December 2, 2025
Massachusetts Department of Elementary Massachusetts Department of Revenue
and Secondary Education (DESE) Division of Local Services (DLS)
135 Santilli Hwy. 100 Cambridge St.
Everett, MA 02149 Boston, MA 02114
RE: Written comments for the Chapter 70 Local Contribution Study
Dear Committee members:
Thank you for the opportunity to submit written comments on how Massachusetts can strengthen local education funding. Fixing the inflation glitch for local education funding, assessing the limitations and pitfalls of minimum per-pupil increases, and expanding access to vocational schools will help municipalities across the Commonwealth provide high-quality education to children and families in their communities.
The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MassBudget) is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that provides rigorous research and policy analysis along with strategic advocacy in partnership with grassroots organizations, many of whom work on improving the education system in Massachusetts. Through our research we have identified ways to improve equity in the education system and expand access to high-quality education for all families. Elementary and secondary education have been a crucial component of MassBudget’s research and policy analysis agenda for close to 40 years.
BACKGROUND
The Chapter 70 school finance formula was adopted as part of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. With Chapter 70, the legislature established the foundation for the state’s public school funding formula which was implemented in Fiscal Year (FY) 1994. The funding formula was created to ensure that every public school district in Massachusetts had the necessary fiscal resources to provide adequate education for their students. The formula:
- establishes a minimum spending level for each district, also known as the “foundation budget”;
- determines the “required local contribution” or how much each city and town must contribute to the “foundation budget”;
- calculates the difference between a municipality’s required local contribution and the foundation budget; and
- covers the difference with the state’s Chapter 70 school aid.
Chapter 70 did not account for the historically embedded disparities in the existing education system that hindered student achievement. It also did not consider that the formula itself could contribute to the underfunding of under-resourced cities and towns education districts or how the lack of adequate funding contributed to further inequities. That is, while Massachusetts had made significant contributions to its public education system, there were wide gaps in student experiences and learning outcomes when accounting for race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of children. Black, indigenous, and students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English language learners faced significant systemic equity gaps in academic achievements and learning outcomes when compared to high-income students, white students, students without disabilities, and English speaking students.
Twenty-six years after the approval of the Chapter 70 formula, the legislature passed the Student Opportunity Act (SOA) which reasserted the Commonwealth’s commitment to provide every student in Massachusetts with high-quality learning opportunities that will lead them to academic success.
The SOA created a Twenty-First Century Education Trust Fund that is administered by the Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in consultation with the Twenty-First Century Education Advisory Council. The Fund’s purpose is to:
- address persistent disparities in achievement among student subgroups;
- improve educational opportunities for all students;
- share best practices for improving classroom learning; and
- support efficiencies within and across school districts.
ANALYSIS
Fixing the Inflation Glitch for Local Education Funding
The Chapter 70 education funding formula accounts for annual inflation rates, yet the inflation adjustment is capped at 4.5 percent. When the established inflation rate included in Chapter 70 has been lower than the actual inflation rate, it results in significant funding shortages for school districts in that year and in future years, as each year’s increase is based on the previous year. FY 2023 and FY 2024 had levels of inflation that exceeded the cap, reaching roughly 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. The difference between the 4.5 percent inflation rate and the actual rate (of 7 percent and 8 percent) is known as the “inflation glitch” in Massachusetts’s Chapter 70 education funding formula. This “glitch” means that the state funding has not kept pace with the increasing cost of goods and services required to provide a good quality education for our students.
The 2019 Student Opportunity Act (SOA) has been crucial to improving K-12 education and advancing equity in the public education system. However, the inflation glitch that prevails in the Chapter 70 formula has been a major setback toward the overarching goal of providing equity based, good quality education for every child in every school district. The high inflation levels, unprecedented since the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, were not matched by Chapter 70, and have eroded the value of the SOA and will continue to do so in the future.
In FY 2023 and FY 2024, DESE operated with a budget that capped a maximum of 4.5 percent inflation rate, leading to a combined gap of roughly 6 percentage points over two years.
According to MassBudget’s June 2024 analysis based on DESE data, the average funding gap from unaddressed inflation for school districts was $2.1 million. However, the funding gaps vary greatly across districts. For example, Springfield had a funding gap of $28 million while Eastham and Rochester had a funding gap of just $19,000. The underfunding tends to be larger in precisely the communities that depend most on Chapter 70 funding, such as Gateway Cities.
Recommendation: We recommend that the Chapter 70 Local Contribution Study acknowledges, addresses, and prioritizes the inflation glitch to account for high inflation years, in order to adequately achieve the objectives of the Student Opportunity Act.
For more information on how the inflation glitch impacts each school district in Massachusetts, visit MassBudget’s interactive map which provides data on Chapter 70 funding, Student Opportunity Act funding, and how much funding school districts would have received if funding would have matched the actual inflation rate.
Increasing Minimum Per-Pupil Aid Is Not Enough
While increasing the minimum per-pupil aid has been a recent focus of formula updates, it tends to provide more benefits to wealthier towns that do not receive Chapter 70 funding. This is based on traditional factors like enrollment growth and financial need. Additionally, increasing minimum per-pupil aid may make it more difficult to find consensus around future efforts to advance equity because it reduces the number of communities that benefit from needed reforms.
Recommendation: We recommend that the Chapter 70 Local Contribution Study assess the limitations and pitfalls of minimum per-pupil increases in the future to remedy issues we are raising.
Vocational Schools Need Additional Investments
The success and growing popularity of vocational schools is a very positive development that was not fully evident at the time the Chapter 70 funding formula was implemented in 1994. The increased interest in vocational schools should prompt further study of the adequacy of the current funding formula and, therefore, contribution rates in the context of vocational schools. The Chapter 70 Local Contribution Study should pay particular attention to vocational schools and determine if these schools will require additional funding, when compared to non-vocational schools. Vocational education, on average, costs around $5,000 more in per-pupil operational spending than traditional schools based on data from 2023. Furthermore, vocational schools tend to require high levels of capital investment because of the programs of study offered. Sophisticated and well equipped laboratories and specialized instructors and teachers are needed to offer a good quality vocational and technical education.
Recommendation: We recommend that the Chapter 70 Local Contribution Study includes in its analysis the current and projected demand for vocational schools, the necessary funding (when compared to traditional schools) needed to operate these schools, and the posibility of expanding high-quality vocational education – either by offering more programs of study, by admitting more students, or by building more vocational schools in the Commonwealth.
Thank you for considering these comments and recommendations. We look forward to continuing to work with you to ensure children and families across the Commonwealth have access to quality education.
Jessica Troe
Deputy Director of Research and Policy Analysis
Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center
