By ANGELA LEMIRE
Staff Writer

BLACKSTONE – After years of resistance, the Blackstone-Millville Regional School District will join neighboring communities in accepting students from other towns under the state's six-year-old "school choice" provision.

The School Committee last night voted unanimously to accept Superintendent Aldo Cecchi's recommendation to accept out-of-district students beginning in the 1999-2000 school year -- a recommendation that signified a "major philosophical" but reluctant shift for the administrator.

With BMR's new policy shift, students from other districts would be allowed to attend the two elementary, middle or high schools in the district at no cost. School officials cited a number of enticements that may lure out-of-district students, such as its renowned music program or the younger cutoff age for enrollment in elementary schools. Other students may have lived in Blackstone or Millville at one time and wish to remain in the school system, they said.

Cecchi said he had serious reservations about school choice in the past, because he felt it creates an odd competition for state funds among communities, and has the potential to throw off enrollment projections.

But he made an about-face on the issue, he said, because he feels the district must reluctantly accept school choice to compete with neighboring communities that have begun accepting students from the towns of Blackstone and Millville.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts introduced "school choice" in 1993, allowing communities to accept out-of-district students in exchange for increased state reimbursement, based on that district's per-pupil expenditure. While the funding comes from the state, the revenue is diverted away from the city or town in which the student resides, resulting in a loss to that community's education reimbursement for the year.

In the current fiscal year, the Blackstone-Millville Regional School District lost approximately $150,000 to students that "choiced out" of the system, according to Cecchi. The same loss would be a substantial hit to next year's proposed budget, he said.

Much of that loss is because the regional school system is one of the last districts in the area that has not accepted school choice. Bellingham has also rejected school choice.

Projecting that the district could comfortably absorb 75 out-of-district students in Grades K through 12, school officials predict that the regional school district could take in as much as $289,000 per year in additional reimbursement from the state to offset Chapter 70 losses to other districts.

The BMR School Committee has, for the last six years, backed Cecchi on the issue and voted to reject school choice. Under Massachusetts state law, school committees are not required to take a formal vote to accept school choice, rather they must take a vote to reject the policy. The BMR School Committee has until June 1 to vote to reject school choice, or it would be accepted automatically in the 1999-2000 school year.

While last night's school board vote was not necessary, School Committee Chairman Michael J. Buckley explained that its vote was to document the committee's support for school choice.