For the Commonwealth to increase state aid to the Amherst and Amherst-Pelham Regional schools by $3.8 million”

• We are asking for the Commonwealth to increase state aid to the Amherst and Amherst-Pelham Regional School Districts by $3.8 million annually by changing the way that school choice tuition is funded.
• $3.8 million is the amount we pay in costs for school choice and charter schools and it is deducted from our state school aid. 
• This petition addresses school funding inequity in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and how it affects Amherst, Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett specifically. It joins similar petitions in other affected communities in the Commonwealth. 

This petition is for Amherst, Pelham, Shutesbury, and Leverett residents to ask the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to change the way that school choice tuition is funded, by underwriting the municipal cost of sending tuition for low and moderate income cities and towns.  

Under Massachusetts’ current funding system, for each student who leaves their public school district for a charter school, almost all of the public funding for that student follows the student to the charter school. For each student that leaves their public school district for another public school district, a smaller, but significant, portion of the public funding follows the student to the chosen school district.  

In 2023, the current funding policies cost the town of Amherst nearly $3.8 million ($2 million for the Amherst School District and $1.8 for the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District). This sum is deducted from the school aid that Amherst receives from the state. 

The current system costs public schools much more in tuition payments than it saves them by educating fewer students. Because students "choice out" from different classrooms, grades and schools across a public school district, the costs to operate the public school district remain relatively unchanged, making it difficult for districts to proportionally shrink in response to declining enrollment. Many of the costs associated with running a school district do not "scale down" and are fixed costs including maintenance, utilities, transportation and benefits negotiated in good faith for public employees.  

This results in more local budget cuts, further perpetuating a downward spiral of loss of students to charter schools and wealthier school districts and a continued decline in school funding, loss of programming and support staff.

The Commonwealth has a constitutional obligation to provide an education for all its children, rich and poor, in every city and town through the public schools.  Yet, the current funding system siphons valuable and necessary public funding disproportionately from low and moderate income public schools. The Commonwealth can correct this inequity by taking financial responsibility for Charter School and School Choice assessments for low and moderate income school districts.

We are asking for our local and state officials to vocalize support for this policy change. This petition is directed at the following decision makers:

The Amherst School Committee
The Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee
The Pelham School Committee 
The Shutesbury School Committee
The Leverett School Committee
The Amherst Town Council
State Representative Mindy Domb (Amherst)
State Representative Natalie Blais (Shutesbury & Leverett)
State Representative Aaron Saunders (Shutesbury & Pelham)
State Senator Joanne Comerford

See Mass Promise to Invest website for more information: https://masspromise2invest.org/

[photo credit: By John Phelan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19002047