Perking Up the Schools.
By Jim Conley • Apr 18th, 2007 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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Remember when Congressman Barney Frank (D-Financial Services Industry) held a hearing on affordable housing at Brookline Town Hall and Selectman’s Chair Robert L. Allen, Jr. got all weepy over the fact that town employees can’t afford to live in Brookline? And remember how this site found no sympathy for our civil workforce? [see previous post]
Remember that?
Well, much of the hard heartedness comes from seeing that the Brookline Selectmen have set up a system that provides plenty of incentives for employees to reside outside of Brookline. And chief among these is the fact that a Town employee can send their kids to Brookline Schools for only $2 thousand per year (the non-employee 2007 tuition rate is $12,000 per year).
By my calculations, 140 students were enrolled in Brookline Schools using this perk in 2007. That accounts for $280,000 in revenue to the Schools. Were these families charged the full tuition rate, it would result in $1.68 million in revenue.
Remember that when the Brookline School Committee and Selectmen tell you they need more revenue from a Proposition 2.5 over-ride to provide a quality education for residents.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Is this a taxable perk? Did the Town provided the IRS with 1099s for these 140 employees (with copies to them) to the tune of $10,000 each? How might this perk relate to retiremet benefits for these employees? Does this perk serve as an incentive for Town employees not to reside in Brookline? It would be interesting to know the pay scales of the Town employees who take advantage of this perk, e.g., how many employees at the low end of the pay spectrum as opposed to those at higher levels? Also, do these Town employees have any enrollment priority over others prepared to pay the full $12,000? Is there a menu of perks that would give other Town employees with school age children (whether residents or not) a comparable benefit? How might union rules apply?
Perhaps there is a state statute or a Town Bylaw covering this. If so, who can help with a cite?
What schools are you talking about here?
All of them. A town employee can send their kids to a school in Brookline without having to reside in the town. I believe that the school that they attend depends on space available, etc.