Roll Call: How Legislators measure up for students and public education

The MTA has compiled a record of roll-call votes taken by members of the House and Senate from January 2005 until formal sessions of the Massachusetts General Court ended on July 31, 2006.

The MTA includes all of the votes cast by legislators that affect public education. The fact that all votes are not of equal importance has been reflected in this voting record. The MTA recognizes that a voting record is but one measure of a legislator's support for public education, but it is one of the most concrete measures of that support.

When the session began in 2005, Massachusetts was very slowly emerging from an economic downturn that had gripped the state for the previous three years. An economic recovery has proven more elusive in Massachusetts than in other parts of the country. While revenues have increased, they have not been sufficient to undo the funding cuts that took place from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal 2004 in public higher education, preK-12 education and general local aid. In many communities, up to 50 percent of local aid helps fund the public schools.

The fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2007 budget cycles played out against a backdrop of the Romney-Healey administration refusing to increase revenues and also campaigning to cut over $625 million a year out of the revenue stream by calling for an income tax rollback.

Major priorities for the MTA during the past two years have been to ensure that there were no additional cuts to public education and to begin to restore and increase funding levels so that educators have the resources they need to help all students achieve.

Funding for public education increased significantly in the budget for fiscal 2007, which began on July 1, 2006. All of the Romney-Healey vetoes of education funding were overridden by the Legislature.

Despite these increases, Chapter 70 state aid to local school districts is still $479 million, or 12 percent, below the fiscal 2002 level, when adjusted for inflation and enrollment. Higher education received the highest funding levels in many years. However, public higher education is still $366 million, or 26.5 percent, lower than it was in fiscal 2001, when inflation is taken into account.

Higher Education Contracts

Another major priority during the past two years was to secure funding for contracts for faculty and staff at UMass and administrators at the state colleges. Educators had negotiated contracts in 2001 that remained unfunded until November 2003. The Legislature made a commitment to fund these contracts in three payments, and the last installment was made in July 2006. All three retro funding packages were vetoed by the Romney-Healey administration, but the vetoes were easily overridden by the Legislature. The importance of these votes is reflected in the roll-call scores.

The Republican administration, during its four years in office, made numerous attempts to undercut the collective bargaining rights of educators and to advance questionable education policies. The Legislature agreed that these so-called "reforms" would do nothing to improve the quality of education for the almost one million public education students in the Commonwealth. The Legislature voted to extend due process rights to school nurses, to guarantee school support staff health insurance during the summer, to give creditable service to vocational ed teachers for training before entering teaching and to keep health insurance premiums for state employees at their fiscal 2006 levels. The importance of these votes is also reflected in the roll-call scores.

Unfortunately, the Legislature did not engage in a long-overdue review of the Chapter 70 formula to determine what updates must be made to ensure that each community has adequate resources so that all students can succeed. Historic funding inequities also should be corrected.

The Senate did pass legislation that moves toward establishing a stable system of funding, but the legislation did not pass the House before formal sessions ended. The MTA urges that this be considered at the beginning of the next session.

Full Report: How do they measure up for public education?

House Roll Call

Senate Roll Call