MTA President Max Page gave the following testimony to the members of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means on the FY27 state budget:
I am Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, a union of 117,000 educators, in preK through public higher education, across 400 locals and in virtually every city and town in the Commonwealth.
Over the course of six hours today, you have heard infuriating and heart-wrenching stories from our students, including brilliant and passionate students from Amherst Regional High School, which I attended as did my children, and educators, about what threatened cuts in our schools will mean to the quality of education we can provide.
No district is without budget constraints.
No district is without budget constraints. Some, like Arlington, recently won a large Proposition 2½ override, which helps mitigate the worst of the cuts. (Malden’s override lost several hours after the end of the March 31 hearing, which will lead to deep cuts.) In Lexington, a wealthy community, the proposed budget would result in cutting the equivalent of 60 full-time positions. More cuts are threatened in Framingham, a much lower-income community. Members from Groton-Dunstable, Leverett, Bridgewater and a dozen other communities testified about the real cuts that will damage the lives of our young people – with larger class sizes and fewer Education Support Professionals, classroom teachers, therapists and librarians.
In public higher education, while we have made progress in securing debt-free public higher education, we continue to exploit our adjunct faculty – low pay, no job security, no health insurance, no retirement contributions – and underpay our faculty and staff compared to other states. The situation is especially egregious in our community colleges, where faculty pay lags by upwards of 70%, when compared to other states and when you adjust for the high cost of living in the Commonwealth.
The frustration you heard was palpable because all these districts and campuses have made cuts over many years. Many have won overrides, but still cannot keep up with rising health care and transportation costs. Others worked valiantly to pass overrides that failed. And now their students are suffering.
Members of the Ways and Means Committee, you know what the problems are, including:
- The inflation “glitch” has meant funding is not close to meeting rising costs.
- The lack of funding for in-district transportation, and inadequate funding for regional transportation.
- The decline in enrollment is in part because ICE is scaring away our students and their families.
- The rapidly rising cost of special education services.
- The accelerating growth in health insurance costs is fueling corporate profits while strangling our districts.
These stories and the challenges our educators and schools face are daunting. And we recognize how hard your job is. But fortunately, we live in a state of enormous wealth. If Massachusetts were a nation, we would, per capita, be the sixth-wealthiest nation on Earth. The revenue solutions are clear:
- Draw on the Fair Share Amendment. MTA members’ dues were the lion’s share of the funds spent to win passage of the so-called millionaire’s tax. Fair Share has exceeded expectations. We need to use the excess Fair Share revenues – upwards of $1 billion this year – to fill the huge funding gaps at the district and campus levels.
- Draw on the Stabilization Fund. Standard and Poor’s has said that a state should have an estimated 8% of its annual budget in reserve; Massachusetts has close to 14%. We could use $3 billion of the Stabilization Fund – because it is raining – and still have sufficient funds to assure these ratings agencies. (Why these ratings agencies hold such power over the state is a conversation for another day.)
- Tax multinational corporations that are hiding profits overseas and are not paying their fair share in taxes. Aligning our tax rate on these profits with those of other New England states could generate upwards of $400 million. This is a no-brainer.
We have the resources in the state to protect our greatest investment, the foundation of our democracy, and the source of our economic prosperity, our cultural vitality and civic energy. Our members, the educators of Massachusetts' best-in-the-nation public education system, are depending on you to protect our most valuable mutual commitment.
