As a state budget takes shape in Massachusetts, several lawmakers continue to fight for more rural school funding. Advocates for a bill refiled this session say rising costs and declining enrollment are leading to “death spirals” at some of the state’s most rural districts.
Martha Thurber, chair of the Mohawk Trail Regional School committee, didn't mince words Thursday when she spoke at a rural school funding legislative briefing.
Overseeing a district of over 800 students that spans about 250 square miles and four Franklin County schools, Thurber’s committee has been dealing with the brunt of declining enrollment and less funding from the state compared to districts less than 50 miles away.
“Once you start to lose staff and lose programming, you lose students. Students who can afford to do so will ‘choice’ to other districts,” she said, referring to the state’s inter-district school choice program. “Choice isn't a big deal in the eastern part of the state - it's a huge deal in western Massachusetts.”
“Kids who can transport themselves - or their parents can transport them - to a different district then do that, and that leaves you with a shell of a school serving the poorest kids in your communities,” she continued. “That's what we call the ‘death spiral’ and there are many rural school districts today who are either in or about to be in the death spiral.”
It's a dilemma State Senator Jo Comerford of Northampton and Representative Natalie Blais of Deerfield seek to address with the refiled “Act to Provide a Sustainable Future for Rural Schools.”
In it are measures that range from establishing a Rural Schools Aid Fund to a “Declining Enrollment Fund,” aiding schools in such a spiral. There are also items supporting school regionalization, creating an “Office of Shared Services” within the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Comerford says the bill comes at a time when municipalities across her rural Hampshire, Franklin and Worcester district continue to struggle to meet rising costs.
“Finance committees, select boards, town councils are meeting and they're making brutal choices, and it's all in the name of getting their kids the education that they need and deserve,” she said. “But it's coming at great expense, and in some communities, they will not be able to do that, and we will see a hemorrhage of educators.”
“A couple of years ago, at a Ways and Means Committee meeting that Chair Blais and I were at, we talked about western Mass. cutting educators a dozen at a time,” the senator recounted. “Right now, in western Mass., we’re cutting educators two or three dozen at a time.”
A state funding formula that better benefits bigger districts as well as sharp rises in transportation and special education costs have been pain points among rural districts.
One reform in the bill would make good on a 2022 state commission report that found rural schools in need of significantly more dollars than what’s been put forward in the past.
Last year's state budget included $16 million for rural schools – far higher than initial funding in years’ past, but as Representative Blais emphasized, it’s a far cry from the commission’s findings.
“That pot of money was $1 million. Today, we’ve been able to get that up to $16 million,” she said. “We know, based on the commission's report, that this fund should be at $60 million, not 1-6: 6-0. We've come a long way and there's much more to do.”
As it stands, the bill would codify rural school aid instead of leaving it up in the air with each state budget debate.
Blais says the bill would help address one of the biggest budget-busters towns face every year, creating dilemmas for communities with many residents living on fixed incomes and tax bases that are mostly residential.
“… community members feel this very deeply. While they want to support our local schools, they're having to make really difficult choices between funding schools or buying a new fire truck, and when you don't have that money, you're forced to make difficult decision,” she added.
Saying as much Thursday was Sarah Reynolds, town administrator for Charlemont, a hilltown of just over a thousand residents. She says with the town spending 56 percent of its most-recent $4.6 million budget on education, contributing even more is a big ask.
Coincidentally, her town also moved to buy a new fire truck at its town meeting while looking to save by merging fire districts with nearby Rowe.
"We did vote at town meeting this year [on] a fire district with a neighboring community, which is something that when I first started, the town wouldn't have done, because they’d look at you and say ‘Well, we're going to lose control of our stuff, ’but we are at the point where we have to come up with creative solutions…” she said.
Thurber noted that both the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont Regional school districts are looking into regionalizing further, including a potential merger of four elementary schools into a single campus.
In terms of actions on Beacon Hill, the rural schools aid bill was last discussed at a May hearing, according to the legislature’s website.
All the while, rural school funding appears to be taking a hit in the latest iteration of the FY26 budget. Emerging over the weekend, a conference committee report stated the rural schools aid line item totaled $12 million, a compromise between the state senate’s budget proposal of $16 million and the house’s $7.5 million.
