DURHAM — The Oyster River School Board voted unanimously Wednesday night to send a tuition framework offer to Newmarket, Barrington and Deerfield.
Superintendent James Morse told the School Board if more than one town accepts the framework of the offer by Nov. 1, it will ultimately be up to the board to select the town from which it wants to accept tuition students.
Morse stressed sending out the framework did not bind the school district or the other town's districts into a tuition agreement, nor into accepting tuition students. Ultimately, both school boards would have to agree to a contract and then the tuition agreement would have to be approved by voters in the sending town and all three Oyster River district towns — Durham, Lee and Madbury.
"It starts the clock ticking," Morse said. "We need to have the clock start ticking ... so it can go to the voters in March."
Under the tuition framework, Newmarket, Barrington or Deerfield would pay $14,500 per student to send their high school students to Oyster River High School. That figure would not include transportation costs or out-of-district special education costs, Morse said.
If Oyster River voted to reach a tuition agreement with Newmarket students, which would start in the 2015-2016 school year, it would receive roughly $3.68 million in tuition payments from Newmarket for its estimated 250 students.
The board voted to send out the offers after questioning Morse for about 30 minutes.
School Board member Megan Turnball asked a number of questions, but asked one she acknowledged beforehand would be "controversial."
"Are we going to report the standardized test scores as a whole integrated body?" she asked.
When Morse said he believed they would, Turnball asked if he could see if the cooperative could report its scores separately from the scores of any tuition students, seeming to suggest she thought the tuition students would bring the standardized test scores down.