GREENFIELD — The formula to determine what it costs to educate a Massachusetts student must be revised.
That was the main message from guest panelists of the open session of the 2016 Conference for Franklin and Hampshire County Municipal Officials, hosted by Senate President Stan Rosenberg, D-Amherst, and the Hampshire and Franklin Regional councils of governments, at Greenfield Community College on Saturday.
The panel was made up of State Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, D-Boston; Mitchell Chester, commissioner of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; and Dr. Mary Bourque, superintendent of Chelsea Public Schools. They spent much of the session saying there have been wonderful improvements since the state’s Education Reform Act of 1993, but the formula used to calculate state aid for K-12 education should be updated.
“That formula has essentially lost horsepower, to the tune of at least a billion dollars a year over the course of the last couple of decades,” Chang-Diaz said, adding that this information probably “does not come as a surprise to people in this room because you’re living it every day and every year as you’re trying to hold those school districts budgets together with two hands, duct tape and some paperclips.”
Chang-Diaz co-chaired the Foundation Budget Review Commission, which held internal deliberations and hearings to get insight on the matter. Its report, which can be found at www.bit.ly/1S9wIg7, states the formula “may need re-tooling to meet the needs of the 21st century.”
Bourque told the more than 100 people at the panel that the formula has been tweaked since 1993, but “the tweaks have not kept up with the times, and have not kept up with inflation, with the cost of health care, with the cost of special education.”
Chester said, though, there have not been enough, great gains achieved since 1993. He also said the average reading and math scores in the late 1990s for students from low-income households were in the failing range. Test scores have steadily risen and the average scores are now in the proficient range.
“That is tremendous progress, not trivial progress,” he said, acknowledging there are still wide gaps on the basis of income and race/ethnicity.
Chester also said 10th-grade assessments are not sufficient indicators of whether a young person has reached the level of academic preparation most colleges or employers expect from a high school graduate.
“We’re in the process of preparing students well for the expectations of the world they’re going to enter,” he said.
During a question-and-answer portion, Tim Walter, who said he sits on Plainfield’s energy and finance committees, asked about the possibility of universal pre-kindergarten education.
Chang-Diaz enthusiastically said there are now a few different pieces of legislation sitting in the state Joint Committee of Education regarding this topic. Bourque said research indicates access to pre-K creates among students more determination, lower dropout rates, stronger perseverance, and higher college-completion rates later in life.
Walter told The Recorder that Oklahoma has been successfully experimenting with universal pre-K.
Gloria Fisher, who said she sits on the Heath Finance Committee and the Heath Education Initiative Task Force, asked the panel if work was being done to bring broadband to the area.
Pressed for time, Chester simply replied, “Yes.”
You can reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com
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On Twitter: @DomenicPoli