The Arlington High School administration in recent years has been forced to cut many courses because of a tightening budget. Some of the classes that have been cut, such as woodworking, have had a vocational or technical focus. One result of such cuts is that any student looking for a mix of academics and vocational training must turn to Minuteman Regional High School, a move that costs the town thousands of dollars.

According to Sue Mazzarella, the chief financial officer for the Arlington public schools, Arlington spent $3,153,412 for Minuteman High School in the current fiscal year. Mazzarella has estimated that "the per pupil expense is approximately $25,027 per year."

This is an large sum, considering that the town spent $38.7 million for all Arlington public schools in fiscal 2008 and may spend about $43 million in fiscal 2010. Such an expense has not gone unnoticed by the Arlington School Committee, which discussed the issue with Minuteman Superintendent Edward Bouquillon in November 2007. At that time, the committee expressed unease about Arlington’s share of the Minuteman budget and asked whether Bouquillon had plans to tighten its spending. Bouquillon assured the town that he was working to make Minuteman more fiscally efficient.

Minutes show that committee members registered their concern about the town's Minuteman expenditures. That concern might extend to a closer examination of Arlington's Minuteman enrollment, which has greatly increased over the last eight years. According to a Minuteman budget report, in the 1999-2000 school year, 104 students from Arlington were enrolled in Minuteman.

In the 2007-2008 school year, 139 students from Arlington were enrolled. As more Arlington students choose to enroll at Minuteman, Arlington's share of the Minuteman budget grows: each new student attending Minuteman means another $2,500 that is sent to Minuteman Arlington sends more students to Minuteman High School than any of the other 15 towns in the Minuteman district. In the 2007-2008 year, Arlington sent more than twice as many students to Minuteman as Lexington, which sent the second highest number of students.

During the 2007-2008 year, students from Arlington made up about one-third of the total enrollment at Minuteman from member districts. The amount Arlington spends for each student that attends Minuteman changes every year but is generally between $23,000 and $25,000 in this decade.

The town cannot directly control Minuteman's budget and thus is not in control of Arlington's share of the budget. But the town could take steps to reduce the number of Arlington students who enroll in Minuteman, thus reducing the town's expenditures to the vocational high school.

Restoring classes at AHS with a more vocational or technical focus could reduce the number of students that turn to Minuteman High School, which emphasizes such classes. In recent years, the AHS administration has moved in the opposite direction, cutting vocational-style classes.

"I will acknowledge that we are
deemphasizing vocational classes here."

Charles A. Skidmore,

AHS principal

Charles A. Skidmore, principal of Arlington High, acknowledges this trend but doubts that it has had a real impact on the number of students who chose to enroll in Minuteman.

"I will acknowledge that we are deemphasizing vocational classes here," Skidmore said in an interview in December, "but even when we had woodworking, and the culinary arts two classes, those were never vocational programs, so kids who want to be in a full four-year voc sequence, we never had that . . . . We were never going to keep kids who wanted a full vocational experience."

Skidmore notes that Arlington simply doesn't have the capabilities or the resources to attract students seeking a vocational school, but he does believe that some students may be choosing to enroll in Minuteman for its childcare program, despite the fact that AHS currently has a strong childcare program. "It's foolish for us to be losing $22,500 for a kid to go there when we have a real quality program here," Skidmore said.

To combat this, Skidmore wants to make clear to Arlington students that anyone seeking a strong childcare program should be enrolled at AHS, not Minuteman. "We should be saying to any [AHS student] we find is doing childcare at Minuteman: 'You need to be here,'" Skidmore said.

The $3 million Arlington sent to Minuteman in 2008-2009 is a hefty sum, but there seem to be few options for lowering it.

The service Minuteman High School provides to Arlington students who wish not to persue an academic career is valuable and necessary.

Perhaps Arlington could attempt to renegotiate the Minuteman Charter, which has Arlington paying higher tuition than any other district. A difficulty with that approach is that any change in the Minuteman Charter must be agreed to by all 16 towns in the Minuteman district, and few towns would be willing to increase their own tuition rates in order to lower Arlington's.

This story was written by Galen Weber, a senior at Arlington High School.