Marblehead and other Essex Tech member communities pushed school officials this week to reconsider a new admissions formula they say has created dramatically different odds of getting into the vocational school depending on where a student lives.

The criticism prompted a forceful response from Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School Superintendent Heidi Riccio, who said the district has spent months trying to balance competing demands from its 17 member communities while preserving access to vocational education.

“You want more kids, but you really don’t want more kids,” Riccio said. “You say you want kids to have access, but you really don’t want kids to have access.”

The exchange came during an Admissions Subcommittee meeting attended by municipal officials from several communities concerned about the first year of Essex Tech’s lottery-based admissions system.

Marblehead Finance Committee Chair Molly Teets told the committee the formula could eventually increase the town’s Essex Tech enrollment several times over, carrying significant financial consequences for the town.

But Teets said the numbers also raised a broader question about whether students across Essex Tech’s district actually have an equal chance of attending the school.

Marblehead was allotted 39 seats for the incoming Class of 2030 but had 28 applicants, Teets said. Because the number of applicants fell below the town’s minimum enrollment target, every Marblehead applicant was offered admission.

Demand was considerably higher elsewhere.

Peabody had 273 applicants for a minimum target of 71 students, while Beverly had 154 applicants for 51 spots, and Danvers had 131 applicants for 39, according to enrollment figures.

Essex Tech’s policy assigns every applicant a randomly generated lottery number. Students are initially placed on a waitlist for their home community, and seats are offered until each community reaches its minimum enrollment target. If a community has fewer applicants than its target, all of its applicants are admitted. Unfilled seats can later move to an at-large waitlist.

Teets argued that the result undercuts the equity Essex Tech sought when it adopted the lottery.

“A lottery that claims equity as its goal but in practice benefits families solely based on the town they live in is fundamentally broken,” Teets said. “Please take this opportunity to fix it.”

She made the argument partly as a town finance official and partly as the mother of twin boys entering eighth grade.

Under the current formula, Teets said, her sons would face markedly different odds than students living only a few communities away.

“Parents in Peabody, Beverly, and Danvers need to understand that their kids will not have the same opportunity that mine do,” she said.

Marblehead was not alone in questioning the system.

Topsfield Select Board member Rafa McDonald said his town supports vocational education but has struggled with the financial consequences of an abrupt change in enrollment.

“It’s more the change in the allocation, and the abrupt change in the allocation, that we are struggling with when it comes to municipal finances,” McDonald said.

Hamilton Town Manager Joseph Domelowicz, standing with Kevin Harutunian, Topsfield town administrator, said admissions should more closely reflect the number of students who actually want to attend Essex Tech.

“The interest in your school is based on how many people apply,” Harutunian said. “That shows you who’s interested in going here.”

Beverly Mayor Michael Cahill, who submitted a statement to be read aloud at the meeting, asked the district to work with municipal leaders to track birth rates and consider reducing enrollment if the school-age population declines. 

He also urged Essex Tech to work with communities developing their own Chapter 74 vocational programs and to create a recruitment plan showing that each member community receives the same outreach and resources. 

For the 2027-28 school year, Cahill proposed keeping the formula based on each community’s share of the district’s eighth-grade population, but making the resulting allotments a cap on incoming freshmen from each community rather than a minimum target.

School officials defended the work that went into developing the lottery and disputed suggestions that municipalities were shut out of the process.

School Committee member Beverley Griffin Dunn said the admissions formula had already been reconsidered following a similar meeting with sending communities in the spring.

“People came in; they were upset with the formula, we sat, and the committee with the staff went back, reexamined everything, and came up with this new proposal,” she said.

She said the formula “was never designed to hurt the small communities” and that representatives from the district’s communities participated in discussions through the School Committee.

“We told everyone going into this last year that the lottery was a new thing for all of us,” she said. “We were going to reevaluate it, look at how it unfolded, and see what occurred. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Riccio said that the review will continue, with the Admissions Subcommittee expected to take up the admissions procedure again at its September meeting.

She said determining student interest will be an important part of that discussion.

But Riccio also pushed back against criticism of Essex Tech as communities wrestle with the costs that come with sending more students to the school.

She described the past year as more difficult professionally than the COVID-19 pandemic and said the district has felt increasingly isolated while trying to respond to conflicting demands.

“It’s pretty sad to me,” Riccio said. “It goes against anything that I learned about the philosophy of education, about equal access, about vocational education.”

She also questioned what reduced allocations mean for students in communities where demand for vocational education is highest.

“Has anybody notified the parents of these city kids that the numbers have gone down significantly?” Riccio asked. “Is it Essex Tech’s responsibility to tell our communities that the numbers went down significantly for city kids who deserve, who deserve, a vocational education?”

The debate is unlikely to end with this year’s incoming class.

Essex Tech will welcome 442 member-community freshmen this fall after 18 rounds of admissions, exceeding the 427 students initially anticipated under the community targets.

The committee will now have its first full year of lottery results to consider as it determines whether the formula should remain in place or change again.

Riccio said the district wants municipalities involved in that discussion.

“While people come together and talk about collaboration,” she said, “how about inviting us to the table?”

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