Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is nearing its final hurdle for full acceptance into a state program that reimburses up to 38 per cent of school construction costs: a spring town meeting warrant article, asking Island municipalities to share the estimated $2 million cost of a feasibility study.
All six towns must vote yes on both the study funding and the amended regional agreement on cost-sharing, the latter of which has already been passed in Oak Bluffs.
High school committee members had voted last year to reduce the $2 million request to the towns by kicking in $500,000 in excess and deficiency funds (E and D), money left unspent from previous budgets. But this week, the committee rescinded its previous vote and voted to ask towns for the full $2 million instead.
Skipper Manter was the sole naysayer in both votes.
By law, Massachusetts school districts must refund to their towns all E and D above five per cent of the school budget. But these funds are nonetheless assets that financial institutions will consider when deciding the high school’s credit rating for the millions of dollars MVRHS will be asking to borrow.
Taking half a million dollars of E and D for the feasibility study is likely to hamper the school’s rating, finance director Mark Friedman told the committee in November.
“It’s a red flag for the raters,” he said.
Also Monday, Mr. Friedman announced nearly $460,000 in grants for Island schools. The funding ranges from more than a dozen mini-grants from Cape Cod Five, of a few hundred dollars apiece for classroom activities, to nearly $332,000 from the state education department to improve ventilation and air quality at the Edgartown, Oak Bluffs and Tisbury schools.
The Tisbury School will be able to use its $100,000 share of the grant to offset costs from the building project it is currently undergoing, Mr. Friedman said.
The regional high school is the fiscal agent for the superintendent’s office, which administers grants for all Island schools, Mr. Friedman told the Gazette in a follow-up email.
“[W]e have one grant coordinator centrally located in the superintendent’s office to assist with this. It is less burdensome and costly for the towns with this centralized approach to grants management,” Mr. Friedman wrote.
