Sen. Adam G. Hinds (D-Pittsfield)
HILLTOWNS – State Sen. Adam G. Hinds (D- Pittsfield) announced Tuesday that the Massachusetts Senate adopted his budget amendment to increase funding for the Rural School Aid grant program by $1 million, raising the total appropriation for this account to $2.5 million in the Fiscal Year 2020 Senate Budget.
“The fight for equal opportunity through education means we need to ensure all of our schools receive the state support they need,” said Hinds.
Hinds’ amendment passed in the Senate on a vote of 39-0, enjoying bipartisan support from members representing both rural and urban regions across the Commonwealth. It was co-sponsored by his Rural Caucus colleagues Senators Julian Cyr (D- Wellfleet), Jo Comerford (D- Northampton), Anne Gobi (D- Spencer), Don Humason (R- Westfield), Eric Lesser (D- Longmeadow) and Ryan Fattman (R- Sutton), as well as former Senate Education Committee chair Sonia Chang-Diaz (D- Boston), Republican members Vinny deMacedo (R- Plymouth) and Patrick O’Connor (R- Weymouth), and Gateway City members Joan Lovely (D- Salem) and Mark Montigny (D- New Bedford).
Hinds represents a largely rural, western Massachusetts district spanning 52 communities in Berkshire, Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden counties, which includes Huntington, Blandford, and Chester. He successfully championed the idea of creating this new grant program for the Commonwealth’s most rural school districts during the 2017-2018 legislative session.
Serving on the Senate Committee on Ways & Means, Hinds worked extensively with chair Michael Rodrigues (D- Westport) and Education chair Jason Lewis (D- Winchester) this session to build awareness and support for the needs of rural schools and the grant program, which provides financial assistance to the Commonwealth’s most rural school districts.
The Rural School Aid grant program helps school districts with low population densities and lower-than-average incomes address fiscal challenges and take steps to improve efficiency. Administered by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), Rural School Aid is a source of funding separate from Chapter 70 aid and is intended to supplement the FY20 operating budgets of eligible school districts.
Eligible school districts must have a student density of “not more than 21 students per square mile and an average annual per capita income of not more than the average annual per capita income for the Commonwealth for the same period, as reported by the United States Census Bureau.”
Rural school districts serving fewer than 11 students per square mile are prioritized to receive funding.
Gateway Superintendent David B. Hopson said level funding of $156,000 for Rural School Aid, based on the FY19 statewide appropriation of $1.5 million, is in Gateway’s FY20 proposed budget. He said they were hoping that it would be put in by the state as part of the Chapter 70 funding. The next best thing, he said, is to put it in the Senate budget and pass it.
“A lot of us were hoping that both the House and Senate would address educational funding in a more robust way than it has,” Hopson said, acknowledging that Gateway is getting nothing more from the increased Chapter 70 Foundation formula. “There were over 200 schools that got nothing,” he said, most of them smaller districts that had reduced populations over the last ten to twelve years.
Hopson did say without the Rural School Aid, Gateway will have to go back and take a hard look at the FY20 budget.
This session Hinds also championed the Fair Funding for Rural Schools campaign, sponsoring S. 2185, legislation to add a rural factor to the state’s Chapter 70 education funding formula, which will continue to be worked out over the summer. At a recent town hall meeting in Huntington, Hinds said that Rural School Aid is not currently included in the Foundation formula review. Until that is implemented, he said he would work to secure funding for the Rural School Aid grant program.
The Rural School Aid grant program is not funded in the House FY20 Budget. After the Senate budget debate is finished, a conference committee of six House and Senate members will be appointed by Leadership to negotiate the terms of the final spending plan, which will be enacted and sent to the Governor. Fiscal Year 2020 begins on July 1, 2019.
