FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                           Contact: Carrie Sullivan

September 25, 2008                                                                            (617) 720-4466                                      

CREATION OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION TASK FORCE

WILL PROVIDE INVALUABLE INSIGHT TO MSBA’S NEEDS BASED SELECTION PROCESS

Voc Tech schools complex educational programs require a specialized assessment approach

BOSTON, MA-State Treasurer Tim Cahill, Chair of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (“MSBA”) and Katherine Craven, MSBA Executive Director, announced today that the MSBA’s first Vocational Education Task Force recently convened its first meeting.  The objective of the Task Force is to advise the MSBA on recommendations for assessment criteria for regional vocational and technical high schools and how these criteria can be applied by the MSBA in evaluating the needs of these individual schools.

There are currently nine vocational high schools in the MSBA’s capital pipeline. The MSBA believes that regional vocational and technical high schools require a specialized assessment approach because they (1) have complex educational programs, and (2) typically serve geographically large regional districts that are overlaid on existing school districts containing academic high schools that may have other priorities.  Task Force members will provide the MSBA with the requisite expertise in vocational education, economics and specific business sectors of the state’s economy.

“An investment made by the MSBA in vocational technical high schools should result in an economic return to the taxpayers and fuel the state’s economy,” stated Treasurer Tim Cahill. 

“I would like to thank Dr. Barry Bluestone for his presentation and insight on vocational technical education and its important role in the state's economy,” said Katherine Craven, MSBA Executive Director. “The creation of this task force is part of our ongoing efforts to fully engage outside experts and stakeholders to advise the MSBA in the development of policy recommendations.”

During the next five years, the MSBA will collaborate with municipalities to equitably invest up to $2.5 billion in schools across the Commonwealth by finding the right-sized, most fiscally responsible and educationally appropriate solutions to create safe and sound learning environments.  The MSBA is committed to protecting the taxpayer’s dollar by improving the school building grant process and avoiding the mistakes of the past in the funding and construction of school facilities. 

To date, the MSBA has made approximately $5.8 billion in reimbursements to cities and towns for school construction projects inherited from the former program -- $3.3 billion of which are accelerated “payments-in-full” to districts which had been waiting years for a partial payment from the state prior to the creation of the MSBA.  Those payments have saved municipalities millions of dollars in interest costs and reinvigorated a system that once had $11 billion in outstanding obligations. In its three year history, the MSBA has successfully contained the Commonwealth’s formerly rampant and unsustainable financial liability for the costs of 1,150 local school construction projects and last year was able to reopen a sustainable, reformed grant program as a result of programmatic reforms and sound fiscal management.