To the Editor:
Last night the Great Barrington Select Board voted 4-1 to place only the school budget authorization on the June 13th Special Town Meeting warrant, declining to support the strategy that I proposed at the May 9 Annual Town Meeting to vote “No” on the school budget at first, so that a Special Town Meeting could then approve both the budget and an appeal to the State Legislature for assistance in transitioning the BHRSD to a unified tax rate.
We can only hope to move forward if we are united, and it is clear to me that any attempt to put the unified tax rate initiative to a vote on the floor of the Special Town Meeting, in the face of opposition not only from the GB Selectboard but also from many (and perhaps all) members of the BHRSD School Committee, would be incapable of convincing our state representatives to sponsor legislation to that effect, even if the Special Town Meeting vote were affirmative.
I urge my neighbors to approve the school budget at the Special Town Meeting. That approval was never intended to be conditional, and the lack of an opportunity to vote on the unified tax rate should not be used as justification for opposing the necessary authorization of funds for Great Barrington to pay its District assessment.
Looking forward, I have a proposal that I respectfully ask the Regional Agreement Amendment Committee (RAAC), the School Committee, and our state legislators to consider: Supporting a Massachusetts Education Finance Reform bill that would fix dysfunctional aspects of current laws and put all of the Commonwealth’s regional school districts on a sounder financial footing. Such reform should include as many of the following components as are politically feasible:
(1) Change the statutory method for regional school district apportionment to an assessed property value method (unified tax rate). Currently all District agreements approved by the Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) use a student headcount formula for apportionment among member towns, unless the member towns unanimously approve, annually, an alternative method.
This change would be consistent with the state’s long and proud tradition of supporting public education, whose fundamental financing principle — as opposed to that of private education — is that all children are entitled to a free education paid for by all members of their community in proportion to their ability to pay, not on how many children they have, if any. Because the lion’s share of public K-12 education is funded by local property taxes, taxable assessed value is a “perfect” measure of ability to pay. (Although many of us believe that state income taxes rather than local property taxes would be a better method of education finance, there is no realistic prospect of changing that in Massachusetts or anywhere else in the U.S. in the foreseeable future.)
The practical effect of that change in the statutory method of apportionment (which could continue to include its MLC component) would be to bring the tax situation of all taxpayers in regional school districts in line with the other 90 percent of the Commonwealth’s taxpayers, who already live in school districts where they pay the same rate as all of their other neighbors in the district. Following this letter is a listing of the top 100 public school districts in the state, in declining order of 2016 student enrollment. Only seven of them (shown in ALL CAPS, with rank) are regional districts, containing more than a single local taxing authority.
A single rate within a school district is not only the standard practice in Massachusetts (and explicitly mandated in many states like New York and New Jersey); it is good public policy. Any discount to that rate for any taxpayer in a school district is a net loss to that district’s revenue. It is in the Commonwealth’s interest that all school districts fund themselves as efficiently as possible at the local level so that demands on the state budget can be minimized.
(2) Gradually raise the cap on school choice reimbursement until it equals the average cost of educating a student in the receiving district. In the BHRSD, for example, the current cap is less than one-third of the average cost.
(3) Mandate that “tuition-in” rates cannot be less than the average cost of educating a student in that district, subject to a multi-year phase-in.
(4) Mandate that all towns in the Commonwealth must either have their own school district or belong to a regional school district, by a date several years hence. If implemented, this would replace (3) above, and would eliminate the “beggar thy neighbor” negotiations that cause some smaller communities to play one district against another in bidding wars. The concept of tuition should be anathema to public schools (see public education’s fundamental financing principle cited above).
Is this the framework for an Education Finance Reform bill that the whole Berkshire Hills community can support? Is it at least a starting point for a potentially productive discussion?
Chip Elitzer
Great Barrington
The writer is a member of the Regional Agreement Amendment Committee (RAAC).
Student enrollment by school district in Massachusetts:
54,300 Boston
25,826 Springfield
24,562 Worcester
17,011 Brockton
14,378 Lynn
14,031 Lowell
13,504 Lawrence
12,744 New Bedford
12,601 Newton
10,319 Fall River
9,320 Quincy
8,280 Framingham
7,870 Taunton
7,802 Plymouth
7,779 Chicopee
7,384 Wachusett
7,288 Brookline
7,147 Haverhill
6,937 Methuen
6,906 Everett
6,843 Weymouth
6,831 Revere
6,610 Lexington
6,535 Malden
6,361 Cambridge
6,171 Leominster
6,146 Peabody
6,118 Chelsea
6,110 Andover
6,011 Shrewsbury
5,879 Pittsfield
5,862 Attleboro
5,814 Westfield
5,760 Franklin
5,647 Braintree
5,573 Holyoke
5,523 Needham
5,400 BRIDGEWATER-RAYNHAM RSD (#38)
5,361 Billerica
5,285 Nautical
5,180 Westford
5,155 Waltham
5,124 Chelmsford
5,033 Wellesley
5,020 Arlington
5,010 Fitchburg
4,940 Somerville
4,900 Barnstable
4,840 Woburn
4,801 North Andover
4,645 North Attleborough
4,590 Medford
4,535 Marlborough
4,440 Winchester
4,432 Reading
4,411 Marshfield
4,404 Beverly
4,336 Salem
4,320 Mansfield
4,237 Hingham
4,205 Belmont
4,182 Milford
4,165 WHITMAN-HANSON RSD (#63)
4,107 Agawam
4,042 DUDLEY-CHARLTON RSD (#65)
3,996 Walpole
3,944 Milton
3,899 West Springfield
3,867 Easton
3,816 Dracut
3,756 Tewksbury
3,694 Dartmouth
3,685 Melrose
3,651 Stoughton
3,644 Danvers
3,585 Westborough
3,579 Burlington
3,541 Falmouth
3,522 Wilmington
3,471 Norwood
3,461 Hopkinton
3,453 North Middlesex
3,434 Nashoba
3,434 Sharon
3,347 Wakefield
3,346 HAMPDEN-WILBRAHAM RSD (#86)
3,293 Marblehead
3,272 Pembroke
3,247 Canton
3,245 Duxbury
3,221 Middleborough
3,199 Westwood
3,122 Scituate
3,078 Gloucester
3,067 Grafton
3,044 DENNIS-YARMOUTH RSD (#96)
3,017 Sandwich
3,005 DIGHTON-REHOBOTH RSD (#98)
2,971 FREETOWN-LAKEVILLE RSD (#99)
2,954 Randolph
