Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How can I help?
    • Stay informed as we make our way through the budget process.
    • Check back here or follow us on Instagram. (https://www.instagram.com/sosamherst) for updates.
    • You can also join us in our Google Group where we share information and ideas around budget equity and advocacy (email sosamherst@gmail.com to be added)

 

Amherst and ARPS are what Massachusetts calls minimum aid districts, which means that our schools have declining enrollment. This is true of 211 of the 316 school districts in Massachusetts. Because we are minimum aid districts, we receive our state education funding under a different formula than districts with stable or growing student populations, and the bottom line is that our funding does not keep pace with our costs. 

The Amherst and ARPS school districts have been cutting positions for years in response to budget cuts and shrinking enrollment. Over the last twenty years, 25% of teaching positions in the elementary schools and 35% of teaching positions at the middle and high schools have already been eliminated. But costs are still rising, due to inflation, and rising personnel and health insurance costs, something facing most municipal departments in Amherst as well. 

 

Over the decades, the state has shifted a greater and greater percentage of the educational funding burden to local governments, and it is hard for local governments to keep up.  In Amherst, we have the additional challenge that 52% of property is not taxable, with a large share of that owned by Amherst College, UMASS Amherst and Hampshire College. This means that we must rely on a relatively small tax base to fund all of our municipal services and schools. Many of our services are scaled to serve our entire community, but 40% of the residents are footing the entire bill. 

Our schools are funded by a combination of state aid and local budget allocation. For the elementary schools, the local budget allocation comes from just the town of Amherst. For the Regional Schools (ARMS & ARHS), this local allocation comes from Amherst, Leverett, Pelham and Shutesebury, according to a formula devised by the four towns. 

 

Each year, the Governor creates the state budget and tells school districts what they can expect in state aid. A preliminary number is put out in January and an updated number later in the spring. 

 

In Amherst, the Town Manager creates a budget each winter. Typically, each “sector” of the community is given a percentage increase over last year’s budget. The “sectors” are the Elementary Schools, the Regional Schools, the Library and the Municipal Budget (all other services in town). The budget is not developed based on need, but rather as a simple percentage increase, and each “sector” gets the same percentage increase. The Town Council determines the percentage increase each year. 

 

The Superintendent then must figure out how to provide services based on the amount of state aid and local allotment she will receive for the following year. 

 

In FY25, the four towns allotted the Regional Schools an additional $355,440 to close some of the budget gap and would now prefer that it not be included in the number from which the percentage increase will be determined in FY26.

Good question!  Many colleges and organizations around the country have financial agreements with their host towns and cities precisely to help offset the financial burden they place on their communities.  Both Amherst College and UMASS give significantly less  to the town of Amherst than many comparable colleges and universities. 

 

UMASS: In 2023, UMASS and the Town of Amherst reached a new five-year financial agreement. Under it, UMASS Amherst will provide the Town of Amherst approximately one million dollars annually ($700,000 for fire and ambulance services, $100,000 toward services supporting safe and healthy neighborhoods, $200,000 to the public schools ($185,000 to the Amherst Elementary Schools and $15,000 to ARPS), and $25,000 for other town services). The agreement was announced June 2023, is retroactive to July 1, 2022 and goes until June 30, 2027.

 

Amherst College: Currently, there is no financial agreement between the Town of Amherst, the school districts and Amherst College. Amherst College has an endowment of $3.342 billion dollars, owns property in Amherst assessed at nearly a billion dollars, and pays only $650,000 in property taxes on certain taxable properties. The community has received varying and sometimes confusing messages from the Amherst Town Manager and representatives from Amherst College regarding negotiations. Now that the school districts have a new superintendent and the Regional School Committee has formed a sub-committee tasked with communicating with Amherst College, perhaps we will see some movement on negotiations. 

Under Massachusetts’ current funding system, for each student who leaves their public school district for a charter school, almost all of the public (state and town) funding for that student follows the student to the charter school.  And while it seems as though the math should work, it doesn’t. Because students “choice out” from different classrooms, grades and schools across a school district, the costs to operate the district remain relatively unchanged. Schools cannot eliminate a fraction of a teacher or principal or stop heating a fraction of a school. Many of the costs associated with running a school district do not “scale down”.

 

For each student attending a charter school, Amherst sends the cost of educating that student in our schools to the charter school, even if actual per-student costs at the charter school are lower. In many cases this cost differential is significant because our schools educate a larger proportion of high-need students (English language learners, students with disabilities, low-income students) than some of our competing charter schools. While charter schools select students by lottery, many do not offer the special education supports, especially intensive need programs, that make them a feasible choice for all students. Teacher experience and pay also plays a role. Some of our competing charter schools end each year with multi-million dollar surpluses due to this inequity in funding. 

 

In 2023, the current charter school funding policies cost the town of Amherst nearly $3.8 million ($2 million for the Amherst School District and $1.8 for the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District). 

 

Mass Promise to Invest is a grassroots group that has come together to advocate for a change in this funding formula for charter schools. You can sign the Amherst specific petition here: https://chng.it/rxXgr2dhnM

The short answer is no. 

 

Each year, the amount that each of the four towns give to the Regional Schools for the operating budget is determined by what is called the assessment method. This is a formulaic way of dividing up the funding for the Regional Schools based on each town’s ability and responsibility to pay, according to state calculations. There does not seem to be, however, a prohibition on one town giving additional money outside of this calculation, and in fact, Amherst has done this in the past for specific projects. 

 

Shutesbury, Leverett and Pelham all have Town Meetings instead of a Town Council, so their processes for allocating funds to the Region are slightly different than in the Town of Amherst. The three towns are also much smaller than Amherst and students who reside in the three towns make up a small portion of students at ARMS and ARHS. The three towns also have much less money than Amherst. 

 

It is important to advocate to all of our governing bodies for more money for the schools, including the town leadership in Leverett, Shutesbury and Pelham. Amherst, though, does not have to wait for the three towns to make a contribution in order to allocate more money to the Regional Schools.  If Amherst is currently giving additional capital funds to the town, the library and the elementary schools, the Regional Schools should benefit as well.

 
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