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Last night, a packed room of area school and municipal leaders gathered at Middlesex Community College to hear from State Senator Steve Panagiotakos regarding K-12 state funding, as well as from Jeff Wulfson, deputy commissioner of the department of education. As expected, the news was not encouraging: The senator affirmed recent media reports that cities and towns could see a 10% reduction in state funding for next year. According to the senator, the best-case scenario would be level funding for schools. In Lowell, where the state provides more than 85% of the costs of educating our children, a level-funded budget for FY10 would require cuts of about $4 million. The notion of having to cut more, up to 10% from the budget or about $14 million, is disturbing since cuts that deep would absolutely impact the quality of education our children receive. (Last year, the Varnum Elementary School was closed to save $1 million, and with that savings came a ripple of disruptions still felt today as staff and students were distributed throughout the district.)

As part of his remarks, Senator Panagiotakos provided a presentation (link available soon, watch for future post) where he noted some interesting historical data, such as the fact that state spending from FY00 to FY09 increased an average of 3.2% annually. He also discussed Chapter 70, which refers to the Mass. General Law requiring the state to support public schools, as well as the role of the foundation budget, established in 1993, that sets an education funding minimum. And despite today’s headlines touting Massachusetts as the highest-ranking state in math and science, and one of the top scorers in an international exam ranking students from four-dozen countries, the future for funding the Commonwealth’s schools is bleak. According to the senator, some relief may come in the form of federal funding, the state’s willingness to reduce unfunded educational mandates, and re-examination of Governor Patrick’s revenue-generating ideas. More on all this later.