Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 11/9/2023
HUNTINGTON — The Gateway Regional School District learned in late October that it will receive a 177% increase in rural school aid for fiscal year 2024, for an increase from $300,000 in FY23 to $832,000 in the current year. But Superintendent Kristen Smidy said this amount is below the $1,096,272 that the district had budgeted for rural school aid this year.
In July 2022, a legislative panel issued a number of recommendations to improve rural education, and the number one recommendation was to increase rural aid to $60 million annually. According to the panel, the aid is vitally needed in rural areas with flat population growth and small municipal governments that must fund increasingly higher percentages of their school budgets from a stagnant tax base. The state announced in late October 2023 that it would fund rural school aid at $15 million in FY24.
“Working with our local legislators, we [knew] that the $60 million in rural aid was not going to be allocated,” Smidy said this week.
She said that the Rural Schools Report had projected that if rural aid was funded at $20 million, or one-third of the recommendation, Gateway was anticipated to receive $1,096,272.
“Because Gov. [Maura] Healey was promoting that equity and rural aid directly ties to equitable experiences for students, we were hoping that the $20 million would be funded, so we planned for that as a part of our budget,” Smidy said.
Smidy said knowing that Gateway’s six member towns of Blandford, Chester, Huntington, Middlefield, Montgomery and Russell want Gateway to keep any increase in total assessment to as close as 2.5% as possible, she said the district calculated their budget last March using the $1.096 million figure.
“We then look at the difference between what we expect for state aid, what the towns’ assessment would be, and then what we still need to continue to offer strong programming and required services to students. We were counting on the $1.09 million in rural aid to make up for the difference,” she said.
This school year, rural aid is already allocated in the Gateway district budget for a new intercom system for the middle-high school, replacing one that does not work; speech and language services based on the increased need indicated by students’ individual special education plans; a special education teacher at Littleville Elementary School for required programs; three paraprofessionals to serve identified student special education needs; special education tuitions out of district; partial salary for an assistant pupil services director needed because of increased programs; a full-time school nurse to ensure that there is a nurse in every school building; safety upgrades that were strongly recommended by the Department of Homeland Security, and required supplies for Gateway’s vocational programs.
“All of these expenditures are either mandated through required programming or a safety hazard if we don’t have in place. I am not sure what we would have done if we didn’t get rural aid. Even still, because we didn’t get the $1.09 million as we hoped for, we did end up making reductions to our library program and reduced multiple teaching positions (art, science, and interventionist),” Smidy said.
The $15 million for statewide rural school aid in FY24 was triple $5 million granted in FY23. The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education identified districts eligible based on having not more than 35 students per square mile and incomes of less than $58,820 per capita, according to 2020 data from the state Department of Revenue.
Based on these criteria, there are 68 school districts that are eligible to receive a share of the $15 million in rural school aid in FY24.
“Making sure that students throughout our region can access a high-quality education, equal to their counterparts around the state, is extremely important to me and our regional delegation,” said state Sen. Paul Mark (D-Becket) in an announcement Nov. 1. “Tripling the amount of Rural School Aid that will flow to our local districts this year is going to help our rural communities significantly and represents a major milestone in progress to full funding.”
The Gateway district has been actively pursuing full funding of $60 million for rural school aid statewide. Staff and students have made several trips to the Statehouse, with a delegation of 15 sent as recently as on Oct. 30 to speak to legislators on behalf of the need to offer equitable educational opportunities for rural schools throughout the state. The most recent Gateway contingent included Chester Elementary School students, school administrators, local legislators and Smidy herself.
“I also want to be clear that receiving notification of our allocated amount for rural aid in late October makes it a real challenge to plan for the budget year when our numbers are due to towns the March before,” Smidy said.
“The late notification does not permit us to be as thoughtful as possible because we are left holding our breath wondering how much we are going to get for months to see if we need to make more cuts or if we’ll have more to spend. It does not allow us to be as intentional as possible with the funding, which is a missed opportunity,” she added.