Comments for Belmont on the Proposed Minuteman Building Project Part II

By Jeff Stulin

April 26, 2016

4 Outdated prejudices regarding a vocational/technical education are hard to counter. However, Minuteman has a new enrollment effort ongoing that shows some promise. In-district applications are currently up 15% over last year. While this is an impressive result, I am not yet too excited because applications are not the same as enrollment, and one year does not make a trend. Nevertheless, it is something to think about.

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5. A concern that the school will face years of building renovations which would be a continuing disruption to education, and
6. A concern that lack of investment by the District will prevent the school from keeping up with modern education and vocational standards.

Concerns 2 - 6 above would be fully addressed by the proposed MSBA project. An improved facility with updated programs will ensure strong long-term in-district enrollment at Minuteman.

Consider, for example, the three new vocational-technical high schools that have been built in Massachusetts in recent years: Worcester Technical High School, Roger L. Putnam Vocational-Technical Academy, and Essex Technical High School.

Worcester’s turnaround story is particularly well known. With the strong backing of local business and political leaders, the City of Worcester built the new school, transforming it from a school of last resort to a “school of choice” where there is “always” a long wait list. To recognize Worcester Tech’s achievements, President Obama spoke at the high school’s graduation in June of 2014.

Putnam, one of six high schools in the Springfield Public Schools, was once viewed the same way as the old school in Worcester. Now, Putnam is described by Springfield’s Public Schools CFO Patrick Roach as “one of our flagship schools”. He says the school has “a really long waiting list” that “grew significantly” when the new school was built and programs were upgraded. In addition, he says construction of the new school brought increased attention from local businesses who now hire its graduates. The CFO also said he’d now be willing to send his own children there. Another staff member in the Springfield School District says Putnam now has “capacity issues.”

In Essex’s case, the new school merged programs from three different schools: North Shore, Essex Agricultural, and Peabody. The new school increased overall capacity from roughly 1,000 seats to 1,400 seats. Its applicant pool has also increased. According to Mary Kroesser, Administrator of Pupil Personnel Services & Human Resources, the school had 1,000 applications this year for 360 seats in the ninth-grade class.

In each case a new facility brought higher enrollment, improved education, and significantly increased district respect for career/technical education. The same would be true if we build the new Minuteman facility .

Attracting New District Members
It may be desirable for the District to eventually attract one or two new members. Over the years we have talked to several potential new members. It was made clear to us that they see two major obstacles to joining the District:

1) Aspects of the previous Regional Agreement were unacceptable, and
2) District towns are not working cooperatively together regarding the future of the District.

Item one has been addressed by the new Regional Agreement, approved by the Commissioner of Education on March 11, 2016. Item two would be addressed if we move forward with the MSBA project. A new building would also make the district significantly more attractive.

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5 More information regarding changes in attitude to Career Technical education is available on the Minuteman website: http://minuteman.org/Page/195 (A Revolution in Learning: Related Articles and Videos).

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A third item that impacts the possibility of attracting District members is the new capital fee that we can charge to non-resident students if we are participating in a MSBA project. Without this capital charge, non-member sending communities are disincentivized to join, since the State-mandated tuition charged to out-of-district students is currently lower than the per student assessment for a member town. But with the capital fee in place, the economics change, and it becomes far more likely that sending towns would see advantages in joining the District.

Per-Student Operating Assessment
The per-student operating assessments are likely to be significantly lower in a new building for the following reasons:

• The new building will be smaller, with an infrastructure focused on 628 students, not the current 900 student facility.
• The new building will have lower operating costs due to a smaller footprint, modern building techniques, and more efficient systems.
• Enrollment will be higher in a new building. Higher enrollment will result in lower per student operating costs since fixed costs will be distributed among more students.
• It is likely that we would attract new member towns which would further increase in-district enrollment and reduce per-student costs .
• With an MSBA project we can charge sending communities a per-student capital fee . This fee has not been yet set, but for our project we expect it to be in the neighborhood of $6,000 per student. But even if we are disappointed, and the fee is low, say $4,000, it is still significant. Example: if we have 130 out of district students, that would provide an additional $4,000 * 130 = $520,000 annually, which would reduce member town assessment. Consider that over thirty years: $520,000 * 30 = $15,600,000. This money would be lost if we “Go It Alone” and do not choose the MSBA project.

Final Thoughts
I understand that both the timing and the cost of the Minuteman MSBA project is challenging for Belmont. Nevertheless, this project is the best choice for all of the member towns of the Minuteman District, including Belmont.

A District approval of the MSBA project will likely have these advantages over the “Go It Alone” approach:

• A lower total project cost with lower risk;
• $44M given to the District from the MSBA;
• Higher enrollment;
• Lower long term per-student operating costs;

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6 We need to careful not to over expand the district since the capacity of the school may not be sufficient for all students who wish to attend.
7 Minuteman stakeholders have complained for years that out-of-district students do not pay for their fair share of capital costs. After many years, partly due to Minuteman’s efforts, the State has created regulations allowing participants in a MSBA project to set a capital fee. The exact dollar value of the fee has not been set but its purpose is to reflect a student’s fair share of capital cost of an MSBA project.
8 The Minuteman administration actually thinks the fee will be slightly higher than this. For purposes of this document, I’ll use a more conservative figure.

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• Ability to charge non-member communities a significant per-student capital fee;
• A unified School Committee and a less divisive political climate;
• A school that can offer a greatly improved education at a lower cost, and
• A school that maintains its accreditation.

The District needs to provide access to quality career/technical education for its students. The best way to provide this quality education at the lowest long-term cost is for the Minuteman District member towns to endorse the proposed MSBA project, to work with the school to put in place appropriate oversight to ensure that project dollars are wisely spent, and to show potential new member communities that the District takes the Minuteman school seriously, is able to work together effectively on complex projects, and is welcoming for appropriate new partners.

More information about this project, its history, and the many different possible options considered during the six year Minuteman feasibility study is available on the School Building Project pages of Minuteman’s website: http://www.minuteman.org/domain/81.

Jeff Stulin
Minuteman School Committee Chair
Minuteman Representative from Needham
jwstulin@comcast.net