Malden Public Schools could benefit greatly from potential Mass. Chapter 70 school funding formula changes

By Steve Freker

This could be the breakthrough Malden city officials have been talking about – and waiting for – in earnest for a number of years now. On Wednesday, it was announced that Malden state Sen. Jason Lewis (D-Fifth Middlesex) had filed new legislation seeking to create an ad hoc state legislative commission to review and consider an update to the state Chapter 70 school funding formula. The legislation is named “An Act to Ensure Adequate and Equitable Funding for Public Education (SD.1912).”

If this news was announced at the next meeting of either the Malden City Council or Malden School Committee meeting, it would deserve a standing ovation of applause. Malden Mayor Gary Christenson and his finance and budget team may have already done so when they heard it themselves.

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For much of the past decade and beyond, Mayor Christenson – who is also the chairperson of the School Committee – and other key officials involved in the overall city budget process and the Malden Public Schools budget specifically – have lamented that Malden has not received its fair share of Chapter 70 funding from the Commonwealth. The Chapter 70 program is the major program of state aid to public elementary and secondary schools. In addition to providing state aid to support school operations, it also establishes minimum spending requirements for each school district and minimum requirements for each municipality’s share of school costs.

Everyone – including Mayor Gary Christenson, Malden’s municipal Chief strategy officer Ron Hogan, Malden Public Schools Director of Finance and Operations Toni Mertz, Councillor-at-Large Craig Spadafora, other City Councillors and School Committee Vice Chairperson and Budget Committee Chairperson Jennifer Spadafora – in recent years and a number of public meetings have pointed to the Chapter 70 funding levels received by Malden schools as inequitable and, in turn, insufficient. All of these city officials as well as Malden’s State House delegation of Sen. Lewis himself and state Reps. Paul Donato (D-Malden, Medford, 35th Middlesex), Steven Ultrino (D-Malden, 33rd Middlesex) and Kate Lipper Garabedian, (D-Malden, Melrose, 32nd Middlesex) have agreed with these positions and pledged to work toward “righting the ship” as it pertained to Chapter 70 funding, and specifically, the formula used to determine the actual annual allocations.

If Sen. Lewis’ legislation reaches fruition, a special commission is indeed created and somewhere down the road updates, revisions and/or changes are made to the Chapter 70 formula, which would result in Malden receiving an increased allocation, then it is possible this city’s proverbial “ship would come in.”

The Chapter 70 funding numbers from this past fiscal year illustrate a stark disparity in funding, when the Malden Public Schools district is compared to two neighboring school districts. Everett and Revere are two similar districts both size-wise and demographically in school populations and the financial status of its students’ families. Malden School Committee budget chairperson Spadafora made a detailed presentation in February 2024 – nearly one year ago – on the Commonwealth’s release of initial Chapter 70 funding figures. At that time, Malden’s allocation was estimated at $68.2 million, with the final number coming in at just over $70 million. For the city of Everett, however, which has about 300-350 more students overall (about 6,700) than Malden’s 6,400 districtwide, the Chapter 70 funding allocation for FY2025 was $111,682,212 – nearly twice as much as Malden’s. Revere Public Schools were allocated $98,418,111 – about 40% more than Malden’s figure.

For the record, the Chapter 70 funding for Malden for this school year, about $72 million, represents a full 77% of the city’s total Malden Public Schools FY25 budget of $93.4 million, obviously the major portion of the total figure.

At that meeting, Spadafora said “we will be working toward a level-funded budget for [the next school year] and it will be very challenging with these [Chapter 70] numbers.”

“We are working on a formula that was devised in the 1990s. We really need to have it reexamined and brought up-to-date,” Mayor Christenson said, reiterating Spadafora’s plea.

In proposing this new legislation, Sen. Lewis explained, “The commission is tasked with making recommendations to the legislature for necessary updates and changes to the funding formula in order to ensure adequate and equitable funding for all school districts in Massachusetts.” Certainly, one of the Senator’s represented districts – Malden – was one of the school districts he was referring to as an impetus for his action.

Also notable was the fact that in her inaugural address recently, Mass. Senate President Karen Spilka (D-2nd Middlesex and Norfolk) said, “At the K-12 level we have maintained our commitment to the Student Opportunity Act, providing record levels of funding to our public schools. But it has been some time since we closely examined some aspects of K-12 funding and policy, and so I hope to tackle that this session.”

Sen. Lewis’ newest legislative push would seem to go hand-in-hand with the Mass. Senate President’s emphasis point.

It is easy to say that Malden city and school officials will welcome the newest effort by Sen. Lewis quite warmly and will be following the progress of this new legislation with great interest as this year’s city and school budget process unfolds. While the timeline of such a legislative process would not realistically affect this year’s FY26 Chapter 70 funding allocation and local budget determinations, it could bode well for the future. For Malden, the waiting game continues, but there appears to be the possibility of some light at the end of this legislative tunnel.

Sen. Lewis files new legislation to revisit school funding formula

Special to The Advocate

Last week State Senator Jason Lewis filed new legislation, An Act to ensure adequate and equitable funding for public education, to create a special commission to revisit the K-12 public school funding formula. The commission would be tasked with making recommendations to the legislature for necessary updates and changes to the funding formula in order to ensure adequate and equitable funding for all school districts in Massachusetts.

Senator Lewis was a strong advocate for the creation of the Foundation Budget Review Commission in 2014, and he then helped lead the effort to pass the Student Opportunity Act (SOA), which was signed into law in 2019. The SOA is being implemented over seven years and once fully implemented will increase state funding for public K-12 education by more than $1.5 billion (in real dollars).

Although the SOA is making a significant difference in closing equity gaps in funding and enabling school districts that serve large numbers of low-income students to make important new investments, many districts are facing fiscal challenges due to a variety of factors, including the end of federal pandemic relief funds, high inflation in previous years and the escalating cost of special education, student transportation and other services.

In Senate President Karen Spilka’s 2025 Inaugural Address earlier this month, she said, “At the K-12 level we have maintained our commitment to the Student Opportunity Act, providing record levels of funding to our public schools. But it has been some time since we closely examined some aspects of K-12 funding and policy, and so I hope to tackle that this session.”

An Act to ensure adequate and equitable funding for public education (SD.1912) creates a special commission composed of a wide variety of education stakeholders and financing experts, and charges them with examining both the foundation budget and the local contribution components of the Chapter 70 school funding formula. The SOA requires that the foundation budget be revisited at least every 10 years.

“The importance of public education and having high-quality, well-funded public schools for all our children is what first motivated me to run for elected office,” said Senator Lewis. “I’m proud of the Student Opportunity Act and everything we’ve done in the legislature to support public education, but it is time to once again revisit the school funding formula and ensure that it continues to accurately and fairly reflect the needs and fiscal capacity of school districts and municipalities across the Commonwealth.”

Under SD.1912, the commission would solicit public input from hearings held throughout the state and would publish a report with their findings and recommendations by the summer of 2027, which is when the SOA is expected to be fully implemented.