Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
State Auditor Suzanne Bump today released a local mandates opinion that has statewide implications for funding the education of homeless children who are in state-sponsored emergency placements.
The state’s participation in a federal program that requires communities to continue to fund the transportation and education of some homeless children after they are placed in a different municipality for temporary housing is an unfunded mandate, the auditor concluded. She said the mandate is costing cities and towns millions of dollars.
“I do not question the wisdom or validity of the Commonwealth’s decision to enable homeless parents to choose whether to enroll their children in schools of their temporary host community or keep them in their original school,” Bump said. “[The state’s] embrace of the federal program, however, does require the affected school systems to incur new costs.”
State law (M.G.L Ch. 29, Sec. 27C) provides that any post-1980 state law or regulation that imposes additional costs upon any municipality must either be fully funded by the Commonwealth or be subject to local acceptance. The auditor’s Division of Local Mandates is responsible for determining the local financial impact of proposed or existing state mandates.
The Division of Local Mandates analyzed three cost impacts to “host communities” and to “communities of origin” for educating homeless children: the cost of transporting students between communities, the cost of educating students in communities of origin, and the cost of educating students in host communities.
The federal McKinney-Vento program requires both the host community and the community of origin to share the cost of a student’s transportation. Bump determined that this shared burden on cities and towns is an unfunded mandate amounting to approximately $1 million annually statewide.
The requirement on communities of origin to pay for educating homeless students who no longer reside in their communities is also an unfunded mandate, Bump determined. In her written opinion, she noted that the McKinney-Vento program deviates from a historical precedent that cities and towns provide education to only their own school-aged residents.
Statewide, the cost to communities of origin to educate returning students amounts to $5.3 million annually.
Bump determined that it is not an unfunded mandate for host communities to educate the students that the Department of Housing and Community Development placed there, because of its alignment with historical precedent.
Some communities, such as Danvers, have a high number of hotels and motels used by the state to house homeless families and thus face a higher-than-average cost burden to transport school-aged residents to their communities of origin. Danvers, with less than one-half of 1 percent of the state’s population, hosts 8 percent of the homeless families that the DHCD places in motels. In the 2009-2010 school year, Danvers paid $145,140 to adhere to the transportation requirements of the McKinney-Vento program, according to the auditor’s office.
“For some communities, this plan cuts into their school districts’ overall ability to provide quality education,” Bump said. “The costs incurred have the potential of forcing schools to cut teachers, enlarge class sizes, and make other expenditures in tight budget conditions. I have concluded this is an unfunded mandate with continuing cost implications.”
While the local mandate law does not apply to federal laws and programs, McKinney-Vento is a program that the state entered voluntarily, inviting the regulations and financial obligations on local school departments.
Bump recommended that the Legislature appropriate funds to local communities to fully cover the costs imposed on their school districts to comply with the requirements of the McKinney-Vento program.
The request for the auditor’s review came from Rep. Ted Speliotis of Danvers.