As we approach annual town meeting time, I am pleased to hear from a variety of sources that our communities think the Gateway Regional School District is a critical component of the area that is worth supporting. While there have certainly been, and continue to be, differences of opinion regarding school budgets and town assessments, I would agree that the district is an important factor in the attractiveness of our towns and certainly worth supporting and improving. As reported last week, we have significant data demonstrating that students, graduates, parents, community members and staff feel that Gateway provides an exemplary education that extends well beyond standardized testing and basic academics.
So why the disconnect between the district and towns regarding funding? I believe that most of us know the reason: a steady decline in state aid to education, whether through Chapter 70 or regional transportation reimbursement over the years, that has completely inverted the percentages of education expenses paid for by the towns rather than the state. Whether fortunate or not, Gateway is not the only school district facing these problems. On March 23, a large gathering of school superintendents met to discuss the financial sustainability of rural school districts in Massachusetts and ways to help state officials recognize the issues of decreasing student enrollment and increasing costs while facing decreases in state aid, and the number of unfunded mandates that hit smaller districts especially hard.
The presentation from this meeting can be found on our website (www.grsd.org under school committee presentations) but some basic information may be useful in putting these issues in perspective. While there is no consensus regarding a definition of rural, using general criteria of school size and number of students per square mile finds that we have rural districts in 12 of 14 Massachusetts counties. Furthermore, these districts make up 19 percent of all public school systems, only serve 9 percent of public school students but cover 69 percent of the state in terms of total landmass. Overall these ‘rural’ schools significantly outperform the state averages in terms of DESE “Performance Levels” yet are at higher economic risk compared to the suburban and urban schools. This is due in part to declining enrollment where 70 percent of rural districts have seen significant decreases compared to the state’s overall stable enrollment. This has resulted in over half the rural districts seeing less than a 2.5 percent increase in Chapter 70 state educational aid with many, like Gateway, seeing increases of between 0 percent and 0.3 percent each year from 2006 to 2016. In addition, many of these rural schools (similar to Gateway) have a very large geographic footprint of over 100 square miles meaning that transportation costs are very large in comparison to the state average. The result is a growing difficulty in remaining fiscally sustainable given that the cost of education throughout the state is increasing and these rural schools are seeing either no, or a very small, increase in state aid, meaning that either town assessments must rise to make up this difference or that significant reductions in services must be made for students.
As the leaders of these rural schools continue to meet, it will become necessary for communities in these districts to support new ways of funding rural districts. There are potential ways to do this, including sparsity aid (Wisconsin) that provides additional state aid for rural schools. Another is to change regional transportation reimbursement to add money to those districts with a low student density per square mile and allow districts to hold onto transportation savings. For example, Gateway has significantly lowered regular education transportation costs, but that is then reflected in lower reimbursement the following year—a downward spiral in terms of net savings. Of course the 4-day school week was also mentioned but here at Gateway we know the state is dead set against that idea despite it being used effectively in other states throughout the country. As the idea of a rural school organization takes form, I’ll keep everyone informed.
