South Berwick resident Donna Robison offers her thoughts on the current discussion about whether Rollinsford should be able to tuition students to Marshwood.
Rollinsford, NH is trying to work out a deal with Marshwood to tuition over 140 students here. They would pay $7,700 in tuition per student. This may benefit the school in some small way but it is going to be horrible for the people of this town. Our property values will drop, how could they not? Why would anyone buy a home in South Berwick when you could buy one in Rollinsford and still get the South Berwick school district. Our school district is a big incentive for people to move here. We pay several taxes to be in Maine, income, sales, excise taxes are all something Maine residents pay that Rollinsford residents don’t. Many of us bought houses in this community for the school district, many of us don’t work in Maine, yet for years we have paid an income tax, not Rollinsford residents. They knew what school district they were in when they bought their houses. We can’t let this happen to our community. We need to get the info out there.
Rollinsford has a web site called the Salmon Falls Education Initiative that gives some of this information.
There are over 100 homes for sale in Eliot and South Berwick, plenty of homes for anyone in Rollinsford that wants to buy one and attend MSAD 35, and contribute to our town.
The next school board meeting is May 20th we need to get people there to be sure that this isn’t something that we get pushed on us.
–Donna Robison
SOBO resident for 10 plus years
Can you imagine how attractive South Berwick would be to new home buyers if the town was not only part of a great school system, but had a great library! I encourage Ms. Robison and like minded people to actively support converting the St. Michaels property to our new library.
Donna raises some good points and there are many citizens who agree with her.
On the other hand, in order to manage property tax rates, it is prudent to explore additional revenue sources if they are available.
It is important to keep in mind that if this ever happens, we are a long way from it – could be a few years. Marshwood currently has no policy that allows tuition students from outside Eliot and South Berwick, so we would have to approve a change in policy.
There is also no certainty that the Somersworth school district will even allow them to leave, so it’s nothing that we have to worry about yet. But please understand that there will be plenty of opportunities for input from the public before Marshwood does anything about this.
Donna writes:
They would pay $7,700 in tuition per student. This may benefit the school in some small way….
Let’s see: 140 students x $7,700= $1,078,000. Over a $Million that SAD 35 taxpayers don’t raise, with almost no increased costs. That’s almost 10% of the local share of school taxes. That seems like substantially more than “some small way”.
Bill, be careful not to be fooled by the numbers…out of $7700 per student, what is the cost of actually educating each student? Once you do the math the “profit” or tax savings to South Berwick (or Eliot) is next to nothing!! Last time this came up there was much research and debate and resulted in one of the most attended school board meetings. With the state mandating the $ figure that can be charged, it is highly unlikely any ‘real’ profit or monetary benefit could come from this… and for MSAD 35 what other reason is there for allowing this?
I think that there is a special relationship between Rollinsford and South Berwick that needs to be recognized. In many ways we have more in common with our NH neighbor then with communities like York and Wells. We even share emergency services- I believe the Rescue squad is the only one in ME that’s also licensed to also operate in NH.
All that being said, this would be a lousy deal for South Berwick & Eliot taxpayers. According to the MSAD35 website, last year it cost us $8,490 to educate each pupil at the secondary school level. That’s far below all of our Maine neighbors and the state average of $9, 519/pupil. There are a lot of advantages to living across the river…do we really need to offer a per pupil DISCOUNT to attend our schools?
My understanding is that the tuition would be revenue has few costs associated with it: The physical schools are there; the teachers and administration are there, etc. Not much extra would be necessary that costs real money. It’s a question of using existing capacity that would otherwise be underutilized, and getting significant revenus through the tuition. Seems like it’s worth considering when the time comes. But I also understand that that is years from now, because of Rollinsford’s commitments to Somersworth.
Reminder from the administrator: please use your name or some variant of your name that is recognizable (e.g. mcolman, mscolman, etc.) on your comments. Anonymous comments will not be published.
Remember there is always the cost per student to educate. Those that talk of revenue and “making a profit off this to offset taxes” are picking what works for their argument. No matter the space or capacity we might have there is still that cost per student…you just can’t throw more kids in the system and not incur any cost.
I agree Rollinsford and South Berwick are good neighbors and we do much together, some things work well but as the old addage goes good fences make good neighbors.
Let’s look at what costs there would be if we had tuition students:
Would we have to have more more buildings? (No)
Would we have greater heating or utility costs? (No)
Would we need more administration? (No)
Would we have more teachers? (No)
Would we have more text books and more paper? (Yes)
Etc. Etc.
Using existing school capacity with marginally fewer additional students does not have the “average per pupil cost” associated with it. It has a marginal cost, and that is probably very small. If this idea stabilized or lowered my schol taxers, I’d be all for a fair and reasonable evaluation, based on the facts.
I believe that Bill’s points are valid. Last year I think a calculation was made on what the impact might be with an extra 140 students in the high school – I believe that the “ball park” calculation of net gain to the District was about $500,000.
And the impact of those students on our per pupil cost will probably be to reduce it because the expenses added will be marginal.
I will admit I don’t know a lot about this subject except that it is being talked about and no decision has been made. I thought the subject was closed and did not realize it was still a consideration. I will be looking at this closer now.
I personally think that we also have to look at the education side of it for our childern, it’s not all about the money.
It sounds like we would have the same amount of teachers which means more students for one teacher, to me that means a teacher being spread even thinner. I love our school system we have a son that has gone through already and 2 daughters that are in the system still – they can’t say enough wonderful things about our teachers and their schools, I would hate for that to change. The teachers we have go above and beyond and with more students in a class a lot would change.
We are a family that moved from Rollinsford to South Berwick and it was for the school district. I agree with Donna.
I have just discovered this website and am grateful for all I have learned from reading everyones blogs today.
Given the fairly large potential income to the school district and the almost 0 added expense I can’t see any harm in continuing to explore this possibility.
I would not be in favor of it if the quality of instruction in the classrooms would suffer or if there is no obvious financial gain for SAD 35.
If there are 60 teachers at the high school 140 kids results in less than three
additional kids per teacher. Thats a manageable number that at least warrants further discussion.
Seacoastonline.com stated in an article today that MSAD #35 and Kittery met last night and have agreed to talk about tuitioning of their students as well.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090617/NEWS/906170366&emailAFriend=1
Actually, the article does not mention or discuss tuitioning at all. It was about looking for ways to jointly save costs. Things like purchasing programs and transportation.
Quoting:
“The two school committees from Kittery and School Administrative District 35 met Tuesday night, hoping to find ways to share programs and cut costs through collaboration.”
Actually you’re both right. We discussed collaboration and did not rule out tuitioning students in to Marshwood.
We will be forming a committee that will most likely consist of 2 board members and the superintendents of both school districts. The purpose of the committee will be to explore various ways that the districts’ can derive benefits from each other and hopefully cut costs while also delivering quality education.
Bill;
Please read the article again. It states the following in the article:
“In the end, it was agreed that issues such as potential shared transportation, central office staffing, facilities and some discussion of tuitioning high school students in the future would come up moving forward.”
As well, I e-mailed Dr. Bearden and he reiterated this sentiment.
Previous to the meeting I had e-mailed Dr. Bearden asking him if during this meeting they were going to be talking of this as I was told that was on Kittery’s Agenda per one of their School Board Member.
This is what Dr. Bearden wrote to me:
“MSAD 35 does not allow tuition students at this point.
Having said that, our Board of Directors will be meeting with the Kittery
School Committee on Tuesday, June 16th at 6pm in Kittery to discuss if
there are other ways we might be able to work together in the future in
order to be even more efficient. Currently, we do some bulk bidding on
certain items and try to coordinate some of our professional development
activities. I’m not sure what will surface in that discussion but it
should be an interesting, and hopefully productive, conversation.”
So it does.
Tuitioning students, if it makes economiuc sense when fairly evaluated, may be an appropriate way of lowering local costs for “fixed assets”, be they buildings or people. I hope they do look at it.
I worry that the quality of the education would suffer. Yes, it doesn’t seem like any big deal to have 3 extra kids in a class, but it is. When our class sizes are already around 21-25 kids per class it does make a difference. Our teachers are already stretched thin. A high school teacher who has 6 classes that is an additional 18 kids. 18 projects to correct, 18 tests to evaluate, etc. You will burn our teachers out!
The guidance staff at the high school stated in a school board meeting that they were already stretched thin. The department will want another staff member. The list goes on. Another custodial person to help clean up after the 140 additional students. Extra buses to get those children to our schools. The wear and tear on our buildings (yes believe it or not extra people in a building do cause additional work — look at when you have kids at home versus not!?).
As well, when you take on another school being Kittery or Rollinsford you have to take everyone.
So, to answer a previous comment… Would we have more teachers (No) the answer should be yes!
Some people presume an outcome, before any real analysis is done. I think if this is considered, SAD 35 would do a level headed analysis, without biases, and we all could see what the results are for a given proposal. All proposals would not be the same. I certainly would not reject all possibilities out of hand on the basis of presumptions and forgone conclusions. I’d like to see how rational evaluations shakes out. No need to be afraid of that.
FYI…..I e-mailed Dr. Bearden and he responded as follows:
“All Board agendas are posted in advance on our website. Again, if this
does surface as a Board meeting agenda item it will receive lots of
attention and publicity. As I said to you in an earlier email, this type
of decision would certainly cause our Board to solicit the opinion of our
community probably through a community forum solely on the topic.”
So as a follow up e-mail I asked:
“Does this mean that the residents would not have to APPROVE the change? A community forum is information only. Would both towns have a vote?”
Dr. Bearden’s response:
“That’s correct. The Board of Education has the legislative authority to
enter into such an agreement on behalf of the district.”
Of course they do. The Board of Directors is charged with such responsibilities on behalf of both communities and the interests of the school system. If it is seriously proposed, let them do their work.
Thanks Bill, and you’re absolutely correct. We have the authority to decide this, but would NOT do it without soliciting public opinion. We are awaiting a proposal, and until it’s offered, there isn’t anything to be done about this.