Passing Notes — April 2011
April 14, 2011Passing Notes — May 2011
May 14, 2011
MBAE’s December 2010 study, “School Funding Reality: A Bargain Not Kept“, revealed that all of the $700 million in new Chapter 70 school aid from 2000 to 2007 was consumed by a $1 billion increase in health insurance costs over the same period. According to the report, “controlling the overall cost of health care in Massachusetts is now the ultimate education issue.”
The report’s findings illustrate why it is important for MBAE to join municipal leaders to support House leadership and the House Ways & Means Committee’s budget proposal giving cities and towns the flexibility they need for health care cost control, especially since a significant number of House members are now qualifying their support and indicating they are behind a union-backed alternative that does little to confront the cost controls needed. Nothing should surprise even casual legislative observers, but consider that 13 of the 26 Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee signed onto an amendment that undoes the proposal that the committee endorsed last week, even though none spoke against it on the day the budget was released and approved by the Ways and Means panel.
The MBAE report found that explosive growth in the cost of school employee health insurance has crowded out funding for the instructional portions of school budgets from teachers to books. Spending on classroom teachers, teacher professional development, and purchases of books, software, and other educational materials – areas of the budget that have the most significant impact on student learning – when adjusted for inflation has actually been falling since 2000.
Unless employee benefit cost issues are addressed, education cuts and layoffs will intensify over the next several years. To protect critical funding for public schools as well as other essential municipal services the state legislature should pass the municipal health insurance reform proposal included in the state budget that will debated by the House of Representative on Monday, April 25th.