Inspired this weekend by the various observances of justice, of proclamations of good news, and also by this
2012 piece from Charlie Pierce, which includes the following:
It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and enobled by the effort...
A basic philosophy of selfishness is being inculcated into our politics. It will render us incapable of reacting when our democratic patrimony is swindled out from under us. There are thieves abroad in the land, making off with the blessings of the political commonwealth, and their most basic alibi is that it never existed in the first place. Once we accept that as our true history, the future is pretty much lost.
I was at an event
last weekend about education policy and the question came, as it often does: how are we to fund what is needed in education in Massachusetts?
Part of the answer is that we already do. We just don't do it everywhere.
There's been a lot of talk online (publicly and otherwise) around fairness and a lot of sharp elbows around keeping what is perceived to be "mine" this spring. What I'm not seeing nearly enough of is concern for first recognizing and then meeting greatest needs.
This may mean recognizing where there are not the same needs.
Among the various workbooks posted by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for our perusal, as usual, is one that gives town-by-town calculations:
If you head right, over in column L, we find a column that is of great interest:
"CEY % found" is what the header says, which is "Combined Effort Yield as a percentage of foundation."
What's that?
The combined effort yield is the calculation, based on property taxes and income taxes, of what each town and city could afford (by a uniform calculation that applies to every town and city across the state) to contribute to their local district's budget. Bluntly, it's a measure of community wealth.
The "% foundation" calculates what percentage of the local foundation budget is covered by the local municipality's combined effort yield. How much of that local "adequate" (scare quotes intentional) school budget could be funded by local property wealth if that was all that was being used?
Important note: Massachusetts has districts that are funky outliers in many ways! Before we go any further with this, it is crucial to remember that we have, for example, whole towns in which
single digit numbers of kids are going to school. Apply that sort of foundation budget against ANY town's community wealth, and it's going to be
overwhelming in the ability of the town to fund. Those are not the ones to latch on to.
Keeping that in mind, if you sort by column L (largest to smallest), you get a list for which the first 25 is this:
We start right off with two outliers: Mount Washington and Gosnold, which come close to framing the state's southern border, as Mount Washington (population 167 at the 2010 census) is the community that is the southwest corner of the state, and Gosnold (population 75 at the 2010 census) is the town of the Elizabeth Islands that trail off the southern end of Falmouth, so only Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket are farther southeast. Check those foundation budgets! It appears that Mount Washington has a single (middle school?) student and Gosnold has two elementary and one middle school students. Yes, those districts have significantly more ability to fund than that.
You'll see then that, not surprisingly, we bounce back and forth a bit between the Berkshires and the Cape, both regions with, often, significant property wealth and small (and shrinking) school enrollments. Outside of Alford (part of Southern Berkshire Regional), however, the foundation budgets aren't necessarily outliers. This does, though, give perspective on why the Cape and the Berkshires fought to get income (something which many of those towns don't have as much of) included in the revamped calculation of combined effort yield, rather than straight property wealth.
As we skim down, we start to get into more of what are (if you're using the more facile sites) considered "good schools": Weston, Cambridge, Lincoln, Wellesley. And look at how much of the foundation budget those local districts can cover of their foundation budgets by the combined effort yield:
- Weston at 340.6%
- Cambridge at 278.5%
- Lincoln at 249.8%
- Wellesley at 228.1%.
They can, in other words, afford to pay two or three times the foundation budget of their schools!
Off the bottom of what I've clipped above, we also get:
- Newton at 188.9%
- Brookline at 180.3%
- Concord at 174.6%
- Watertown at 159.7%
- Wayland at 159.4%
- Carlisle at 147.3%
- Somerville at 143.7%
...you'll note that we're dropping pretty rapidly here, though, even if you keep in mind I'm dropping the Cape and Berkshire towns. I could continue here, but remember that the statewide average last year was 130%!
I note this first because the above towns are actually funding their schools at levels that otherwise elude us. In FY18:
- Weston funded their schools at 221.3% of foundation
- Cambridge at 234.6%
- Lincoln at 206%
- Wellesley at 177.7%
- Newton at 169.8%
- Brookline at 182.2%
- Concord at 219.3%
- Watertown at 181.8%
- Wayland at 179.5%
- Carlisle at 215.4%
- Somerville at 132.2%
These are towns that are, at the very least, covering their foundation gaps in health insurance and special education, ensuring that underfunding doesn't impact other parts of the budget.
I also point this out because one of the choices the state legislature is making, even as it chooses not to move ahead with the funding needed in the foundation budget for kids who are learning English and kids who have low income, is to continue to fund 17.5% of the foundation budgets of districts like those above; moreover, the Legislature continues to increase the state aid of these districts at $30/pupil, again. This is done, one presumes, from some notion of "equality."
Here's what the other end of column L looks like, however:
- Worcester CEY 27.9% of foundation
- Orange CEY 27.8% of foundation
- Lowell CEY 26.2% of foundation
- Southbridge CEY 26% of foundation
- Fitchburg CEY 25.2% of foundation
- Lynn CEY 23.8% of foundation
- Fall River CEY 23.3% of foundation
- Brockton CEY 22.5% of foundation
- Chelsea CEY 21.8% of foundation
- New Bedford CEY 20.9% of foundation
- Holyoke CEY 19.9% of foundation
- Springfield CEY 15.9% of foundation
- Lawrence CEY 14.1% of foundation
The state notion of "equality" pushing those increases per pupil doesn't extend so far as to ensure that all, including those above lacking local resources, districts are funding at the levels above foundation the top districts are. It doesn't extend so far as to ensure that all districts don't have the health insurance and special education gaps hit the classroom.
There has been a notion advanced this spring that somehow the latter districts don't "deserve" to have local representation; that because they are poor, and thus majority state-funded, their districts should be state controlled. This is predicated on the false premise that the wealth within a municipality--a municipality made of particular kinds of historical decisions about whom could live there and whom could not, among other things--belongs solely to that municipality. This is of course an extension of the dispute over to what degree what we as individuals earn belongs to us an individuals.
The Constitution of Commonwealth, however--and, reaching even farther back, the history of Massachusetts even as a colony--states straightforwardly that the distinctions of family or town wealth are not what is to determine the type of education a child receives in Massachusetts "for the preservation of their rights and liberties." To use such determinants is simply unconstitutional. We as individuals, children as individuals, are not "left to struggle on our own" as Pierce states above; we are a commonwealth.
We should act, and budget, as one.
