Earlier today the Legislature’s Committee on Education released a sweeping school finance bill that would amend the state’s landmark Chapter 70 school finance law used to determine school aid and local contribution amounts for the Commonwealth’s cities, towns and school districts. The bill would update key factors in the foundation budget spending standard consistent with the recommendations of the Foundation Budget Review Commission and implement the changes over a 7 year period. The bill also proposes changes to the special education circuit breaker program, and would provide additional funds for charter school impact reimbursements and make changes to the school building assistance program.

The new bill is headed to the Senate where debate is expected within the next several weeks before the end of the Fall legislative session. The announcement in the State House library was attended by Senate President Karen Spilka, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and the House and Senate Chairs of the Committee, Senator Jason Lewis and Representative Alice Peisch. The bill was described as a consensus proposal.

The MMA is reviewing the bill and will provide more detailed analysis and guidance later in preparation for Senate debate.

AMHERST (WWLP) – Amherst and Pelham have rejected a proposal to regionalize their elementary schools.

The Amherst and Pelham Regional School District Planning Board announced in May that it would not regionalize the town’s elementary schools.

The final report has come out, and it found that regionalization had insufficient financial and educational benefits to Amherst and Pelham.
This means both Pelham and Amherst elementary school districts will stay separate.

Amherst and Pelham already share a middle and high school, as well as a superintendent, but not elementary schools.

Board members expressed disappointment and frustration with the state’s failure to keep its promise of reimbursing 100 percent of regional school district transportation costs.

“The main incentive for districts to regionalize here in western Massachusetts where we have smaller populations and we are looking for efficiencies is this reimbursement of transportation and it was very frustrating when we had to project what the savings would be and we couldn’t rely on that 100 percent transportation reimbursement,” Planning Board Chairman, Peter Demling said.

The board was trying to make this work since Pelham only has one elementary school, but they did not see them saving money.