Deerfield voters said they wanted more choices for the town’s high-school-aged students. A year later, with tuition agreements finalized and approved for three area schools, they’ll get it – at a steep price.

“What we were saying last year is that school choice is not free, or cheap or easy. And so we voted as a town to foot the bill,” Deerfield School Board Member Nathan Oxnard said in December when that board approved agreements with Concord High School, Pembroke Academy, and Coe-Brown Northwood Academy. “And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to foot the bill.”

The bill is expected to be about $800,000 more next year.

Deerfield, not having a high school of its own, has contractually sent 90% of its secondary students to Concord High School since 2004. The current contract with Concord expires in June, and last year Deerfield voters, wanting more flexibility, rejected a 12-year extension of that arrangement and approved language directing the school board to pursue options for school choice.

The new contracts, each expiring in 2027, give Deerfield students a choice between the three schools. There is no minimum or maximum number of students that must attend any of those schools, and all are assured a place wherever they choose. The contracts with Concord and Pembroke can be extended by one year and Coe-Brown by two years.

“Thank you, all of you, for getting this foot in the door,” resident Kimberly Black said to board. “I don’t think the numbers are that crazy. That’s what we were expecting. I think this is what our high schoolers deserve.”

“This is what the town has been asking for, for years now,” Greg Whitmore said. “Generations have been looking for exactly this.”

As current high school students graduate, enrollment is expected to net away from Concord and into the other districts: 61% of fifth- through eighth-graders prefer Coe-Brown, 30% Concord and 6% Pembroke, according to a district survey last year. The Deerfield School Board is still working on whether or not high schoolers already at Concord High will have the option to transfer, though it is unclear whether any want to, board chair Kendra Cohen said.

Deerfield voters knew last year that a new arrangement would likely be more expensive, but not, necessarily, how much more. The answer is up to $4,400 more annually per student starting this fall.

Under past contracts, Concord gave Deerfield a discount in exchange for the 90% quota, which would have pegged per-student tuition around $15,300.

Tuition rates are set annually by receiving districts: next year, Deerfield will instead pay about $18,600 per student to Concord and $19,700 to Coe-Brown. Of 45 rising ninth-graders, just over half are planning to attend Concord and the rest chose Coe-Brown, Cohen said at the school district deliberative session last month. None selected Pembroke Academy, where tuition would have been roughly $15,300. Concord’s new tuition will apply to all of the 156 Deerfield students projected to attend next year.

Those higher rates mean Deerfield is expected to pay $805,612 more next year to educate its high schoolers. Tuition represents more than a third of the about $2.25 tax rate increase — or $900 more annually for a $400,000 home — in the school district’s proposed budget. That’s on top of a separate $3.81 tax rate increase in the town’s proposed budget, which means a total tax increase of $2,400 annually for a $400,000 home.

Notably, because the tuition agreements have been approved and signed by the board, they will not get direct voter approval and their costs are fixed in both the proposed and the default school budget.

The decision to approve the contracts outright rather than to place them on the warrant was not one that the school board made happily, Cohen said.

Many voters, especially those not paying regular attention to the board may have been unaware of just how expensive school choice would be when they voted last year, she said.

“I wish that we had had more time,” Cohen said. If the school board had decided to put the contract before voters and they were shot down, it would have left Deerfield with no backup plan just weeks until the current contract expired and running up against its legal obligation to provide for the education of its students.

“The board had to make that decision,” Cohen said. “It doesn’t feel good.”

On March 12, voters will consider establishing a tuition trust fund to manage fluctuations. The proposed budget was amended at the deliberative session to not include funding for additional high school buses — those who spoke in favor of the amendment noted that the existing buses to Concord are far from full, and that one bus to Coe-Brown for the entire town is an inexpedient, and therefore undesirable, option.

At both the school board meeting where the agreements were approved and the school district deliberative session, some warned that, if residents demand future budget cuts to offset expensive tuition, high school choice could mean hard trade-offs for the Deerfield Community School.

It’s a concern that Cohen, elected a year ago, shares.

“We all campaigned on the promise that we would listen to the town,” she said. “I just hope the town continues to support DCS.”

“I don’t want the needs of DCS to fall by the wayside because the town wanted school choice.”