and it’s not Frank Phillips’ latest front-page exercise in bogosity (bo-gos’-i-ty. n: the state or condition of being bogus), already discussed here. No, I’m talking about a story by Lisa Wangsness that ran at the very bottom of page B1. It was easy to miss, but it’s so much more important than whether Suzanne Bump did or did not make an ineffectual phone call about some union dispute.
Lawmakers, particularly those who represent suburban districts, are under increasing pressure from their constituents to provide more education aid to their communities than Governor Deval Patrick proposed in the budget he released last month…. “We are getting a full-court press,” said Representative Michael E. Festa, a Democrat from Melrose. “Every legislator I’ve talked to is getting the same message. It’s very powerful and a very serious concern from local officials, school committee members, mayors, and city councilors.” …
Officials representing suburban districts want to add $55 million to the $200 million increase in school aid that Patrick proposed in his budget. That amount would fully fund a new school aid formula the Legislature devised last year with the aim of sending more to suburban communities.
This issue is, among other things, bipartisan.
Stoneham, which is also considering an override, is in a desperate state, said Senate minority leader Richard R. Tisei. He said that about 250 parents were on hand at a selectmen’s meeting he attended recently, at which officials discussed cutting varsity sports and music programs. “I’m feeling immense pressure from my local communities,” said Tisei, of Wakefield. “… A lot of communities are at the end of their ropes and don’t have many options left.”
If something doesn’t happen at the state level, the answer is going to be the only other choice: crank up the property taxes. Again.
Earlier this year, [Rep. Jamie] Eldridge [D-Acton] cofounded the Suburban Legislators Coalition, a group of about 40 lawmakers whose top priority is increasing school aid. He said parents have begun to mobilize in Harvard, one of about 40 communities facing a Proposition 2 1/2 override this spring. Harvard parents are planning to travel to the State House next month to push for more state aid, Eldridge said.
In Natick, Representative David Paul Linsky said, town officials figured out a way to avoid a $1.9 million override vote this year, but expect to face a $4 million to $5 million override vote next year, a very unusual situation, he said, for a suburban community whose commercial tax base has helped the town avoid overrides.
And what’s the word from Sal “Oh gosh no, we couldn’t possibly consider closing tax loopholes that business has been taking advantage of” DiMasi?
House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi has said the House budget would include a slightly larger increase in education aid. But in an interview this week, he tried to keep expectations in check given the financial pressures the state is facing. “Everybody would like to see more money” for public schools, DiMasi said. “… But we have to balance that with the revenues that we do have. We’re facing a year that’s not very good, as far as the revenues are concerned.”
Drat — it’s that pesky arithmetic again.
My guess: the lege decides that it’s monsoon season, and takes a big bite out of the rainy day fund in order to boost chapter 70 aid while rejecting Governor Patrick’s tax fairness package. Mike Widmer and his pro-business buds, aware that the only alternative to that course of action is either to follow Patrick’s blueprint or to see municipal budgets cascade down the crapper, does an astonishing pirouette away from his usual resistance to “one-time fixes,” and backs drawing down the rainy day fund as the most sensible and prudent course of action. Which will balance the budget — for this year.
For next year, of course, the problem will be that much worse, since the increases made possible by withdrawing from the rainy day fund will become baseline, and will not be reversible, yet one can’t draw down the rainy day fund forever. Which will likely mean that Patrick was right all along about the need to do something about the revenue side of the equation. Actually, everyone secretly knows that’s true. They just aren’t willing to say it out loud — yet.
Should be a good one to watch.
Whether I pay locally, or state, I pay. State, County, and local government ineffectively and frivolously expend our tax dollars and they “fix” the problem not by diligent scrutiny of expenditure, but by increasing taxes. There is a complete abdication of responsibility on the part of government. Each branch of government points an accusatory finger at the other.”He/she/they made this mess, let them fix it.”
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School budgets are now wildly out of control. The local Hacks, school committee, teachers, and concerned parents in my community decided that the community needed to build another high school.Not just a high school, but a Taj Mahal. An idredible, energy consuming monster, with no concept of or concern for energy conservation. Now aforementioned are wailing that they had no idea that the cost of energy to support and maintain this cancer would increase threefold. An idiot could have forseen this. but no, the teachers and children need a structure to boost their self esteem. So now we are looking at a 2 1/2 or god forbid layoffs. I take it that the correct thing to do is
find something else in my life that I can cut out of my budget to stoke the furnaces of our government. Just how much am I expected to take? What’s the cut off? How many extra hours will I be required to work? I think it’s a valid question that the sheeple would like an answer to.
The override they’re asking for is probably a minimal impact on your personal financial bottom line, I’d be surprised if it was hitting you for more than 5 bucks a week.
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Did you complain as hard as this about your health insurance premiums going up last year? Did you complain at all? It probably hit your bottom line much worse. Same with gas prices, your cable bill, basically the prices of anything that isn’t produced in China these days.
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But you get a vote on the override, so even though that money is going to pay teachers while your health insurance is just feeding into a broken system, we get lots of anti-tax activism and comparatively little “fix health insurance” activism.
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I still say we need to deprioritize property taxes and fund more local projects off of the income tax. By definition, people can afford to pay an income tax – if they’re not making any money, they don’t have to pay anything.
Springfield has been under the careful scrutiny of a state-appointed Financial Control Board, appointed by the Romney administration, for the past three years. Rest assured that our budget does not contain fat, waste, and fluff. It has been gone through repeatedly with a fine-toothed comb.
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Springfield is paying its teachers less money than surrounding districts, because there isn’t enough money in the budget to pay them more. The latest contract — a seven-year deal — eliminated step raises, and gave annual contract raises lower than surrounding districts.
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Because of this, a significant number of teachers (I’ve heard 40%) have left Springfield to fill vacancies in suburban districts, vacancies that opened up because of a wave of retirements.
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As a result of this Springfield has about 25% of teachers who are not certified. Surrounding districts have maybe 2-3% of uncertified teachers.
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Giving suburban districts more money will result in them being able to pay teachers even more than urban districts like Springfield. Given that Springfield has one of the most challenging populations of students to teach, we can pick two approaches: get the best teachers into Springfield because it needs them, or decide that kids in Springfield won’t learn anyway, so put the worst teacher in Springfield because it just doesn’t matter.
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Which one works for you?
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How about before we give more money to suburban school districts, we put them through the rigors of a Financial Control Board to cut the fat first?
…ignore the cities while funding the suburbs. The point is to do both.
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But suburbs are in REAL trouble. Many are to the point of contemplating closing down or have closed down schools. Chelmsford faced that last year. I hear about several facing it this year. This is crazy – and it’s not about fat, since those towns have been cutting and cutting and cutting. It’s that the funding source is ditributed unfairly.
I hear what you’re saying, but when Springfield was in a very similar situation a couple of years ago, all I ever heard from anyone was “well, why don’t you just manage your money better”?
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It was true, to a point. Springfield did need to manage its money better, although that doesn’t prove that other towns were not just as loose — they may just have had less of a need to.
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Springfield did so by firing street sweepers, replacing them with a private sweeping service, by firing school custodians, replacing them with a private cleaning company, by firing school cafeteria workers, replacing them with a private food service company.
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It did so by laying off 76 cops [Springfield is now ranked in the top 25 in the nation in crime]. It did so by closing two fire stations. It did so by laying off hundreds more city employees, reducing levels of service across the board.
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It did so by freezing wage increases that had been collectively bargained in good faith, ultimately never paying them, by making unions go without contracts for several years, and then by negotiating seven-year contracts with municipal employees that included very small wage increases.
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It did so by switching health insurance to a company that cost less, but ultimately paid less in benefits. It did so by increasing employee contributions to said insurance. It did so by making people buy their drugs from Canada instead of from CVS.
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It did so by increasing the fees to pick up bulk trash items, and by implementing a new fee to have trash picked up by the city. (Illegal dumping has now increased)
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It did so by structuring a wage system that paid veteran teachers less than surrounding towns, thereby ensuring that they would leave at first opportunity, only to be replaced by uncertified new (cheaper) teachers.
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Why isn’t anyone asking any of that of the towns that are talking about closing schools now?
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When Springfield complained about the disparity in state aid (additional assistance category), we were told “tough”. When we complained about our court-mandated busing plan, one where the state was supposed to pick up the cost but stopped paying a decade ago, we were told “tough”. When we brought up that homeless families were being bused from Boston to Springfield because it was cheaper than renting transitional housing in Boston, (I can document that if you want me to), we were told “tough”
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Why was Springfield treated differently, instead of the canary in the coal mine. And why are the solutions being talked about to increase the aid JUST to these suburban districts (which means “at the expense of” urban districts)?
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[Before you try the “corruption” angle, it is important to note that all of the corruption cases centered on federal non-profit agencies that operated at the periphery of the city, with virtually no oversight (housing authority, homeless shelter, jobs agency), and the money affected by the corruption did not come at the expense of municipal services. I would say that the predominance of social dollars spent in the city was a magnet for corruption — corrupt people aren’t looking in small towns for such opportunities because there are no dollars there.]
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I’m all for looking at correcting problems in this state, however, no one came through for Springfield when we were in trouble; why should I take cries of a few towns at face value, without proof that everything has been done that can be done, including a state commission looking into the performance of the district?
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We’ve gone through the wringer for the past three years. We were told that we were on our own. We worked hard, tightened things up, didn’t wind up getting an additional penny in aid from the state for our trouble — just a big fat loan that will have to repaid in a couple of years. And now other communities are just going to the head of the line? Doesn’t seem right to me.
The way things are going in the less affluent suburbs is that we are headed in the same direction to do the things that have happened in Springfield.
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Seem some burbs can pass Prop. 2 1/2 operational overides every year and others have no chance.
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I was surprised to see the Town of Harvard mentioned in that Globe article. I always considered that Town to be VERY affluent. Now one could make the argument that Harvard does not need extra Chap. 70 aid, but their neighbors on Clinton sure could.
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Median Income Clinton $48753, Harvard $123038.
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Seems like the wrong Town is asking for extra Chap. 70 aid.
Swampscott is facing an equally dismal situation. They’re over a million in debt as they open up the brand new high school. Their solution? Shut down the town’s best elementary school, also serving the only working class neighborhood in the town (coincidentally, my neighborhood… filled with landscapers, nurses & child care providers, literally).
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Something has to be done, but for a lot of towns it’ll be too late (Gloucester and at least one other town is facing having to close schools).
In FY06, Swampscott spent $10,546 per pupil. That’s only 5% below the state average, which considering Swampscott’s demographics, is quite a chunk of change. By demographics, I’m referring to its percentage of high need students, percentage of households with children (226 of 351… in other words, lots of childless neighbors to share the costs with), and income. Yet, Ryan would have you believe Swampscott’s situation is dismal and that it’s the responsibility of rest of the state to bail them out of their spending mess.
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But wait, they are threatening to close a school. Horrors! Seriously folks, look at the size of Swampscott. Get out your spectacles, it’s that little town roughly twice the size of Nahant. Now tell me, does a town of 3 square miles really need four elementary schools? Each probably comes with its own principal, secretarial and custodial staff, special education teachers… all this for class sizes of about 40 students per grade. Machon elementary has grades with as few as 21. Hadley has a teacher to student ratio of 10.9:1 (the state average is 13.2:1).
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Closing a school will not only save on labor costs as administrative overhead is eliminated and classes are consolidated, it will also save on utility and maintenance costs.
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By the way, Springfield’s per pupil expenditure exceeds the state average. So does its average teacher salary. Granted they are in competition with wealthier districts. Anyone here have the courage to buck the unions and make teachers state employees? Eliminate the wage differential between like communities and make sure that the most challenging districts pay more than those surrounding them? Have the state be responsible for tracking CORIs, certification, and PPEs.
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And don’t start in on me about how Westford is one of the lucky ones in the C70 game. I know it, and I’ve said as much.
Springfield’s per-pupil expenditures do indeed exceed the state average — $11,419 vs. $11,189. It spends $230 more per student. However, let’s look at some other comparisons:
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Springfield has 77.5% of its students from low-income families, and anecdotally, a large percentage of transient students (leaving or entering a school mid-year, and a very low number of students that started Kindergarten in Springfield and graduated high school in Springfield). The state average is 28.9%.
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Springfield has 22.0% special education students, the state has an average of 16.9%.
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Springfield has 21.8% “first language not English” students, the state has 14.9%
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Springfield has 13.7% limited English proficient students, the state has 5.6%.
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If you take the 25,791 Springfield students out of that state averages (2nd largest district, representing 2.7% of the state’s students), the state averages get even lower. For example, the average low-income for the state drops from 28.9% to 27.6% if Springfield isn’t included).
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Do you think that the extra $230 per student in Springfield mitigates these demographical challenges? If you were a private company and were offered a choice, which would you pick at those costs, given the expectation that you had to deliver similar results?
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State average isn’t the best metric becasue the number is skewed by about 30 communities like P-Town with very high amounts ($21K) and regional districts (especially those that are only for upper grades where costs and foundation budgets are higher). When you strip out those factors, Springfiled is near the top of per pupil spending.
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Compared to like communities, at $11,419, Springfield is almost on pace with Lowell ($11,373), Worcester ($11,965), Chelsea ($11,857), and Lawrence ($11,594), ahead of Lowell ($11,373), and clearly behind Holyoke ($14,646). Of these, the disparity with Holyoke is of the most concern because of the proximity of the districts. I do recognize that, at least with regard to teacher retention, Springfield is at a disadvantage if it cannot keep pace with area communities.
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I brought PPX up because so often in these discussions of C70 we omit the fact that urban districts qualify for millions of dollars in federal and state grants, and that these need-based grants are for a large part unavailable to the rest of the state. But grants aren’t all that is needed to round out a discussion of money. We also need to talk about results and how it is that some districts outperform like communities.
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No community should expect the state to pick up an ever increasing share of its costs without at some point relinquishing an ever increasing amount of control. Comparing the spending of Springfield to that of Westfield or Weston is probably not the most productive endeavor. Afterall, while Weston has a higher PPX, they also are funding 80% of their budget on local taxes (compared with 20% in other communities).
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Were the formula — and its corrections — fully implemented, I think it would be a fairly well-balanced system in terms of equity and local control. Not perfect, but you have to admit that regardless of how much C70 money was given to districts, they would still want more or call foul.
Your reply mostly makes sense to me, with some exceptions. I really don’t agree with this sentence:
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I’d like to point out that the state mandates that Springfield spend about $50 million more on its schools than it can legally collect in property taxes, even if all override capacity was passed. Given that fact, it seems disingenuous to say that the city should relinquish control because the state is providing aid, because the state is also mandating the amount we spend.
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More and more, I see the root cause of the problems in Massachusetts is that there is a singular funding option for local revenue — property taxes. Why does Weston spend so much money? Because they can, and they want to — they are able to raise gobs of money via the property tax, and to most residents of that town, $10,000 to them is like $1,000 to the rest of the state.
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What if the state said “OK, no more property taxes, all local money comes from sales tax within your border, and we’ll give state aid to make up for communities that don’t have that much commerce”? Weston would all of a sudden become a “welfare case”, and people would start to argue that they would need to relinquish control. Perhaps more so, since the community is so wealthy. At the very least, I’m sure the state would step in and reduce their education spending to 100% of foundation, instead of the 125% they were at in FY07. Do you think they’d like it? I don’t think so.
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Springfield may be financially challenged, but if you take all that the city contributes (including the income taxes generated paid by people working here, the sales taxes paid here, the lottery tickets sold, and the corporate tax paid), and then consider how many people enjoy cheaper goods and services because their minimum wage service providers live here instead of their $400k-house town, I think a more balanced picture would appear.
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Regarding grants, I’m not sure how predictable they are. They are less predictable than state aid, and we see what happens when you’re reliant on the state for 89% of your budget and the state coughs. You catch it fast.
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What seems to get lost here is that there are children who are easy to educate, and there are children who are difficult to educate. There is a strong correlation between household income and this factor. It isn’t absolute, as your link to “overperforming and underperforming” districts shows that, but it is still a strong correlation, and I would argue that the addition of a few other attributes — transience, for example, would probably get rid of those outliers.
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Since we have set up our state to be economically segregated, and since is actually one of the tools that enables this, we wind up with many communities who are “focused on education”, and others who are not.
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This translates to even more segregation, done via self-selection — if you’re concerned with your kids’ education, you move to the best possible community you can. In some ways, entire districts have become the equivalent of private schools. It’s really no wonder why private schools are now in decline, they have been pushed out by school districts.
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I’m not a teacher; I’m not financially vested in the education world. My interest is in helping my city become respectable again. Its school system is not very respectable, and although I don’t have answers as to how to make it so (other than improve the class of student — if I did have those answers I’d be rich, since this is a nationwide problem), I would like to speak up when I feel that people use the amount spent in my district to argue that they should get more money. They can — simply loosen up the zoning rules, build some more low-income housing, and educational aid will increase.
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Since no one is rushing to do that, I have to believe that the formula, although heavily skewed toward poor urban areas, is still very far from fair.
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Yes, okay now that you mention it, I recall that you posted that someplace else too. What numbers are you referring to? From the DoE, I see that the difference in your mandated spending and the amount of aid you receive is about $30M (foundation budget = $285M, net minimum contribution is $31M). These figures are from the FY08 C70 estimates, although they were about the same in FY07.
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I’ve also looked at the DOR At a Glance Report which shows FY07 revenues of $504M, including state aid of $305M and override capacity of $40M.
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I hope I’m not coming across as accusatory. I’m just trying to understand your points.
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You posed an interesting question about the funding mechanism. I predict that in Weston, assuming the quality of the schools stayed the same, you’d see either an increase in commercial property to generate the revenue or, perhaps more likely, a surge in the amount of funding that came via “donation”.
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My point is, regardless of the mechanism certain people will move to where the schools are deemed to be “good”. For those districts at the top of the pack, especially those that offer good schools in conjunction with other desireable features, home prices will go up. This alone will price many people out of the communities. The segregation via self-selection that you talk about.
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So, if under your scenario, Springfield suddenly became flush with money and its schools flourished, you’d see property prices and rents jump, forcing people out to a less affluent community. That Springfield spends 30-50% more per pupil than suburban communities and people can still afford to live there indicates to me that something in the funding mechanism is working.
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I do agree with your point that suburbs could do more to increase their revenue bases. At least in my neck of the woods, I see a lot of “passing the buck”. We’re all responsible for own spending, and if there is an imbalance with our revenues, we (meaning the community) have the best chance of fixing it ourselves.
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Anyway, I digress. I admire your concern for education and encourage you to check out this discussion of Project Follow Through. And if it makes sense to you, bring it to the attention of your school councils, committee and fellow supporters.
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I’m referring to the foundation budget minus Chapter 70 aid.
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Springfield’s foundation budget for FY07 is $263 million. In other words, the state says that we MUST spend that amount on the schools (it will, of course, make up the difference).
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Springfield has a 2007 Proposition 2.5 levy ceiling (the $25/1000 ceiling) of $185 million (we currently collect $145m in property taxes, and another $37m from other local receipts).
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My point is to address people who say we deserve less control because the state is paying so much. Under Proposition 2.5, it would be illegal for us to raise enough local revenue that the state says we must spend on our schools, and it would be illegal for us to spend less than what the state says we must spend on our schools. Talk about Catch-22. The laws of this state have put us in this situation.
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No, it says more about the dismal state of the Springfield Public School system driving down property values. If you aren’t prepared to go the private route, and you are very concerned with your child’s education, then you don’t live in Springfield. This message is reinforced every day by every Realtor in the Pioneer Valley. It’s as though the Springfield suburbs have their own public relations firm.
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I read that in North Carolina, I think, they take a regional approach to things, and they desegregate by economics. They realize that a wealthy district can take on a handful of low-income students per classroom without affecting the class in general. I think the problems in Springfield are the high concentration of poverty. If you have 2-3 kids in your class that are harder to educate, it might not be overwhelming, but when you have 30-40, it might just not be possible to bring them all up to speed.
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I really don’t worry about the gentrification that you talk about, because I don’t think that Springfield is a sustainable community with a 40%+ poverty rate, a non-existent middle class, and a school system with 80% poverty. I bristle when people say “yes, but if you bring in more middle class, where will the others go” — my response is that they will go where they go when they are shut out of wealthier communities — “elsewhere”. Economic segregation is not good, and arguing that we shouldn’t try and improve the economic balance in poor cities because we’d be moving poor people out sounds like a red herring to me.
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I grew up in Massachusetts, and I see that schools are more and more economically segregated. But when I hear people crying for more state aid for their very successful school systems, it grates at me because they have options — cut spending, make the system less desirable, make the community less exclusive, and the taxes will go down.
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I think that in the grand scheme of things, giving tax relief to schools that are already spending more than the foundation level should come before addressing the fundamental deficiencies in urban districts like Springfield, Holyoke, Lawrence, etc. I don’t necessarily believe that “throwing money” at the problem is the best answer, but when urban districts are both more challenging AND pay less than suburban districts, I’d say that we have a way to go before what we do is called “throwing money”. I’d call it “appropriate funding”.
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Gotcha.
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Just to clarify, my own comment wasn’t directed towards Springfield, or any other community that is largely funded by the state. Rather, I was commenting on the ever-present call for more C70. The state can impose more controls (or fewer) at any moment and not have their action tied to state funding. But there is likely a tipping point where if we get everything (or at least “more”) it’s going to cost us in terms of control. As Barry Goldwater once said, a government powerful enough to give you everything you need is powerful enough to take it all away.
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The state goal of a 60/40 split, with variations up to 80/20, seems to be about right given the current tight-loose relationship of state and local districts. We get a lot more freedom and corresponding responsibility than other states where I’ve taught. While I believe regionalization is worth a serious look (we pay our superintendents almost as much as they make in very large county-based districts), I’m not so naive as to think it won’t come at some cost (other than monetary).
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This may not be a bad thing, but I really like the site-based leadership model (as long as its coupled with outside accountability measures). I’m sure it is possible to regionalize finances and still keep local control models in tact, but it would be a hard sell. It’s unfortunate, because I think urban centers have a wealth of resources to offer their suburban neighbors. It could provide students and parents with a lot of choice, and be a win-win situation.
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As for children being harder to educate than others, I don’t a blanket statement holds. I was a much more effective teacher in the poor districts than the wealthy ones.
I wrote a reply to dweir below that applies to your last point: just because a town is wealthier than average, doesn’t mean it can stay affloat under the status quo. The answer isn’t dragging everyone down to the same lowest common denominator either. If a town has little to no business community, the burden lies almost completely on residential property taxes – which means a lot of these towns are paying as much or even more than they can really, fairly afford. Even wealthy towns typically have working class/middle class neighborhoods – neighborhoods that are often neglected to some point, often with lower performing schools.
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So, what’s the answer? Some of it is going to have to come with real reforms. Some aspects of sharing resources and regionalization should be looked at – such as sharing fire and police chiefs in small communities, or sharing fire coverage. The town I live in has already begun looking at that (it’s a shame they didn’t look into a regional high school w/marblehead when there was still time… sadly that window of opportunity is well since passed and both towns passed massive overrides to build 45+ million dollar high schools that have rocketed both town’s property taxes to among the highest in the state, esp. swampscott). There’s probably more room for reform to help towns afford schools beyond sharing resources – and I’d love to listen to experts on them. However, it’s unlikely that the current level of spending can take our school systems to where they need to go, both in wealthy as well as urban and poor areas. Yet, we can get to that promised land – if we, as a populace, demand it.
Maybe those towns could relax their precious zoning restrictions in order to allow commercial development in order to alleviate the burden on residential property.
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Especially in the eastern half of the state, towns have no commercial activity because having any such activity might damage the bucolic exclusivity of the town.
But, in Swampscott’s case, there’s literally NO room for development. Seriously, none, nada, zippo.
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The elite towns that create huge acreage requirements, geared toward keeping certain people out of their towns as far as I’m concerned, are a completely different story. However, even many of those still like businesses, just not (mildly affordable) housing that’ll bring lots of kids to the school system.
is that Springfield must spend up to its Prop 2.5 revenue limit on its schools, and the state will cover the rest up to the foundation level. In Springfield’s case, the state covers nine dollars out of every ten. Slightly less than the 96 out of every 100 for Lawrence.
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I think Springfield’s numbers are complicated by the state oversight for the whole municipal budget.
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The foundation mandate is a gift, not a burden, for places with relatively low ability to pay. There’s a fairly broad concensus that it is in the best interest of the state and the country if Springfield’s kids get at least a basic education opportunity. Some want the foundation higher; it really hasn’t kept pace with inflation, it has been capped, as much as anything because the state can’t afford to uncap it. Every quarter of a point the foundation goes up, the state is in the hole for about $20 million more.
There are lies, damn lies and statistics.
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Let’s look at the real important facts.
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Mainly, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Swampscott may not be large in square mileage, but it has almost 15,000 people. Yes, 4 elementary schools is a good deal for 15,000 people – and clearly we are getting really good results from them. Do you want class sizes of 30 in ean elementary school?
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You clearly don’t know what’s going on in Swampscott, so looking at macro statistics just doesn’t work. The fact is that Swampscott forced a high school right next to the elementary school that could very well be shut down – despite the fact that the neighborhood didn’t want it. While that was fine, because the town desperately needed a new high school, now the town is trying to impose its will to the neighborhood again. This is the same neighborhood that’s largely working class, with vastly different dynamics from the rest of the town. It’s the four rich precincts trying to push around the one regular one – the one that just so happens to have the best elementary school.
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Swampscott is in the situation that it can’t get out of by itself, due in some measure to poor state formulas – formulas that give hundreds of thousands more to towns with the same socio-economic levels (like Marblehead next door). Swampscott still recieves less Chapter 70 aide than in 2003. Furthermore, because Swampscott has almost no major business environment – and no room to build any – the residents pay almost all the expenses. In other words, they can’t afford to keep increasing property taxes – even if we spend less per pupil than state average. With property taxes that are among the highest in the state, there’s a real portion of the town that can’t really afford to pay more property taxes. I’d vote “yes” for another override, but currently there isn’t even one on the table (which is a shame, because I think it would win to save Machon). Perhaps you think like Kerry Healey – and these people struggling to pay property taxes are “over housed.”
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Local, small schools, with reasonable class sizes have clearly proven a boon to education. Machon school is no different – how else would the town’s only working class neighborhood be so successful (and it is actually working class – with a large “projects” in the neighborhood, and mostly littered with streets with old, small houses – like mine, with these kinds of households surrounding mine: crossing-guard/free-lance writer, boston grunt worker; retired kitchen server at a factory, bus driver, child care provider; land-scapers both across the street and behind my house and my mother, a single parent, is a LPN nurse). When socio-economics are one of the single-best predictors of how a child will do on the MCAS (and it is), Machon school has truly broken out of the mold.
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I’m glad to see you’re high on destroying it. Anything to debunk a strong public school system…
Re: Swampscott still receives less Chapter 70 than in FY03.
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Another little ditty for you. Swamscott would see about double the increase of C70 this year if the legislature uses the downpayment formula that was used last year.
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Last year’s down payment formula was designed to uniformly distribute the precious additional dollars available for target share reform among the 190-ish towns and regional school districts calculated as short of aid. This year’s governor’s formula concentrates aid distributions to locales already “in the money” in the formulas, and takes it away from about 80 locales.
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It’s a pity; some of the places the new formula concentrates aid really need it, but others should be in the same place in line as the other 189 shortchanged locales.
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For example, Pittsfield and Chicopee need it; they are both in 5th year sanctions under No Child Left Behind, the only two of 7 districts statewide in 5th year sanctions that are short of target aid level. So, please, legislators, don’t take that aid away. But if you don’t use last year’s downpayment aid formula, this isn’t a fairness reform any more, it’s just another divvying of legislative spoils. So why not call the modified formula “aid for distressed districts” aid, and leave downpayment aid as it was meant to be?
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On the other hand, Acton and Framingham ought to be in the same boat on this, but the new formula leaves them in different boats. And tiny Whately, which ought to be near the head of any line, 15% of foundation level short of aid, is up a creek without a paddle. The formulas play out differently in small towns – much higher highs, much lower lows, and not nearly as well defined by demographics as the suburb/city thing inside 495.
I can understand your desire to hold onto a school, especially one that is performing well. But there is nothing magic about the brick and mortar of the Machon. There is no reason to believe that the results attained by the staff and students couldn’t be replicated in another building.
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I said nothing about class sizes of 30. Class sizes are more at risk of raising in extremely small schools than in larger ones. Machon’s 4th grade class of 21 can be serviced by one teacher, but what about its 3rd grade class of 25? How about its 2nd grade class of 28? Is that deemed large enough that a second 2nd grade teacher is employed?
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You don’t address at all my points about cost savings in the area of utilities and administration. The reason I brought up Swampscott’s size had nothing to do with its population. It was evidence that consolidation wouldn’t result in children being bussed across long distances.
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Machon is outperforming the three other schools? Great for Machon. Why not ensure that its the Machon staff that stays rather than just leaving it up to unions and their seniority rules?
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It comes down to this: there is a lot you can do, but you don’t. Not you personally, but the collective “you” of local government. You personally idenified a lost opportunity of regionalizing that high school. But now it seems romaniticized ideals come into play when it’s the Machon. On the one hand you say there’s no room in Swampscott to build business, on the other you say the high school was “forced” onto a neighborhood. As if having a HS in your neighborhood is a bad thing? As if the people who lived their had been wealthier it wouldn’t have been “forced”?
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I’ve never understood why folks lament that their aid amount isn’t as much as 2003. It’s almost as if there wasn’t an economic downturn. I tell you what. Look back at your teacher contracts during that time period. Were you giving out raises that outpaced revenue growth. I would bet you were. It’s really not that complicated. Spend more than you take in, and you’re going to run into problems.
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I recognize that Swampscott still is not receiving its targeted 18%. If it were, would that solve Swampscott’s current problem?
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The state had less revenue in FY04 and later because that was the fiscal year when the income tax rate was cut from 5.6% down to 5.3%.
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And it coincided with the downturn.
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Lottery aid down the same year. So was regional school transportation.
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Local aid really depends on the income tax rate. Without it, maintaining services is dependent on property tax rates, for better or worse. My preference is a bit more at the state level, and a bit less at the local.
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This is particularly problematic because education reform requires that all kids across the state get at least a foundation based education, and because the foundation we’re preparing to demand is 100% proficiency. And local revenues the state can require of towns is limited by Prop 2.5. Meaning we have a really skewed baseline, and comparable locales have wildly different demands and assistance levels from the state. I’d rather the education burdens across the state were balanced up to foundation level, meaning a roughly flat tax expectation out of local revenues and a progressive distibution of state assistance to assure each school gets foundation.
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Doing that is problematic with the current level of state revenue. But given that voters also want low income tax rates, we muddle along.
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As for the closing schools; I’m between you and the romantics. Enrollments across the state are declining, and this really means some schools will have to close. It’s too bad the charter school movement didn’t start in the 1950s, in this perspective, because we needed more schools then. Now we need less.
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And the schools that do close, I wouldn’t be suprised, are selected through the political process, which often does bias against low income neighborhoods.
as if you know anything about what’s going on? As evidenced by comments like this,
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The one – and only – true park in Swampscott, you know with woods and stuff and the only park area that serviced that area of the town, was destroyed to build that school. That means people from a remote area of the town have to travel far and wide to catch a little league game, which is a shame because that’s something kids from my neighborhood have been enjoying for literally decades.
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You’re making a helluva lot of judgements for someone far removed from the situation. I wouldn’t make judgements about things from other towns. Furthermore, it was in the town’s master plan to shut down Machon for years now – something elites in the town wanted for various reasons, but the town itself was against. Now that the High School was built, suddenly we’re facing a huge defecit. Well, fine, I get that there could be a shortfall or could be added expenses that weren’t accounted for – but they didn’t even offer a choice for any remedies that the town could vote on, such as a proposition override.
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That’s because I don’t necessarily disagree with you – and to a certain extent, it already happens. The elementary schools have shared nurses since the days I was in them. Sharing principals and administration between the four is one idea that should be looked into, something I wouldn’t necessarily be against (nor for, I’d like more info).
It’s everyone’s business how state money is being spent. Your arguments are going to need to be better than the dozens of other communities who also are not receiving their target share. They are also going to have to be better than communities like Marblehead who are at target but who, unlike Swampscott, are experiencing enrollment growth.
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Your arguments need to be better than those given by Transportation, DSS, Highway, Police… need I go on? The supposed hardship of having to “travel far and wide to catch a little league game” doesn’t cut it. The town is 3 sq miles for pete’s sake. There is no “far and wide” except in your Swampscott-centered view.
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And newsflash. There will always be limited resources. An override will not fix a structural imbalance between revenue and spending. Here’s an example:
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Let’s say town funds support your budget by $50M. Each year, excluding growth, you can generate about $1.25M in additional revenue. (This is simplifying Prop. 2.5 and assuming all monies levied are spent… a fairly accurate assumption).
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But you need $2.25M in order to pay for all the requested increases from FY07 to FY08. So you pass a $1M overried, and you make your FY08 budget. Congratulations.
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Well, what happens in the following year? With the new levy limit you can generate $1,275,000 — a whole $25,000 more than the prior year. That isn’t enough to make up for the deficit you will have going from FY08 to FY09. Then what do you do?
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What if, instead of voting on a $1M override, you voted on a $10M override? If the town was disciplined enough to not tax to the levy limit and spend it all the first year — indeed to stretch it for 5 or 7 years, then you could raise your taxes by 5% a year for a number of years. How much do you trust your selectmen to not increase the tax rate? Will other departments agree to this scenario to save Machon, or will they pull a full court press on town administration to fund some of their requests (surely they have them)? How much confidence do you have in your finance committee to be able to review the numbers independently of your business manager? And perhaps most importantly, how long can your neighbors sustain 5% property tax increases in their own budgets?
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I’ve heard a lot of blame put on Prop 2.5. I don’t know many families who have, over the last 20 years, enjoyed a predictable growth in wealth of 2.5% a year. How many businesses have closed because they couldn’t sustain modest growth over the long haul? Yes, 2.5% doesn’t give us a lot of wiggle room, especially in these days of skyrocketing insurance costs. But, it’s predictable. We have only ourselves to blame if, when flush with cash in boom times, we grew our budgets to the point where spending couldn’t be sustained when the economy took a turn for the worst.
The chapter 70 spreadsheet is fairly obtuse.
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The reason the summary chart is different from the spreadsheet is probably that one of them is showing just the local school district, while the other includes Nashoba Valley regional.
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And, the reason Chelmsford still pay 84% of foundation rather than the supposed limit of 82.5% is that effort reduction is only in the 2’nd of a scheduled five year phase in period.
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Maybe you should put it on the devalpatrick.com “my issues” list: “Raise our taxes to pay for town and school aid.”
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The small business I work for doesn’t get an advantage from those loopholes – all our money stays in MA too.
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The only people who get an advantage are the big transnationals who just pull all the money out of the state and store it in bank accounts in delaware.