Write a letter.
Send it to the Joint Committee on Education and your own legislators.
Click here for contact info for the members of the Joint Committee on Education.
Click here for contact info for your own State Representative and State Senator.
Sample Letter (click here for a Googledoc to copy)
Send to: Senate President Karen Spilka, karen.spilka@masenate.gov; Senate Ways & Means Chair Michael Rodrigues, michael.rodrigues@masenate.gov; Joint Committee on Education Senate Chair Jason Lewis, jason.lewis@masenate.gov; and your own Senator.
Dear President Spilka, Chair Rodrigues and Chair Lewis,
Thank you for your service and your support of public education in the Commonwealth. I am writing to ask you to please promote equitable resourcing for rural schools in the Senate budget by fully funding Rural School Aid at $60 million for FY26.
According to the Commission on the Fiscal Health of Rural School Districts, it costs between 16.7 and 22.7% more per child to educate K-12 students in small and rural districts, a difficult reality that is not recognized by current Chapter 70 funding formulas. Rural school districts/towns account for 18 of the 20 lowest average teacher salaries in the state, and 18 of the 30 highest Massachusetts residential property tax rates. Rural towns already make tremendous sacrifices in teacher pay, student services delivered, and burden on local taxpayers, and have nowhere else to turn in order to continue to provide an acceptable free and appropriate education to our students. Rural Aid is a matter of survival for vulnerable and overlooked small school districts like mine.
[Insert local anecdote here and/or below.]
Please also advance these rural school priorities:
Fund Regional Transportation to at least 90% reimbursement.
Fund Special Education Circuit Breaker to at least 75% reimbursement for both tuition and transportation costs. In some rural districts, transportation costs are now higher than tuition costs for Out of District Special Education.
Increase Minimum Aid to $200 per pupil.
Thank you for your attention to the needs of rural school districts.
Respectfully,
Name, title and town