The School Committee’s discussion of funding non-mandatory busing during an update on the work of Regional Agreement Committee during its meeting on Wednesday, March 26 reflected the financial divisions still evident in the district.
“We’re plugging through the Regional Agreement,” Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak reported to the School Committee. “We just took the 2018-2020 ‘bones,’ because it was really a good, solid document, and I did the updates on the statutory method. There was some issues around capital and leases of the new Whitman Middle School that we’re being able to pretty much iron out.”
However, the issue of transportation was brought up as a topic of discussion by the Whitman finance representative for the Regional Agreement Committee (RAC) to discuss, Szymaniak said.
“That [discussion] is around non-mandated transportation and costs,” he said. “The proposal is to take that non-mandated appropriation, which is not through the School Committee, but is an assessment assigned to the towns
No vote was taken during the meeting. Rather the discussion was aimed at providing feedback to take back to the Regional Agreement Committee, both Szymaniak and Chair Beth Stafford stressed.
“If we change the methodology, there will be a cost shift from one town to another – that’s all I’m going to say,” Szymaniak said.
But when Committee member Kara Moser asked what the cost shift would look like, Szymaniak said, “roughly, it’s about $50,000 shifting from Whitman to Hanson per year.”
The current non-mandated busing policy, bills both communities by pupil and mileage, Szymaniak explained before the discussion began.
Both communities transport via school buses, students living within a zone of a half-mile and a mile and a half of the school(s) they attend.
“We bill the towns per mileage and per pupil,” he repeated. “The proposal that was brought up is to change that protocol to actually billing the way we bill mandated transportation as reimbursable.”
It would take the non-mandated appropriation, which is an assessment assigned to the towns, voted on in a separate line item in the town budget, and not through the School Committee. The non-mandated busing assessment is now voted on as a separate line item in the town budgets within the town meeting warrants, to get it back to a 60-percent by 40-percent that would be part of the school district’s assessment to the communities and part of the overall budget he said.
“We’ve been back and forth on it,” Szymaniak said. “Both sides have some strong arguments, so the [RAC’s] decision was to go to the School Committee, go to the FinComs and go to the select boards before we get too deep into it get the vibe from the School Committee, [on] whether you want to shift it or not,” the superintendent said.
The Regional Agreement Committee, on which School Committee Vice Chair Hillary Kniffen serves as a representative from Hanson and member Rosemary Connolly represents Whitman, has been meeting for the past two years.
Select board members Justin Evans of Whitman and Laura FitzGerald-Kemmet of Hanson and finance committee members Steve Amico of Hanson and Kathy Ottina of Whitman also serve on the Regional Agreement Committee. Szymaniak, Assistant Superintendent George Ferro and district Business Manager Steven Marshall, also serve on the committee as nonvoting members.
Connolly, said that, even having been a member of Whitman’s Finance Committee in the past and researching some of the history involved in the issue, she had to wade into law books to understand some of the “statutory laws and application of aid.”
“This was one that stood out to me,” she said. “Our application here is unorthodox – it’s not something that other schools are doing, and I think we need to see this a little differently.”
She said anytime aid is viewed as something to benefit a town, as opposed to benefitting a purpose or a goal, collectively, of education, [but] as diversion of money outside of education, is a failure of understanding the aid.
Delving into the history of the issue, she said that when Whitman was given the option of splitting mandated and non-mandated busing, it was seen as an opportunity to do something different because of the differences in the two towns.
“Because Hanson doesn’t have sidewalks, they can’t take this out of their budget, or, if we wanted to keep it and Hanson decided to take it out then we can do something [else], but under MGL Ch. 71 Sec 16c, it actually says the district is responsible for busing all students when we busing within our contracts,” Connolly said. “That was something [on which] the citizens of Whitman were misled when this started.”
The purpose of the aid is so that the region ultimately uses the busing assessment to get the best overall cost and the way it’s being applied, loses a lot of opportunities for cost management, using district buildings in a diverse way and burdens one town more than the other.
“The improper application has created a diversion of money out of education, not one town over the other,” she said.
Committee member Steve Bois asked if that means some Hanson pupils could be sent to Duval School in Whitman, because it’s closer to their homes.
“It opens up the possibility of that,” Connolly said. “We’re going to work it out anyway, because we’re going to do what’s best for kids. … I’m saying let’s actually be a region and share this effort, cost, and everything else.”
Committee member Dawn Byers commiserated with the public who might find the entire issue confusing.
“I wish the RAC had actually voted to propose something, not necessarily to even vote on, but a suggestion,” she said, noting that she appreciated Szymaniak’s explanation of what their discussion was. “Without anything, really, in writing, I’m trying to formulate an opinion and a discussion to go back, but I want to have more concrete [information] in front of me.”
She noted that because of the differing assessment formulas at work, mandated busing is split roughly along the 60-40 percentage break as the operating assessment, while the non-mandated billing formula puts 82 percent of the cost on Whitman and 18 percent for Hanson.
Kniffen reminded the Committee the proposal was in the early discussion stages, seeking feedback on which to proceed.
“The idea has to fall away from towns to the best way to lower the overall cost of this service,” Connolly said.
Committee member Christopher Cloutman said they were apparently hearing two different questions – the first on how the cost had been distributed in the past vs how it should be, and are the buses most efficiently being used to provide the services to the town.
Stafford expressed a concern for the School Committee and how they deal with their budget, if the non-mandated busing cost gets rolled into the district’s operating budget.
“People will forget that that’s why we increased it,” she said. And, “being realistic,” she said she doesn’t see that Hanson would agree to it at all.
“I really don’t know if this is the right time to do this,” she said. “We finally got how we divvy up between the towns and how we pay the correct way and there’s a lot of people who still have a problem with that. Maybe it shouldn’t be [done at] this time.”
Stafford reminded the Committee that the Regional Agreement is supposed to be reviewed every three years and there are other opportunities to address it.
Moser agreed with Stafford.
“I hear the Whitman perspective, but I lived and advocated through that 2020 Town Meeting on the lawn out here, where it took a yeoman’s effort to get Hanson on board with the statutory [assessment] method,” said Moser, who is a Hanson resident. “There is a lot of residual resentment, even though it may be well intended or not, but it hit people’s pocketbooks in a very big way, and I think it unfortunately eroded a little of that sese of mutual responsibility.”
Combined with the economic outlook, Moser said a change in non-mandated busing formulas, would be a hard sell at this time.
Connolly replied that resentments are not only present in Hanson, and Whitman has had major large financial bills for middle schools and other things that “any sort of recognition for partnership” must entail and that she cannot be responsible for misinformation provided the residents of Hanson in the past.
“There’s no easy way to do it that would be fair to both towns because we’ve got such a number discrepancies between student population and mileage,” said member Stephanie Blackman. “I do think this is something that’s worth looking at further, but I certainly don’t want to be asking people in either town to be paying more than they should be paying.”
Once RAC develops a consensus of opinion and gets the same from the School Committee, according to Szymaniak they are also asking for feedback from the select boards before a policy change is sent to the commissioner of education for approval before going before Town Meeting. The goal is currently to get on the commissioners calendar for May 2026.
Towns, but not regional school districts, could also opt to bill parents on a per-child basis for non-mandated busing it they so choose.