Students at the H.B. Lawrence School in Holyoke at a February 2025 ceremony marking the launch of the United States Readers Program there, designed to close achievement gaps in literacy. (Joshua Qualls/Governor’s Press Office)

IN JUNE 2024, the state’s Racial Imbalance Advisory Council – a public body which I chaired – released Racial Segregation in Massachusetts Schools. It was a damning report that used the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s own data to demonstrate the substantial and pervasive disparities between segregated white and nonwhite schools in the Commonwealth.

After two years in which our recommendations remained largely unaddressed by state education leaders, families and community advocates filed a lawsuit three weeks ago demanding state action to address segregation in our school system.

Like the lawsuit, our report directly addressed the issue of double segregation by race and income. Due to generational disinvestment in urban districts (including redlining), suburban NIMBYism, clustering in ethnic enclaves, and state-level policy decisions, fewer than a dozen communities in a state of 351 cities and towns have become responsible for educating a disproportionate number of high-needs students – defined by DESE as students with disabilities, current or former English learners, and/or low-income students.

At the root is Massachusetts’s current educational structure, which provides but also limits kids to a public education in the municipality where they live. For example, kids living in New Bedford are guaranteed a K-12 public education in New Bedford, but they are also largely confined to it. Critically, this also limits which communities are responsible for educating which kids.

That works fine for kids in places like Brookline, Andover, and Longmeadow, where wealth is comparatively abundant and student needs are relatively manageable. But in urban areas like Boston and Springfield and Gateway Cities like Brockton and Lawrence – places where poverty, disability, and English learners are concentrated, resources are constrained, and educators are overwhelmed – this structure produces the kinds of stark disparities we see across districts.

Nowhere is this more apparent than across district lines such as Springfield–Longmeadow and Lawrence–Andover, where neighboring communities exhibit dramatically different racial demographics, concentrations of student need, and resulting educational outcomes.

So, what’s the solution? Not voucher programs or charters, which can exacerbate inequities. We need a two-pronged approach: generational investments in urban and Gateway districts to modernize facilities and develop appealing and effective community schools alongside policies and investments designed to make public school district boundaries more porous, including the expansion of inter-district school choice and programs like Metco, as well as the creation of regional magnet schools.

Part of the solution may lie outside of schools – in housing policy. Developing more public and social housing in suburban communities and the expansion of housing vouchers there would more evenly distribute low-income families and balance the distribution of high-needs students across municipalities.

In tandem, these efforts would equalize access to high-quality educational opportunities across existing public school districts, while deconcentrating student need and distributing responsibility for educating those students more broadly across the Commonwealth.

The result would not be just more integrated schools. It would mean more communities with a direct stake in – and accountability for – the success of students who have too often been treated as someone else’s responsibility.

These are, after all, the Commonwealth’s kids. Their education should not fall to just a handful of cities. The sooner the state recognizes that and aligns policy accordingly, the sooner it can expand opportunity and improve outcomes for all children – especially those who need it most.

Raul Fernandez is a senior lecturer in educational policy studies at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.