INCREASE FUNDING FOR EDUCATION IN TEWKSBURY
- by: TEWMOMS
- recipient: Senator Tucker and Representative Miceli and Representative Finegold
Friends,
We are writing to you because we know you to be concerned citizens of our great town of Tewksbury. As you probably know, we are in dire financial straits and working to find solutions that will maintain our services and schools at a quality level. Unfortunately, recent actions by the State have made this effort more challenging than ever in the short-term and nearly impossible in the long range. A significant factor affecting our budget is the Foundation Budget and its formula derived at the State level.
The Foundation Budget represents the conglomeration of numbers the State uses to calculate its support of mandated services within communities (pensions, transportation, and special education). Unfortunately, the actual costs communities are incurring to provide these required services is FAR greater than what the State assesses. This misrepresentation on the part of the State results then in gross underfunding on their part and huge budget deficits to communities which are crumbling under these burdens.
With that in mind, we have created a petition which asks our leaders to fight for our children and to represent our families' interests at the State level by getting this Foundation Budget formula changed to more accurately reflect current costs for mandated services.
We hope after this reading this overview, you will decide to sign the letter by clicking below. We were able to share over 500 signatures received by March 26 at the meeting that night at the high school. We were able to share our concerns with Senator Tucker in person as well, and to send copies of our petition and signatures to Rep. Miceli and Feingold through their aides. Also present at that meeting was an aide to Rep. Nikki Tsongas who took a copy of our signatures and acknowledged that our efforts had made a strong impression on her. She informed us she would share this with Rep. Tsongas as well.
We will continue to collect signatures for some time to come. This is only the first step in a longer process to get our legislators to hear us and respond. So, please forward this to any and all friends, family and community members to keep our message strong and growing.
Dear Senator Tucker, Representative Miceli, and Representative Feingold,
We, the undersigned residents of Tewksbury, need your help. Tewksbury officials and volunteers are addressing our budget crisis and its potentially devastating impact to the educational experience for ALL of our children. It is clear that there are only so many levers that we can pull to manage our own financial destiny. To say that we are extremely disappointed with the amount of money that our town will be receiving from the stimulus package is a gross understatement. Tewksbury%u2019s portion is a direct result of the foundation budget, which we believe is fundamentally flawed.
At the state level we need you to advocate for increased chapter 70 funding through:
· Revisions to the foundation budget formula that address the fact that 50% of the foundation budget is a direct result of the income of the town%u2019s residents yet a town does not control its own local income taxes.
· Revisions to the foundation budget formula that include more realistic personnel benefit costs. For example, Tewksbury%u2019s 2010 foundation budget includes $3.5 million but actual costs are $9.8 million.
· Revisions to the foundation budget formula that include transportation reimbursement for single-school districts just as is provided for regional schools districts.
· Improvements to the Circuit Breaker reimbursement (either lower the threshold which is four times the foundation budget, or increase the reimbursement).
We also need you to encourage your colleagues at the federal level to fully-fund the Individuals with Disabilities in Education (IDEA) mandates, to continue the municipal Medicaid reimbursement program and to retain charitable giving tax incentives (e.g., charitable giving funds many of our educational and co-curricular programs through non-profit organizations).
Please help ensure that ALL Tewksbury students don%u2019t just %u201Cmake do%u201D but they %u201Cmake progress%u201D by making these revisions and improvements a top priority.
Thank you for taking the time to address our concerns.
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