Nauset Towns Seek To Revise School Pact

ORLEANS – Student enrollment for years has driven what member towns pay annually into the Nauset Public Schools. But in a bid to make their annual assessments more predictable, officials in Orleans, Brewster, Eastham and Wellfleet are seeking a change in how their enrollment figures are calculated.

 The four towns are in the process of revising their regional agreement with the Nauset regional school committee. Most notably, the towns are asking that their enrollment figures be calculated using a three-year rolling average instead year-by-year figures.

 “The Nauset Regional School Committee looks forward to working collaboratively with member towns to continue the process of restating our regional agreement and finalizing a document that will guide us in our shared future,” the committee said in a letter to the four towns’ select boards dated Sept. 30.

 As is, member towns can see inconsistencies from year-to-year in their district assessments depending not only on how many of their students attend middle and high school in Nauset, but how many are attending from the other towns. Mark Mathison, who chairs the Orleans select board, said even small population shifts can have noticeable financial impacts for the member towns.

 “What we have seen consistently over the years is that two or three kids’ difference can shift a whole percentage point,” he said. “It can be $100,000 or more. It can be a significant change.”

 Brewster, whose students account for just under 50 percent of the district’s middle and high school enrollment (Nauset’s elementary schools are funded directly by their respective towns), carries the largest portion of the district’s annual assessment. Town Manager Peter Lombardi said the town first sent a letter to the regional school committee in May 2023 asking that the committee work with the towns on revising the agreement. The other three member towns soon afterward wrote the committee in support of the idea, he said.

 “In this case for Nauset, it’s been 20 years since (the agreement) has been reviewed, let alone updated,” he said when reached by phone last week.

 Lombardi said he and town managers in the other three district towns first broached the idea of updating the agreement with Nauset administrators a few years ago.

 “At the time, there were some pretty significant changes to student enrollment year to year, and it was causing some pretty significant swings, both increases and decreases, in our respective assessments,” he said. “And it’s zero sum. If one town is going up, the other towns are going down.”

 One of the biggest factors influencing enrollment fluctuation is School Choice, which allows students to attend school in districts other than where they live. Lombardi said gauging enrollment on a three-year average would help level out that variability, making it easier for towns to prepare their budgets each year.

 “Having uncertainty around what the student enrollment shift is going to be adds another variable that makes [budgeting] that much more difficult,” he said.

 In 2022, the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released new guidelines for how regional school agreements should be structured. Lombardi said in revising the Nauset agreement, the revision must bring the agreement up to the state’s current standards.

 The towns also are requesting language in the revised agreement that would subject the agreement to regular review and revision, as well as more clarity around how tuition agreements are prepared with the towns of Truro and Provincetown and how budget information is presented and rolled out to the member towns each budget season. The towns are also requesting that chairmanship of the regional school committee be rotated annually, “so that all four towns would have on a somewhat regular basis a role in leading the committee as opposed to representatives from one town serving in that capacity five to 10 years,” Lombardi said.

 A regional school district subcommittee has been meeting since September to rework the existing agreement. With the Sept. 30 letter to district select boards, a “draft restatement” was shared outlining a number of proposed revisions. Some came in an effort to meet the new DESE guidelines, while others came from the district’s legal counsel and the four member towns. 

 A tentative outline prepared by the regional school committee calls for public meetings throughout the fall and winter. A revision would go before DESE for review in April, followed by a final vote on the revised agreement from the regional committee. The revision would then go before town meeting voters in each district town for approval next spring. Lombardi noted that all four district towns would need to pass the revision by a simple majority in order for the updated agreement to go into effect.

 But there’s been some question as to whether or not the timeline will hold up. Speaking to his board members last week, Mathison said the process could be much lengthier.

 “I think it’s a two-year project just to get two sentences changed,” he said in reference to language update the enrollment calculations.

 The regional school committee is seeking feedback on the draft from the member towns by Oct. 31. But town managers and their legal counsel on Monday determined that at least three months would be needed to provide “thorough and meaningful feedback” to the committee, Lombardi said in a follow-up email. 

“After reviewing the school’s proposed timeline again, it is now clear that they do not intend to bring this to Town Meetings next spring,” he said. Instead, Lombardi said it is more likely that a revision will be prepared for DESE next spring, with continued review of the agreement to follow after receiving input from the agency.

“Accordingly, we don’t think our request will delay action by the district or our voters,” he said.

The regional school committee also noted in its timeline that dates are “subject to change” given the “dynamic” nature of the process. 

 “It’s important that it be revised, but it’s not urgent,” Lombardi said. “We don’t want to create an artificial deadline for ourselves. Wwe want to make sure we get right rather than not giving it the time it needs.”