Voters back Metco 2 to 1

The people of Lincoln have spoken: Metco is worth the money.

The desegregation program got a vote of confidence from local residents in the annual town election Monday, with nearly 64 percent expressing support in a nonbinding referendum for maintaining or increasing the town's current level of participation.

About a third of voters said they wanted to see the town decrease its participation rate, which is the highest in the state.

Criticized by some Lincoln residents over the past 18 months as too expensive, Metco also won the support of most residents at Town Meeting on Saturday.

Don Halsted, a town resident with boys in the fourth and sixth grades, told Town Meeting he is happy how much the program, which buses minority students from Boston to suburban classrooms, has taught his sons. He said they are comfortable spending the night at the homes of their Boston friends, and that they enjoy hosting those friends in Lincoln.

"My observation . . . is if you are not comfortable working and managing in a diverse environment, you will not succeed," said Halsted, noting that his experience in the professional world suggests that his sons are learning an important skill.

Barbara Low, a resident who spoke forcefully for decreasing the town's participation in the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity program, as it's formally known, acknowledged that a clear majority of Lincoln voters back it.

"On the one hand, I'm disappointed," Low said in an interview Tuesday. "On the other hand, I think it shows very clearly that the town is willing to support the program no matter what the cost to the town. And the people have spoken."

While the result seems to provide impetus for the Lincoln School Committee's support for the program, outgoing chairwoman Sue Hollingsworth reacted cautiously. School Committee members have emphasized in recent months that the referendum was nonbinding.

"Based on the data," Hollingsworth said in a prepared statement, "we recognize that there are Lincoln residents who continue to be concerned about the financial costs of adding Boston children to our school population.

There are also a significant number of people who support our current level of participation in the Metco program or want our participation increased."

The statement said the School Committee will analyze the data in the coming weeks and work to "strike the right balance with the community."

Lincoln has participated in Metco, which currently brings 91 students to Lincoln from Boston, for more than 35 years. But some have questioned whether the town should continue its level of commitment, given recent budget woes.

The Lincoln school system gets state funding for Metco but has to pay for a significant portion of the cost.

Exactly how much is hard to measure, school officials say, because many things the school system provides Metco students it would have to pay for anyway.

For the purposes of discussion at Saturday's Town Meeting, several speakers used $400,000 as the figure for the annual cost to Lincoln, based on a rough estimate of what a local task force came up with.

But a School Committee member told Town Meeting that the actual yearly cost to the schools could be as low as $175,000 or as high as $440,000.

"I know that for some Lincolnites $400,000 is a small amount, and the burden of funding it is not significant," Low said at Town Meeting. "But that is not the case for all of us."

Low argued that Lincoln schools can promote diversity closer to home by having more interaction with the public schools the town runs at Hanscom Air Force Base, under contract with the federal government.

Lincoln resident Mark Soukop said recent test scores leave him worried about the performance of the town's school system, and he argued that Lincoln taxpayers should not pay for the education for pupils from out of town.

"I don't think the educational benefits of the Metco program are significant at all. I think the social benefits are debatable," Soukop said at Town Meeting.

Yet most speakers praised Metco, and the auditorium seemed to be dominated by Metco supporters, who applauded loudly after most of the endorsements.

Several speakers argued that Lincoln residents benefit from the program as much as Boston residents who are trying to escape subpar urban schools.

Kahris McLaughlin, president of the Metropolitan Educational Opportunity Council Inc., which lobbies for Metco, told Town Meeting that her children and others from Boston have benefited from the generosity of Lincoln residents. She quoted at length from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, while asking voters to maintain Lincoln's participation and perhaps even increase it.

"What I need to tell you is what you offer these children is so important. It's so much more than the $400,000 it may cost because you offer them an opportunity to live differently," McLaughlin said. "And you also offer your own children the same."

In an interview Tuesday, Low said the election result effectively ends the issue for now, assuming the state continues its current level of funding.

But Low also called the referendum a success. It provided what she considers a much-needed measure of how townspeople really feel about Metco because many residents have felt intimidated about speaking against the program for fear of being perceived as racists.

The referendum also forced debate about a topic some in town would prefer not to be discussed, she said.

"It's kind of amusing that for a town that supports diversity, there had not been a lot of tolerance for diversity of opinion," Low said. "If discussing this issue openly leads people to have respect for divergent opinions, then it was a successful exercise."