Saugus to pay higher tuition fee for school

SAUGUS – The town’s tuition payment for Northeast Metropolitan Technical School is going up $240,000.Selectman Peter Rossetti, who also sits on the vocational School Committee, told his colleagues Tuesday that 16 more students would be attending the school causing the bump in the tuition. The town already pays over $2 million for 145 students, which is considerably higher than two-thirds of the communities that send children to the Wakefield school.The news prompted Selectman Michael Kelleher to once again suggest the formula used to determine the tuition be revisited. Kelleher asked Town Manager Andrew Bisignani to poll the mayors, Town Managers or Administrators from the other seven communities that also send students to the vocational school to see how they felt about offering some financial relief to the town.Rossetti all but scoffed at the idea, explaining that the communities have no say in setting the formula.According to Rossetti the tuition formula was set when Education Reform swept in 1993. The formula was altered to give communities that at the time were considered poor a break and, as Rossetti pointed out, at the time Saugus was considered more well-to-do. The problem now is that while times and financial circumstances have changed the formula has not.Last year Chelsea was planning to send 205 students to the vocational school and it was to pay just over $4,000 in tuition. Revere’s tuition hovered at $1.9 million but it sends 242 kids.Rossetti said if Kelleher wanted to discuss the formula he should attend the school’s next committee meeting.”I could care less about attending a budget meeting,” Kelleher said.Kelleher said by his calculation it the town spends roughly $15,000 per student to send kids to the vocational school.While Rossetti said it wasn’t the highest tuition Kelleher said it was still too high.”Tell me I’ll have an effect on the meeting and I’ll attend all day long,” he said. “This is taking away from school kids here. I certainly would like to support all the kids but Chelsea has a deal of a lifetime and it’s killing us.”Bisignani said he would certainly give his counterparts a call and see what they had to say.