Last modified: Monday, May 5, 2008 11:55 AM EDT Adrian Munoz-Bennett, METCO director for Foxboro and Walpole, describes Foxboro as a welcoming community during a presentation on the educational, social and financial benefits of the program. (Staff photo by Frank Mortimer) METCO boosting Foxboro By Frank Mortimer SUN CHRONICLE STAFF FOXBORO - With emotion in her voice, school committee member and retired foreign language teacher Beverley Lord spoke of a graduation speech once offered by a student who went through Foxboro public schools in the METCO program. "The title of his graduation speech was '10,000 miles.' He calculated that he traveled 10,000 miles to receive his diploma," Lord said of the student, who had commuted from Boston to Foxboro since elementary school. Superintendent Christopher Martes suggested that kids who live in Foxboro also travel, but in a different sense: entering a wider world through their interaction with the minority students from the city. "There's a great benefit to the community and I think there has been for a long time, which people need to celebrate," Martes said of METCO, the four-decade racial integration program in which students who live in Boston and Springfield are bused to suburban schools. "People grow up in a larger world...working together. This is a huge value." And Foxboro METCO director Adrian Munoz-Bennett said the METCO students themselves "leave here as ambassadors from your town to the rest of the world. Not all parts of America are as open-minded as the residents of Foxboro." But it was an effort to correct misinformation about the local cost of the program that pushed a long-planned review of the program to the top of last week's school committee agenda - and to the announcement that METCO actually makes money for the town, board Chairman Larry Harrington said. Munoz-Bennett said it's a myth that METCO is "bleeding the towns dry with the money - that is just not the case." The program this year will bring the school budget $248,659 in "receipts in excess of program expenses," school business administrator Paul Jackson said. In a report on the financial picture of the METCO program, Jackson said the $260,575 state grant for Foxboro's program, combined with the state's Chapter 70 reimbursements for 44 students, totals $374,778 in receipts. Jackson placed the total program expenses at $126,119, for a half-time coordinator, bus transportation and tutoring - for a net gain of nearly $250,000 for Foxboro. "Since the 44 METCO students are distributed over eight grade levels (5 through 12), no additional teachers have been hired because of the METCO program and consequently no teachers would be eliminated if the program were eliminated," Jackson wrote. Board member Martha Slattery said it's good to place students in the handful of empty seats in any given classroom, adding that METCO students have distiguished themselves not only academically, but in the arts, music and athletics. Munoz-Bennett, who is in his 19th year as Walpole's METCO director, splitting his time as Foxboro's director for the past six years, gave a brief history. The METCO program started during the 1962-63 school year as the "Exodus," program in several towns. In 1966, the state took it over and funded it under the Racial Imbalance Act. In 1971, Foxboro had 18 students in the METCO program and has 44 this year. The students ride one bus from Boston to and from Foxboro. Currently there are 3,100 student in METCO programs in Eastern Massachusetts. All five committee members joined Martes in citing the program's values. "Quite a few people feel the students are a positive and bring diversity to the town." chairman Larry Harrington said. "There are a lot of benefits." Martes, a Foxboro High School graduate, said he has been a "big supporter" of the METCO program since the early 1970s, when he taught children from Boston in his Foxboro elementary school class. His support continued over the years as he worked in other school districts, and returned to Foxboro this school year as superintendent.