two* Massachusetts school budget charts you might find interesting

 I took some time this past week to update some slides from work, and there are two that I thought might be of general interest.

As you may or may not know, the state school funding system is based on an underlying split of 51% of the foundation budget coming from the local communities and 49% coming from the state. Now, that's foundation budget level state aid and  required local spending, so both of those aren't what actually happens. It continues to be the local part that's really different, though. Here's what FY25 (which the state recently released actual spending data on) was: 

Green is chapter 70; blue is local spending

Now, please keep in mind that this is reported net school spending--it doesn't include grants, and it also doesn't include things like transportation (which regional districts have heavily reimbursed). It is however most of what is spend on schools in Massachusetts, and chapter 70 is 38.5% of the above total.

Now some of that above state aid is, as I've been noting, hold harmless aid. Hold harmless aid is, of course, aid that ensures a district doesn't get less aid than the year before. Because the state also ensures districts get an increase in aid each year, this can accumulate, such that the amount of state aid a district is receiving is increasingly far removed from the needs of the district and the ability to contribute of the municipality.

As I was putting together my annual comparison of two districts with very similar foundation budgets that have very different levels of need and very different abilities to contribute this year: 

Dartmouth, which has much less need in its district, and much strongly ability to contribute than Southbridge, as seen above...

...is, due to minimum per pupil increases adding up over time, now required by the state to spend more than Southbridge through state-supplied funding. In other words, the state gets both Dartmouth and Southbridge schools to foundation, and then adds funding to Dartmouth's state aid, lest Dartmouth's aid be less than before. 

As always, I post this not to pick on Dartmouth, or indeed anyone; we could easily do this with a large number of districts across the state. I am, however, going to continue to note that this isn't equity

*yes, there are three charts, but it's the first and the third I thought you'd find of interest