Throughout western Massachusetts, communities are grappling with big potential cuts to school district staffing. It’s prompting lawmakers and students to call for the state to step up – and revisit one of its funding formulas.
Conditions were murky and rain was in the forecast, but that didn’t stop more than 400 students at South Hadley High School from conducting a “walk-out, walk-in” protest in late March.
With them were signs – some hand-drawn, some sporting Massachusetts Teachers Association messaging – all calling for strengthening school funding, even as the town deals with a $2 million budget shortfall.
“There are going to be cuts at the high school, but the majority of the cuts are at the elementary and middle school, and that was very concerning to the students here at the high school, and that's what they spoke about,” said Amy Foley, an English teacher at the school and president of the South Hadley Education Association.
In a phone interview with WAMC, Foley described how students spent part of March 31 speaking out and to one another, joined by various teachers and local state lawmakers.
“They encouraged the students that they spoke in front of to take this message home and take it out into the community, so that … the greater community of South Hadley could use their voices to advocate for more funding from the state,” she added.
School staff cuts on the table across the Pioneer Valley
As many as 20 student-facing positions could be cut in some way. It’s a similar story in Belchertown, where, at one point, 25 positions were said to be on the line as the school district copes with a $2.1 million deficit, according to the Belchertown Education Association.
And in Northampton, some 20 positions could be impacted depending on what route the school committee takes as budget talks continue – not unlike last year’s budget and the cuts that followed.
Though school budgets are technically increasing, they are struggling to keep pace with inflation, rising wages and rising special education costs, among other factors, leading to sizable gaps.
Different towns are weighing different options, including an override in Belchertown, but, Foley says, getting the state to update how it determines aid for schools would be helpful, given the state of things.
It was front and center during a Joint Ways and Means meeting at UMass on March 24, one featuring State Senator Jake Oliveira, numerous other lawmakers, and more than a few local students and educators calling for funding changes.
“As someone who fought very hard for the Student Opportunity Act to be passed a little over seven years ago, I think it's really important to point out that the Foundation Budget Review Commission's report also said we shouldn't wait another 30 years to crack open that funding formula,” the Ludlow Democrat said to applause. “The current Chapter 70 funding formula is not working for a majority of our school districts, period.”
Smaller towns lose out under current formula, critics claim
Oliveira’s district includes South Hadley, Belchertown, and Ludlow – small- to mid-sized communities that tend to be hardest hit by the current system, as they were last year.
Speaking with WAMC, Oliveira re-emphasized that while there have been some tweaks to the formula that determines how millions are dispersed to school districts across the Commonwealth, the state can’t afford to wait decades to make changes like it did before lawmakers passed the 2019 Student Opportunity Act (SOA) - boosting Chapter 70 funding by $1.5 billion to be phased in over the following seven years.
Gateway cities like Springfield and Chicopee - both partially in Oliveira's district - especially benefit from the SOA's emphasis on boosting support for districts with low-income students and English language learners.
It's meant more money for districts in general, but for smaller, more suburban and rural districts, it's not kept pace as costs grow and student enrollment in some areas decline.
"We knew that school districts like Springfield, Chicopee, and I'd add Holyoke to it - were severely-underfunded, and so they have benefited greatly from the implementation, through the fiscal year budgets, of the Student Opportunity Act, and they've been able to do some amazing things,” Oliveira tells WAMC. “The city of Springfield ... has been able to be the first school district in all of Massachusetts to provide universal Pre-K to every family, which is something that is really exciting and we hope will be emulated in school districts across Massachusetts, but I also have nine school districts that are 'Minimum Aid Districts:' districts that didn't necessarily see the full benefit of the Student Opportunity Act, communities like my hometown of Ludlow, where I served on the school committee for 12 years, and all the other suburban and rural communities around it that I represent."
“So, as we develop the FY26 budget, and we begin asking questions of the Healey administration and their budget proposal that was released in January, a focus for many western Mass. legislators, including myself, is squarely on Chapter 70 and the cost drivers that are far outpacing the inflationary costs and increases that we see in Chapter 70, which is putting school districts - nine of my school districts - into a very difficult position,” he adds.
Another longtime proponent of revisiting the Chapter 70 formula is Hampshire, Franklin and Worcester State Senator Jo Comerford. With the governor’s budget proposal being debated, she says she hopes leaders hear the concerns she shares with residents in her rural district.
“We must open these formulas - we must take a hard look at an equitable access to public education, which I don't think my constituents have right now, and I think - I'm hoping - the administration is as concerned as I am,” Comerford told WAMC, while also observing the governor’s House 1 budget proposal did not make mention of a potential Chapter 70 review commission Comerford’s been advocating for – a move she calls disappointing.
According to Comerford, it’s been about a decade since the last Foundation Budget Review Commission was established, and the state needs another.
Following leads and starting conversations
Meanwhile, the senator adds both the Senate’s president and its minority leader have signaled support for revisiting the formula.
While co-chairing the UMass Amherst Joint Ways and Means meeting, Comerford joined Oliveira and others calling on state education leadership to address the matter.
After reading off headlines from the Greenfield Recorder and Daily Hampshire Gazette on challenges local school districts face, she asked State Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler if he and Healey would lead the conversation – potentially helping with building consensus in the legislature.
Tutwiler acknowledged the question was posed to him last year as districts made similar cuts – and that his answer remains the same: he and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education follow the lead of the legislature.
“I'll also say, definitively, what we've proposed in H1 is a strong local aid proposal: there are increases in there that will have impact on every single school district in Massachusetts,” Tutwiler said, references how the budget proposes $7.32 billion in Chapter 70 school aid funds - a $420 million (6 percent) increase over last year. “Will it get to the levels of addressing the issues that you named in those headlines? I don't know because of the complexity of the experience district by district, but I offer my partnership, I offer all of the resources between the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and my team, should the legislature decide to move in that direction.”
There have been other Ways and Means meetings since the UMass Amherst session, with Chapter 70 continuing to come up, including one held Tuesday morning featuring students from Amherst and Northampton, Comerford stated on social media.
Meanwhile, Oliveira, who took part in the South Hadley walkout alongside State Representative Homar Gómez, told WAMC he had planned to hand Tutwiler and others around a thousand letters at last Thursday’s meeting.
The letters were the result of a letter writing initiative overseen in-part by Foley, educators and South Hadley students - all "advocating against state budget cuts to school funding," according to a school district Facebook post.
