The Massachusetts Association of School Committees has provided the Arlington School Committee with an April 2009 report about educational requirements from the state and federal governments that are not fully funded -- known as "unfunded mandates." The list is described as partial.

STATE EDUCATION MANDATES – Partially or Unfunded Requirements

Many laws, initiatives and requirements that may have been well intended, from a multitude of governmental agencies create “un-funded mandates” at the local level.  These mandates must be coupled with adequate and sustainable funding sources.  Often local mandates required by the state are attributed to federal requirements.  The cause and effect of these growing local burdens and links to their funding support are a frustrating source of conflict to state / local harmony and cooperative efforts.  

Several years ago the Massachusetts Association of School Business Officers (MASBO) reported on this issue and the points made are incorporated in this document.  The MA Association of School Superintendents and MASC have also included items listed below. 

General Overview of the General Regulatory Requirements with Cost Implications

The largest legislated program to fund public education, known commonly as the Chapter 70 funding system, does not cover in full the cost of mandates inherent in the law and regulations.  The system remains essentially as it was at the start of the Education Reform program in 1993.  The reimbursement formula has been modified somewhat and annual funding has increased significantly, but school districts have for many years had to budget for expenses that outstrip both the rate of inflation and the state’s ability to grow state aid to education faster than the cost-of-living for schools.  

In addition to funding shortages, some of the mandates that districts must address are:

• Time and Learning standards that required some districts to expand time spent on classroom instruction. 

• Curriculum frameworks that have been established in seven areas, requiring new and expanded areas of educational activity.

• Implementing, adhering to, or complying with any one of the 15 assessment, accountability and accreditation systems that were created by Education Reform or imposed by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education or the US Department of Education, including No Child Left Behind .  Superintendents have estimated that the growth of compliance mandates has expanded ten-fold and one estimate is that every educator in a public school spends as much as 160 hours per year on pure compliance requirements that are not classroom instruction or preparation for teaching. 

• The Department of Education has produced a list of 106 reporting requirements (the “checklist”) that are required of superintendents each year. 

• Federal regulatory compliance is an added burden as districts fulfill obligations to No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Massachusetts superintendents. School committee members and school business officers have compiled a partial list of mandates that are listed below:  

Regular Education

Provide free and equal (and appropriate) education to all students from kindergarten through grade 12. We believe that Chapter 70 is underfunded by about $1.6 billion that would be required to provide necessary and mandated services. 

Special Education

Districts must provide education to special education students from age 3 to age 22. This must be done in the least restrictive environment.

The cost of providing assessments, evaluations, and specialized instructional services exceeds the funding provided by federal and state sources.  In addition, non-instructional services within the review and appeal processes such as arbitration, mediation, and hearings result in extraordinary costs to the district. The personnel, administrative, and technology costs inherent in the delivery of appropriate services are exorbitant.  Individual Education Plans dictate where a student must go to school, requiring outplacements and special education transportation.

Special Education Transportation 

Currently, about $165 million in mandated but unreimbursed transportation costs are incurred by school districts for students in special education programs. 

“504 Services” For Physically Disabled Students 

School districts are required to provide students with disabilities with accommodations that will assist in their learning according to federal law.   This may include any disability that is not covered by special education.   Teachers must accommodate all needs written into a student’s “504 plan.”  State and local options are constrained.

Transportation to School for the General Student Population

Districts are required to provide transportation to all students in grades K through 6 who live two miles or more from the school.  Regional districts receive transportation reimbursement for about 85% of these costs, but municipal school district aid was eliminated during lean budget years and has not been restored. 

Administrative Mandates with Cost Implications

In addition to the 15 systems identified above, other mandates with cost implications include: 

• Criminal records checks for all staff having unsupervised contact with students and other school employees.  

• Emergency evacuation plans add training time, signs, posters and other means of alerting.

• Title I Requirements for costs associated with delivery of services and the reporting and documentation requirements often exceed funding.

• Crisis Prevention Intervention (CPI) training – requires that the district provide training for instructors who then instruct a majority of staff members in techniques to de-escalate student crises.  Associated costs are incurred to hire substitutes for classes whose teachers are required to participate in training.

• Pre-school requirements – Districts must ensure that they provide integrated (ratio of regular and special education) settings for all students in accordance with the regulations of Early Education and Care.  The requirements for assessment, evaluation, and provision of services are costly.

McKinney-Vento and Costs Associated with Homeless and Transient Students

This component of No Child Left Behind requires that schools accept any homeless student who wishes to attend the public school.  In addition, McKinney-Vento requires the school district to transport any homeless students living in town to the schools in their old home district.

Services to English Language Learners

Provides required ELL services to all students who are not fluent in English.  Specially certified teachers must provide this service.  There are educational materials and testing costs associated with the ELL services that are provided.

• All classroom teachers who service ELL students in their classrooms must have ten hours of training each year until they fulfill a requirement of 50 hours of training.

• All communications that need to be sent to the homes of all students (not just ELL) whose parents do not speak English as their first language must be translated into their native languages. 

• ELL training is required even when only one (1) student in the district is an ELL student.            

• Districts are required to provide Sheltered English Immersion services for students whose first language is not English.  Districts are responsible for developing procedural manuals, forms, parent outreach, interpreters, and translation of documents.  Districts are also required to provide Sheltered English Immersion training in Categories 1, 2, 3, and 4 for all staff who work with English Language Learners.  All levels and types of services as provided for English-speaking students must be provided for ELL students in their primary language.  Every student whose first language is not English is required to be assessed, to determine language proficiency upon registration and admission to the public school; stages of language acquisition need to be determined in order to identify the level of services required for each student.  Students must also be supported by staff members in order for them to participate in Massachusetts English Language Acquisition – Oral (MELA-O) and Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment (MEPA) in reading and writing as well as the MCAS assessments. 

Home Schooling

The district must monitor and document all home-schooled students.  This includes identifying families and reviewing detailed home schooling plans for compliance with state guidelines.  Though school districts are required to provide this oversight there are not funding or reporting requirements to or from the state.

MCAS Testing

MCAS testing is required annually in grades 3 through 10.  Students must pass the grade 10 testing in math and English in order to graduate from high school.   All students must be proficient in English/Math by 2014, requiring needed extra help and extra time on task to meet this goal.  District must continually upgrade the curriculum to keep up with the testing.

• Districts must provide special tutoring for students who do not do well in the testing and must track and contact non-graduates if they fail MCAS.  This requires guidance time and mailings.

• The costs for instructional time and funds associated with the preparation for, documentation for, administration of, and reporting about the multiple assessments in grades 3-10 are difficult to quantify.  

Curriculum 

Frameworks.   Districts revise and create new curricula to conform to the state curriculum frameworks and demands for timely update as the revises and updates frameworks on a regular basis.  This work must be done after school and during the summer.   Instruction hours must provide at minimum 990/900 hours of instructional time.

Individual Student Success Plans.  Districts are required to deploy administrative, teaching, secretarial, guidance, and technology staff and resources (including but not limited to intervention programs in ELA and Math) to ensure that students receive additional support services that address individual student needs as a result of statewide assessment mandates (MCAS).  Instructional support and resources such as texts, workbooks, and online instruction are examples of areas that require increases in expenditures.

Curriculum Requirements.  The Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks require that districts provide additional instructional staff (e.g. health teachers and guidance staff) to ensure that all curriculum areas are addressed.  The periodic review and alignment of every curriculum area requires substantial investment in time (including committee review, curriculum development, printing and dissemination of curricula) and resources (texts, consumable items, and online access).

The length of the school year (180 days) requirement impacts costs incurred for snow and ice removal and climate control in multiple buildings.

Residency

Residency waivers and concerns arising from private entities such as sports boarding facilities within district boundaries and the implications of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Act impact district budgets (also see above).  Sports boarding camps attract players from various towns, states and countries.  Local districts are required to educate said students without regard to tuition payments because residency statutes state that if a student is not at such a facility “solely for the purpose of education,” they are allowed to attend at no cost to the student.  

• Residency also becomes an issue when a residential special education institution is located in a Massachusetts community.  Students admitted to that institution sometimes attract the family, or a guardian member of the family, to relocate to the community for purposes of being closer to the resident student.  This includes formerly out of state as well as in-state residency shifts and families with multiple residents.  Such shifts determine assignment of costs to the host resident community.

• While there is local control on the admission to kindergarten there is a great deal of differentiation of starting age.  Under choice students may be entered into a district at an earlier age and then require placement at the resident school district.

Vocational Education

School districts allow students to attend out-of-district vocational schools when programs are not offered in the regional district to which the local district belongs.  Unlike the Charter School Reimbursement, there is no apparent reimbursement for vocational placement, though the vocational student, like the charter student, is counted in the Foundation Budget of the sending district.  In addition, school districts are required to transport these secondary students to the schools of their choice.  There is only partial (up to 50%) reimbursement for vocational education transportation.

School Choice

This program requires all school districts to admit students from other districts in the state unless the host school district takes action to restrict or prohibit accepting non-resident students from other Massachusetts school districts.  

• Admitted choice students’ siblings are thereafter entitled to enrollment in the school also, even when there is little or no space for new local students to enroll.  Districts losing students to choice have no control over the students who choose to leave and are charged for the cost of those students as assessments on the Cherry sheet.  

• With declining enrollments and constraints on local funds, it is expected that this “free-market-choice” of school districts will expand causing a drain on resources from more vulnerable school districts.  This will have an affect on the capacity to address issues for low-income school districts often having the neediest students.

Charter Schools

School districts have no control over students who wish to attend charter schools rather than the local district and local residents have no say in how these schools operate or how their tax dollars are used unless they happen to be selected by the charter school to serve on its board of trustees.  In other words, charter schools operate outside the reach of city, town, and regional government. 

• Many persuasive arguments have been made to demonstrate such counter-intuitive outcomes as lower numbers of special education students enrolled, the virtual absence of limited English proficient students, and the ability of charters to transfer students out of their school back to the public school district. 

• We believe that the current charter school funding formula is unreasonable because it draws away from a city or town (or region) chapter 70 allocation

Staffing 

Professional Development - with the enactment of Education Reform, all teachers and other professional staff must be re-certified every five years.  The district must provide professional development required for re-certification, with no cost to the individual employee.

Highly Qualified Staff – this requirement is a mandate that ensures employment of and reporting on highly qualified staff members and requires a substantial investment of time and money at all school levels.  In many cases, there is insufficient guidance for districts that enables administrators to assist teachers and professional staff to meet the requirements established by DESE.  (For example, appropriate licensure and completion of a designated number of courses is required for teaching assignments for which licensure may not exist at this time.)

Foster Care & State Wards

Districts are required to educate students who have been placed by the state in foster care and state ward settings.   If a student has special needs, the town is responsible for that student’s education, even if the student is enrolled in a day or residential school that is not in town.  

• Districts are also responsible for the transportation for the student. However, the local district is only responsible for regular day/vocational education of these pupils.  When that student requires special education, which cost can be billed back to the district from which the student came.

Grant Percentages of Federal Grant Funds to Private Schools 

School districts are required to give a percentage of grants funded under the No Child Left Behind Act to all private schools whether or not our students attend the schools.   The percentage is based on total school and district populations.  The district must provide reading services from its Title I grant to all schools within the state that our students attend if the schools meet certain criteria.

SIMS & EPIMS

The state requires that each district have software in place that will allow districts to report data on all students and staff in a format that is compatible with the state databases.  This process has been very time-consuming and costly to districts for training and updates. 

With EPIMS, the labor and technology costs of providing the information to DESE are significant.  Many hours are required to collect and verify information, upload it to DESE, and continually review to ensure accuracy.  Administrative costs are incurred to complete the Teacher Quality Improvement Plan (TQIP) and update information.  In addition, significant time is consumed by communicating with teachers and administrators to ensure validity of reporting.

With respect to SIMS, it must be recognized the reporting requirements consume significant secretarial hours and require extensive technology fund investment in terms of hardware (administrative computers) and reporting systems (student software programs).  There are multiple reports required during the course of the school year.

Reporting & Auditing

The school district must provide timely reports to the state throughout the year.  There is a financial end-of-year report that takes a great deal of time to prepare.  An outside auditing firm must audit this report each year. 

Student Activity Accounts

In a town it is required that these funds be kept in accounts under control of the Town Treasurer.  The funds are deposited in an agency fund.  Each school has a checkbook that allows the school to keep a small amount of cash to pay bills as needed.   The checking accounts are reimbursed through a system that requires them to complete a form for reimbursement and attach the documentation.  This is sent to the Business Office for verification and then sent to the Treasurer’s Office.   These accounts must have a minimum of an internal audit yearly and an audit from an outside firm every three years.   The town auditors perform a yearly audit on these accounts.   Although this allows for more accountability, it adds a great deal of time to the workload of existing staff to monitor and process the transactions.  

Unexpended Education Funds

Massachusetts local school districts are required, unlike as in many other states, to return, at the termination of each fiscal year, unexpended/unencumbered funds to the municipality’s general fund.  This requirement is counter to stimulating incentives for school districts to find creative ways to generate savings throughout the fiscal year.  Municipalities often conclude that funds, which are returned at the end of the fiscal year, is misinterpreted as evidence that the school district did not really need said funds.  School districts are not permitted to establish rainy day funds.  

Technology

Each year, the district must have a technology plan.  An annual report must be sent to the state indicating how the district is using technology to teach, how much is being spent and what the district plans to spend in the future. There are technology benchmarks that must be met by students at each grade and all students must meet state-defined technology proficiency by the end of grade 8.  The development of technology plans (incorporating professional, administrative, and community personnel), the recommended student to technology (computer) ratio, and the ratio of technology personnel recommended for districts, directly affect school budget development.

Building Maintenance

Districts have a requirement to spend a minimum amount to maintain buildings and are required to pay “union scale” otherwise know as “prevailing wage,” on projects for repairs and maintenance when done by an outside contractor.  This mandate results in higher costs for many skilled trade services. 

The following is a list of annual inspections and tests required by the state for maintenance of buildings: 

• boiler inspections;

• air tank inspections; 

• fire alarm tests; 

• fire suppression tests (kitchens); 

• fire extinguisher tests;

• elevator & chair lift inspections;

• under-ground tank inspections/replacements, 

• drainage back-flow controls, 

• stage rigging inspections; 

• Integrated Pest Management Plans (use of pesticides) including community notifications; 

• fire sprinkler tests; and 

• Asbestos inspections.