By contrast, Boston spends only $6679 per pupil each year and Somerville only $6199, according to the Massachusetts school department commissioner's office.

These gaps in the figures mean that if a Somerville student wanted to switch to a Cambridge school, under the new state system Somerville would be required to hand over an additional $2800 for each transferring student--pushing an already financially strapped school even further into the hole, Giroux said.

"How can you justify asking a school system that spends $6200 per student to send $9000 to another system?" asked Peterkin. "This is just the rich getting richer."

In addition, the participation in the statewide program might have hidden costs for a city like Cambridge.

"It takes money to bring students from worse school districts into better ones because you have to bring them up to par," Peterkin said. "Some--not all--of the students coming from the worse districts will have academic needs that the students already in the system don't have. At least some of the funds would have to go to helping these youngsters catch up."

Cambridge already has experience in dealing with non-resident students entering its schools.

While Cambridge Rindge and Latin does operate a program under which tuition-paying students from outside districts can attend classes, Peterkin estimated that 10 to 15 per cent of the high school's current students are actually Boston residents sneaking into the system from across the river.

Questions of Justice

Central to Cambridge's decision on whether to participate in the state program will be moral considerations about the fairness of the plan, McGrath said.

"Whether we get outside students or not, we would continue to keep improving the quality of our education," McGrath said. "My issue isn't a problem with being a receiving school, but rather what [the program] would do to the schools whose students would be leaving."

Some families would be better able to avail themselves of the system because they could afford the transportation costs of commuting to another school system, she said.

And McGrath said she also worries about whether once a student was admitted from another district to the Cambridge system they would be able to stay. If the Cambridge population or racial balance were to shift, outside students might be forced to leave, she said.

"It's difficult to maintain the standards of controlled choice when you're bringing in students from the outside," Giroux said. "We're hard-pressed to accommodate all the students in Cambridge."