On Monday night, the Newton School Committee joined school committees of yesteryear in rejecting School Choice.

“We’re going to be faced, in these chairs, with doing things that are both right and unpopular,” committee member Ben Schlesinger said. “To me, this isn’t one of them.”

The state’s Inter-district School Choice program allows families to enroll their kids in school districts outside their community. The school district where the child lives pays tuition—currently set at $5,000 per student per school year (with special education increments added)—which goes to the school district in which the child attends school.

School boards have to vote on School Choice every year, as per state law. Newton has always opted out of School Choice, and this year is no exception.

The major sticking point was over money. The money the program brings in won’t cover the money spent educating the students brought into the district, especially if the added students cause the district to have to add another teacher.

“School committees for 20-plus years have gone through the same analysis and voted this down repeatedly, and there was a reason for that,” Mayor Marc Laredo said. “The math just doesn’t work. It didn’t work a long time ago. It actually works less and less as we move forward, because that $5,000 number has stayed the same for a long, long time, and every single year our costs go up.”

In a bit of a plot twist, Ward 4 member Tamika Olszewski–longtime skeptic of School Choice who even wrote an impassioned memo opposing it in 2024–said Monday night that the committee should consider it now that the school is in such immediate need.

Olszewski and Schlesinger suggested the district consider a “surgical” approach, accepting students for specific classes in specific schools at the lower level to test things out. Olszewski went further and suggested the district try it out in the near future before going to the residents for a Proposition 2/2 override.

“I’ve said this before, but I’m going to say it again, we cannot self-determine when it is we go out to our residents and say, ‘Hey, we need funds to do all these amazing things, or to keep all these amazing people, and we need your help,'” she said.

Olszewski joined the rest in voting to opt out for the next academic year, now that a conversation has started again about various options for School Choice that aren’t as big a risk or commitment.