Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Massachusetts isn't fully funding charter school tuition reimbursement

 For reasons that are unclear to me, this doesn't seem to be getting any attention, but Massachusetts isn't fully funding charter school tuition reimbursement. 

As of the May 6 projections, charter school tuition reimbursement statewide should have been (per DESE's numbers) $215,792,970. The conference committee instead agreed to $199M. It wasn't fully funded.

And that was before the Governor vetoed another $19.9M over the weekend


The Governor isn't wrong that the account fluctuates over the year; charter enrollment does, so the amount needed does. 
What this misses is that midyear money isn't the same as July money. It also misses--again, something the state seems rather stuck on--that midyear funding doesn't, save in cases where the funding is allocated "without further appropriation" to the school district itself, get to municipal school districts. It goes into the municipal general fund. 

The Legislature could override the veto, though State House News reports:

House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka both provided thankful quotes for Healey's budget action press release, each of them referencing a shared commitment to "responsible" budget management.

Fully funding charter school reimbursement is part of the Student Opportunity Act. It thus is not the case that the commitment of the SOA is being met.  

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