by Maria Sacchetti

The Boston Globe
June12, 2005

State education officials and key lawmakers want to make school funding fairer by having median income be a significant factor in how much a town or city should pay for education.

The proposals circulating on Beacon Hill in recent weeks would lead to the most dramatic change in school funding since 1993, when the state began making property values a key determinant of how much cities and towns had to pay and income was a minor factor. State officials, in 2001, took income out of the equation, and the proposals lawmakers and state education officials are touting would weigh a community's income and property values equally.As a result, property-rich but cash-poor towns, like Orange, a rural working-class community in north-central Massachusetts, and towns along the Cape would benefit and chip in less for their schools. But towns such as Abington, a middle-class South Shore suburb, would pay more because state officials say they can afford to. So far, the designers of the newest proposals are keeping mum about who the winners and losers would be, but say the changes could affect both rich and poor towns because state funding of schools is so uneven now.

The Senate, led by Senator Therese Murray, is working to pass a bill as early as this summer in time for the House to take it up. Governor Mitt Romney is working with the state Department of Education and others to come up with a "fairer and more rational" funding formula, said spokeswoman Julie Teer. The Massachusetts Municipal Association and House Education chairwoman Patricia A. Haddad support the move to include income.

"You want people to feel they're being treated equally," said Jeff Wulfson, associate commissioner of the Department of Education. "You don't want them to look over at another town and say they're getting a better deal."

The proposals, though, are drawing criticism from those who say the new plans favor wealthier towns and fail to address concerns highlighted in a school-funding lawsuit dismissed by the Supreme Judicial Court in February. Poor cities and towns contend the state still is not spending enough on the poorest, lowest-achieving cities and towns.

The way the state doles out money for schools has been a contentious issue for decades. For years, communities decided how much to spend on schools in addition to what they received from the state.

In 1993, a school-funding lawsuit forced the state to set the minimum amount each city and town should spend on its schools, and then the state would have to chip in the rest.

During the flush 1990s, the state pumped billions into school systems, mainly to close the gap between rich and poor schools. The state also tried to make school funding fairer for all communities, taking the amount school systems spent before 1993 and slowly adjusting it to better reflect their wealth.

State officials used property values as the main measure, and then raised or lowered a town's share depending on whether its income was above or below the state average.

But state officials say they did not finish the job and stopped using income in 2001 because of budget cuts and complaints that the formula was too broad. Instead, the state ordered towns to raise their school spending by the same amount that their town revenues increased each year.

As a result, school spending is a patchwork across the state: Some towns pay a high share of the education bill and some pay too little. In the most frustrating cases, many towns of similar wealth are paying wildly different amounts.

Athol and Orange, neighboring working-class towns, have similar median incomes, and both are ranked at the bottom of the state in property values.

But Athol pays 3 percent of its education budget, while Orange pays 23 percent. Wulfson said the disparity occurred because the towns started off in 1993 paying different amounts and the state never finished adjusting the formula to more accurately reflect their true wealth.

Orange Town Administrator Rick Kwiatkowski said taking income into account could provide some relief.

The town is so cash-strapped that it might slash teaching positions and repair fewer potholes. The town is trying to pass a tax override, against the objections of some senior citizens who have called up the town administrator and cursed at him.

Kwiatkowski, a Republican, said a change in the funding formula is long overdue.

"These towns are dying out here, and the state Legislature doesn't care," he said.

The Department of Education's proposal is part of a broader plan to overhaul school spending aimed at helping all cities and towns. In addition to taking income into account when doling out money, the department's plan would promise to pay 15 percent of each city and town's education budget. The department proposes spending $78 million over four years to help 63 wealthy areas, including Nantucket and Weston, who now receive less than 10 percent of their money for education from the state. The state spends more than $3 billion a year on schools.

The Senate plan, like the Education Department's proposal, would treat income and property values equally in determining how much a town should pay for schools. But it would provide relief more quickly to as many as 45 percent of the state's school systems, and it would target aid to communities that have been historically underfunded, such as those on the Cape.

Murray's bill would cost $150 million to $175 million a year over the next seven years. She represents several Cape towns, which have complained that soaring property values make blue-collar residents appear richer than they really are.

The Council for Fair School Finance, which backed the school-funding lawsuit that went to the SJC this year, said the state should study how much all cities and towns need for their schools before tinkering with education spending.

"There are lots of different ways of describing what's fair and what's not fair," said Norma L. Shapiro, president of the council. "The problem is that nobody has done the research."

The League of Women Voters opposes hitching the school funding to a town's income because the main way towns raise money is through property taxes. Mary Frantz, an education specialist with the league, said she sympathizes with towns on the Cape and elsewhere that saw property values triple over the past decade, which affected their education spending. But, she said, property values are still the best way to determine wealth.

"There are people in every community in the state who couldn't afford to buy the house they're currently in," Frantz said.

State lawmakers and education officials say hammering out a school-funding plan to please everyone is a near-impossible task. Before they release the figures that show the winners and losers in the current proposals, they are trying to rally support for the notion that a town's median income should help determine wealth.

"The bottom line is there's something in it for everyone," said Senator Robert A. Antonioni, the Senate education chairman, who backs Murray's plan. "Many communities are hurting. I think there's a consensus that something should be done."