| Public school districts in Massachusetts are experiencing increasing difficulty in offering quality services in the face of overwhelming budget constraints. School leaders must make every effort to insure that programs and services are as cost effective as possible, thereby minimizing the effects of budget cuts.;Educational service agencies have proven to be very effective organizations for offering certain educational programs and services. A review of the function of these agencies in other states indicates that most states utilize their regional agencies to offer a much broader range of services than does Massachusetts.;This study examines the role of the Greater Lawrence Educational Collaborative, a consortium of nine school districts in northeastern Massachusetts. It examines the potential effectiveness of an expansion of its collaborative services. The costs of proposed collaborative service delivery models are compared to the costs of existing individual school district services. The collaborative models are also compared to the individual school district services on relative quality of service, efficiency of service and equity of service across districts.;Six activities, all of which are performed by educational service agencies in many other states, were examined: shared staff recruitment and job-bank services, shared instructional staff for low-enrollment courses, a shared learning resource lending library, a directory of grants available to school districts, cooperative purchase of printing services and shared data-processing services.;The results support the development of collaborative services in all areas studied except for data processing. The data indicate a projected cost savings of 52.7% if all five activities are implemented. The data also indicate that in three of the five activities, one would predict a significant improvement through the collaborative model in all three variables of efficiency of service, quality of service and equity of service across districts. In the other two activities, one would predict an improvement in two of the three variables.;It is recommended that the Collaborative implement the five activities, conduct follow-up studies on their effectiveness and urge the state's Department of Education to support an expanded role for educational collaboratives in Massachusetts. |
