Times have changed, but the formula remains stuck in 1949. The wealth disparities between neighboring towns simply did not exist at anything like their current scale. The founders of the regional school system could not have foreseen the inequity their formula has imposed on most towns today.
The idea was to collect 5-cent deposit beverage containers from the town transfer station and send the money to victims of a historically destructive month of hurricanes. In the process, we also developed some ideas about how the Massachusetts Bottle Bill, a good thing, could be made even better.