Nauset Tuition To Increase 12 Percent Next Year

BREWSTER – It’s not as costly as an education at Harvard or Yale, but tuition in the Nauset system isn’t cheap.

In the current year, the tuition charged to Provincetown and Truro to send a student to Nauset High or Middle School is $20,572. Next year it will be $23,108, an increase of 12.3 percent, according to Nauset Regional School SuperIntendent Brooke Clenchy, who was part of the team that negotiated the new rates. That’s up from $16,235 in 2015. Through most years the rate increased by 2.5 percent annually.

“It’s important to me we have transparency about this agreement,” she said last Thursday. “Every five years there’s a new agreement. The current agreement ends at the end of the school year.”

The new agreement will run for five years with the fees climbing by 3 percent a year until fiscal 26-27, when it hits $24,525 per student. After that a new rate could be renegotiated.

Regional School committee member Tom Fitzgibbons said the negotiation starting point was $25,161, which was the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education number for per pupil cost plus a 7.8 percent addition representing the increase in Nauset operating costs.

Clenchy, who assumed the job in 2022, told the Brewster School Committee Dec. 14 that she anticipates revenue of $2,206,814 for the 2024-25 school year from the tuition agreement, This year the tuition revenue is $1,967,539 so the increase would be $239,275.

Provincetown, Truro and the Nauset District all had legal counsel and the three Superintendents met to work out the details.

“This time each of us had a working subcommittee,” Clenchy said. “We gave the three members the opportunity to make suggestions.”

The subcommittees reviewed the suggested and everyone worked on the language with a Dec. 1 target date.

“For us this represents $2 million and we need to know if we have $2 million,” she said. “We needed to do a course correction. Last year the 3.5 percent increase didn’t keep up with what the per pupil numbers were. We sat down to take a look.”

During the debate over what is now a $169 million renovation of Nauset High School, some Brewster residents raised concerns about the number of School Choice and tuition students and their effect on the size and cost of the renovation. At the time, circa 2020, there were 219 school choice students attending Nauset High School from towns all over Cape Cod. The calculated per pupil cost was around $20,500. By state law School Choice students pay $5,000 per student to attend Nauset, paid by their school district. There were just over 900 students at Nauset including 86 tuition students from Provincetown and Truro who paid $18,417 in fiscal 2020 and $18,918 in fiscal 2021. Since then school enrollment dropped to 780 last year.

“The tuition agreement is different than school choice,” Clenchy pointed out. “School choice is a flat fee (set by the state).”

That tuition more closely reflected the per pupil cost of education, but critics of the renovation plan argued that with just over 300 students from outside the district attending Nauset, if that number was lower, a smaller renovated school could be created at a lower cost. The statewide average for percentage of School Choice students at a given school was 1.7 percent while 23.7 percent of Nauset High students were there on choice.

The project was passed by all four district towns in April 2021. The Brewster Finance Committee recommended a no vote but town voters supported it by a 2,160-1,415 margin. At that time the cost estimate was $131.8 million, but inflation post-COVID pushed the price tag up.

Some town officials have suggested any new tuition agreement with Provincetown and Truro should include some funding to cover the cost of the renovations. Brewster has the largest enrollment in the system; the town was responsible for $45,746,409 of the original estimate. Orleans’ share was $18,558,049. After subcontractor bids came in greater than expected in 2023, district voters approved another $38.1 million for the renovations.

The project does have a $36.6 million state grant, but the four towns are responsible for the debt to rebuild the school. In fiscal 24, Brewster will make its first payment of $4,254,577.

Brewster Town Manager Peter Lombardi reminded the select board on Monday that they’d urged the regional agreement be reopened. The district towns asked the regional school committee to see if Provincetown and Truro were interested in fully joining the district. Both towns said no.

“Their sentiment was not anti-Nauset. It was pro Provincetown and Truro. They said ‘We bleed our school colors,’” Clenchy reported. “We don’t want to join in any other district, we want to be our own.”

“Regardless of the color of their blood they are saving an awful lot of money on debt service every year and I wouldn’t join if I was on their select board either,” Brewster select board member Ned Chatelain said.

Brewster also wanted to know if the new agreement could include contributing to the cost of the school renovation.

“We are paying for that debt and there is a great sense of unfairness about that,” select board member Mary Chaffee said.

Clenchy noted under state rules debt cannot be added into the tuition assessment. Provincetown and Truro are required to pay their special education costs (School Choice students do not) and those costs were around $350,000 last year, as well as transportation from Provincetown and Truro.

Fitzgibbons noted that Orleans, Brewster, Eastham and Wellfleet approved the debt. The two Cape tip towns were not involved.

“There were no stipulations placed on Provincetown and Truro. They don’t own the debt,” Fitzgibbons said. “Anything they give us would be voluntary on their part.”

The subcommittee working on the amended regional agreement will meet again in January.

“The agreement that created the Nauset District dates from 2002 and has never been amended,” Rick Draper, Brewster representative on the regional school committee, told the Brewster Select Board on Monday.

Topics under discussion include district representation on the regional school committee, the assessment formula between towns and other issues. The recommended draft will be sent to the full regional school committee and if approved sent on to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Then it would be sent to the four town select boards and town meeting for final approval this spring.