By Patrick Anderson
North Shore communities still divided by large gaps in education funding and achievement are being drawn together by fears of the rising cost of educating their populations, and the pressure it is placing on local budgets.
One day after state MCAS test scores showed academic performance in towns such as Manchester, Rockport and Hamilton remain well above the performance of cities Gloucester and other cities such as Salem, a group representing 11 communities from Nahant to Newburyport announced it was going to work on solutions to education problems across the region.
The group, called the North Shore Coalition for School Funding, is being led by Manchester Essex School Committee Chair Susan Beckman, and includes representatives from Gloucester, Rockport, Salem, Beverly, Swampscott, Nahant, Newburyport, Ipswich, Marblehead and Hamilton-Wenham.
"We are beginning to recognize that this is not just within our towns and we have to start thinking about things in different ways," Beckman said Friday. "There has been so much frustration, we have not found the common denominator that we can agree on. It is not just the larger urban setting like Gloucester and Beverly. This is not just an exclusive problem."
The coalition was unveiled last Thursday during a public forum on school finances hosted in Ipswich by state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, and Rep. Bradley Hill, the Ipswich Republican whose House district includes Manchester.
Gloucester School Committee Chairman Greg Verga, one of the founding members of the group, said that, in recent years, cities and towns that may have seen themselves as rivals competing for a larger slice of the funding pie, or may have been focused inward were now finding common ground with those around them.
"Unfortunately for our neighbors, we now have a common cause," Verga said.
By joining together, North Shore communities hoped to carry greater political weight to counteract the influence of districts in greater Boston, Verga said.
Tarr, who has been involved in the arcane and often intractible debate over education for 13 years in the state Senate, said the banding together of local school leaders was an example of the kind of effort that would be needed to bring about fundamental change to the way Massachusetts education is funded.
"(It's) about bringing people together who have been in the fight for awhile," Tarr said. "Clearly we have to redouble our efforts."
As the communities within the coalition look to work together, MCAS scores released last week indicate that many of the differences that have created division among cities and towns in the past are still relavent.
On this year's math and English tests, both Manchester Essex and Hamilton-Wenham had fewer students scoring below proficient in all grades tested than the state average, while Gloucester and Salem saw more of their students score below proficiency than the state average at each grade level.
Confronted with those test scores, Gloucester Superintendent Christopher Farmer pointed out that his district spent $862 less per pupil on education than the state average in fiscal 2007, $1,003 less per pupil than Manchester Essex, and $1,775 per pupil less than Rockport.
In addition, 26 percent of Gloucester's student body qualified as low income last school year, compared with 12 percent in Rockport and 5 percent in Manchester Essex.
Farmer said the state's failure to provide funding to cities and towns for all of the things that local districts are required by law to cover in education was one problem. Another stems from the inequity between districts caused by the reliance on property taxes to pay for education.
"First, general funding for mandates is inadequate," Farmer said, "then there is an issue about equity."
In addition to more students to educate from a smaller tax base — and a reluctance of residents to pass overrides — Gloucester also loses funds to its neighboring towns through the state's School Choice law, which allows students to attend schools outside their home district, with the home district covering the cost.
Tarr said he understood the difficulties faced by Gloucester and Massachussets' older cities, but the political realities of the state Legislature has kept many reforms off the table.
"Every legislator has to work for their community, so if we are going to change things, they need to be ones that 50 percent plus one can agree on," Tarr said. "Nearly every community has a problem with the state funding formula and we need to find the things we can agree on. The dissatisfaction is intensifying."
Tarr's legislative prescription includes two reforms expected to be popular in his sweeping Essex County district: changing the formula to provide more money for every community, and basing calculations for a community's "wealth" on resident income in addition to property taxes. In Gloucester, swaths of valuable property give the city a wealthier profile than the income level of many residents would suggest.
Beckman said the similar challenges faced by North Shore cities and towns were greater than the differences and each community would benefit from working together.
"I think part of this is understanding where all of the towns sit," Beckman said. "Every community has a story to deal with and it is not as easy as robbing Peter to pay Paul.
"In the climate we are in today," she said, "we need to work with our legislative team to come up with solutions."
Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com
