A group of rural educators and elected officials from communities around Massachusetts are sending a week-long SOS to Beacon Hill lawmakers, letting them know, not for the first time, the destructive consequences of underfunding the state's rural schools
“Across Massachusetts, rural schools and schools with chronically-declining enrollment are in a death spiral, said Mohawk Trail Regional School Committee Chair Martha Thurber.
Thurber is one of the organizers behind the Rural and Declining Enrollment Schools Week of Action.
This is "our SOS to the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and their Administration; the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Legislature," said Thurber.
The action began Monday when students and educators from Mohawk Trail Regional School District in Franklin County traveled to Beacon Hill to bring that message directly to lawmakers and the Healey administration.
"The state is not ensuring that students in our districts have equitable access to excellent public education," Thurber said.
Both immediate and long-term solutions are needed as communities are at a crisis level she said.
"There's this idea that enrollment based funding makes sense, Thurber said, referring to an element of the state's Chapter 70 funding formula.
Per pupil funding doesn't work for rural schools Thurber said, not only in Franklin county where she is, but from Berkshire County to Cape Cod.
The objective of this week's activities is for the state to fully fund rural school aid at $60 million, while also demanding that the state pass the 2022 policy recommendations outlined in the Commission on the Fiscal Health of Rural School Districts — provisions that would help both rural schools and school districts with chronically-declining enrollment.
"We need $60 million annual appropriation every year — until they fix Chapter 70 to have a rural factor that recognizes the differences and inability to create the kind of efficiencies that larger schools can have, and it's been a long battle," Thurber said.
This is the first time educators from around the state have tried to make change together said Thurber, who is also active in the Massachusetts School Committee Association.
People have been advocating for years for greater equity for rural schools in the state funding formula she said.
"We've tried kind of everything we can possibly think of testifying, writing letters, talking with legislators, and [in 2022] we finally got the Rural Commission report," said Thurber.
The amount has yet to fully be appropriated. In the meantime, Thurber says districts continue to make cuts.
“Deerfield and most other rural communities across the Commonwealth are facing wrenching FY27 budget choices, and the main culprit is the woeful lack of equitable school funding from the state,” said Deerfield Selectboard member Tim Hilchey.
The district school school committee just voted to eliminate Frontier Regional School’s librarian to save money he said.
"When school expenses make up almost 70 percent of the entire municipal budget, barring major school funding increases from the state, the wheels are going to come off the bus," Hilchey said.
In 2022, the Legislative Commission on the Fiscal Health of Rural Schools found that it costs 23% more per student to provide a basic education in a small rural school district than in a district with 1,300 or more students, said Jessica Corwin, member of the Sunderland and Frontier Regional School Committees.
"This disparity has never been accounted for in Chapter 70 funding formulas, leading to grave inequities in academic offerings in rural schools,” Corwin said.
