Good morning,
Have your legislators signed the Every District Accountable pledge?
I’ll make it easy for you: probably not. In sad news, we haven’t had any new sign-ons to the Pledge since the September primary.
As a reminder the Every District Accountable pledge is a set of five “good government” commitments developed by Act on Mass and a coalition of progressive groups. We’re asking legislators and legislative candidates to share their commitments (or not) to the following points:
- Vote in favor of bills you have co-sponsored on committee and floor votes
- Host at least two in-person constituent town halls per year in your district
- Support legislation to provide public funding for elections
- Vote to reinstate 8-year term limits for Speaker and Senate President
- Uphold the will of the voters on good government ballot initiatives, namely: Public Records and Same Day Voter Registration
You can check on our website to see if your legislators have signed on yet. If not, please consider sending them an email, using our email script. We’ve heard from a few folks whose outreach about the Pledge sparked really interesting and helpful conversations with their legislators, whether they ultimately signed or not. It’s a great tool to learn where your legislator stands!
Once your legislator has agreed to share their commitments, we will post them on our website and social media. As we gear up to push for additional transparency reforms in the next legislative session, these commitments will be essential to help your fellow constituents and advocates know who’s standing with us.
Thanks for taking action!
State House Scoop
Why are Massachusetts schools still so segregated?
This year marks the 60th year of operation for Massachusetts’ voluntary school desegregation program, METCO. Annually, METCO sends roughly 3,000 predominantly Black and Latino students from Boston to attend better resourced schools in 33 surrounding suburbs. Research has found that METCO students have better attendance, higher graduation rates, higher test scores, and higher career earnings than their Boston peers. The program has been continuously operating since 1966, making it the second longest voluntary school desegregation program in the country. It is funded via a line-item in the annual state budget.
This issue has a personal connection for me: I grew up and attended public school in Natick, which receives students from the METCO program. I was one of those white suburban students who benefited from more diverse voices in my classrooms. In fact, my first time ever visiting the state house was for a METCO Lobby Day in high school, where METCO students, teachers, and allies urged legislators to fully fund the program. It was my first time meeting my state rep. (Little did he or I know how much trouble I’d give him in a few years, when I became an organizer for Act on Mass!)
A few weeks ago, the Boston Globe released an extensive article that explored the history and current status of METCO. Its headline asked a key question: “Metco is an experiment that’s an undeniable success. So why hasn’t a single suburb been added in decades?” (“Decades” is an understatement: the last new town was added to METCO in 1975.)
Racial segregation in schools has been illegal in Massachusetts since 1855, the first state in the nation to ban it. Yet, policies of redlining and racial discrimination in housing led to significant “de facto” racial segregation. Our state’s main law preventing all types of racial segregation in schools, the Racial Imbalance Act (RIA), was passed by the Legislature in 1965, in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. A year later, the METCO program was established.
Yet, 60 years later, a 2024 report found that 63% of Massachusetts’ public schools are racially segregated. Massachusetts’s public schools have the 12th highest racial segregation in the nation—worse than states like Mississippi and Alabama—and the fifth highest economic segregation. This adds a follow-up question to the Globe’s inquiry: after decades of effort, why is there still school segregation to address? Why do we still take for granted that an education in Natick (for example) is better than Boston or Springfield?
Like many questions, the answer takes us back to our state house.
First of all, Massachusetts’ school funding mechanisms are uniquely poised to exacerbate inequities. Unlike other states, which often have county-level or regional districts, most municipalities in Massachusetts have their own school district. This means school budgets are constrained by the municipality they’re in. Yet, also unlike other states, municipalities in the Bay State are highly restricted in their revenue-raising ability, leaving them disproportionately reliant on property taxes for funding. In short, towns with higher-valued property have more budget money available for schools, allowing racial wealth gaps to fuel education gaps.
The state’s Chapter 70 funding formula aims to use state funds to close gaps between wealthy and lower-income districts. In 2019, the Legislature’s ambitious “Student Opportunity Act” sought to further boost state funding to lower-income districts. The additional funds unlocked have allowed major strides in districts like New Bedford, where 79% of students are low income and state funds provide 86% of the district’s budget. However, as the Boston Globe recently reported, the impacts of the pandemic on learning and inflation have hollowed out several of the victories. Budget crises have also revealed some of the “unintended consequences” in the funding formula, which lock in districts to spending amounts that don’t account for inflation.
As wealthier towns face those same economic headwinds, many have responded by passing Prop 2.5 budget overrides to extract more from property taxes. Low-income districts that rely on state funds do not have this option and can only push for adjustments to the inflation-capped Chapter 70 formula. For a longer exploration, I recommend reading Oscar’s recent blog post: “Massachusetts is No Longer First in Education. What Happened?” Statewide, there is still a $2,672 gap in spending per student between wealthy and low-income districts.
Amid mounting municipal budget crises and calls for reform from rural and urban districts alike, legislators finally included a policy rider in this year’s budget to convene a commission to re-evaluate Chapter 70. The Commission’s report is due in October 2028: the end of the next Legislative session. Not exactly an urgent priority, it seems.
On the subject of policy approaches to segregation, it is clear that the Racial Imbalance Act (RIA) is limited in scope and outdated. The original law, still on the books. requires school districts to submit annual demographic data, allows students at segregated schools to transfer in-district, and empowers the Legislature to withhold funding from districts that fail to act on segregation. However, it only considers “white” and “non-white” populations, defining “racial imbalance” as a school in which more than 50% of students are “non-white.” At the time of its passage, the law only applied to two school districts in the state: Boston and Springfield. Today, it fails to capture racial diversity among Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American populations.
The RIA limited action from the start by leaving integration to the choice of individual parents and allowing transfers only within a school district. A Northeastern Law Review article explains that the RIA was primarily supported by “suburban legislators who sought to demonstrate their commitment to racial justice without inconveniencing their own constituents.” Due to the Act’s limitations, they conclude that it “never achieved its purpose.”
Perhaps due to these limitations, it seems that enforcement of the RIA has slipped on the priority list. In 2024, the state’s Racial Imbalance Advisory Commission, a product of the RIA, released a scathing report: “Racial Segregation in Massachusetts Schools.” By all appearances, it was the first public release of a report by this commission in years. The authors revealed a routine failure to enforce the RIA: despite statutory requirements, the state had not notified a school district of racial imbalance in their schools in the last 20 years. The report also explored limitations of the RIA and made policy recommendations to the Legislature for remedy.
One of the major recommendations from the report was a “robust expansion” of the METCO program. At the time that the report was published, the Legislature had recently had the opportunity to do so. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020, eight new suburban school districts expressed interest in joining METCO. Six existing METCO host towns voted to expand their programs, including my hometown of Natick.
Yet, instead of providing the modest funding increase to support this expansion in 2023, the Legislature “inexplicably” level-funded METCO for the first time in years, leaving them without even an inflation adjustment for 2024. This halted expansion plans, and momentum was lost. The Boston Globe’s editorial board slammed the move at the time, writing “The Healey administration and the state Legislature missed an opportunity to show that actions matter more than words by ignoring Metco’s plea to grow.”
As of this writing, it seems that none of the recommendations of the 2024 report have been adopted by the Legislature; some were refiled this session and “sent to study” again. In June, report co-author Raul Fernandez published an op-ed repeating the demand for Legislative action: “I co-authored the Commonwealth’s report on school segregation. Two years later, it’s time for Massachusetts to act.”
Fernandez also mentioned that, after two years of inaction, a group of Black and Latino parents moved to file a lawsuit against the state earlier this year. The plaintiffs are nine students at schools in Boston, Brockton, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lynn, Springfield, and Worcester, which are “among the most racially segregated districts in the state,” with routinely low test scores and low graduation rates. The suit argues that the racial segregation in Massachusetts schools is unconstitutional, and primarily seeks “voluntary measures to increase integration, such as expanding opportunities to attend schools in other districts,” including an expansion to METCO.
More than 170 years after our state first banned racial segregation in schools, it is alarming that students in our state have been forced to resort to lawsuit for the right to a fair education in Massachusetts’ schools. If we want to pride ourselves on being a national leader in education, we owe it to our students to provide an equal opportunity for all.
I’ll echo a plea that I made at 16, the first time I stepped under the Golden Dome: robust funding for METCO. We must stop delaying action on segregation.
| Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog. |
What else we’re reading this week
Interesting writing and reporting from around the Bay State this week!
- Future of Mass Save in limbo as Legislature stalls on energy bill in Commonwealth Beacon
- Mortgage rates are soaring, another blow to Mass. housing affordability as buyers face higher monthly payments (paywall) in Boston Globe
- National Guard deployment sent Sen. Velis to militarized southern border in Shoestring News
Take Action
Want a lawn sign to support Question 1?
The campaign has rolled out some adorable signs to bring sunshine to your front lawn! If you’d like a lawn sign, please fill out this form and we will coordinate to get you one.
Phonebank for No on 3! – Wednesdays at 6 pm
Don’t let billionaires buy our elections! The No on 3 campaign is hosting weekly phonebanks to speak to Massachusetts voters about why we’re voting No on 3 and why they should too. Join them every Wednesday at 6 pm.
Is stipend reform on your ballot this year?
This November, eight districts will feature a non-binding ballot question asking voters to curb legislative “loyalty pay.” Is your district one of them? Check our map and make sure to tell your neighbors to vote “YES!”
For more info on this initiative, visit actonmass.org/stipends.
Thanks for reading and for supporting Act on Mass! Have a great weekend.
Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass