The Clymer Central School Board of Education is continuing work on their policy for non-resident students. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

CLYMER — A discussion regarding looking at a policy for non-resident students is ongoing at Clymer Central School.

During a recent Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Beth Olson said the district currently has one non-resident student and that there have been conversations in the past about how to tweak the school’s policy to make it clearer on what the qualifications are for students in the district who are not residents.

“Currently our non-resident policy allows non-resident students for two reasons; if they are assigned or part of a collective bargaining agreement either the CEA, which is our teachers’ union or the CESP, which is our non-instructional unit, if they have students and they do not live in the district they can bring their students free of charge,” Olson said. “And then the second would be if we had a contract or intermunicipal agreement with a neighboring school district, which we currently do with Sherman schools for some students, we share students back and forth to provide some services.”

The ongoing conversation, Olson said, is if the district should open the policy up further for students from other districts to have the opportunity to tuition their students to Clymer. Following the board’s last conversation on this policy, Olson said she added some draft tuition language to their current policy, borrowing from other tuition policies, so that it basically outlines if someone has a non-resident student that can be full time or part time and then they would be charged tuition at the rate to be determined by the Board of Education. The policy also looks at the students of employees and that students would be responsible for their own transportation. Olson said with the current agreement with Sherman, Sherman is transporting their students to Clymer.

The tuition fee could also be offset if the parents own property in the district. Olson said if the person was paying school taxes, they can offset the amount of taxes they pay from whatever the tuition amount is.

“So, if they’re paying $1,000 in school taxes and our tuition rate is $2,000 they would owe $1,000 for their students’ tuition,” Olson said. “From our research too, it’s got to be a per student charge, it can’t sort of be a family rate. However, we can provide a discount for multiple children. We’ve talked a little bit about that, but we can’t just say right, the whole family will get charged this particular rate.”

The board’s conversation around the policy focused on that the policy would cover only New York State, because of an experience in the past with special education students from Pennsylvania that essentially was “breaking the bank”. There was a question as to when that was and if the data from that was still good, and Olson said she did not know enough about it to know if it would still be the same but that she could investigate it more. It was believed that that happened around 30 years ago and things may have changed.

Potential tuition rates were then discussed, including the state aid formula. The number of students in the district came up, with a question about if they had any data as to what the “sweet spot” would be when it comes to the number of students to help enhance current students’ education.

“If more kids are going to enhance the educational experience for everybody that’s attending here now, then I would be more in favor of a lower tuition rate,” Board President Ed Mulkearn said.

Olson said there is no data specifically for any individual class sizes, but that consolidation research has shown that 1,000 kids in the district is a sweet spot to be able to provide programming at an efficient cost to the district.

“The problem is, if you are making your tuition rate too low, it’s not that you’re making money on it, but you’re opening doors to a transient population that tends to hop from district to district when they don’t get the answers that they like,” Olson said. “And with that comes a lot of challenges, which I am not confident we have the resources to really accommodate, so that’s why we’re being careful.”

Business Official Jarrett Wiggers said there are potentially three separate NRT rates for elementary, secondary and students with disabilities, and wondered about the possibility of having different levels in theirs. It was noted that Sherman only has one rate with a family discount as well, and that as they are not a Hold Harmless school Sherman gets aid with every student they get, compared to Clymer as a Hold Harmless school who would not see an increase in aid. Olson said in the state’s eyes they are already receiving more money in state aid than they should.

Ripley students that attend Sherman were discussed, and that around 100 kids are tuitioned into the district. Olson said there is still some more digging to do with this policy, and that she would look into the possibility of the three NRT rates, with more conversations to be had in the future.