Can school deficits be entirely blamed on state funding flaw?
A broken state funding formula or an overreliance on a one-time infusion of federal funds?
Listening to the state’s major education lobbyists, one might assume the former, but in the case of individual school districts, it also might include some of the latter.
According to education advocacy groups that want lawmakers to rethink the state’s school funding formula, school districts across Massachusetts face a fiscal cliff that could result in staff and service cuts.
In her fiscal 2025 budget, Gov. Maura Healey allocated a 4% increase to public education aid, called Chapter 70 funding, from $6.5 billion to $6.85 billion. This proposed $263 million increase for K-12 schools would follow a $594 million, or 9.9% increase in Chapter 70 funding in the fiscal 2024 budget.
Despite this injection of aid, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents and Massachusetts Association of School Committees told lawmakers at a recent budget hearing that school budgets can’t keep up with inflation.
That’s in spite of a funding boost from the Student Opportunity Act. But as was pointed out, that $1.5 billion was primarily directed toward closing education funding gaps in urban districts, specifically in Gateway Cities like Fitchburg and Lowell.
The school groups recently made their case to House Democrats, who plan to unveil their rewrite of Healey’s spending bill in April.
Mary Bourque, co- executive director of themassachusetts Association of School Superintendents, said school costs have “increased dramatically” over the last few years due to high inflation rates, affecting everything from special education and transportation to building maintenance, curriculum cost, and cost- of-living increases for staff.
She said while inflation was at 7% in fiscal 2023 and 8% in fiscal 2024, the foundation budget for schools was increased by only 4.5%.
This year, Healey’s Chapter 70 allocation applied a 1.35% inflation rate to foundation budget rates, based on the U. S. Department of Commerce’s state and local government price deflator, according to the administration.
The superintendent, school committee groups and the two largest teacher unions in the state, themassachusetts Teachers Association and the state branch of the American Federation of Teachers, all backed a request for lawmakers to “fix a flaw in the Chapter 70 formula’s treatment of inflation.”
“The way that Chapter 70 originally worked, the value lost to inflation in those years would have been made up in future years. But because of a glitch that was an unintended consequence of a change in the formula, value lost to the cap in one year is no longer made up in future years. And this is having serious consequences in our schools. We need to fix this,” Bourque said.
Examples of school districts dealing with funding shortfalls can be found in our area.
In Billerica, the School Committee recently passed a spending plan that some members noted already included a “historic” increase from the current fiscal year’s
budget, rising by 7.65% to $82,845,000.
Despite that significant increase, the budget as currently constructed will require cuts to certain positions, namely registered behavior technicians, social- emotional learning coaches and instructional coaches for reading and math at the elementary school level.
It’s still unclear how many positions would ultimately be lost; it likely will depend on how many retirements and resignations take place by the end of the school year in June.
But as one school superintendent admitted, many communities are currently dealing with the consequences related to the cessation of temporary COVID relief funds.
The sunset of federal COVID relief aid, better known as ESSER funding, wasn’t mentioned by the education lobby as a reason for school districts’ financial woes.
In March of 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, providing an additional $122 billion in elementary and secondary school emergency relief ( ESSER) funding.
This aid, coupled with the previously passed CARES
Act and CRRSA Act, brought the total ESSER funding to about $190 billion to help education entities at the state and local level address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But because ESSER funds are one-time allotments, they’re typically not spent on budget items that have recurring costs, unless the state’s department of education or local school districts know they’ll have the resources to cover those future expenses.
We certainly don’t dispute the effects of the past few years’ inflationary spiral on budgets — from households to municipal government and public school districts.
It’s real, and that lack of spending power can cut deep.
For instance, the town of Dracut, facing a $3.6 million fiscal 2025 deficit, has asked its municipal and school sides to absorb $1.5 million of that shortfall.
And the North Middlesex Regional School District has asked member communities Pepperell and Townsend to hold Proposition 2 ½ override votes to help raise an additional $3.314 million for next year’s fiscal budget.
But we also can’t rule out that some of these school districts’ financial woes stem from their shortsighted use of those Covid-relief funds, including hiring personnel without a future revenue source to fund those positions, which may have caused budget problems of their own doing.
What’s fairly certain: Given the current fiscal year’s disappointing revenue receipts, it’s doubtful additional school funding will be forthcoming.