Over the years, the money MassDevelopment pays Harvard schools to educate Devens students has helped to buy laptops and iPads, update science labs, pay teachers’ salaries, and make capital improvements at both schools. Earlier this week, the School Committee discussed whether a portion of that Devens money might also help pay for the proposed new elementary school.
This fiscal year the Devens contract will bring the Harvard school district more than $1.5 million. By fiscal 2020, the final year of the current contract with MassDevelopment, school business manager Peter Rowe expects that amount to be about $1.76 million. The contract is set to renew year by year unless either Harvard or MassDevelopment gives two years’ notice of a desire to change or end it.
At Monday’s School Committee meeting, Rowe reported that the Devens revolving fund—the unspent amount from past years’ payments—would likely have a balance of well over $700,000 at the end of fiscal 2019. He said the expected gradual growth of Devens enrollment by 2020, coupled with the completion of several capital projects at Bromfield, could free up about $250,000 a year for the proposed elementary school building project. “It’s reasonable to believe,” Rowe said, “… that commitment could be carried out for a number of years.”
If the school building project is approved at this spring’s Annual Town Meeting, the biggest increase in taxes would take place in the first four years of borrowing, School Superintendent Linda Dwight said, and using some Devens funds could help to level out that bump. Dwight asked the committee to consider setting a flexible amount such as $1 million over four years to commit to the elementary school building project.
Committee member SusanMary Redinger supported the overall idea, saying, “The last thing we want is for the School Committee to be sitting on $800,000 while the town is really struggling to make ends meet.” But she said the Devens fund commitment should be capped at $300,000 in any one year, because the fund is a buffer to help the district cope with unexpected costs such as removing snow from school roofs or paying unusually high special education expenses.
A whole-town approach
Committee members John Ruark and Jon Green suggested waiting until the next meeting to vote on the idea, and other members agreed to that plan. Green wanted some time to better understand “all the moving parts” of the financing for the building project, but he described the overall idea approvingly as “more of a whole-town approach to capital and debt management,” rather than thinking of the schools and the town separately.
Chairwoman Mary Traphagen also supported the idea, saying it was the School Committee’s responsibility to help tackle the project if members want it to pass at Town Meeting. It’s a message of support she said she wants to give at the upcoming public forums on the building project.
