Stockbridge — Back in November, a projected $325 million budget shortfall prompted outgoing Governor Deval Patrick to make what are known as 9C cuts to the state’s $36.5 billion budget, cuts that do not require the legislature’s approval. Included in Patrick’s revisions is an $18.7 million cut to regional school transportation — the biggest hit of all — striking a blow to rural districts that spend a fortune on bussing.
Not only are regional school districts alarmed, but they say that cut is illegal, and will collectively take their case to the Attorney General and newly inaugurated Gov. Charlie Baker. Attorneys for the districts say that according to state law, transportation cannot be cut without a corresponding cut to general education, which is “meant to be a safety valve,” said Berkshire Hills Superintendent Peter Dillon. That way “you couldn’t ding the regional districts without impacting the other [schools].”
“We’re prepared to [sue] if we have to,” said Steve Hemman, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools (MARS). The first step is to ask the Attorney General to step in, then to see what Governor Baker will do. If that doesn’t work, “we go to court,” Hemman said.
Should it come to that, regional districts are getting ready, with superintendents firing off letters pleading for a reversal in the cuts and sending MARS $500 for legal fees. In early December, 80 senators and representatives signed a letter written by Rep. Anne Gobi (D-Spencer), begging for a restoration of transportation funding, the entire appropriation for FY2015, stating: “These districts are already in tenuous financial situations, even without the 9c cuts.” Rep. Gobi asked for a response to her letter, but with one foot out the door, the Patrick administration apparently did not look back.
“The Governor disappeared into the sunset,” said Southern Berkshire Regional School District Superintendent David Hastings, whose district will lose around $200,000 if the cuts aren’t reversed. “That’s either three teachers or two teachers and one para-professional,” he said. “There’s not a lot of fat in our budget — no fluff. I don’t want to have to be making programmatic decisions about kids because of transportation money.”
Berkshire Hills would take a $257,876 hit should the cuts remain, but Business Manager Sharon Harrison, Dillon said, budgeted conservatively, “thinking we’d get around 60- percent, since the state “has been so lousy about meeting their obligation,” and as a result he said, there would be no mid-year staff or programming changes.
Dillon said Berkshire Hills usually gets somewhere between 35 to 60 percent in transportation reimbursements. All districts were supposed to receive 90 percent this year, as a nod to regional school advocate Sen. Stephen M. Brewer (D-Barre), upon his retirement, but Patrick’s cuts nixed the whole appropriation.
The Southern Berkshire district is also accustomed to the state’s ways and budgeted accordingly as well, Hastings said. “I don’t anticipate layoffs, but you never know,” and noted that some staff may be retiring. But a $200,000 shortfall adds a new twist to taxpayer angst for Southern Berkshire, a district with five towns: the district is about to embark on a $7.7 million roof and boiler replacement for Mt. Everett Regional High School, a project to be completed this summer and into fall, but expected to cost less than the estimated amount, with its 10-percent add-on of contingencies in the event of any unforeseen surprises. “It will be a hard sell to get the project passed if we come to [taxpayers] with a high school budget,” Hastings said.
Berkshire Hills has a million-plus transportation budget, and Dillon said years of being short-shifted by the state amounts to millions, ultimately harming “kids, communities and districts.” And Dillon is frustrated by the state’s inconsistency: “The notion that is pushed widely in Boston is regionalization and schools working together,” he said. “The only concrete thing the state has to do is provide transportation, then they pull the rug out, even though they say they care about this.”
Dillon thinks the state gets away with this bait and switch because rural areas are full of “people perceived to be in the hinterlands and don’t have a population base to take political action.”
“It’s the path of lesser resistance,” said Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli D-Lenox, of hits to regional transportation, and said people on the eastern end of the state are surprised to learn how critical these funds are to rural districts. “During the regionalization push 57 to 58 years ago, the carrot was state funding for transportation, and Southern Berkshire was the first [to regionalize] with the false promise.”
“Every year we file amendments to increase the amount, and the battle starts all over again.”
But Pignatelli says regional districts should start thinking creatively about transportation, anyway, that it isn’t enough to “just complain that the state failed to honor its commitment,” and he wonders about the efficiency of school bussing systems, and what changes could be made there. “I’ve even said we should think about making school transportation a state bid, take it out of local hands…then the state knows what 100-percent [funding] is…”
Given their dismal record with transportation funding, Dillon doesn’t like the idea of handing bussing over to the state. He said the district had its bussing analyzed and got high marks. “It was the best they said they had ever seen,” Dillon said, though he said there is still more to be done for efficiency, particularly since the district by law must reserve seats for all children whether they ride or not. Often, especially due to athletic schedules, he said, many students get picked up by parents.
Dillon said he is more interested in fixing other things, like what is “broken” in state funding formulas because “over time, the state’s contribution is going down and towns’ percentages are going up.”
Money for shared services projects got the heave-ho as well in the 9C cut carnage, but districts in the Berkshires will continue to talk and find ways to work together anyway, Pignatelli said.
Things will get sorted fairly soon, it appears. Massachusetts Municipal Association’s Legislative Director John Robertson said in an email that next week’s (January 22) annual consensus state tax revenue hearing “would provide a good public discussion on the revenue picture for fiscal 2015 and a first look at next year.” He added: “It is my understanding that the Legislature may wish to wait for new Governor Baker to take a look at the budget shortfall this year and make recommendations before taking any action themselves.”
Baker, who traveled to the Berkshires last weekend, has commented that “he wants to protect local aid,” Pignatelli said. “But he has his hands full trying to close this budget gap.”
“And I have yet to hear his definition of local aid. I want someone to ask him what local aid is.”
