Michael Buoniconti understands rural school districts.
That might not be surprising given that Buoniconti for more than a decade has been superintendent of the Mohawk Trail Regional School District, one of the state’s most rural districts. He understands the challenges of declining enrollment, what transportation is required to cover a large geographic region, other costs, isolation and, most important, how rural districts don’t command the same attention that the larger, more urban public school districts do across Massachusetts.
But what may be surprising Buoniconti’s counterparts, though, is his desire to be not just a voice for rural school districts, but also an agent of change.
It’s why Buoniconti has been at the forefront of a newly formed Massachusetts Rural Schools Coalition and why he’s invested time and effort to devise a financing mechanism that provides small, rural schools with more state education aid.
And the Mohawk superintendent isn’t just talking about how school districts like his should fall under a separate category within the Chapter 70 state education funding mechanism; he’s put together a formula that Massachusetts should use to even the playing field.
“The fundamental argument that I make in this proposal is that rural schools are structurally underfunded by the Massachusetts Chapter 70 program,” Buoniconti said in a Recorder story this week. “I assert that, even if a rural school district were to close all its schools and revert to a one-room school house, given perpetually flat state education aid, the district will eventually become financially unsustainable.”
What Buoniconti instead proposes is an aid program that uses four criteria — enrollment, population density, Chapter 70 and per-capita income per town — to come up with additional money for rural, low-population schools. The idea is modeled after what the state of Wisconsin is doing faced with a similar situation, providing what they call “sparsity aid.”
Under his formula, there would be three tiers of possible aid for schools. Thus, based on the criteria and formula, the Athol-Royalston School District would be designated Tier 1 and be eligible for $1,476,000. Mohawk, too, would be in Tier 1 and would receive $1,007,000, while Greenfield would be a Tier 3 and get $214,600.
In all, Buoinconti sees about 50 schools in Massachusetts benefiting from this aid, amounting to a total of $20 million. That money, he said represents about 0.32 percent of the state’s $6.2 billion public education budget.
Buoniconti deserves not just recognition for his desire to bring about change but support in moving this proposal forward. While at a recent superintendents’ conference, the group did advance a recommendation that a proposal be developed to address the financial problems of rural schools, we know that such a measure is going to take more advocacy — something our state legislative delegation can help provide.
Between lawmakers, the schools and the public they serve, this critical funding help can become a reality.