First-term Democrat Healey on Wednesday delivered the fourth budget proposal of her tenure, and labor leaders representing Massachusetts educators aren’t giving it a passing grade.
“There is a big fiscal crisis in our public education system, pre-K through higher ed," said Max Page. "In fact, just a month ago, we delivered to the governor's office a plea to deal with the fiscal crisis issue. And we had 1,100 elected leaders — union leaders, mayors, city council members, school community members all across the commonwealth — saying, please, take it on.”
Page is president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the largest union in the commonwealth. It represents around 117,000 education professionals.
“Some of that has been answered, but not enough," Page continued. "There are some good things in the budget- Fulfilling the Student Opportunity Act, for instance, more money for special education costs that have gone up, transportation costs that have gone up.”
But the union is more focused on what’s missing.
“There's nothing about really revenue in the governor's budget, meaning she's not calling for the passage of the Corporate Fair Share bill, which would ask very large corporations who are hiding profits overseas to pay their fair share, and there's no call to draw on our very large rainy-day fund, which we have built up over many years and we should be using when the federal government is cutting back on its funds for Massachusetts,” said the union's president.
Another issue Page says the MTA takes issue with is a $120 million cut to the Group Insurance Commission.
“Over 31,000 of our members are covered by the Group Insurance Commission, and the Group Insurance Commission sets the benchmark for municipal plans, even if they're not in the Group Insurance Commission," he explained. "So, we were really disappointed to see that in this massive budget, when revenues have not even been added into the mix, the governor is asking to essentially make healthcare more expensive and perhaps not as good for public employees, state and municipal.”
Jessica Tang is president of the Massachusetts American Federation of Teachers, which has a membership of around 20,000 educators and school workers across the commonwealth. Like Page, she has a mix of praise and concern for Healey’s budget proposal.
“The good news is that she does fully fund the Student Opportunities Act, and that means that the Legislature -- the House and the Senate — can go above and beyond that, and that's what we're hoping for," she told WAMC. "And the same thing with the charter school mitigation funds. It was an increase, but we'd like to see even more, because, again, it doesn't keep up with inflation.”
Tang also praises the governor’s proposal to expand rural school aid eligibility to agricultural schools, vocational schools, and some charter schools, and says she supports Healey’s BRIGHT Act bond bill that would direct $2.5 billion to support capital projects for higher-ed institutions.
She says the commonwealth’s education sector is facing a perfect storm due to a number of factors.
“One of them, of course, being that the federal government has cut $3.7 billion from the state, and specifically for education, that's over $200 million," said Tang. "And that has a lot of impacts when we also are facing declining enrollment in a lot of our districts. A lot of our districts also are seeing even steeper declines of enrollment because of the federal immigration policies right now.”
As a result, she says even Healey’s call to fully fund the Student Opportunity Act comes with a significant caveat -- especially for Western Massachusetts communities.
“In a normal time, on a normal year, would be fantastic," Tang said. "But the problem is that, because the formula doesn't take into account the true inflation level and the fixed costs, it actually isn't as much as we believe it needs to be. So, for context, the average funding gap from unaddressed inflation is $2.1 million, but that can greatly vary across districts, with a lot of higher gaps in districts like Springfield, where the gap is actually $31.6 million.”
Tang says the same logic applies to Healey’s call for a 3.3% increase in Chapter 70 funding, the main source of state money for Massachusetts schools.
“That sounds like it's an increase, but it doesn't actually have the impact we had hoped that it would have, because of the perfect storm of the fiscal cliff that so many of our communities, like Pittsfield, is facing," she said. "And so, Pittsfield is actually getting a less than 1% increase over the last fiscal year. And even if you level fund again, that is really a decrease because of the inflation.”
As the state legislature prepares to pick up budget talks ahead of the new fiscal year’s start on July 1, Tang says the AFT’s goals are clear – as are the risks of Massachusetts failing to support its educators, schools, and students.
“We know so many places that, they're expecting to have to cut positions, and that's student-facing positions that will have an impact on our students ability to get the services that they need,” she said.
Democratic State Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier, who represents Pittsfield in the State House, says addressing the lack of education funding in Healey’s budget proposal is her No. 1 priority in the coming months.
“We just need to fix this Chapter 70 issue for Pittsfield this year," the state rep told WAMC. "We need to look at it really closely and make sure that Pittsfield has the funds it needs to be able to do the work it needs to do.”
