As is so often the case, the final state budget resulted in changes to the revenue numbers the district used in determining town assessments, which we based upon the Department of Revenue’s figures earlier in the spring. Despite regional school districts informing the state about the difficulties involved in changing how minimum contributions are determined after school budgets are passed, this is not the first time that the numbers have changed (despite the overall funding for Chapter 70 not changing for the state since the DOR put out the numbers the district used in calculating assessments). While this has little impact on municipal school districts it has significant impacts on regional school districts.
To use Gateway as an example, our state Chapter 70 funding allowed us to set overall town assessments at $9,102,234. Despite additional funding for statewide Chapter 70, and a ‘guaranteed’ increase as part of the ‘hold harmless’ mechanism of $55 per student, the final Chapter 70 funding for Gateway decreased by approximately $55,000. When the state decreases Chapter 70 funding, districts essentially have four options; change the budget, ask the towns to revote their assessments, use E&D funds to offset the change, or revise revenue in another manner. Having already reduced the budget by over $400,000 to come up with assessments the towns could afford, reducing the budget further and/or asking the towns for additional money through raising assessments after they had set their budgets, were not reasonable ways to resolve the issue. E&D has not been growing over the past several years because the district continues to use this to offset town assessments, essentially leaving the district the only option of looking at other revenue sources. Fortunately, Medicaid receipts increased at the end of the year and the state changed charter tuition reimbursement, which ultimately allowed us to limit the impact of this state funding change on the school system.
What this means to the towns is an overall decrease of $33,838 in total town assessments with only Russell seeing no decrease in assessments. These changes further reduced assessments below last year’s level for both Blandford and Montgomery (total assessments are now $16,773 and $85,634 lower than last year) and reduced total assessments for Chester, Huntington, and Middlefield. Given these reductions, it is not unreasonable for the district to suggest that these towns set aside these last minute reductions against next year’s school budget, something the towns do routinely for other issues and for which the state provides the legal authority for them to do so.
We’ve seen many times how state aid to education via the minimum contribution has impacted overall town assessments based upon a large number of factors used to determine Chapter 70 funding. While it all makes sense to the very few in the state who are able to explain the formula, it makes funding the schools difficult in our small towns. This is one of the reasons for suggesting that, as part of the changes to the regional agreement, the towns should consider establishing a five-year rolling average for assessments that would make the variance in assessments easier to manage for all of Gateway’s participating towns. Of course, all of these changes continue to be held up by the towns’ and district’s legal action against Worthington regarding the way in which they left the district and the unresolved issues of an equitable means of sharing long-term costs encumbered by the district over decades of educating students from all seven towns.
