BOSTON — When the state Senate passed a long-awaited sweeping teacher preparation and student literacy bill late last month, it also unanimously approved an amendment aimed at leveling the playing field for rural schools.
By adopting the measure championed by Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, the new bill would ensure that rural and minimum-aid school districts receive the same benefits as suburban and urban districts when implementing the reforms.
The new bill, officially known as the “Act Relative to Teacher Preparation and Student Literacy,” mandates that kindergarten through third grade school districts adopt evidence-based literacy curriculum using phonics, vocabulary building and oral comprehension. The instruction is to be “grounded in scientific research methods” and demonstrate “significant and positive effects on student learning outcomes.”
The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed its own version last fall, and the two bills need to be reconciled before heading to the governor’s desk for signing.
While she supports the act, Comerford told her colleagues on the Senate floor on Jan. 29 that educators and staff in her district, despite showing up every day so that the kids have a “fighting chance,” can’t afford more state education mandates.
“I’m pretty tired of banging the rural drum, but I’m going to keep banging it,” she said.
To help pay for the requirements in the new reading bill, the state would establish an Early Literacy Fund (ELF), a non-budgeted revenue fund using money authorized by the Legislature and from public and private sources. This year, the Office of the Comptroller would transfer $25 million from the Education and Transportation Capital and Innovation Fund to the ELF.
Money credited to the ELF will be spent on developing a free literacy curriculum for K-3 and providing grants to districts to support updating their curricula, purchasing materials, and providing professional development resources for instructors.
“I’m glad for this language,” Comerford said on the Senate floor. “However, the people I represent in north, central and western Massachusetts have no reason to believe, none, zip, no reason to believe that they will receive either an adequate amount or their fair share of this funding.”
Comerford said her amendment, referred to as Amendment 18, aims to address inequities in the state’s school funding formula that she says favor wealthier, urban school districts.
“One, because we don’t have the ability to write competitive grants because we’re so threadbare in our staffing throughout my district,” said Comerford in an interview with the Gazette. “Two, it happens because the grant prioritization just isn’t seeing or valuing districts like mine — declining enrollment, or rural, or both.”
The senator said that 77% of Massachusetts school districts receive minimum-aid funding increases every year. The “Hold Harmless” provision in the state’s Chapter 70 education funding formula ensures that these districts do not receive less funding than they did during the previous year, but the minimum annual increases to district funding are often outpaced by inflation, meaning that many districts end up receiving decreased funding year after year.
“Over the past 22 years, education aid for rural schools has declined, while aid to suburban schools has flatlined, even as the Student Opportunity Act has increased overall funding in the commonwealth,” Comerford said.
“Districts like mine have been held harmless for so many years that inflation has cut way through the fat,” she said. “Now we’re hacking at the bone. There’s no more fat in western Massachusetts schools. It’s all bone and blood.”
Amendment 18 would ensure that the costs of literacy screening assessments are covered by funds from the ELF; require the state’s grant formula to prioritize geographic and funding equity; require a public hearing to be held in western Massachusetts before finalizing grant criteria; and require the state to provide technical assistance to rural school districts.
Despite the amendment’s passage, inequities still exist within the state’s school district funding formula. To address them, Comerford is advocating for a new Foundation Budget Review Commission. The Foundation budget is Massachusetts’ statewide system of school district funding, and it has been more than 10 years since the last review commission took place.
While she is pleased with the passage of Amendment 18, Comerford reiterated that “Band-Aids don’t cover the full wound. We need to actually heal the wound of our school funding. We can’t Band-Aid it up because our schools are hemorrhaging, and in order to do that, we have to crack open the Chapter 70 formula.”
As to whether a new review commission is a real possibility, Comerford said, “I think after today, it’s a little bit more likely. You heard our governor say yes, you heard lots of bipartisan support on the floor.”
The new reading act will now advance to conference, where a bipartisan group of six legislators must pass it before it can be signed into law by the governor. While the work is not finished, Amendment 18 offers a platform from which legislators can address the funding gap between urban, suburban, and rural school districts in Massachusetts.
“I, damn well, am not going to allow a new program to come out of the gate inequitable,” Comerford said. “I had to have a say about that.”