We are at a critical moment right now where we really need advocacy for state funding reform. Please consider either showing up to the virtual hearing on November 18th (registration required – instructions below) and/or submitting written testimony (address below).
Several of the SOS Amherst community members went to the public listening session in Greenfield on Thursday, and both Representative Mindy Domb and Senator Jo Comerford are urging the public to speak up now about this. They say that the state needs to hear from the stakeholders (parents, caregivers, educators) about this, and not just municipal and school committee elected officials. That means us!
The most critical thing you can share is your own personal perspective. You can simply share your own observations or experiences of how the chronic underfunding of our schools impacts the schools and our children. This might include highlighting understaffing, positions and programs that have been cut, needs not being met, increasing burden on our educators, problems with facilities, etc… Our job is not to explain to the experts how to fix this; it is simply to sound the alarm that the status quo is not working for us.
***If you only have the time and bandwidth to write one sentence – please do that. Email C70PublicComment@mass.gov and say that the current funding formula isn’t working for the Amherst schools and that we need more state funding to meet the educational needs of our children.***
Beyond that, we are asking that the state examine and change the state funding formulas to take into account the realities of our school districts, and to correct the false assumptions and inequities baked into the formulas. We want to support both the suggestions made by Senator Jo Comerford in her written testimony AND the proposals outlined in the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association’s (MTA) Fiscal Crisis Campaign.
If you want to get into more detail, here are some points from Senator Comerford’s remarks and the MTA proposals that are particulary relevant to Amherst/Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools:
- Funding Formulas should reflect actual costs: The funding formulas need to be corrected to account for the actual costs of education in communities like Amherst, with declining enrollment in low-density rural areas. Costs have soared while state aid has remianed flat for our districts.
- State funds should not subsidize the wealthiest communities: The formulas need to be made more equitable – currently, many wealthy towns that can afford to sustain their education systems many times over with local tax revenue, are receiving state aid while other communities like Amherst are underfunded and can’t raise any additional local tax money.
- The State needs to fund Special Education: Special Education costs need to be accurately accounted for and the state needs to pay its fair share of these costs. It is unacceptable that the state assumed percentage of students receiving special education services in schools is below the state average and FAR below the average in the Amherst and Amherst-Pelham schools. These students deserve their legally mandated services and supports and our districts can’t provide them without state funding.
- The State needs to take responsibility for some of the Charter School Funding: The funding formulas must be changed to shift some of the burden of Charter School sending tuition to from the local school districts to the state. When three students leave the Amherst Schools for Charter Schools, our districts must send the equivalent of one teacher’s salary with them, but our schools can not eliminate one teaching position just for the loss of three students. The costs of operating a community’s school system do not meaningfully change despite a decline in enrollment. Our school districts are paying millions in charter tuition every year and this must be changed.
If you are able, please make your comments at the virtual hearing scheduled for Tuesday, November 18 at 4:00 PM. Register at: http://bit.ly/43wBQUe.
You can also submit written comment to: C70PublicComment@mass.gov. You can copy both Representative Mindy Domb (Mindy.Domb@mahouse.gov) and Senator Jo Comerford (Jo.Comerford@masenate.gov) on your email.
**If you have friends elsewhere in Massachusetts who care about public schools, please ask them to take this action as well – the majority of school districts in Massachusetts, and especially those in Western MA, are not well served by the formula, and we should all be speaking up for equitable public school funding. We in Western MA can’t do this alone.**