Massachusetts 9c Budget Cuts Don't Affect Eduction? Not True
The latest painful round of state budget cuts, was announced with the statement that education funds would not be cut. Massachusetts education funding is complicated, but don’t let the governor hide behind that complexity and leave regional school districts to clean up the mess!
Education Funding vs. Regional Transportation Funding
All school systems in the state receive funding under Chapter 70 of the state laws. This is generally considered “education funding.” It is true that there have not been any 9c cuts to this funding.
Regionals school systems also receive Chapter 71 funds to help cover the extra costs to bus students around a larger geographic area. These funds are offered by the state as part an incentive to regionalize. Why does the state wants school systems to regionalize? Because the savings, and education benefits, outweigh the additional costs. In fact Governor Patrick has an explicit goal to get more schools to regionalize because of these benefits.
A 9c cut was applied to the Chapter 71 funds. An $18,000,000 cut. When added to a $20,000,000 at the start of the fiscal year, regional school districts are looking at a 63% cut in transportation funds.
At this point you may be saying “Phew, at least basic education wasn’t cut.” Read on.
Restrictions on Regional School Districts
Now that we have to deal with regional transportation cuts, there are two laws that come into play.
Chapter 71 Section 17C: The section of law mandates that regions provides transportation to K-12 students. Regional districts don’t have the choice not to bus students to school, that’s a good thing we should be bussing students to school.
Chapter 71 Section 16B: This piece of law deals with regional budgets and assessments to a region’s member towns. It spells out that once the annual assessments are approved by town meetings, the district can lower, but not raise those assessments.
Regions Get the $18,000,000 Shaft
The implications of those two laws leave districts in a bind. The Wachusett Regional School District lost $1,000,000 in transportation funding. We can’t not transport students and we can’t go back to our towns for more money to make up the difference – even if the towns want to pay it, we can’t legally raise their assessments.
This means that we have to take the money out of our educational programs. Given the difficulty we had in getting a budget in the first place, it is hard to see how we can find $1,000,000 without impacting staff. Even though the $1,000,000 was a transportation cut we are going to be forced to take it out of educators.
Lets Discuss This Honestly
In order to get around the politically unpopular idea of education cuts, the Governor cuts transportation funding. This is still an education cut, and it focuses the cuts on a small fraction of the state’s students.
It is possible that education has to be cut in the current, dire, fiscal circumstances. If so, lets call them education cuts, make equitable and have an honest discussion over the necessity for them. If the $18,000,000 were cut from Chapter 70, and spread across all students in the state, Wachusett would be looking at a $99,000 cut. We have several ways to address that short fall without affecting staff.
The Wachusett School Committee doesn’t get to decide which students get fully funded educations – we have a responsibility to all our kids. Doesn’t the state have the same responsibility?
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