Following an audit assessing the human resources and payroll practices of the Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools (MVYPS) District, members of the All-Island School Committee (AISC) and Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) committee continue to contemplate gradual regionalization.
The audit, which was conducted by the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Collins Center for Public Management, recommended that the district implement regionalized software systems and payroll, and create a centralized human resources office for efficiency and to ensure equitable treatment of staff across the Island’s six schools.
The report marks the second time that an off-Island organization has recommended regionalization. Last year, a study conducted by the Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools revealed that it costs more than $34,000 to educate a student enrolled in the Vineyard’s public schools, a significantly higher per-pupil cost than other regionalized school districts of a similar size in the state, including Nantucket.
Collins Center associates Monica Visco and Marie Altieri presented the human resources audit’s findings during an AISC meeting last Thursday. Altieri emphasized that the varying software systems used by the schools to track staff hours could be improved.
“There are so many different software systems across the Island. The default systems have been very manual and very paper-based, so there really is room to be able to create some efficiencies,” Altieri said.
Some examples that Altieri suggested for the district were software systems for requesting time off, assigning placements for substitute teachers, and for onboarding.
“Onboarding and recordkeeping could be instrumental in helping to improve service to employees and accuracy of documentation,” Altieri said.
MVYPS Superintendent Jaime Curley also said that she discovered over the summer that around 30 Island teachers were working without the proper licensing. Currently, Curley said that some teachers remain unlicensed, and the waiver process is in progress for several members of staff.
In Massachusetts, unlicensed teachers can work at schools under waivers from the state education department after other candidates are considered.
During an MVRHS School Committee meeting on Monday, Curley referenced the audit during the committee’s interview with officials from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). The association visited the high school this week as part of the renewal process for the school’s accreditation. Regionalization of schools and services on the Island has come up in relation to budgets, safety, and resources. The community has often considered further merging of regulatory and educational bodies, but hasn’t yet pursued it.
“One of the dirty words that we never say, but I take every opportunity to say, is ‘regionalization,’” Curley said at that MVRHS School Committee meeting. In an interview with The Times at the beginning of the school year, she referenced wanting to pursue more regionalization at the schools as part of her superintendency tenure.
Curley told The Times that the district has been working on some of the software initiatives recommended by the audit prior to the presentation. These initiatives include Vector, which would track teacher licensing and accumulation of professional development points, and software for tracking teacher absences.
However, Curley said, the district is still deliberating on the audit’s other proposed changes.
“We want to take those recommendations and really consider them, and be very thoughtful about what our next steps would be,” Curley said. “We want to be super-thoughtful that we’re not creating different problems by alleviating other problems.”
The report also recommended that the schools should centralize their food and custodial services.
“We do think there are ways to create efficiencies by having more [food service] done at the district offices and then pushed out to the schools, rather than each school creating their own menus and ordering their own food,” said Altieri.
After the presentation, School Business Administrator Mark Friedman raised possible questions about the legal classification of MVYPS employees if payroll is centralized. Currently, Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, and Tisbury handle their payroll through their separate municipalities. The Up-Island School District — which consists of the towns of West Tisbury, Chilmark, and Aquinnah — and MVRHS administer their payroll through the MVYPS superintendent’s office in Tisbury.
“Having everybody come through a high school payroll means that everybody becomes a high school employee, and what are the legal ramifications for that?” Friedman said. “That’s just one aspect of trying to fully centralize payroll without being one region that we have to look at.”
Amy Houghton, All-Island School Committee chair, stressed the necessity of the audit. “The fact that a staff member can’t go to a portal and find out how much time [off] they have left is ludicrous,” Houghton said. “We need to have more efficiencies, and those efficiencies are going to be able to help us with stopping the bleeding in areas where we’re doing that.”
Houghton told The Times that the regionalization process is unfolding in “baby steps.” She said that the AISC hopes to reduce the expenses of operating the Island schools without erasing their distinct characters.
“The culture and uniqueness of the schools and the different ways that people celebrate certain things that are true to the town, we want to be able to keep that kind of thing,” Houghton said. “There’s no attempt to reduce that, and what the school committee is looking to do is to find ways that we can reduce the cost burden across the Island.”
