On the chapter 70 study committee: First, what they aren't going to talk about

The budget conference committee, you might remember, agreed that the chapter 70 study commission from the Senate FY26 budget¹ would be in their agreed upon final budget.

 ...and so here we are, with an announcement last week that the required hearings for this study are starting on the 23rd. This seems rather last minute as an announcement, even as one understands that they need to get going in order to have the report back, as required, by June 20 of next year. 

Note that is this is very specifically a study "to improve the adequacy and equitability of the formula to determine a municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution." Thus much in the way the Foundation Budget Review Commission was only about the foundation budget--the "how much does it cost to educate a child" question--this is very much only about local contribution. 

Because this started to get long, I'm going to break this into two parts: first what they won't talk about, then what they will or should, given the scope of the committee.
You can find part two here.

What they're not going to talk about

The first thing that means is this isn't going to in any way at all be a report on, nor will they be taking testimony on, things on the other side of the calculation. Most notably, inflation² as calculated in the foundation budget ties to to previous year's increases in spending by state and localities; this is not reflective at all of actual cost increases, which is what districts actually need. It has been bad enough now, but it's going to be worse in FY28...

...bringing to my second thing, which is that the final year of SOA implementation is next year, FY27. That means that the increases that have been going to the highest need--which, again, was both the point of the Student Opportunity Act, and how our funding system works--end. We're back to inflation and student enrollment being the only changes year to year, which, if we're not prepared for it, is going to be devastating, particularly in the cities, which have been using SOA increases to cover inflationary cost, rather than making the changes we'd hoped for, because it turns out that laying off a lot of teachers doesn't improve anything.

We also know there are other issues that either we knew when we had the Foundation Budget Review Commission--hundreds of millions of dollars off on special education³--or have continued to emerge since--instructional leadership is undercalculated, for example, and it doesn't seem to me that we have a very real grasp on actual costs of instructional supplies and technology.

What they're also not going to talk about

The other two things that concern me greatly and aren't included are as follows:

Rural schools. There has been some attention to rural school districts in recent years, with a special commission issuing a report in 2023, and rural schools grant funding in several years' budgets in a row, though it doesn't approach the $60M called for in the report. 
The thing is, though--and this is going to be an unpopular thing to point out--that all of the proposed solutions don't address things like the things that can actually be changed about the cost to run things when it comes to state bills and funding. Regional districts in particular have struggled to consolidate students in fewer buildings when it means that a town's elementary school will close; there are districts that have seen their budgets fail over that, and even more that won't bring it up lest their budget fail when towns vote it down. 
I am not under any illusions about the distances or time involved here⁴; my parents came from just the other side of the Berkshires. There is only so far one can travel for school in a given day, and there is only so much consolidation that can happen. But if we aren't talking about that alongside how much running districts cost, we're not really having the full conversation. 

Hold harmless funding. For this current fiscal year, Massachusetts is spending about $350M in state aid for education that is in no way linked to district need or to local ability to pay. It's money just going to districts because it did last year and the year before. It has no relationship to equity or anything else.
As a result, there are many, many districts that are spending 20% of more over their foundation budget through state funding. This is at the same time that the neediest districts aren't yet at their new foundation budgets. And it is often those same districts that have been loudest about not getting state funding increases, again, even as they are receiving millions of dollars every year that are not associated with student or municipal need. 

We are building an inequity into the system. We are funding--with state funds!--things in some districts that are able to fund themselves that we do not fund in districts that cannot.

Note that there's nothing particularly magic about $5M; it just makes the chart readable.
I run a column in my DESE Ch. 70 chart which is here; look at "comparison to FY25,"
 though I also just added a sheet.
Added for Denise, who insists on it.

I should note also that the above two, plus local funding questions, come into play for non-regionalized districts looking into regionalization. In many cases, the state funding levels, including hold harmless funding, are so radically different, and the local funding levels so very different, that municipal districts looking to their neighbors for any joint services find the numbers are so wildly different that they cannot make it work. That is also a big problem.

Again, though, it is not one that is going to come up here.

Next, I'll give a look at what they are, and even should, talk about.

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¹Full language from the budget:

not less than $200,000 shall be expended for the department to study and make recommendations to improve the adequacy and equitability of the formula to determine a municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution, as those terms are defined in section 2 of chapter 70 of the General Laws; provided further, that said study and recommendations shall include, but not be limited to: (i) the adequacy and equity of the methodology used to determine a municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution as a measure of a municipality's ability to contribute to its foundation budget; (ii) the impact of local contributions to pre--kindergarten to grade 12, inclusive, education on municipalities' ability to maintain and fund adequate levels of municipal services, including aggregate trends in municipal spending on education and non--educational services and the primary drivers of such trends; (iii) the impact of the fixed 59 per cent local share of the statewide foundation budget on the calculation of combined effort yield for each municipality; (iv) the extent to which the wealth and income measures in the formula accurately and fairly determine a municipality''s ability to contribute to its foundation budget costs; (v) the impact of the growing number of municipalities that are subject to the 82.5 per cent maximum local required contribution cap; (vi) the number of municipalities receiving minimum per pupil aid and the impact of such aid on those municipalities; (vii) the impact of section 21C of chapter 59 of the General Laws on municipalities and their ability to make their required local contributions; and (viii) potential additional methods of measuring a municipality's ability to contribute to its share of education funding; provided further, that the department shall identify the implications of changes to the existing mechanisms that determine municipal contributions and the total state target local contribution including, but not limited to: (a) changes to maximum local required contribution caps, including the establishment of different maximum local required contribution tiers based on a municipality's fiscal capacity relative to their foundation budget; (b) changes to the total statewide target local contribution; (c) impacts of declining enrollments on state and municipal contribution targets since the adoption of the aggregate wealth model; (d) changes that would address challenges that are unique to rural and regional districts; and (e) to the extent feasible, what the potential impacts of such changes would be if phased in over multiple years; provided further, that the department shall work in collaboration with the division of local services to inform its analysis of existing and potential modifications to local contribution requirements; provided further, that the department shall solicit public input and hold not less than 4 public hearings in different geographic areas of the commonwealth; provided further, that the department shall post a draft report and hold a public hearing and solicit public comment on said draft report; and provided further, that not later than June 30, 2026, the department shall submit its final report to the joint committee on education and the house and senate committees on ways and means, which shall include any recommendations for regulatory and legislative changes​

²which I heard something like third hand the new Commissioner may not have a good handle on, as he, I am told, was concerned to hear that the Student Opportunity Act funds weren't being spent on new initiatives rather than, say, not laying off staff. If that is the case, that is a problem.

³ per the report of the Foundation Budget Review Commission (p.15), $700M per year, as of ten years ago.

⁴However, I'll also observe that two of my three children took 45 minute to an hour trips both to and from school right here in Worcester for years and years, so it'll have to be longer than that to seem long to me.