Local Aid Policy

During the financial crunch, the state abandoned some formula elements that were designed to better match aid to community ability to pay. The result over the past four years has been an erratic pattern of aid increases which does not treat communities of similar wealth in similar ways. An additional feature of the erratic pattern […]

The three pages linked to at the bottom of this page explore the implementation of the education aid reforms of 2006 through the financial crunch and consider alternative implementations for FY2013 and beyond. Education aid was formerly distributed to communities pursuant to Chapter 70 of the General Laws and “Chapter 70” is still shorthand for […]

An economist at the Federal Reserve bank of Boston has recently been doing work on the relative need for local aid of communities. Bo Zhao‘s work was the subject of a recent presentation at the state house. Mr. Zhao computes a municipal funding gap per capita based on estimates of local needs per capita — […]

Arlington has lost aid, but is still getting more aid than most comparable communities.

The chapter 70 formula is shaped first by the constitutional mandate to equalize educational opportunity. So, the communities with lowest property wealth and incomes receive the greatest aid. Additionally, since 2006, an effort has been made to bring all communities up to at least 17.5% of their “foundation budget”. The foundation budget is a low […]

The Unrestricted General Government Aid category, which has superseded Additional Assistance and the Lottery program, is a less a program than a list of aid amounts. There is no agreed underlying formula. It was first generated for fiscal 2010 and the Governor has proposed to hold it constant in fiscal 2011. To some extent, UGGA […]