SOUTH HADLEY — South Hadley and Ludlow are organizing municipal and school leaders, students and community members from at least eight communities to attend a hearing Monday at UMass to persuade the state Legislature’s House and Ways Means Committee to support altering the state’s municipal education funding formula.

“It’s a more organized, different strategy that we’ve undertaken before,” Town Administrator Lisa Wong said during a Select Board meeting last Tuesday. “But we’re trying to rise to meet the challenge that we see ahead of us.”

Wong noted that most towns in western Massachusetts face shortfalls in seeking to maintain level-services budgets for their schools. South Hadley’s $1.3 million shortfall could result in 19.5 positions cut permanently, many of which are interventionists or core curriculum teachers considered crucial to student success. So, after swapping frustrations and concerns in a town administrator group chat, Wong and her network decided it was time to roll up their sleeves and take action.

On Friday, Wong and Ludlow Town Administrator Marc Strange gathered town administrators, school superintendents and finance professionals from their towns along with those from Southwick, Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Ware, Warren and Monson in Ludlow to consolidate testimony and provide templates for community letter-writing campaigns in preparation for Monday’s hearing on local aid. Backed with over 800 letters written and collected by students, parents and South Hadley school staff, the coalition of municipal leaders will testify together at Monday’s hearing as a show of community, solidarity and urgency.

“Let’s all show up if we can because that shows more force,” Wong said. “What we’re going to do is we are going to coordinate our testimony so that we have a number of ways in which we’re elevating the typical discussion at Ways and Means.”

This testimony will fold in the voices and concerns of parents, school staff and students. This week, South Hadley High School students organized a letter-writing campaign with the assistance of South Hadley Education Association, the town’s teachers union. SHEA President Amy Foley said high school students made an informational video in the high school’s news studio about the education funding shortfall, its impact and how to help. Then, the students sent the video to every high school and middle school classroom along with a letter template for students to fill out.

“I’m really impressed with the students,” Foley said. “One thing that really stood out to me was two students who took a lead are seniors. They are graduating this year and they really got involved in the organizing of this when it’s really short term for them. The fact that they want to give the same middle school and high school experience to other students is really impressive.”

In 2019, South Hadley launched similar organizing efforts to support the Student Opportunity Act, which padded school funding for special education, English language learners and low-income students. Since the students had roughly a week to gather all the letters, Foley said the templates from their previous grassroots campaign were updated to match points about state education funding, then sent out to middle and high school students, staff and parents.

These letters, along with written statements from some of the high school students, will be potent fuel during Monday’s testimony.

“Even for me, I think this time around, I feel that (unity) even stronger because in the past, when it comes to the budget, and teachers’ raises, there’s always two groups at odds,” Foley said. “This time, what’s made us strong is acknowledging that this isn’t the school committee, school administration or town’s fault, and we really need to come together to fix the school funding formula.”