Table of Contents
The trend to not allow non-residents to attend Winchester Schools was continued last week when the School Committee voted unanimously to opt out of School Choice.
“School Choice would essentially allow students who are non-residents to attend Winchester public schools for essentially the state per pupil amount,” explained Superintendent Dr. Frank Hackett. “There are many school systems that do it. There are some school systems in the state that depend on it. We’ve not done it here, to my knowledge, ever.”
The state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education requires districts to take a yearly vote on the issue.
Hackett said he recommended against it primarily because Winchester doesn’t have the capacity to allow for more children in the system. He said with the new Lynch School opening in the fall, conditions could change over the next few years but “next year is certainly not the year that we want to be getting into offering school choice.”
Hackett added that while Winchester could cap the number of students accepted and limit it to certain grade levels, from a predictable space standpoint, it’s not a viable option.
What about down the road?
Earlier this year the UMass Donahue Institute, the public service, research, and economic development arm of the University of Massachusetts, released an updated school enrollment study, which is part of the school’s 10-year Facilities Master Plan update.
According to the report, WPS could see an enrollment increase of 246 students on the low end to 326 students on the high end by 2030 and increases of 304 (low) and 403 (high) between now and 2035.
Hackett said at the time the numbers were not a surprise.“The study gives us a look at the potential and I think it’s a manageable potential,” he said.
And while he noted the district never knows for sure what enrollments are going to look like, Hackett said they are on track to have the highest enrollments at the middle and high schools for next year that they’ve seen since pre-pandemic days.
Which is, again, why he said he recommended opting out of school choice for this year.
Easy vote
The committee, minus Tom Hopcroft who was absent, supported Hackett’s recommendation with no discussion.
School Committee member Tim Matthews made the motion to opt out “given the unpredictability of our space constraints with an elementary school which is still yet to open.”
