Rural schools speak up about funding challenges

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Last week, 36 school districts across the state sounded the alarm about their funding woes in what they called the Rural and Declining Enrollment Schools Week of Action. 

“It’s a death spiral,” Martha Thurber, the chair of the Mohawk Trail Regional School Committee, said of the fiscal crisis that schools face when their enrollment declines. “What you end up ultimately with is a shell of a school that’s providing only the very, very basics.”

That’s because enrollment factors significantly into the state’s funding formula, known as Chapter 70. For schools where enrollment is steadily declining, state contributions to annual school budgets can plateau, which spells trouble as schools face increased fixed costs, like building maintenance and energy expenses, the end of pandemic-era federal aid, and extra pressure from exploding insurance costs. 

Mohawk Trail Regional School District is one of dozens of districts, largely concentrated in western Massachusetts, that are struggling to provide adequate education due to declining enrollment. It’s not just rural schools that are struggling with declining enrollment, either — districts like Amherst and Northampton have also seen enrollment decrease. 

“Rural schools have had declining enrollment for a number of years because of aging demographics,” Thurber said. “There’s not a lot of economic opportunity here for people to find jobs. There’s not a lot of affordable housing for people who might want to be out here.”

According to U.S Census data, the population in Franklin County has been steadily decreasing for decades and over a quarter of the population are seniors. The percentage of employed residents in Franklin county is also trending downward and the median household income is lower than the state’s average by nearly $30,000. 

Franklin County is also sparse, with 102 people per square mile compared to the state average of 900 people per square mile.

Thurber is also a co-chair of the Rural Schools Committee of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, along with Jessica Corwin, who serves on the Frontier Regional School Committee. The two of them, accompanied by several other members, have been working to raise awareness of the “dire straits” of rural schools and their different needs. But recently, Thurber felt that movement had stalled. 

The funding formula is rarely updated. The last major modifications to the way that funding is allocated to schools were made in 1993 and 2019, the latter after the passage of the Student Opportunity Act, which established a special commission that would study the needs of rural schools.

In 2022, the Rural Schools Commission released a detailed report outlining startling findings. In a comparison of non-vocational districts, the commission found that per-pupil costs were 17% higher in districts with fewer than 1300 students than in their more populous counterparts, and across districts the report defined as sparse, total enrollment decline over the 2010s was only slightly less than the entire state’s figure — about 4,200 students. Mohawk Trail, for example, saw an enrollment decline of almost 20% over that period, a loss of about 200 students.

The report recommended that “at least $60 million should be appropriated annually in rural school aid” and that the standard funding formula for schools should be revised. 

But that hasn’t happened yet. 

Thurber said that the issue has been largely ignored by legislators east of the Connecticut River Valley, in part because rural areas have less voting power due to smaller populations. Each of the eight towns that she represents have populations below 2,000, she said, and none of them have significant commercial districts — making school funding more dependent on residents’ property taxes.

“As school districts begin to need more and more of those resources, then the towns are having to either say: ‘No, we can’t afford to educate our kids the way we want to educate them, or we can’t afford to plow our roads, or to fix our bridges, or to pay our own employees a decent salary.’ So there’s a real nexus between the survivability of rural schools and the survivability of rural towns.” Thurber said. 

Thurber said that one of the first steps that can be taken to remedy the underfunding is the immediate funding of $60 million to rural schools. This was the amount proposed in the original house version of the rural school funding bill by former state Rep. Natalie Blais. It’s still being sponsored by Sen. Joanne Comerford after Blais’ resignation to take another job, but the current bill text as amended by the Joint Committee on Education does not include that funding. 

Comerford declined a request for comment for this story.

As of January, the committee also removed aid for districts considering regionalization — a merging of multiple school districts — as well as reimbursement for building projects, transportation costs, and aid for the salaries of teachers and staff in districts undergoing regionalization. 

However, some aspects of the original bill remain intact: it defines “rural” districts as those with fewer than 35 students per square mile and a per capita income below the state average, and keeps certain assistance for districts that choose to regionalize, like debt relief and financial assistance with student costs for the first three years.

Regionalization isn’t appropriate for every city and town, Greg Snedaker, a veteran teacher and Gill Select Board member, told The Shoestring. But having spent the last decade exploring the option for six Franklin County towns as part of a regionalization board, he said it would improve the quality of education in the face of declining enrollment for students in Gill, Montague, Northfield, Warwick, Bernardston, and Leyden.

“We’ve watched [educational] programs disappear. We’ve watched the kids disappear,” Snedeker said. 

For Snedeker, smaller schools don’t always mean better education. He said regionalizing schools gives students more choices and opportunities for their education, and that it doesn’t have to result in teacher lay offs. Instead, he said that regionalization would give districts an opportunity to consolidate at the administrative level — like superintendents and business directors. He said that cost-saving measures in small districts like closing down schools and laying off teachers are avoidable.

“That’s what we’ve been doing for 30 years,” Snedeker said. “And by not regionalizing, you can expect more of [that] to come.”

According to Thurber, there’s been a push for rural schools to consolidate. But both Thurber and Corwin said that’s not realistic for many districts, especially without funding.

Corwin said that it’s an inequity issue — students at Frontier Regional School are losing a school adjustment counselor amidst a “mental health crisis” and every cut is impacting the education that students receive. According to her, rural schools can’t make any more cuts to their expenses. DESE’s latest report on teachers’ salaries found that rural schools already make up some of the lowest paying districts in the state.

Thurber said that further cuts would also lead to more “choicing out” — that is, parents with means will take their children out of the district in pursuit of a better education — leading to a “death spiral” of more declining enrollment, less funding, and more cuts. Thurber called that scenario “totally inequitable” for the students who don’t have the ability to go to school elsewhere.

Just a few weeks prior, Corwin said she had to vote in favor of a school budget that would result in laying off teachers. She said that as a former teacher, it was heartbreaking to her that teachers are being laid off because of the state’s inaction. 

Students and parents have also been mobilizing in response to rural schools’ funding crises.

Eliza Strickland moved to Leverett in 2021, partly because of the good reviews she had heard about the school district. Last week, she and other families got together in the cold rain to hold signs, raise awareness, and show support for rural schools. She’s a big believer in public schools, she said, and wanted to make sure that her children received public education. 

“You shouldn’t have to go to a pricey private school to get the best opportunities,” Strickland said.

She’s also the mother of a second-grader, who Strickland said loves school. For both of them, schools make up an integral part of their everyday lives. 

“It’s the heart of the community in my mind,” Strickland said. “Our social world kind of revolves around the people we know through school. It’s more than just an education for the kids, it’s a way to bring the community together.”

According to Strickland, schools in Leverett get a lot of community support. From non-profit organizations like the Leverett Education Foundation to PTO fundraisers that help students experience field trips and extracurriculars. But without dedicated community members  Strickland said that Leverett schools would be bare bones. And every year, she said it feels like there’s a crisis when budget negotiations for the town occur — with concerns over raising property taxes and school budgets. 

“We really want to keep our kids in there,” she said. “And keep supporting the school.”

Jimin Anh is a freshman at Frontier Regional School. She’s been attending school committee meetings whenever she can, and when she can’t, she watches them in her free time. She also makes it a point to attend Deerfield’s annual town meeting, where issues like school funding are discussed.

“When you’re in such a small school, you’re able to be very close to most of the people in the school,” Anh said. “I know most of the people at our school. I think it’s really fun because it’s almost like we’re a huge, big family.”

Despite the love she has for her school and community, Anh said that she has seen the way that underfunding has been impacting her school — she said that the textbooks are older and there are fewer classes offered than nearby schools in Springfield. 

“I really think that it’s unfair to the students at Frontier that we as a community need to work harder just to get the same basic education and experiences that other towns, regions, and schools can get for a lot less work and a lot less money,” Anh said.

She said that the teachers at Frontier put in extra time and effort in order for students to have the ability to experience extracurriculars. 

Frontier Regional School was one of dozens of schools across rural Massachusetts that took action. At the end of their school day last Thursday, students from the 7th to 12th grade gathered to spell “SOS” in their gym. She said that although she appreciates the hard work of her senators and representatives, she doesn’t feel like they pay attention to smaller rural schools.

“Just because we’re small doesn’t mean that we don’t matter. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need funding. We do,” Anh said. “The only reason we’ve been able to stay afloat as a school is because of so much of the extra work and money that the students, teachers, and the community puts into our school.”

The budget that Frontier Regional School Committee passed will cut “the librarian, a special education teacher, a part-time adjustment counselor, a hall monitor, and three instructional assistants,” according to Corwin. Anh said that she’s worried how it’ll affect the education of her peers. 

“We’re such a small school, when one thing gets cut, it’s like a ripple effect,” she said. “It truly affects every single student.”

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