designation "Authorized Regional Enrollment Area" (A.R.E.A.) school. 

 For some sections of the state it appears that this proposed plan might 

 have a much greater appeal to local districts than the "cooperative" plan. 

 The cooperative school law provides three formulas for apportion- 

 ment of school costs among pre-existing districts as follows: 



1. All costs apportioned according to total equalized valuation 



2. One-half of all costs apportioned on equalized valuation and 

 one-half on average daily membership in residence 



3. Some other formula adopted by the district board and approved 

 by the State Department of Education 



The application of the above formulas requires some analysis with 

 respect to incentive for organizing cooperative districts versus electing 

 the A.R.E.A. plan. A group of seven towns prepared for an A.R.E.A. 

 school was selected for this purpose (Final report of interim commission 

 on education, chart 6, region 30). Although this is an extreme case, the 

 same analysis can be applied to other areas. Assuming that the seven 

 towns make up a logical combination of school districts for an A.R.E.A. 

 school, is it likely that the same would be favored for a "cooperative dis- 

 trict" under formulas 1 or 2 for proportioning costs? 



Tables 12A and 12B indicate the extreme variations among the seven 

 towns with respect to selected economic factors. In the first place, this 

 group includes Monroe which is among the highest in taxable wealth 

 per capita in the state, and Benton which is among the lowest in per 

 capita valuation. The town of Haverhill has nearly eight times as many 

 people and nearly six times as many pupils in residence as Monroe, but 

 its equalized valuation is about $2 million less. Monroe has 95.9 percent 

 of its property in the "electric plant" classification. 



Haverhill is a multi-district town and maintains two small high 

 schools at relatively high costs per pupil. Orford maintains a still smaller 

 high school at an extremely high cost — $865 per pupil. There are no 

 other high schools in the area. Monroe has extremely high costs per ele- 

 mentary pupil because of its large amount of taxable wealth per pupil 

 and liberal appropriations in support of its school, while at the same 

 time it has a tax rate much below any other town in the area. 



This area of seven towns is one of declining population, 8.0 percent 

 from 1950 to 1960. Monroe had an increase of 2.7 percent while all the 

 other towns lost population. 



Monroe has 39.0 percent of the total taxable wealth of the area, but 

 only 8.8 percent of the total number of resident pupils, while Haverhill 

 has more than half of all the pupils, but only 32.0 percent of the equal- 

 ized valuation. 



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