On November 6, I joined many western Massachusetts community members and elected officials to testify before the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the Division of Local Services (DLS) about the urgent need for education funding reform.
I was so damn proud to be among them.
Read on for the testimony I shared at the hearing.
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Thank you to DESE and DLS for your work to examine the state’s K-12 local contribution formulas which have not been substantially amended in 18 years — that’s 2007.
From my perspective and the perspective of the 25 communities I serve, the Commonwealth’s target and local contribution formulas are neither adequate nor equitable.
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Back in 2007, there were important ideas discussed at the intersection of education spending, local aid, and population decline. My hope is that this study will make similarly visionary recommendations and drive real and lasting solutions to intractable problems. Solutions that will have a measurable impact on students’ lives and community wellbeing.
MMA says cities and towns are experiencing a perfect fiscal storm. Here in western and north central Mass, this storm is a hurricane — battering communities, threatening their fracture.
This must change.
I have submitted a written comment which describes the vicious economic cycle created by population decline.
And I have included sobering charts from MMA which tell a damning story of inequitable state aid, for example education spending — where state funding for rural schools has declined 9.5% from 2002 to 2024 and suburban aid has essentially flat-lined.
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I urge you to include an analysis of population loss in your findings and to consider how the local contribution formulas can break this vicious cycle instead of further perpetuating it.
I urge you to understand the gross and generational inequities in a sea of state formulas that have for too long short-changed western and north central Mass communities.
I urge you to examine the ravages of minimum or hold harmless aid which does not keep pace with inflation and costs and results in school districts spending far above foundation while still making devastating cuts.
I urge you to understand that the communities I represent cannot maintain municipal infrastructure and services because their budgets are swamped with education-related expenditures, many of which are legally-required and immediately needed.
I urge you to take into consideration declining school enrollments, the population density of rural districts, overall population trends, trends in municipal revenues, educator/student ratios, whether the district is already regional, and actual in-district special education enrollment.
And as you consider necessary changes, please focus on:
The 59% – 41% split between municipalities and the state. We must shift this dramatically and allow the state to carry a much heavier burden — especially because the communities I represent, already with high tax rates, do not have the capacity to raise necessary additional revenue.
Please also consider raising the 82.5% cap on districts — those with wealth enough to spend many times greater than foundation. Why is the state subsidizing wealthy communities that do not require state support, when there is not sufficient money for the communities that are hemorrhaging?
And finally, I urge the Administration to open the Chapter 70 formula, now ten years old, in a commission that includes a focus on health care costs and wages, special education, rural schools, declining enrollment schools, transportation, and the intersection with charter schools.
Such a review commission could easily draw from the recommendations of this important study — and allow consideration of both sides of the education funding framework. State aid and the local contribution must be considered simultaneously.
This would be especially beneficial to the people I represent. The kind of transformational and urgently needed change will not come from a revision to the local contribution formulas alone. We must also amend state spending so that we can pull all available levers to course correct an inequitable trajectory.
Finally, I know you’re receiving considerable testimony from this region. I hope you take it as a measure of shared urgency.
Inaction is impossible. The state already knows the issues we’re facing. It must summon the moral, ethical, political, social, and financial will to act. It can no longer look away. This region and I — the people, municipal leaders, and my colleagues in the delegation — will not stand for it.
