Tuition Stalemate

It is hard to believe that the seemingly endless number of hours logged by administrators in the two-year-long tuition dispute between the East Hampton and Springs School Districts has yet to yield results.

Even more difficult to understand is why the Springs School Board refuses to accept the proposed new contract's terms, which call for a 3-percent increase in tuition for this year. Springs, along with the Montauk, Amagansett, Wainscott, and Sagaponack Districts, which send students to East Hampton's middle and/or high schools, already is paying 5.8 percent more this year than last, according to the contract now in force.

The 3-percent rise is part of a five-year plan devised by Edward J. Milliken, Superintendent of the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services, at the request of the districts. It is not his first try, and apparently won't be his last.

Springs is lobbying to have no increase this year, with a five-year deal that would allow a 3-percent hike for the 2000-2001 academic year. The BOCES plan, which East Hampton has accepted even though it would reduce its income this year, carries a 0-percent increase in the fifth year. East Hampton, which is correct in saying it has to charge all of the districts equally, has calculated that it would lose $1 million in compounded dollars under the terms Springs has proposed.

Montauk, too, and Amagansett have declined the BOCES proposal, preferring to wait 90 days until an ongoing study is completed of the impacts of consolidating the districts and/or setting up a centralized high school district. The relevance of that study to the tuition issue is questionable, and a three-month delay seems little more than avoidance.

Springs has no choice but to be cautious about tuition increases. Its taxpayers have turned down proposed annual budgets more than once and the possibility of its sending Springs students elsewhere for high school or building its own is at best remote. But the East Hampton School Board has a responsibility to its voters, too, and cannot agree to terms it believes are subsidies for the other districts.

There is a real chance that a centralized high school district - which would give the so-called sending districts a direct voice in budgets and taxation - will be created before long. For now, though, those most responsible for continuing the stalemate should back off and get on with the business of education.