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.”