The Quest for a New Chapter 70 Ed Aid Formula

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As lawmakers opened a conversation Monday about overhauling the state's K-12 education funding and municipal contribution formulas, Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said the administration would not lead the effort.

Sen. Jo Comerford, who chaired a hearing Monday at UMass Amherst on Gov. Maura Healey's fiscal year 2026 budget focused on education and local aid, has long advocated for Massachusetts to rewrite the formula by which state dollars flow to local school districts, directed by a state law called Chapter 70.

Comerford represents a large area of the Connecticut River Valley, made up of many small towns and regional school districts, as well as the city of Northampton. Rural districts and small to mid-sized towns have often said they are not prioritized under the current formula, and have not benefited from the Student Opportunity Act which injected $1.5 billion largely into cities over the past five years.

"The complexities facing very different districts, from rural western Massachusetts all the way to the east coast, all that complexity, I believe, requires us to gather ourselves in a new Foundation Budget Review Commission, and one that also tackles the municipal contribution. It's been a decade since the last FBRC; it's been 17 years since we tackled the municipal contribution," Comerford said.

The chair directly asked Tutwiler if he would "lead work to open up the Chapter 70 and municipal contribution formulas," including looking at special education costs, charter school funding formulas, and more. She said she was "monumentally disappointed" that Healey did not include such a commission in her budget.

Tutwiler responded that he would follow the Legislature's lead.

"Madam chair, I don't want to disappoint you, because I respect you first and foremost. And I like you a lot. But my answer is going to be the same as it was last year. We will follow the lead of the Legislature on this important conversation," he said, adding that he offers the administration's partnership if lawmakers decide to go down that path.

A number of lawmakers brought up overhauling the Chapter 70 formula during the budget hearing, including Sen. Jacob Oliveira, Sen. Kelly Dooner, and Rep. Kelly Pease. The several hundred attendees at UMass Amherst auditorium broke into applause and cheering each time.

Faculty and families from Quabbin Regional School District — who took a bus to Amherst on Monday — and Amherst Regional were among those rooting for the formula overhaul in matching T-shirts.

School districts are struggling due to high inflation and declining state funding tied to enrollment decreases. Many towns last year sought to increase property taxes to maintain school staffing and services.

"The current Chapter 70 funding formula is not working for a majority of our school districts. Period," said Oliveira, of Ludlow, who also represents parts of western Massachusetts.

Senate President Karen Spilka signaled that she's interested in approaching the K-12 funding formula, and Sen. Jason Lewis, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Education, filed a bill (S 400) to create a special commission to revisit it this session.

"At the K-12 level we have maintained our commitment to the Student Opportunity Act, providing record levels of funding to our public schools. But it has been some time since we closely examined some aspects of K-12 funding and policy, and so I hope to tackle that this session," Spilka said in her inaugural address in January.

The Student Opportunity Act was approved in 2019. It increased state funding in public K-12 education over six years by more than $1.5 billion. It focused the bulk of that money on mid-sized cities facing economic or social challenges that have large low-income populations and communities of color. The law requires that the foundation budget be revisited at least every 10 years.

"Our urban school districts and our Gateway Cities have done amazing things with the investments that we've made through the Student Opportunity Act... but for our suburban, rural and small school districts, out of the 11 school districts I represent, nine of them are facing multi-million dollar shortfalls," Oliviera said.

Comerford cited the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association's observation that more than 75% of the overall recent increase in Chapter 70 has gone towards only 56 school districts.

"I voted for the Student Opportunity Act, and I was proud to take that vote, and it was a good bill. It's doing good work across our commonwealth. But it has left us out," Comerford said.

The SOA is in its fifth year of implementation, with its last year set for fiscal 2027.

"Chapter 70 works for roughly 13 of 351 communities," Sen. Kelly Dooner, a Taunton Republican who represents areas of southeastern Massachusetts, said during Monday's hearing. "One of my communities being one of those 13, but a majority of my communities being rural, they're laying off teachers. Almost every community outside of that one is going to have to lay teachers off due to Chapter 70."

The current Chapter 70 formula targets a 59% contribution from local municipalities into school districts. However, it's a variable calculation, and some towns pay for up to 82.5% of their schools' foundation budgets.

Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said communities are struggling to keep up with inflating costs of schools, like employee pay and benefits, and charter school tuition.

"Municipalities are using almost all or all of their new revenue each year to meet their school spending requirements. Unfortunately, that means that every other municipal department remains flat or must experience cuts to create a balanced budget," Chapdelaine testified to lawmakers on Monday.

Factors such as skyrocketing special education and transportation costs have further strained school budgets.

Chapdelaine said special education costs have increased 37% over the past four years.

In her budget, Healey recommended special education circuit breaker funding at $682 million, an increase of $132 million. That total includes $532 million in the House 1 budget, and $150 million from the supplemental budget she filed simultaneously that uses revenue from the surtax on the state's highest earners.

When asked about the Chapter 70 formula, Tutwiler pointed to that increase in special education funding, which he said would help smaller districts that struggle with high and growing special education costs. He also pointed to investments that the governor proposed in reimbursing regional school transportation.

Healey's budget recommends $116 million for regional school transportation, which would reimburse 95% of those expenses.

"We heard loud and clear about the challenges around regional transportation, moving that reimbursement rate from 80 to 95% was our attempt to try to address some of those concerns for rural districts, maintaining that quadrupling of rural aid, while I would name that that is nowhere close to what the report calls for, it is a shift in a direction and sort of recognizing the pain points that are felt," Tutwiler said.