $5,000 per-student tuition reimbursement for those students who live out-of-district and attend NPS. This reimbursement can increase if a student receives special services, according to page 8 of the memorandum cited above. However, School Committee member Rajeev Parlikar (Ward 1, former President of the Special Education Parent Advisory Council, SEPAC) has expressed concern in prior meetings over the total cost of students requiring extra help.
The cost-benefit analysis of whether NPS should enroll in School Choice is complex and involves several assumptions. If a district received more in-bound student interest in attending than it has open seats, it will institute a lottery to allocate spaces. Regarding class size and overcrowding, NPS today is able to direct which schools have how many seats available, but as the students who enroll in NPS via School Choice progress into middle school and high school, it’s less certain whether or not they would contribute to overcrowding in certain classes like STEM.
Another notable consideration is NPS staff — who are in any case guaranteed placements in NPS for their children — would be asked to first submit their child to the School Choice lottery (if Newton’s open seats were oversubscribed), and only if the child did not succeed the lottery would they still be guaranteed a spot. The effect is that if that child qualifies for a School Choice slot, then the district will receive the aforementioned financial reimbursement for a student who would have enrolled even without the School Choice program.
The School Choice program is separate from the METCO (Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity) program, which operates under a different budget and different state reimbursements. In theory, if NPS were to adopt the School Choice program and significantly expand it, that could constrain capacity for more METCO students. However, today NPS is the largest suburban participant in the METCO program, and no NPS official or SC member has given any indication of changing this.
Regular School Committee Meeting
Following the School Choice public hearing, the agenda of the School Committee’s regular meeting includes:
- A discussion of Digital Citizenship Skills,
- Revisions to the district’s Bullying Intervention and Prevention Policy, which entail expanding the definitions of protected classes under anti-discrimination mandates, and
- An overview of a 46-page 2023-2024 Annual Report of the district.
The focus on Digital Citizenship Skills for elementary is notable given Superintendent Anna Nolin’s comments in public forums regarding the need for internet literacy education to begin early.