Marlborough to get new registrar, more state money
By Doug Grindle Community Reporter

Marlborough - The Marlborough School District will hire a full-time registrar to keep closer tabs on students who enroll for classes in the district.

Currently parents and guardians register students at the school they will attend. That will change beginning in September, and all registrations will be handled by a single person at the District Education Center.

"This is really good news for parents, particularly parents of students whose first language is not English," Superintendent Barbara McGann said. "It's just going to be a much more effective and efficient process."

The changes come after several incidents in which parents and guardians could not be easily contacted by the district when their child needed assistance, McGann said. In one instance, a student did not arrive home in a timely manner, having gotten off the bus at the wrong stop.

It is stressful, McGann said, when parents are not readily available.

"I have a few more gray hairs," she said. "I was working the situation personally with the principal. We were looking for the child ourselves. There is a safety issue."

Adding a new full-time registrar will also allow the district to keep closer tabs on whether the students are residents in the district. The district will develop a central database, instead of having several databases spread across schools. By developing a central database, the district will be able to hire a residency verification service.

"We are just ensuring that the children we are educating are residents of Marlborough," McGann said.

The new database comes less than a month after city councilors voted to direct the mayor to investigate bringing a federal immigration office to Marlborough. But the two issues are not related, McGann said.

"It has nothing to do with that," she explained. "I actually started [the process of creating a] central registration six months ago. I cannot be concerned with immigration status. It is against the law."

By law, school districts are not allowed to ask the immigration status of prospective students.

But with each student costing roughly $10,000 a year to educate, according to city officials, the district will ensure no money is being wasted on students who are not residents. McGann said she did not know the extent of the problem, but said there had been reported cases.

The school district is also getting a boost from the state for its budget this year. With the start of a new fiscal year July 1, the city expects to receive extra money to pay for education.

Under the urging of lawmakers such as State Rep. Stephen P. LeDuc, D-Marlborough, and State Sen. Pamela P. Resor, D-Acton, the state is recalculating how much money it gives to school districts.

LeDuc said Marlborough received 14 percent of its school funding from the state since the early 1990s, but the state average is 34 percent. LeDuc said when the original 1993 agreement was created, lawmakers gave Marlborough less money because the city was seen as having a good ability to raise tax revenue within the city, and has plentiful commercial and industrial sites, in contrast to other cities and towns.

"[Marlborough] was seen as not needing the cash in relation to its peers," LeDuc said.

That disparity in funding is now changing, and fiscal year 2008 will be the second year Marlborough's receipts for education are increased. The process is designed to bring Marl- borough's state funding for schools up to the level of other Massachusetts communities.

For the fiscal year currently ending, the city received state money for education equal to 18 percent of its needs, a jump of 4 percentage points. In fiscal year 2008, the state portion should meet or exceed 20 percent, although the state budget is still being negotiated.

The state will continue to increase the money its gives Marlborough for education as long as state revenues hold up, LeDuc said. The state is increasing its contributions for education for more than a dozen other towns in all, he added.

The city's education budget for fiscal year 2008 is $46.8 million.