School Funding

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This week, Incorruptible Mass takes a hard look at how schools are funded here in our home state. We'll have a conversation with Dr. Sarah Elizabeth Neville, a candidate running for reelection to the Chelsea School Committee, about the impact of ICE and other federal immigration policies, how rising inflation nationally and globally affects kids here in Massachusetts, and what aspects of our own state's education system makes the situation here so unique.

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Transcript

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Anna Callahan

00:00:01 - 00:01:16

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know that we could have a legislature that truly represents and upholds the needs of the 7 million people who live here in our Commonwealth. Today we have a really excellent conversation about school funding here in Massachusetts. We will be speaking with our amazing guest, Sarah Elizabeth Neville. From the Chelsea School Committee who can give us some insights into what is happening in that city. We will talk broadly about the way that school funding is affected by immigration and ICE policies. We are going to talk about how inflation is affecting it. We're going to talk about how Massachusetts-specific policies affect both both school funding and city funding. And so we're really going to dig into it and talk more about the way that our state policies affect our cities and our schools specifically here in Massachusetts. It's going to be a great conversation. But before we do, I am going to have my illustrious co-host Jonathan Cohen introduce himself.

Jonathan Cohen

00:01:17 - 00:01:28

Hello, I'm Jonathan Cohen. I'm he/him/his, joining from Boston in the South End. And I've been active with progressive issue and electoral campaigns here in Boston and Massachusetts for over a decade now.

Anna Callahan

00:01:29 - 00:02:03

And I'm Anna Callahan, she/her, coming at you from Medford, where I am a city councillor, so also dealing with city funding issues and school funding issues. So I'm sure I'll chime in a little bit as well with my personal experience. And I'm very excited to introduce, or have her introduce herself, Sarah Elizabeth Neville, who is on the school committee in Chelsea. And first, I would love to just have you introduce yourself, but I'd love to hear a little bit about what really got you interested in running for school committee in the first place.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:02:05 - 00:03:09

Yeah, thanks so much. I'm so happy to be here. Let's see. Well, when my husband and I moved to Chelsea, my husband was actually the one who ran for school committee in 2019. My husband, Roberto Jimenez Rivera, he was the at-large school committee member for 4 years in Chelsea. And then when he decided to run for city council instead, I just felt like, you know, I've been seeing the work that Roberto's been doing on school committee for so long, and I feel like maybe now it's the time for me to step up and run in my district and try and carry that good work forward. We have a lot of uncontested races in Chelsea usually. Sometimes we have even had seats that go completely unfilled. Um, well, both City Council and School Committee, or just School Committee? Uh, that happened with School Committee. Um, there was one year, um, where we actually had 2 seats that had to be appointed.

Jonathan Cohen

00:03:09 - 00:03:10

Oh wow.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:03:11 - 00:03:49

It wasn't even a sticker campaign, like, it was— they— 2 seats had to be appointed. So that out of, out of 9. So really, that's— I know I'm not like the perfect candidate or the best, you know, one to run. But you never know, right? Don't sell yourself short. So yeah, I just won my second term. I was unopposed both times, won with like 100 votes, you know, real big election in Chelsea. So this is my third year now that I've been on school committee.

Anna Callahan

00:03:50 - 00:03:51

Great.

Jonathan Cohen

00:03:51 - 00:04:01

Don't see yourself as having one of us. See yourself as you beat everybody else in the district in terms of desire to sell. Chelsea School Committee.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:04:02 - 00:04:04

That is one way to look at it.

Anna Callahan

00:04:06 - 00:04:23

So I hear through from a little bird that you— that there was like a pretty interesting interaction between COVID, like the effects of COVID on the schools in Chelsea specifically. And I'd love to just hear you tell that story. Or Jonathan, you look like you're jumping in to give her another.

Jonathan Cohen

00:04:24 - 00:05:03

Just commenting about like, just adding some additional things to that. When I think about, let's say, some of this stuff in Chelsea that we'll talk about in a bit, that to me, like so much of like an overhang is what Chelsea had to put up with during COVID particularly like kind of the 2020, 2021, 2022. I feel like I'll get— people would attack and say that COVID is formally done because you still have some little surges here and now and again. But during those beginning years that the city was hit particularly hard, and I think that that has intersected with so much of municipal governance and the schools in Chelsea.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:05:04 - 00:07:38

Right, right. Yeah. I mean, so I have a little thing that I like to say, which is America runs on Dunkin', Greater Boston runs on Chelsea. And that's because Chelsea is literally all of the industry, all of the essential workers, all of the environmental injustice, it's all in Chelsea. The reason we were the— I think we were the first COVID epicenter in Massachusetts, maybe the first in the Northeast besides New York City. We are big up there in terms of early, early COVID. Rates, March, April 2020. And that's because we have so many essential workers in Chelsea. We've got the produce distribution center running the whole New England. I mean, just also for context, we have the salt piles that also serve all of this area, trucking routes, shipping routes. We do it all, and everything is thanks to Chelsea. So don't forget about us. We house the jet fuel for Logan Airport. It's all here. So that's why I say Greater Boston runs on Chelsea. And what that means is we were the COVID epicenter, the earliest COVID epicenter in the region. And I think that we're kind of like Chelsea tends to be the canary in the coal mine for a lot of state-level problems. Like things will hit us first as it's rolling out to hit other places too. Chelsea, not only did we have really high COVID infection rates early on, but the socioeconomic impacts were just devastating. We had to just do a really intense food distribution effort in those days. It was really something. I was pregnant at the time with my first, so I did not participate in any of those efforts. I just sat at home and watched the world go by and watched everything falling apart around me. But yeah, and it's interesting because COVID happened right after the Student Opportunity Act was passed, which is a huge funding bill that leaders in Chelsea and advocates in Chelsea, as well as other cities across the state, really fought really hard to win.

Jonathan Cohen

00:07:39 - 00:07:42

And for that, can you explain to us what was the Student Opportunity Act?

Anna Callahan

00:07:42 - 00:07:42

Right.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:07:43 - 00:07:46

Yeah. Well, how much in the weeds do you want me to get?

Anna Callahan

00:07:46 - 00:07:53

So we did— we had an entire episode, at least one, maybe multiple on this. But just for our listeners to remind them.

Jonathan Cohen

00:07:53 - 00:07:54

Yeah.

Anna Callahan

00:07:54 - 00:08:20

Like some of the basics of the Student Opportunity Act. Right. And one of the basics was trying to even out because in America, your funding comes from your city property taxes. So if you're a wealthy city with wealthy people in it, you have more money for your school. That's not fair. So that was one of the concepts behind the Student Opportunity Act was to try to even out that funding. But tell us a little bit of if there are other aspects of it that Chelsea particularly wanted.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:08:20 - 00:10:25

Right. Right. So Chelsea, 75% of our school budget comes from the state government, which is a lot more than most other cities and towns in Massachusetts. So the way that the state calculates state funding for school districts, which they call state aid or Chapter 70 aid, whatever that formula is affects us really, really deeply. So we have a ton of immigrants. We have a really, really big Central American immigrant population. We're a gateway city, the first destination for a lot of families who are coming into this country. Highest number of English as a second language learners, student, ELL students, highest proportion in the state. And so the effects of poverty and trauma and needing to learn English for the first time, some kids are coming over and they are 13 and they have a second grade education because of whatever was going on in their country. All that stuff, I mean, I hate to say it, it's more costly to give those kids what they need to have a good education and to have, you know, to fulfill their potential because they have more that they're trying to overcome. And so the Student Opportunity Act was all about changing that formula so that for 3 categories— students who are low income, students who were ELLs or English language learners, and special education students— and making sure that that formula, which funds school districts per pupil based on enrollment, gives enough of an extra funding for those 3 categories. So extra funding, depending by the number of English language learners you have, extra funding by the number of low-income learners you have. And the formula used to give a little extra bump for those categories, and the Student Opportunity Act changed it so that it gave a bigger bump.

Anna Callahan

00:10:25 - 00:10:40

Amazing. So back to the COVID So it had just— Student Opportunity Act had just passed. We go into COVID. And anything more you want to say about the effects that COVID had on Chelsea's school district?

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:10:41 - 00:11:15

No, I mean, that's really it. We were the canary in the coal mine. We were— we had all of the first impacts. We were you know, the, our district had to figure out what do you do when kids don't have internet at home and now they have to do Zoom school. So yeah, and it's not just like, oh no, school's online, but it's like, oh no, you know, our kids' parents are still going to work and are at risk of contracting COVID and they're wondering how they're going to get food if they're not getting school meals anymore. So it was just a lot.

Jonathan Cohen

00:11:16 - 00:11:35

So, right, so the Student Opportunity Act, as we noted, 2019, right before like everything collapsed and messed up with like the implementation of that. We're nearing the end of the implementation period for the Student Opportunity Act. What does the new situation look like for school funding and what new challenges have arisen since?

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:11:37 - 00:14:50

It just makes my heart hurt, you know? So the first couple years, so what they did is they took that new bump for those categories and they spread it out over 6 years. So they didn't like phase it in all at once. They phased it in over 6 years. So this is actually our last year of the phase-in. So for the first couple years, everything was like, wow, we have so much cash because they're phasing in this new formula and it's resulting in a lot more funding for our district every year. And then as time went on, we started to kind of see those impacts get eaten up by other cost drivers and like get eaten up by other things outside of our control. So I'm going to talk about 3 things that happen. The first thing that happened is the inflation problem. Some people call this the inflation glitch. So the state funding formula says that we're going to multiply everything by the inflation rate every year. You're going to get your state funding multiplied by the amount of inflation that happens in the state, right? Obviously, you got to do that. Otherwise, how can you pay for things? But the Student Opportunity Act and the Chapter 70 funding formula bill had this thing in it that says, well, we're afraid that what'll happen if inflation gets really bad, then the state might not have enough money to pay for everything. So we're going to put a cap on inflation. They said if inflation ever goes more higher than 4.5%, we're only going to multiply the inflation factor by 4.5%. So right after COVID, Inflation was like 7% in one year and then it was 8% the next. But our funding only got multiplied by 4.5% in those two years. So the state was like, well, we got to protect the fiscal health of the state by having this factor in there. It's like, well, what about the fiscal health of Chelsea Public Schools? Who's going to give us— who's going to help us account for the costs of inflation? The answer is nobody. So we just had to eat the cost, you know, like utilities is going up, health insurance is going up, all the cost of the school district is going up, but the amount of state aid that we're receiving is not being reflected by that. And so we lost, like, I can't remember, remember exactly how the math works out, but it was like $7 million. I don't know, per year, I guess it doesn't really, whatever. That's, that number doesn't mean much to anyone, but it was a lot. And when you look at the, um, analysis that MassBudget did of how the inflation problem affected districts, and you look at it on a per-student basis, Chelsea was the district that got hit hardest by that inflation problem because we are so reliant on state funding because we don't have that local tax base.

Anna Callahan

00:14:52 - 00:14:52

Wow.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:14:52 - 00:14:55

So that was the first thing. Second thing is—

Jonathan Cohen

00:14:55 - 00:15:00

wait, one quick thing on that. You also have the way in which it's a problem that just keeps compounding on itself.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:15:01 - 00:15:19

Yeah, because the inflate— once you multiply it once, then next year gets multiplied by another number, and you're multiplying it against a number that should have been higher. So that means that like, if that, that loss goes on forever and ever, you know, it's like a— it's like, uh, kind of like, um, compound interest or whatever.

Anna Callahan

00:15:19 - 00:15:22

Yeah, yeah, we have a little mini math class here.

Jonathan Cohen

00:15:22 - 00:15:23

Exactly.

Anna Callahan

00:15:24 - 00:15:31

All right, so inflation was one of the— one of the big One of the big ones. Yeah, another one.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:15:32 - 00:16:37

The other one is just the rising costs in general. So without even the inflation cap, this is something that's affecting all districts in Massachusetts. The state funding formula just isn't really accounting for the cost of educating kids. And it's not because inflation was more than 4.5%. That was a special issue, but just in general, people are, districts across the state, they're projecting what their costs are going to be for next year if they keep all of their services and everything the same, and they're coming up short because the state funding just isn't keeping up with costs. And that's just like an inherent, something's wrong with the formula that it's just not accounting for the real costs of educating kids. So that's the second thing, and that's affecting every single school district in Massachusetts. Rural schools are really struggling, you know, transportation, the cost of special ed, and having to— when kids are sent out of district into special schools and they have to pay that tuition, those costs really rack up, you know.

Anna Callahan

00:16:38 - 00:18:29

And I will jump in here to say that, like, this was one of the conversations that we had because we, in our city council in Medford, we recently finally got an override placed on our ballot for the first time. First time. We had never done an override, a tax override, and we did place one on the ballot, which required the city council. And as we were going through that process of trying to get this through the city council and then get the voters to approve of it on the ballot, I did a big deep dive into the budget. And one of the things that people don't realize is that a large portion of your city's budget is uncontrollable. right? So it can be things like insurance, like you have to pay insurance for all of your salaried workers. And that's a lot of workers and you have to pay other kinds of insurance too. But like health insurance and then bonds, those have to be repaid, like pensions, those have to be like there are things that you literally just, you know, you can't, you can't cut them. There's nothing that you can do. And with health insurance in particular, like health insurance one year went up by 10%. So it's it's not inflation. It, like, these costs aren't necessarily tied to inflation, right? The cost that a city might have. And for schools, insurance is a large— health insurance for all the employees, that's a large percentage of your budget. It's a large percentage. And if that goes up by 10% and the amount of funding that you have is only going up by 4%, then you got a problem, right? So just backing you up on that question of different kinds of funding or different kinds of expenses and how those expenses may not be tied even to the inflation number. And when you're saying inflation was 8% and it only went up 4% or 5%, just because inflation goes up 4% doesn't mean that your costs are going up 4%.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:18:32 - 00:18:34

Yeah. Yep.

Jonathan Cohen

00:18:34 - 00:18:38

And what's the other thing that's been hitting?

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:18:38 - 00:19:57

And the third thing is the one that's the worst right now for us. And it's also the newest, which is that Ever since Trump came into office, he basically, he did two things. He basically made it so that no one was crossing the border anymore, and he started terrorizing communities like Chelsea with immigration enforcement and ICE agents. And we have had a roughly 5% decrease in enrollment from this year. Our enrollment number is 350 students less than it was last school year. And of course, that state funding formula is tied to enrollment and the number of kids you have. It gets multiplied. You get like, you put in the number of kids you have, put in whether or not they're English language learners and low income, multiply it all, and that's the number you get. So it's like, you know, $20,000-ish per student. And so to have such a huge enrollment drop in one year just has decimated our budget. And the most recent estimate from MassBudget suggests that it cost us We would have gotten $9 million more from the state if we had had level enrollment. Wow, that is very—

Anna Callahan

00:19:58 - 00:20:00

puts you guys in a terrible position.

Anna Callahan

00:20:39 - 00:21:09

Go ahead, Jonathan.

Jonathan Cohen

00:21:09 - 00:21:39

Okay. So as we were just talking about the impact of kind of ICE and kind of increased ICE presence and ICE enforcement on the schools. And so with these three things you were talking about, right? So you have the impact of increased ICE activity on the schools and declining attendance. You have the problems in the funding formula itself, and you have years of kind of compounded shortchanging due to inflation. What should the legislature be doing to address this?

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:21:41 - 00:25:20

I mean, there's a lot of things. So one thing that we're pushing for right now, and specifically I see AFT Massachusetts, the teachers union, and MEJA, the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, really leading the charge on this. Is just to ask for some sort of extra grants from the state to soften the blow from this enrollment decline. You know, we know that with more, with fewer students, you have fewer costs. And so some right-sizing is potentially necessary, even if it is painful. I mean, although I will say like, oh wow, we're gonna have smaller class sizes, you know, due to the enrollment rate, due to the enrollment decline. And then, oh no, you have to cut teachers because, you're a poor district and you don't have extra money to spend, that sucks. But we acknowledge that that's kind of the way things work. So enrollment grants from the state, I think that might be proposed in some sort of a budget amendment coming up. I'm not entirely sure about the details, but that's That's really important because just to have one big cut like this all at once, it's just really, really hard and really painful. We just passed our budget last night and we had to cut about 50, 55 teaching positions in Chelsea. That's what the district proposed to cut. It's really painful for the students, the teachers, the families. So there's that. There's also, although I will say the thing that really bums me out is there's, I tend to hear these rumors that people from across the state, different state legislators or advocates elsewhere, they'll be like, Oh, well, you know, the gateway school districts already got their turn. They already got their assistance. They already got the Student Opportunity Act. Now it's like, what about the suburban districts? What about the rural districts? And that really bums me out because I just don't think that we— the idea behind the Student Opportunity Act is that the quality of education you receive shouldn't depend on your zip code. Or at least that you should have— I mean, the idea behind the state funding formula in the first place is that every student, regardless of their zip code, deserves access to a minimum quality level of education. And the Student Opportunity Act was acknowledging that the previous formula wasn't providing that minimum. And I would go further and say that everyone deserves an equal access to equal quality regardless of their zip code. And other districts, they have large tax bases to draw upon where they can fund their schools by much, much millions of dollars more than what the state funding formula says is necessary. To give them that minimum education quality. And districts like Chelsea were basically only funded at around where that minimum is. And like, that also sucks. Yeah.

Anna Callahan

00:25:20 - 00:25:20

Yeah.

Jonathan Cohen

00:25:21 - 00:25:51

It reminds me of how like many communities like suffer from having to do override votes because of Prop 2.5. But like, if you do a Prop 2.5 override, you typically have at least a tax base on which to actually raise additional money. But in some of the cities, like And Prop 2.5 is a terrible policy. It's overly restrictive. We should repeal it so that it doesn't become such a nightmare for communities to govern and fund themselves. But in some communities, like, an override isn't really going to be on the table because you don't have that much of a property tax base to begin with.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:25:51 - 00:25:55

Yeah, it's absolutely not on the table in Chelsea. We all acknowledge that limitation.

Anna Callahan

00:25:56 - 00:26:40

Right. And I think why it's so interesting to talk to you and talk about Chelsea with the way— I love how you frame it as the canary in the coal mine. Like, sitting on the city council in Medford, I hear that lots and lots of school districts across the Commonwealth are having major problems, funding problems this year. And we can hear from you about the fundamental reasons that you guys experience so intensely that other districts are going to experience less intensely, but but still experience and realize that, oh, they're actually at the point now where they are having a problem. You guys clearly have been aware of this problem for a while and have to deal with the sort of worst of it.

Jonathan Cohen

00:26:40 - 00:26:41

Yeah.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:26:41 - 00:28:47

Right. And the fixes that would help Chelsea are usually progressive fixes. And some of the other funding fixes that people push for are ultimately regressive fixes. So for example, there's a lot of regressive stuff that's just baked into our funding formula. One of the things is, so the way the funding formula works is you have a formula where they take your city's property values or property wealth and income levels and they multiply it by God knows what. And what they come up with is the required city contribution. The idea is it's the amount that your city can afford to spend on its schools. And the formula is built in such a way, or that's how the formula is built. And then what schools actually get, what districts actually get, is even if a city is able to pay for the entire cost of their school district, the entire, like what the state says per formula is that they need to be spending, or even more, they can afford more, the state still gives them 17.5% of their school not their school budget, but of what they say it takes to educate students. So basically it's like, in order to get wealthy cities on board with this funding mechanism, we got to throw them a bone. And so as a result, our state is spending millions and millions of dollars on things like this, on things like holding harmless enrollment in other cities where they probably should be downsizing, but they, they give them extra aid because they don't want to reduce their aid so that it goes down from one year to the next. Um, and so all the cities who can afford more, um, get all these kind of extra bonuses because of the way politics works, where you have to make everyone happy. And it's not about who actually needs it, it's about how do you get everyone on board. And, and that also sucks.

Anna Callahan

00:28:48 - 00:29:02

I know. If only we actually believed that all children were, you know, were valuable and had equal opportunity, you know, should have an equal opportunity to a great education. That's clearly not the way that the U.S. system was built. I wanted to throw in—

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:29:02 - 00:29:32

although wait, I'll say one more thing, is that I shouldn't be complaining about spending too much on education. What I should be complaining about— like, it's cool that Brooklyn wants throw millions of extra dollars at their schools. But I heard that in Texas, when you spend extra money on your schools over what's required, you also have to make a donation to a pot of money that gets sent out to the other districts that can't afford to do that. Right? Wouldn't that be cool?

Anna Callahan

00:29:32 - 00:31:17

Interesting. I like that. I was just going to throw in a little bit about Massachusetts City funding and remind people this is this portion of the episode where you will hear how Massachusetts is not a glowing, wonderful beacon of hope in America, that we are not the best state in the world, in the country, that we really could be improved upon. I want to remind people we had a previous episode that was about municipal funding generally and how different it is in Massachusetts. And in Massachusetts, we are really hampered both by the Prop 2.5 that makes it, you know, you have to put it on that. You have to put it to voters if you want to increase the amount of money that you raise on property taxes, but also how limited we are, cities in Massachusetts, in our ability to raise funds, that we are severely limited. And in Massachusetts, like, over most cities in Massachusetts, over 70% of their funding comes from property taxes. And that is really not the case across the country. I think the average is around 60% because they allow cities to raise funds from other means. Right. And there's lots of other different ways that they can do that. But here in Massachusetts, we aren't allowed to do that because we are— you know, we have the state that sort of passes laws and has things in the Constitution that do not allow cities to do things that we are allowed to do. Cities are allowed to do in other states. And this is one of the ways that I think that is not helping It is not good. Really hurts us. And the number one budget for any city that has a school district is schools. So that is what it primarily hurts is the schools.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:31:17 - 00:31:23

Also, cutting taxes at the state level also does not help.

Anna Callahan

00:31:24 - 00:31:26

Really? What a surprise.

Jonathan Cohen

00:31:26 - 00:31:32

Imagine having less money means you have less money to do things.

Anna Callahan

00:31:33 - 00:31:42

Imagine, imagine. Great. Well, we are rounding up our discussion here. Do you have any other—

Jonathan Cohen

00:31:42 - 00:31:47

Hold on, before we do final things, Anna, speaking of funding.

Anna Callahan

00:31:48 - 00:32:57

Oh yeah, thank you, Jonathan. You're always a good reminder. I often remember, but not always. Hey, if you think that this information is valuable, Put a dollar value on it. There's a link below. You can toss us a few bucks or a lot of bucks, whatever you feel like. One of the things that we talk about often is how the media does not properly portray any policy issue in America, not in Massachusetts, not in Massachusetts at the state level, not in Massachusetts at the city level. We have a dearth of good media. And so we provide these amazing interviews like you're hearing today about many different topics that you care about here in Massachusetts. And it does take us a little bit of money. None of us get paid, but we do pay some lovely young people to do our graphics, our video editing, our social media, and make sure that this podcast and YouTube video stream can get into the ears and eyes of as many people as possible. Thank you so much to our donors. And before we go and close the episode—

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:33:58 - 00:34:39

One more thing I forgot to say. Another policy fix is that a lot of advocates are pushing— advocates from all across the spectrum are pushing for Massachusetts to have another like Chapter 70 funding formula commission to look again at how we can fix the formula and other— yeah, just to just look at it again. But the thing that sucks is that I don't remember the specifics, John. What did they take, 10 years to—

Jonathan Cohen

00:34:39 - 00:34:41

Oh yeah, it took a while.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:34:42 - 00:34:48

Yeah. So I mean, first you got to actually pass a vote, like get it passed that you're even going to do a commission.

Anna Callahan

00:34:48 - 00:34:49

Yeah.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:34:49 - 00:35:50

And that has to pass. So that's also— it's been in talks for a year or two, still hasn't happened yet. Then the commission has to do the research and the, you know, the work of the commission. And then a piece of legislation has to be passed that actually reforms the formula. And then they have to phase in the formula because they're not going to phase it in all at once like I talked about. So we're not going to see, even if we do get that commission to happen, we're not going to see the financial impacts of it in what, 15 years? It's way long. It's so important to do, but we got to do something else in the meantime too, which is why the enrollment grants or the inflation fix. My state senator, Sal DiDomenico, last year he proposed to remove the cap on inflation. Some other people have proposed giving money back that that districts lost from that inflation cap. So we need other solutions in addition to the formula commission.

Anna Callahan

00:35:50 - 00:36:07

Absolutely. And I will say, shocker for our audience, the state moves very slowly. Big shock. Final words, final words, final thoughts. Anything you want, any ways that people can help?

Sarah Elizabeth Neville

00:36:09 - 00:36:16

Anything people can do? Follow Progressive Mass and MEJA, I think. Yeah, those are my faves. Those are my faves.

Anna Callahan

00:36:18 - 00:36:19

Awesome. Jonathan, final thoughts?

Jonathan Cohen

00:36:20 - 00:36:54

I would say one is the importance of like we all should be caring about the success of our public schools and particularly that we're providing them the funding so that all students have the ability to succeed, that you shouldn't just be able to have a great public education if you're going to schools in one of like the well-funded suburban districts. And in order to make sure that everybody's able to get that high-quality public education, the state needs to provide more money. We need to make rich people pay more so that we can invest in everything that we need to and need the state to actually view both funding and equity as both important goals.

Anna Callahan

00:36:55 - 00:37:47

And my final words are going to be that if we want our schools to be funded, then we want our cities to be funded. And Massachusetts should stop strangling cities through the 2.5 bill, which they could easily repeal, and also through the basic restrictions that we have on municipalities being able to raise. So the vast majority of any city that has a school district's funds are spent on the schools. We want schools to succeed. We want cities to succeed. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, School Committee Member Neville. We have really enjoyed having you on here and wish you the best of luck in Chelsea. Thanks so much to all of our listeners. Forward the show to anyone interested, and we look forward to chatting with you all next week.