Inflation or just bad management? School districts across the state are lobbying for more money even as enrollment declines

First appeared in Contrarian Boston 7.23.24

By David Mancuso

The drumbeat for more money for schools is starting again.

Initially, the grift was under the banner of adjustments needed to cover inflation. Now talk of raising local taxes is being added to the mix.?

State House News Service reported that advocacy groups like the Education Justice Alliance, analysts, and others, are pointing to a “glitch” in the state’s Chapter 70 funding formula that fails to accommodate inflation, thereby denying schools a “slice of an additional $465 million” of potential funding.

A glitch? Really?

Districts knowingly agree to contracts, presumably keeping inflation in mind. If there’s a glitch, maybe it’s the result of poor fiscal management.

The Boston Globe reports Massachusetts communities are increasingly turning to voters?to “override the state’s (2.5 percent) cap on property tax increases to avoid severe cuts to school” in case the state doesn’t pony up more dough.

Paradoxically, the call for more money comes when there are significantly fewer students to educate. Enrollment continues to decline in Massachusetts schools with Boston Public Schools, as an example, showing a loss of 15 percent of students between 2014 and 2023.

According to research from Dr. Marguerite Roza of the Georgetown University Edunomics Lab, only about half of the K-12 education dollars fund student instruction. Nearly 90% of a districts’ costs are compensation and benefits.

Districts went on a hiring spree with the $6.5 billion the feds and state gave them over the last few years, adding mostly para-professional support staff. A chunk of contract dollars also went to fund the pensions of teachers getting ready to retire, bringing nothing to the classroom for students.?

Despite the investment of billions in education, many Massachusetts’ third graders can’t read proficiently, and students are still struggling to recover from pandemic learning losses.

Meanwhile, student scores on NEAP and MCAS, two well recognized measures of education competency, are in decline.

Talk of teacher layoffs and other cuts to schools can spook local officials, who bear the brunt of balancing their budgets in the face of political pressure, both from teachers’ unions calling for strikes and parents calling for their schools to stay open.

And that, in turn, can lead to bad, potentially unsustainable decisions.?Check out Newton, where the local teacher’s union leader called for the removal of the city’s mayor after contentious contract negotiations earlier this year.

Regarding increasing school education funding, state Sen. Jason Lewis, chairman of the Joint Committee on Education, told Contrarian Boston that three things needed to be done in conjunction or separately: ?“One, study and make reforms to the local contribution side of the Chapter 70 formula; two, conduct the once-every-ten-year (Foundation Budget Review Commission)?review and update of the foundation budget in the Chapter 70 formula; (and) three, look more broadly at the range of needs and fiscal challenges faced by different types of school districts, and how well these needs are, or are not, being met by Chapter 70 aid as well as other state programs.”

In 2019, state Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr filed an amendment empowering the Foundation Budget Review Commission to “consider the challenges presented for schools with declining enrollment… and the methodology employed to calculate required local contributions by municipalities.”

The Legislature rejected Tarr’s amendment, punting the issue down the road as they often do. Now the issue has come home to roost.

At a time when educators are turning to the state seeking money like flowers to the sun, Lewis and his colleagues on Beacon Hill would be wise to listen to what Dr. Roza and her research have also pointed out: “More money doesn’t necessarily deliver more outcomes.”

School funding challenges aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. If the state and local taxpayers decide they want to contemplate paying more for schools, they might start by looking at what kind of return students are getting from the sizable current investments being made before they spend another dime.

At least that way they might invest in what matters most to students.