Chester, Massachusetts
Chester Elementary School. (Photo courtesy of Todd Gazda)

ON A TYPICAL morning at Chester Elementary School, a small rural school of 127 students in grades PreK through 5 in the foothills of the Berkshires, the work of education looks much like it does anywhere else.

This is my school, where I have the privilege of being the principal. I greet every student by name at the door each morning when they arrive, mostly by bus, some after long rides along winding roads. Classrooms are full of life, teachers are balancing academic instruction with social and emotional support, and the day moves with a familiar rhythm.

In a school like mine, a shift of even a handful of students can have a big impact. Reductions in funding mean cutting electives and enrichment opportunities, stretching support services, or rethinking how to provide opportunities that larger districts take for granted. There are fewer staff to absorb change, fewer resources to draw from, and fewer options when costs rise. What looks stable on the outside is, in reality, a system under constant pressure to do more with less.

In 2019, the Massachusetts Legislature passed the Student Opportunity Act (SOA), a game-changing piece of school funding legislation and the largest influx of money for our educational system since the Education Reform Act of 1993. That legislation represented a multi-billion-dollar commitment to public education in Massachusetts, specifically aimed at closing the achievement gap for low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. That same year, the Legislature created the Special Commission on the Long-Term Fiscal Health of Rural School Districts, recognizing that another set of challenges, less visible but no less significant, remained unaddressed.

In 2022 the commission released a report that makes the issue plain: Rural districts operate under structural conditions that the state’s funding system does not adequately address.

The SOA rightly focused on the economics of student need. However, the challenges facing rural districts are driven less by concentrated poverty and are more impacted by geography, scale, and demographic change. Those factors drive costs in ways that the current state funding formula does not effectively capture.

Small districts are simply more expensive to run. The commission found that districts with fewer than 1,300 students cost about 17 percent more per pupil, and small regional districts cost an additional 23 percent.

This is not due to inefficiencies, but rather is merely due to the realities of scale. Students are dispersed across large areas, increasing transportation costs by as much as 50 percent per pupil. Additionally, the costs for core staffing, facilities, operations, and other services do not shrink proportionally with enrollment.

Enrollment is a major issue for rural schools and is falling far faster than the state average. Between 2012 and 2020, rural districts lost 13.9 percent of their students, compared with just 0.5 percent statewide. That mismatch between cost and enrollment creates a familiar pattern. As student numbers decline, funding follows. Although the state funding formula has a “hold harmless” provision intended to mitigate the fiscal impact of declining student populations, this is woefully inadequate when balanced against skyrocketing operational costs, particularly health insurance.

Western Mass. has unique fiscal challenges facing its schools and communities. Declining populations in our rural towns, little to no commercial tax base, lack of social services for our children and families, and the dearth of employment opportunities for families all create fiscal challenges unique to rural communities. Our communities, constrained by Proposition 2½, face an impossible choice between adequately funding their schools and maintaining other essential municipal services such as police, fire, and public works.

Schools like Chester Elementary School are the lifeblood of our rural communities and we do what we can with what we have, often leading to amazing results. We partner with the relatively few non-profits and social service agencies that we do have to support our kids. We bring in volunteers and seek out grant opportunities. We explore online learning opportunities, work to break down the walls of our buildings to bring education into the real world, and build experiences for our students that transcend traditional educational models. Those partnerships and creative approaches work to fill some of the gaps that financial pressures have created, but they still come up short.

The most important recommendation of the rural schools commission was the need for $60 million in further state aid for these schools. That figure is based on an analysis showing that rural districts spend, on average, 12.4 percent less per student than other districts. For fiscal year 2020, the commission calculated a funding gap of roughly $2,144 per student. With 27,219 students attending rural districts, that amounts to a statewide shortfall of approximately $58.4 million.

The amount dedicated to rural aid in the FY 25 budget was $16 million, but it was reduced to $12 million in the 2026 budget.

The governor’s 2027 budget increased it to $20 million for next year, which, while an improvement, still falls well short of the recommended amount. The House and Senate have taken different approaches in their FY27 budgets, with the House providing $12 million and the Senate providing $20 million for rural aid. Those figures include both the direct line-item appropriations contained in the FY27 budget proposals and additional funding designated for rural schools through the Fair Share supplemental budget bill to support FY27 education spending. The final appropriation for rural schools will now be worked out in a House-Senate conference committee.

Not only is the rural schools commission recommendation not being implemented, but the fact that rural schools cannot count on a consistent amount from year to year wreaks havoc with our budget process, which must be completed in early spring in time for our town meetings. This is well in advance of the completion of the state budget.

The commission’s recommendations extend beyond a single funding figure. They call for adjustments to funding formulas to reflect low enrollment and sparsity, increased transportation support, targeted aid for districts with sustained enrollment decline, and expanded shared services and regional collaboration. These approaches are not untested. The report notes that 37 states already incorporate rural factors into their funding systems: Massachusetts does not.

The Student Opportunity Act addressed one dimension of educational inequity. The rural schools commission’s work makes clear that another remains. In 2019, rural districts supported the SOA because it was the right policy for students who needed it most. The question now is whether the Commonwealth will apply that same commitment to districts facing a different set of structural challenges.

Without action, the trajectory is clear: continued enrollment decline, reduced programming, and increasing strain on the communities that depend on their schools. Massachusetts has already done the analysis. What remains is the decision to act.

Todd Gazda is the principal of Chester Elementary School. He was superintendent of the Ludlow Public Schools from 2012 to 2021.