How much would your community receive?
Find out how much your school district would benefit from the Promise Act.
New numbers make a powerful case for Promise Act
New numbers make a powerful case for Promise Act
The Promise Act would deliver three times more new state aid than the governor’s bill
A new report by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center released today confirms that the Promise Act delivers far more money to our high-need districts than competing proposals filed by Governor Charlie Baker and by Representative Paul Tucker.
The MBPC numbers confirm what the MTA has been saying: The Promise Act would deliver three times more new state aid to public schools than the governor’s bill, when fully phased in. The report also indicates that the amount of money many districts would receive if the Promise Act is enacted is even higher than our initial estimates.
Last summer, the MTA issued “checks” showing, with the best estimates we had at the time, what each community might receive if the Legislature honored the recommendations of the Foundation Budget Review Commission. Now we have a detailed analysis of an actual bill, the Fund Our Future campaign’s Promise Act.
Take Action
Urge your state representative & senator to ask the chairs of that committee to release a bill that meets the core principles of the Promise Act.
Here are bottom-line conclusions of the new report:
- The Promise Act would bring in just over $1.4 billion in additional state funds to our public schools in the final year of a seven-year phase-in. This is more than three times more than the governor’s bill would provide: $460 million.
- Almost every community will benefit. The districts that have the least will benefit the most. Three-quarters of the funds will go to districts with the highest concentration of economically disadvantaged students.
- Communities with the most racial and economic diversity — places such as Fall River and New Bedford, Brockton and Revere, Haverhill and Holyoke, Springfield and Chicopee — would see even higher levels of funding than were in the estimates in the checks from last August.
- Another way to say this is that these schools — and our educators — have been even more deprived of what they are owed than we previously thought. Data in the MassBudget report underscores how far the Legislature needs to go to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide all students with quality public schools.
- The Promise Act is still stuck in the Joint Committee on Education. Please call your state representative and senator today and ask them to ask the chairs of that committee to release a bill that meets the core principles of the Promise Act.
Our students can’t wait!