UPDATED, Oct. 24: This viewpoint was submitted by state Rep. Dave Rogers, a Democrat who has served in the Massachusetts House since 2013 and represents the residents of the 24th Middlesex District, which includes Belmont and parts of Arlington and Cambridge. Meanwhile, the state House passed the funding bill, but a clash with Senate is expected3.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” And his words of wisdom have rung true through the ages.
Studies uniformly demonstrate that few investments yield more benefits to an individual, and to society as a whole, than an investment in education. Now, after careful study and years of effort, the Massachusetts Legislature is poised for a once-in-a-generation effort to make transformational investments in our K-12 public education system through the Student Opportunity Act.
To grasp the importance of this pending education legislation, it helps to understand the historical context of K-12 school funding in the Commonwealth. In 1993, recognizing that the state was not keeping pace with the needs of its communities, Massachusetts passed the Education Reform Act that established the “foundation budget.”
Foundation formula
The foundation budget is a formula that calculates how much funding each district across the state needs to provide adequate and sufficient educational services for students. Then, a calculation is undertaken to understand how much each city or town is required to make by way of their “local contribution,” with municipalities in more well-off parts the state required to make a larger local contribution. The state then makes up the difference.
State lawmakers intended to update the foundation budget over time as the need for funding increased because of inflation. However, it became increasingly clear that the foundation budget had developed structural flaws, which were short-changing school districts, particularly those in low-income areas.
I helped push successfully for legislation to create the Foundation Budget Review Commission. As the name implies, the commission was tasked with doing a comprehensive review of the foundation budget to better understand the growing gaps in education funding provided by the state. Following the findings in 2015, the commission provided four principal recommendations to state lawmakers:
1.) Adjust the projected costs of employee healthcare;
2.) Increase the assumed in-district special education enrollment rate from 3.75 percent to 4 percent;
3.) Adjust the calculation formula used for English language learners by including additional funds on top of the base rate for each student; and
4.) increase funding for districts with high concentrations of low-income students.
On health care, the data indicate that health insurance costs nationwide have increased significantly, far more the rate of inflation used to calculate the initial foundation budget spending on employee health insurance. The legislation, therefore, provides an increase in funding to reflect the average Group Insurance Commission rate. Critically, it will include the costs of retiree employee health insurance in the foundation budget.
Special-ed costs
As to special-education costs, legislators agree that additional funding for services is essential and necessary. The commission’s report highlights that the original foundation budget allocates less money for out-of-district special-education services, leaving districts with the responsibility of spending additional funds on special-education tuition for those out-of-district services. Because the foundation budget understates the number of in-district special-education students and the cost of out-of-district special education, the Student Opportunity Act will include the adjustments recommended by the commission.
The commission also recommended adjusting the calculation formula used for English language learners (ELL) cost. Massachusetts has begun implementing the ELL recommendations during the last few budget cycles. With that good start in place, the Student Opportunity Act continues to advance the work of educating those students for whom English is not their primary language.
Where Massachusetts is really falling short is in the fourth recommendation of the commission pertaining to low-income/economically disadvantaged students. The Student Opportunity Act will provide low-income school districts with sufficient funding to pursue several improvement strategies that will address a variety of issues and challenges that have negatively impacted those communities.
The bill will allow districts that have the largest percentage of low-income students to receive up to 100 percent of the average state aid. In doing so, the bill will dramatically increase funding to communities with a high percentage of low-income students. By providing these districts with additional funding, this should lead to higher graduation rates and improved student outcomes.
Beyond recommendations
This legislation goes well beyond the commission’s primary recommendations. In does so by:
1.) Fully funding charter school reimbursements,
2.) Increasing foundation rates for guidance and psychological services,
3.) Expanding the special-education circuit breaker, and
4.) Raising the annual cap on the Massachusetts School Building Authority spending for school-building renovations by 25 percent, this legislation will contribute significantly in our efforts in providing the highest quality of education to our public schools.
This bill is a huge accomplishment, and I am particularly pleased that this legislation both should help the communities I represent, while also making big increases to communities with the highest concentrations of low-income students across the Commonwealth. For those of us who care deeply our own schools and also about social justice and equal opportunity in schools around the state, we have much to celebrate in the Student Opportunity Act.
This viewpoint was published Monday, Oct. 21, 2019. It was updated Oct. 24, to add a link.
