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The name “School Choice” is a semantic reversal. Resident enrollment is declining, so the City imports nearly 9% of its student body to sustain a preferred narrative about enrollment and capacity. The policy manufactures demand. School Choice doublespeak becomes a mechanism for filling seats and obscuring costs. We have 189 out of district students, and the reimbursement is capped by the State at $5,000 — even though the district’s per-pupil cost is around $20,000.
While investigating this matter, people knowledgeable about the topic have told me, “The marginal cost of an additional student is near zero, therefore the five thousand dollars is pure profit.”
This is the same logic that would say:
A restaurant with empty tables should serve $5 meals even if food and labor cost $20.
An airline with empty seats should sell tickets for $10 because the plane is already flying.
A hotel with empty rooms should charge $15 a night because the building is already heated.
It is a seductive argument because it feels efficient.
But it collapses the moment you ask:
What happens when the empty seats fill and the district must open another section, which triggers a new teacher, new benefits, new prep time, and new contractual obligations?
What happens when guidance counselors, nurses, psychologists, and adjustment counselors reach caseload thresholds and the district must add support staff?
What happens when cafeteria staffing, custodial staffing, and building maintenance scale with actual bodies, not theoretical averages?
What happens when the district must purchase more testing materials, more curriculum subscriptions, more science kits, more art supplies, more athletic equipment?
What happens when building wear increases, HVAC loads increase, utilities increase, and capital needs accelerate because more students are using the facilities?
What happens when fixed costs turn out not to be fixed at all, but simply slow‑moving costs that scale with enrollment over time?
The marginal cost argument is a snapshot, not a system.
The DESE (Massachusettes Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) per pupil cost (~$20,000 in Newburyport) is not an abstraction. It is the actual cost of running the school system divided by the number of students.
If you add students without adding revenue equal to the per pupil cost, you lower the average revenue per student, increase the load on the system, and shift the unfunded portion onto local taxpayers.
That is the definition of a structural subsidy.
The empty seat argument is a short term convenience that ignores long term capacity, long term staffing, long term capital needs and long term fiscal reality. Despite the scale of this issue, the public has not been given a clear explanation of why the district maintains so many out of district seats, how capacity is determined, whether a cost benefit analysis exists, or how the multimillion dollar gap is absorbed. These are basic questions of fiscal stewardship.
To understand the district’s decision making, I asked both the Mayor and the School Committee:
1. Has a cost benefit analysis of maintaining 189 School Choice seats been conducted?
2. How does the district define capacity for out of district students?
3. Is there a target number of School Choice seats, and what is the rationale?
4. How is the 2.8 million dollar annual gap addressed?
On March 30, the Mayor replied:
“Here is a one pager on school choice that Ethan Manning presented at the last school committee meeting. I would recommend you attend an upcoming meeting of the school committee to learn more about school choice.”
That same day, the School Committee vice chair wrote:
“In our discussion on this topic at the March 28 meeting, we addressed a number of questions about school choice. You can watch a rebroadcast of that meeting here. We will be continuing this discussion on April 8.”
The Mayor’s reply is a study in municipal misdirection. A resident asks a specific fiscal question and receives a laminated talking point in return. Instead of engaging with the numbers behind 189 School Choice seats, he forwards a generic one pager and suggests attending a meeting, as if public comment were a substitute for an answer. It performs attentiveness while avoiding it. A sideways shuffle that treats a data question like a scheduling inquiry and leaves the substance untouched.
Resident enrollment is declining. The district imports 189 students. The reimbursement is five thousand dollars. The cost is roughly twenty thousand. The gap is nearly 2.8 million dollars. And the public still has no clear explanation of why this structure persists or how the costs are absorbed.
These are not niche questions. They are the foundation of responsible budgeting and long term planning. They deserve direct answers. Residents interested in the approximately $2,835,000 in state determined costs to out of district students may address those concerns in two ways:
Asking questions at the April 8 public hearing.
Writing to the school committee: sc@newburyport.k12.ma.us
Walt Thompson
Newburyport resident
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