Inflation Mars Baker's Budget Plan For Some MA School Districts

BOSTON — Under Gov. Charlie Baker's $48.5 billion fiscal 2023 budget plan, more than 40% of Massachusetts' school districts would receive the smallest possible amount in funding.

Lawmakers and administration officials said giving the minimum aid to these districts wouldn't even make a difference to these schools due to the high rate of inflation during a hearing Tuesday.

135 of the state's 318 operating school districts would get minimum aid funding increases of $30 per student. According to an article first reported by The Lowell Sun, the Massachusetts Municipal Association and Rep. Natalie Blais said this funding would represent "below-inflation aid increases of approximately 1%" for districts that wouldn't see their aid amount increase under the state's current funding formulas.

To combat those numbers, the MMA has called on the Legislature to increase the per-student minimum aid amount from $30 to $100 to provide greater resources to those districts.

"Those districts would struggle mightily just to maintain existing programs and services. We don’t think they would be able to do so at all," The Sun reported Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, saying to the Joint Ways and Means Committee during a hearing.

Beckwith said Baker's budget proposal would provide the 135 "minimum aid" districts with a combined increase of $9.3 million, while the remaining 183 districts would receive nearly $475 million collectively.

"Otherwise, some communities will go forward but many school districts will see their programs go backwards," The Sun reported Beckwith saying. "It doesn't require a formula change. It just requires a minimum amount of $100 a student that would cost collectively about $23 million, according to the most recent numbers put out by [the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education]."

Blais brought up the issue of the minimum aid to Education Secretary James Peyser and DESE Commissioner Jeffrey Riley, who simply blamed inflation as the issue, saying the minimum increases would seem more generous to those districts if it weren't for the high rates of inflation.

"I guess I just would have hoped that that would have been recognized and somehow addressed in the budget proposal from the governor," The Sun reported Blais saying.

For more on this, read the Lowell Sun.