Regional bus funding to change

By Jonathan Cook
Turley Publications Reporter

REGION -What was once a promise to fully fund regional school transportation has sunk to an all time low this year of 29 percent, and Senator Stephen Brewer (D-Barre) has decided doing nothing is not an option.
That’s why he co-sponsored section 11E of An Act Relative to Education Reform, a 77 page bill devoted to charter school funding and a new method of running schools with low test scores, called “innovative schools.”
Brewer’s proposal is only one paragraph of the bill. It seeks to peg the regional school transportation budget to all other school aid that is provided in chapter 70 of Mass General Laws.
As the situation stands now, regional school transportation is a singled out budget item that often looks like low hanging fruit to a government with reduced revenue. The result of the change, as Quaboag Superintendent Brett Kustigian said, “would level the playing field.”
While the senate has recently passed the bill, and suggested to the House of Representatives they should move it quickly through to passage, the House has instead adjourned for the holidays.
One consequence of delay is likely the lost opportunity to qualify for up to $300 million in the federal government’s “Race to the Top” stimulus incentive, which features a Jan. 19, 2010 deadline. Surprisingly, it was educators who spoke out with concerns that gave the House pause, explained Rep. Todd Smola (R- Palmer).
Smola, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, said there were only two days left in the scheduled session “when this bill just fell onto our lap. And there were a lot of questions.”
Primarily, said Smola, the concerns he and others heard from educators focused on the innovative schools portion of the bill. Smola said most objections stemmed from the bill’s removal of the local appeals process in situations where a school has little or no chance of meeting any goals in terms of standardized testing.
But Smola wants to know where this bill was months ago when the details could have been examined and fully understood without racing to make major changes up against a deadline that is not new. He suspected politics is the real answer. “This is political posturing for the governor,” he said. “He wants to run for reelection saying he passed education reform. Well, it only comes around every ten to fifteen years. We should take the time to get it right.”
Yet, as far as the section on regional school transportation goes, Smola admits that something needs to be done to fix the funding hole. Saying that pegging the line item to the much bigger chapter 70 budget “has some merit.” Smola added, “I’m not sure it’s the best solution.”
One possible drawback would be the incentive to start the budget low since it will be harder to cut later.
However, Tantasqua Regional School Superintendent Daniel Durgin said administrators are already facing another year at 29 percent in 2011 – with fear that further cuts could be around the corner. “We’ve been directed this will be the best we are going to see,” Durgin said.
He said Tantasqua is already down $360,000 in transportation funding from last year.
Absorbing that loss at a time of rising costs in health insurance and other areas has included chipping money away from programs such as special education. Many employees have already agreed to take unpaid time off and the teachers have been asked to follow suit, something they will be voting on, said Durgin.
At Quaboag, Kustigian said he is talking with the bus company in an effort to consolidate buses. He is also tightening the rest of the budget to the last notch, he said. He pointed out that he has been a Superintendent for 10 months and for seven months his budget has been frozen. As for what happens if more cuts come his way, “stay tuned,” he said.
Durgin pointed out that the state has been attempting to encourage regionalization, but the last remaining incentive for schools to consolidate is the vanishing promise to fully fund regional transportation. Even though Senator Brewer’s proposed change is unlikely to add money to the budget, “he is probably trying to protect us,” Durgin said.
Returning funds to any budget these days is unlikely. After all, as Brewer said, “we can’t print money.”
He called this year’s cuts “a catastrophic loss.” He also said the change would “spread the pain around to all school systems.”
But right now his effort to stop the bleeding of regional school budgets is tied to a bill going nowhere fast.