Mayor Daniel M. Knapik is requesting the City Council to establish a special account for the Westfield Vocational-Technical High School to return a portion of out-of-district tuition directly to the school.
Currently, the tuition from out-of-district students goes into the city’s general fund, unlike School Choice funding which goes into a revolving account administered by the School Committee.
School Choice is funded through the state Chapter 70 funding. About $5,000 per student of Chapter 70 funds are withheld from the home district of a student electing to participate in the program and added to the Chapter 70 funding of the hosting district. Vocational schools are not eligible for School Choice programs or Chapter 70 funding.
Knapik said yesterday that the Voc-Tech tuition generates about $800,000 a year for the city, based upon an out-of-district charge of just under $14,000 per students.
Knapik said that he has discussed the proposed order establishing the special account with Ward 2 Councilor James E. Brown Jr., chairman of the council’s Legislative & Ordinance Committee. The L&O will review the impact of the order and make a recommendation to the full council.
“I’d like to start it soft, at about $100,000 so we don’t have to offset that amount in the city budget,” Knapik said. “That amount is easy to absorb in the budget and is a reasonable sum of money so each year there will be consistency.”
Knapik said that a higher funding level could impact the future of the account as new mayors are elected to office.
“I’m trying to avoid the situation where it stresses the annual appropriation, trying to avoid taking an equal sum out of the School Department budget process,” he said. “In a perfect world I’d want every school principal to have a sum of discretionary money to be used for building expenditures beyond what the School Committee appropriates, but that may not happen this year.”
The School Committee voted recently to commit $100,000, over five years, to upgrading the library book collection and services at the Westfield High School using School Choice funds. The high school generates more than $300,000 in School Choice funding.
The funding in the special account would give the Westfield Vocational-Technical a similar funding source to use for educational programs.
“I’d like to see it used to benefit the various shops,” Knapik said.
Brown said yesterday that council members have been approached by School Committee members supporting the Voc-Tech account.
“The mayor also brought it up as something we should review,” Brown said. “It’s no secret that I’m a big supporter of Voc-Tech, so anything we can do, we will do if it benefits the students. This will go to committee where we’ll be able to take a hard look at it.
“What we will be able to determine is where will this money go, is it going to benefit the kids. Is it going to update equipment and software,” Brown said. “I want to make sure that the kids are learning today on the equipment that they will be using in the workplace tomorrow.”
