During Senate budget week, I sat down and wrote out the Chapter 70 formula. Not the talking points. The actual math — how the state calculates what a district needs, determines what the town can pay, and fills the gap. I wanted to understand, in exact terms, what the formula does to Gardner, Ashburnham, Templeton, and Winchendon. And then I wanted to understand why no one has fixed it.
What I found is that the problems facing our towns aren't the result of bad local management. They're structural. Built into the formula itself. And they've been compounding for over a decade.
The formula's five structural failures
The formula assumes costs scale smoothly with enrollment. They don't — a school building costs what it costs whether there are 800 students or 650. It reads rising property values as increased ability to pay. It isn't — equalized valuations in our four towns have climbed while median household income hasn't kept pace. It freezes aid at nominal levels that lose purchasing power every year. It sets required local contributions that can exceed what Proposition 2½ actually allows a town to raise. And it provides no mechanism for periodic review that requires the Legislature to act.
These are not appropriation failures. They are formula design failures. The formula is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It just wasn't designed for towns like ours.
211 of 360 districts are in hold-harmless status. The formula isn't underfunded. It's mis-designed. And the data that would prove it isn't published.
Why it hasn't been fixed
The rural schools bill has been filed and killed three sessions running. The House champion resigned. The coalition between urban and rural districts that passed the Student Opportunity Act in 2019 hasn't reassembled around formula reform. And the SOA's six-year phase-in — which completes this year, at $7.66 billion — absorbed the political oxygen for education funding conversations.
Meanwhile, Vermont and Maine have both enacted structural formula reforms that Massachusetts hasn't. The question now is whether FY2027 marks the end of the SOA conversation or the beginning of the next one.
Five structural fixes no one has filed
I checked the Legislature's amendment database — H.5500, S.4, S.3, and the 193rd session. Nearly 4,000 amendments across three budget cycles. None of these five mechanisms appear anywhere. The closest are O'Connor's #732 and Dooner's #1146, both one-time study commissions. Those study the problems. These fix them.
Requires DESE to publish CPI-adjusted erosion data for every hold-harmless district alongside the annual Chapter 70 spreadsheet. The data already exists. Publishing it costs nothing.
For districts below 1,500 enrollment, the foundation budget uses the higher of current-year or three-year rolling average. Self-extinguishing when enrollment rebounds.
Caps required local contribution increases at the municipality's actual Proposition 2½ levy growth capacity. Aligns two laws that currently contradict each other.
Ties minimum aid per-pupil increment to the foundation inflation index. Makes the $52.2M Fair Share supplement structural instead of discretionary.
Five-year FBRC review cycle starting FY2032 with public hearings and a 180-day legislative response requirement. Inaction becomes a recorded choice.
Three of the five cost nothing or restructure existing money. The two that cost new money — $18 to $35 million combined — are fundable from the Rural School Aid line item and a fraction of Fair Share education revenue. Total new spending: 0.24 to 0.46 percent of the $7.66 billion Chapter 70 appropriation.
A timely proposal — with the votes in the district
Chapter 70 reform isn't hypothetical. The Senate is debating its FY2027 budget right now, and 211 of 360 districts — including ours — are stuck in hold-harmless. The five fixes above are drafted, costed, and sourced. They're ready to file.
The 2nd Worcester District is exactly the kind of seat that should be carrying this. Gardner, Ashburnham, Templeton, and Winchendon are all directly affected by the formula's structural failures, which means the votes to advance these amendments aren't in some other district — they're in this one. The representative who shows up with the math, the language, and the constituency wins this fight.
I built a governance workbook with 86 live formulas — district-level data, reform simulations, fiscal guardrails, and an assumptions tab that stress-tests every number. Everything is sourced. The workbook is open. The amendment concepts are public.
This is the kind of work I think a representative should do before asking for your vote. Not because it's impressive — it's a spreadsheet and a few memos — but because the alternative is showing up in Boston and spending two years figuring out how the formula works while your towns keep absorbing the damage. Towns cannot cut their way out of a formula problem.