Testimony on the MSBA before the Joint Committee on Ways and Means

 Offered today at the State House

My name is Tracy O’Connell Novick, and I am here in my capacity as a member of the Worcester School Committee, where I serve as the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance and Operations. I’m also the mother of two Worcester Public Schools graduates and one current high school junior.

We are profoundly grateful in Worcester, that after over a decade of advocacy, Governor Healey’s budget will fund the third year of implementation of the Student Opportunity Act. The ability of districts like mine to properly staff our schools—short, by the state’s own measures, by literally hundreds of teachers—has begun to ease. We have begun to take stock of the funding for instructional supplies and technology, and the impacts of decades of underfunding of facility maintenance.

It is about this last that I am here today, however. 

Worcester has had a strong partnership with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Schools across our city have benefited from the Accelerated Repair program, with the life of our buildings extended by new roofs, new windows and doors, and new boilers. 

No such work will take place this year, however, as there is no Accelerated Repair program. Due to the rightful recognition of the rising costs of construction, the MSBA lacks the funding for the Accelerated Repair program this year; there is as yet no plan for it to return. 

Thus, Union Hill School and Wawecus Road School will not have new roofs this coming year, as we were unable to submit them. Within just my own district, this will create a ripple effect of boiler and roof projects that will not move forward, something my and other districts will have to scramble to patch with our limited local funding. 

Worcester likewise has benefited from the Core Program, with a new Doherty Memorial High School rising on Highland Street even as I speak. But Worcester has 24,000 students; the new buildings, even after Doherty’s opening, will house only a fifth of our students. Of Worcester’s over 11,000 elementary students, less than 600 attend school in a building built since the turn of the millennium. Worcester once again did not have a new Burncoat High School accepted into the Core program this past year, and so we are currently planning to spend millions of dollars to shore up the building to meet its reaccreditation requirements. 

The city’s funding for all of this is limited, of course, for precisely the reasons that make the district so heavily dependent on state aid to run its schools. It is, however, further hampered by the inflationary increase in the cost of the new Doherty project. The city has been hit with $21 million dollars in increases due not to changes in the building, but to pandemic influences on the economy. This is money the city cannot spare. 

Please note that everything I have outlined for you impacts other districts across the state: my peers throughout the Commonwealth likewise have buildings that will not have accelerated repairs this year, have not been accepted into the core building program, are facing inflationary increases in new buildings. 

In every case, the Massachusetts School Building Authority simply does not have the funding to cover this.

As such, we would ask the following:

1. Uncap the MSBA. The MSBA currently is capped at $800 million. While that is an increase due to the Student Opportunity Act, it is inadequate for the needs of the state.
2. Once you have done that, bring back the Accelerated Repair program. Not every school building needs replacement or a full renovation, but many projects are too big for a district to tackle alone.
3. Consider a middle option between Accelerated Repair and the Core program. Some buildings have good bones, but need full electrical work or other major projects.
4. Finally, dedicate state ARPA funding to cover the cost of inflation. The federal government foresaw that there would be rising costs as part of the pandemic. While it absolutely should not be left to local municipalities to cover these inflationary jumps, nor should it come out of the inadequate coffers of the MSBA.