Storyboard Examples

Carolyn Shores Ness, Deerfield:

As a member of Deerfield’s Selectboard/BOH charged with producing a balanced budget, I was truly alarmed in 2017 to learn that we were expected to to have to pay almost $400,000 extra for education the following year. Our school related costs were averaging 64% to 68% of our total budget already. I had to understand what the movement of the 82% cap meant to us and towns out east, the impact of the EQV, what hold harmless provided, etc. All of the research I did generated even more questions. 

The Department of Education steered me to the Department of Revenue, then vice versa with no answers. I gave up until the MMA Annual Meeting, where I basically cornered the DOR and DOE people. It turned out the incomes of the administrators of the three private schools in the 01342 zip code made that zip code among the wealthiest in the Commonwealth, even though we collect no taxes on their properties and are also responsible for educating the children of residential faculty and staff in our public schools. We were able to make the argument that Deerfield should not be penalized for incomes dramatically out of line with those that are typical in our rural agricultural area. We gave DOR the information about the parcels owned by the schools, and they pulled the income associated with those parcels. We also found out that fully a third of our 01373 zip code included Whately. Those addresses were removed. That reduced the incomes in the EQV formula and that, in turn, stabilized our funding.

We were fortunate that with diligent and sustained work by town leaders, we were able to procure a waiver with the state. Larger municipalities do not have to expend their limited person hours pursuing such basic provisions, and in fact, often have professional staff who are hired to apply for substantial grants that allow even greater resources to be offered to their communities. In rural towns, that work often falls to volunteers who may have more good intentions than experience– if it even gets done at all. State formulas, policies, and programs are generally constructed to suit the needs of Boston area local governments and not small ones like ours.

Martha Thurber, Mohawk Trail

There are many things that make a rural school district different. My district is the Mohawk Trail Regional District, which includes 8 very small rural towns that span 250 square miles in northwestern Franklin County. On the very positive side, our students, staff and families share a strong sense of community and a tradition of caring for one another. In our schools, every student has at least one staff member who knows them – and, often, their families – well; someone they can talk to, someone who can help. Our students are resilient and persevering.

Then there is the negative side, the funding side. Some examples: In our schools, approximately 25% of our students have IEPs. We strive to meet their needs while facing a severe shortage special education teachers and related professionals – OTs, PTs BCBAs. We can’t pay enough to attract or keep these highly skilled professionals on staff, so we must try to find high-priced hourly contractors and ask those few staff we do have to work longer hours. When we simply can’t meet student needs, we send them out-of-district to day programs ($50,000-$75,000 per year) far from home. The nearest facilities are located 40-60 miles away. Transportation to these facilities runs around $600/day, usually for one or perhaps two students per trip. Residential programs are also few and far between and, should a new family move into our district with a child needing out-of-district services, the unbudgeted cost throws our already razor-thin budget well into deficit.

Finding general education teachers is also enormously challenging, as we simply cannot compete on pay or benefits.

And then there are the facilities issues. We have aging buildings with outdated infrastructure, and our towns have no capacity (tax base) to fund any but the most essential improvements. Fortunately, our amazing Facilities Director is adept at finding “work-arounds.” For example, when our ancient DOS- and JAVA-based heating control systems falter, she has found programmers with the translation skills to get these systems “talking” again. But her efforts to find replacement parts on EBay for a decades-old fire monitoring system were unsuccessful, and we had to have the local volunteer fire department on site for a day or two while awaiting delivery and installation of the new panel.

Rural school districts operate much like many of the families we serve: we are one accident, one car breakdown, one family crisis away from falling off the fiscal cliff. This should not be the case in Massachusetts. It should not be the case that some rural districts lack staff and/or programming to offer the complete Mass Core curriculum, while schools in wealthier suburban districts feature course catalogs with dozens of different arts offerings, 10 or more courses in business (marketing, entrepreneurship, product design), courses in TV and video production and multiple world languages. In too many rural district ”extras” like music, theater, and the arts can’t be funded at all.

We are not looking for handouts, we are looking for equity.

Meghan Arquin, Sunderland (excerpt— read the full story here):

A school is not just a building where children spend their days. It is a place where people become known to one another. It is where teachers watch their students grow up and where former students return years later because they still feel connected. It is where working families find support, where children learn to participate in their communities, and where neighbors find ways to take care of one another. It is part of the infrastructure that allows a rural community to remain a community.

I worry that when we talk about the value of rural schools, we sometimes limit the conversation to enrollment numbers, budgets, and test scores. Those things matter, but they don't tell the whole story. They don't measure the relationships built between a child and a teacher, the confidence that comes from being known and encouraged, or the sense of belonging that develops when children see their own community reflected in what they learn.

We cannot continue to depend on the goodwill of teachers and school staff to make up for inadequate resources. Passion is not a substitute for investment. Commitment cannot indefinitely make up for a lack of support.

I want my children to grow up in a community where teachers are supported, where schools are valued, and where the places and people who helped shape them are worth investing in. I want them to be able to return to their elementary school, walk those familiar halls, and find the teachers who remember them. I want younger children in our community to have those same experiences and opportunities.

I want rural communities to retain the things that make them communities: their schools, their gathering places, their relationships, and their shared responsibility for the next generation.

We talk a lot about what it costs to maintain small schools. I wish we spent as much time talking about what they give us, and what we stand to lose when we stop investing in them.

The question is not simply what we can afford to invest in our schools and communities.

The question is: What will it cost us if we don't?

Jessica Corwin, Hatfield:

I first became acutely aware of rural school inequities when MassLive published a list of the lowest-paying public school districts in the state in 2018. 

Eighteen of the twenty lowest-paying districts were rural ones. At the time, I was teaching in the Hatfield Public Schools– number twelve on the list. I knew that our salaries were lower than larger neighboring districts, but the biggest impact on many faculty and staff members was actually the benefits: due to chronic underfunding, the town was able to pay only 50% of employee health insurance premium costs, the lowest contribution allowed by law. 75-80% is more typical.

In the mid-2010s when I had two children in daycare, my take-home pay exceeded my day care bills. In effect, I was teaching only for health insurance. This was sustainable for my family only because of my spouse’s career. Other wonderful teachers are not so privileged.

In one year, two of my close colleagues unexpectedly left the Hatfield Public Schools to start teaching in a nearby district. This was a shock to me, as I had pictured that we would all continue teaching side by side for decades. They both said that they wanted to stay in Hatfield, but their families’ growing needs made it unaffordable to do so. One of them told me that she was going to get a $12,000 salary increase from her professional move, and that didn’t even count the improved benefits. 

Rural children deserve to attend districts that attract and retain highly skilled teachers, regardless of the teachers’ financial resources outside of district compensation. Rural children deserve to have stable relationships with and institutional knowledge from long-term educators who can afford to serve rural communities for decades of their careers. And rural children deserve to learn from teachers who are able to focus on the task of teaching, not working second and third jobs or worrying about whether they can afford dance lessons for their own child.