BOSTON — House and Senate negotiators tasked with producing a final fiscal 2026 budget will also need to decide whether it’s time to begin rethinking how the state and municipalities split education costs, a response to a fiscal climate that one lawmaker said is “as bad as I’ve probably seen it.”
In one of its final actions during last week’s three-day budget debate, the Senate adopted an amendment that would instruct the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to embark on a new study of the K-12 school funding formula, focusing in particular on the required local contributions that many communities say have become too burdensome.
Districts fund the public education with a combination of state and local dollars. Most receive only a minimum amount per pupil from state government, leaving cities and towns to make up the rest.
Amendment author Sen. Jason Lewis said the study “lays the groundwork for what will need to come next” once Massachusetts finishes implementation of a six-year school funding reform law in fiscal 2027.
That law, known as the Student Opportunity Act, has committed $1.6 billion in new state aid toward schools, but educators, lawmakers and advocates have long been warning that the increases are unevenly distributed.
“A great number of our school districts and cities and towns are struggling. I have to say, probably in the time that I’ve served in the Legislature, first in the House and [then] in the Senate, this is as bad as I’ve probably seen it in terms of the fiscal struggles facing many of our communities,” Lewis said during Senate budget debate Thursday. “It’s not one type of community. It’s some of our urban Gateway Cities, our suburban communities, and certainly our smaller rural communities.”
Nearly three-quarters of the new Chapter 70 aid under the Student Opportunity Act, about $1.2 billion, has flowed to 61 districts, while 258 other districts have split a combined $422 million increase, according to a Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation analysis.
Lewis said the uneven divide was to a degree “by design,” arguing that the 2019 law sought to lift up historically underserved districts with large numbers of low-income students, English language learners and students with special needs.
But in recent years, he said, many other districts are struggling with inflation, the end of pandemic-era federal aid, and rising costs for special education, health care and school transportation.
Many school leaders spent the springtime state budget hearing season warning that the latest annual Chapter 70 increase would not do much in their communities, or grappling with funding shortfalls of their own that prompted layoffs and service cuts.
Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton said from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2025, state foundation budget funding for the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District increased less than a single percentage point. In the same span, Amherst’s required local contribution grew nearly 64%, she said.
“That math,” Comerford said, “does not work.”
Comerford described “similarly unworkable” situations in other rural communities she represents such as Bernardston and Greenfield, warning of “rising numbers of school closures, families and students struggling mightily to get the services that they need and deserve.”
“We have made great strides in this Senate in funding higher education and pay rates for early educators, and we passed the Student Opportunity Act, which has been transformational for many K-12 schools, but not transformational for the people I represent,” she said.
MTF said 229 of the nearly 320 school districts in Massachusetts received only a “minimum aid” increase of $104 per pupil in fiscal 2025. Both the House- and Senate-approved fiscal 2026 budgets would bump minimum aid up to $150 per pupil.
DESE’s study envisioned by the Senate would need to focus on the “adequacy and equity” of the formula that determines a municipality’s required local contribution toward K-12 education, the impact of the “growing number” of municipalities subject to a maximum 82.5% local required contribution cap, and more. The report and recommendations would be due by June 30, 2026.
The Senate adopted the amendment on an unrecorded voice vote with no opposition.
Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, the chamber’s top Republican, gave it a vocal endorsement.
“The Student Opportunity Act is going to be fully implemented in a couple of years, and by that time, it is a moral imperative that we take action to do the undone work that the SOA did not fully address,” he said. “We cannot do it without an assessment, a fair assessment, an inclusive assessment, of the foundation budget. We need to move as quickly as possible to be able to begin that process.”