Suburban districts are disproportionately benefitting through the state program used to help fund large school building projects across Massachusetts, and a new report calls on policymakers to reexamine why and how the state could address the resulting inequity.
Despite major public investments in recent years, the report by the MassINC Policy Center and the Worcester Regional Research Bureau found that students in Boston and “gateway cities” are more likely than their suburban counterparts to “learn in buildings that are deteriorating, lacking in basic features, and often cramped and overcrowded.”
“We’re seeing, just based on the invitation outcomes, who’s being invited to do these significant rebuilds or these significant renovation projects. We’re seeing suburban districts benefiting more than our urban and gateway city schools,” Anthony Clough, research associate at the Worcester Regional Research Bureau, said Tuesday at a briefing following the report’s release.
The report, co-authored by Clough, found that schools with the best “building condition ratings” have received nearly two-thirds of program invitations since 2015.
The Core Program of the quasi-independent Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) provides grants for large-scale construction and renovation projects at schools across the state.
Suburban schools accounted for more than half of the schools invited to the program from 2015 to 2024, though their buildings make up just 43% of all schools in Massachusetts, the report found. Schools in Boston and gateway cities make up 32% of those in Massachusetts, and have received less than 19% of invitations to the program in the same period.
Schools in Boston are five times more likely than other schools across Massachusetts to have a low “general environment” rating, Clough said, adding that Boston schools were also 2.5 times more likely, and gateway city schools 1.5 times more likely, to be missing “essential features” like art and music classrooms, gymnasiums and science labs. Urban schools were also more likely to be overcrowded and to have low building condition ratings.
The report also looked at the demographics of students more likely to attend schools with inadequate learning conditions, finding that Black, Hispanic and low-income students are more likely to attend overcrowded schools, schools with inferior physical conditions, and schools lacking learning features that are deemed essential to education.
The authority’s cost-control policies are part of how urban districts have become so disproportionately impacted, as they’ve been subject to larger reductions from the maximum reimbursement rate allowed under state law when compared to their suburban counterparts, the report suggests. In the meantime, researchers said that cost pressures have reduced the number of communities looking to rebuild, as well as the number of projects awarded state funds.
“To the extent that we have dollars, we’re not using them to meet the highest needs first and foremost. So we’ve got to make sure that we extend our resources effectively, and that begins with reimbursement policies that recognize that it costs more to build in urban areas than it does elsewhere,” MassINC Research Director Ben Forman said.
Along with calling on policymakers to increase authority funding and to prioritize projects based on the severity of building inadequacy and student needs, the report suggests lawmakers take a look at reimbursement policies researchers say are disadvantageous to urban districts.
Non-reimbursable costs like land acquisition and site preparation are often higher in urban settings than in suburban ones, panelists at the briefing said, and can impact whether a school is even able to get to the part of the process that involves the MSBA.
In gateway cities like Lynn, Mayor Jared Nicholson said, they’ve had to find a way to address overcrowded and inadequate school buildings without the authority’s help.
“We had a huge increase in students over the last 20 years and we have been grateful beneficiaries of the Student Opportunity Act, an annual operating budget so we can hire more teachers. But we don’t have the classrooms to put them in. And we’ve been desperately trying to fix that with modulars being created, using existing buildings,” Nicholson said. “But that’s all been done outside of the MSBA system.”
“We’re clearly short of where we need to be and want to be in our facilities,” Nicholson added.
The state could start the process by tapping a commission to discuss and look at statewide school building data, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts Jessica Tang said. The state could use its experiences implementing other student funding mechanisms, like the Student Opportunity Act and Chapter 70 formula, to understand how a formula for school building projects could work, Tang added.
American Institute of Architects Executive Director John Nunnari referred to a Sen. Jason Lewis bill (S 403) that would establish a commission to review the “adequacy and equity” of the Massachusetts School Building Program.
“When MSBA reformed itself back in 2004, it had the best ideals and intentions to try to take a program that prior to that, was driven a little more by politics, I would say, than equity,” Nunnari said. “Now, 21 years later, we have this opportunity to look at the program again and see — to not necessarily say ‘Let’s throw it out,’ but to say, ‘This is a program that is working, how can we make it better?'”
MassINC researchers suggested policymakers take the same “general approach” with facilities as they took with Chapter 70 funding, calling on municipalities to be required to co-invest with the state when buildings are considered “educationally inadequate” and on the Legislature to pass policies making it mandatory — rather than optional — for school buildings in poor condition to be rebuilt, closed or consolidated.
There is a clear role for municipal finance in the process, Worcester Regional Research Bureau Executive Director Paul Matthews clarified, adding that “There is simply a need to acknowledge that our state’s cities have some of the most disadvantaged students, some of the oldest and neediest schools, and there needs to be recognition of that in how the program prioritizes.”
“The Student Opportunity Act has been critical at restoring some equity to the operating funding,” Matthews added. “This report, this conversation demonstrates that there needs to be a parallel conversation addressing capital needs.
