Central Mass. rural schools dreading more cuts, as help lies on horizon
By
Scott O’Connell
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted Apr 15, 2019 at 8:21 PM
Updated Apr 15, 2019 at 8:21 PM
WORCESTER – Financial anxiety is practically
synonymous with public education in Massachusetts these days, but it’s
in the state’s rural areas where school officials may be feeling the
most stress over the coming budget.
With
many of those relatively poorer, sparsely populated communities facing
public school deficits of hundreds of thousands of dollars for next
year, the current state budget picture would give them a pittance to
cover those gaps. So far, Gov. Charlie Baker’s and the state House Ways
& Means committee spending plans would give some of those districts
just a $20 or $30 per-student funding increase in fiscal 2020, according
to rural superintendents.
While there may
be some more help from the Legislature on the way, several rural school
officials are not in the most optimistic mood heading into yet another
spring of uncertainty.
“It’s not
equitable. It’s not fair. It’s broken,” is the way Quaboag
Superintendent Brett Kustigian described the current state school aid
formula, which for years has disadvantaged small rural districts like
his. “And they’re not doing anything about it.”
In
particular, some superintendents in the region are irked that the
governor’s spending plan, which Mr. Baker’s administration had heralded
as a landmark attempt to fix the state’s decades-old school funding
formula, provides hundreds of dollars extra per student for the state’s
Gateway Cities. While they acknowledge those districts, which typically
have large numbers of low-income families and English language learners,
also have an urgent need for more funding, “our kids need it too,” said
Richard Lind, superintendent of the North Brookfield schools.
Instead,
he pointed out, his district is getting the same per-pupil increase in
the governor’s budget as some of the state’s wealthiest communities. “We
get the same (increase) as Wellesley,” he said.
“Why?”
Unlike
those towns closer to Boston, the region’s rural systems can’t rely on
their local tax bases to carry the weight of their school budgets,
school officials said, making them more like the Gateway Cities. But
because of their small size, most rural school systems also can’t take
advantage of economies of scale like the much larger city districts can.
“We
have higher costs per student than urban and suburban districts. That’s
just the way it is,” said Mr. Lind, who oversees one of the smallest
K-12 districts in the state, with 570 students as of the last official
count. “I have 35 kids in my third grade. If I lose five kids, I still
have 30 left, and I still need two teachers.”
“The money follows the student,” however,
under the state’s funding formula, said Paul Haughey, superintendent of
the Spencer-East Brookfield schools. “It just makes it so difficult.”
Like
the state’s urban districts, the rural school systems are hoping the
state will finally fix the entire school funding problem by passing the
Promise Act, a bill filed earlier this year that would reform the
state’s education aid formula according to the recommendations made by a
special state commission four years ago. Mr. Kustigian, for instance,
said those updates would increase funding to Quaboag by nearly $2
million – more than enough to cover the $937,000 increase in fixed costs
the district is facing next school year.
Another
new bill, S2185, would help rural schools specifically, by creating a
rural “factor” in the school aid formula that would provide additional
aid to districts that fit a specific per-capita income and
population-based threshold. The measure builds on efforts lawmakers made
during last year’s budget debates to establish a rural factor, said
Sen. Anne Gobi, D-Spencer, one of the legislation’s petitioners.
“We’re
just looking for a way to figure out something to bring them up a
little bit,” said Ms. Gobi, who added that “every single one” of the 28
towns in her district is rural. “I have towns that still don’t have
broadbrand. That’s a big issue when you’re trying to do online
learning,” or even just take the new online MCAS tests.
The
proposed rural factor, based on Wisconsin’s school funding formula,
would give a $400 per student increase to eligible districts. “That
would be huge,” Mr. Lind said, as North Brookfield tries to figure out
how to cover a $336,000 school budget increase for next year.
But
even the rural factor wouldn’t help every rural district. Mr. Haughey
said Spencer-East Brookfield would still fall outside of the measure’s
40-students-per-square-mile cutoff, for example.
For
that and other reasons – chiefly the refrain from state officials that
even with school funding reform on the table, it will be tough to come
up with the more than $1 billion needed to fully fund it – Mr. Haughey
said his approach has been to look locally to fill the district’s
persistent budget gaps, while still advocating for state-level fixes.
“It’s incumbent on us, at the local
level, to have a plan B, and a plan C. We’re asking (lawmakers) to be
white knights riding in at the eleventh hour, and that’s just not going
to happen,” he said, adding that ultimately the goal is to maintain a
district that can provide a good education for kids. “If that means us
sharing services, or creating cooperatives or collaboratives for
transportation, English language learners and the like, I’m all for it.”
But
other rural school officials in the region said further regionalizing
services – something most of them have already done, and plan to do more
of – won’t solve their financial issues entirely, noting that some of
the state’s most hard-hit districts are already made up of multiple
small towns.
“Even with regionalization,
they have the same issues we do,” including the large cost to transport
their far-flung students, said Maria Tucker, chairwoman of North
Brookfield’s School Committee.
Unless
rural districts get something more than what the current budget process
is forecasting, “we’re going to have to continue to cut programs, cut
staff,” she said, adding that North Brookfield has already been reduced
to having one art teacher for the whole system and no librarian, and
relying on local parent-teacher organizations to provide money for
things like rugs and window blinds.
“Some
communities just can’t give more. They’re giving what they can,” Mr.
Haughey said. “If we don’t do something, we’re going to be in trouble.”
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