The news that Gov. Maura Healey is proposing an increase of $6.5 billion in Chapter 70 aid to education is certainly welcome. It fully funds the state’s FY24 obligation under the Student Opportunity Act, which passed in 2019. It’s also helpful that the governor plans to include in her budget an increase of $2.5 million in rural school aid (from $5.5 million to $7.5 million).
However, for those of us involved in trying to keep the small rural schools in Massachusetts financially sustainable, the governor’s proposal is also disappointing. The Student Opportunity Act has yet to provide any significant increase in funding for rural schools.
The most needy rural schools received a mere 0.39% of the Student Opportunity Act-based increase in state education aid for this year (FY23). Under Healey’s proposal, those districts will receive only 0.93% of FY24’s $6.5 billion increase. For the Mohawk Trail district, the increase will amount to just under $25,000. Mohawk Trail has received no meaningful increase in state aid in more than 20 years.
The Student Opportunity Act also included a mandate for a legislative commission to review the state’s funding for rural schools. That commission did a very thorough job and, in late 2022, issued an excellent report, A Sustainable Future for Rural Schools. The report detailed the challenges facing rural and declining-enrollment schools and made a series of recommendations for action. (The report is available at malegislature.gov/Commissions/Detail/510/Documents.)
Key among the recommendations is an annual appropriation of at least $60 million targeted to rural and declining-enrollment schools. Healey’s proposal for $7.5 in rural school aid is an increase of 50% over last year’s appropriation, but it is still 88% less than the Student Opportunity Act’s Rural Commission recommended.
There is hope. While the governor did not meet our expectations on rural school funding, her budget does include a number of provisions that will benefit rural districts, such as 90% funding for regional transportation reimbursement, a substantial (and long overdue) increase in funding for out-of-district vocational student transportation, full funding for charter school tuition reimbursement, and changes to the state’s “circuit breaker,” a program that helps school districts meet extraordinary special education costs.
The most hope, however, comes from state Rep. Natalie Blais, who is spearheading efforts to pass a separate appropriations bill designed to fund the most urgent of the Rural Commission’s recommendations, including the full $60 million in direct rural school aid.
It is imperative that we in western Massachusetts make our voices heard in support of this legislation — not just by contacting our own senators and representatives, but by reaching out to fair-minded legislators across the state. We were, quite correctly, strong supporters of the Student Opportunity Act, which benefited primarily their districts; now we must have their help to complete what the act left undone. Now is the time.
Martha Thurber lives in Buckland.