House Decreases School Aid

The House released its 2007 budget today, and amazingly, it cuts Chapter 70 education aid for Fitchburg compared to Gov. Mitt Romney's proposal.

According to the House budget website, Fitchburg would receive $38,070,719 in Chapter 70 aid. Romney's budget appropriation is $38,443,683. That's a difference of $372,964. For a school district that is whispering override and doesn't have enough textbooks, that's very, very bad news.

There are possible reasons for this. The number of students may have changed in the last few months, decrease aid through the funding formula. Some other quirk in the complicated formula may have had an effect (admittedly, we don't know how the formula works, we just know there is one).

Whatever the case, Fitchburg needs answers as to how this happened. It's less than 1 percent of the Chapter 70 aid, but really, every dollar counts. How many books could $372,000 buy? It could fix a roof or two, also. We someone get the feeling the school budget is being built with that money in mind. Traditionally, figures would only go up in the process, so this breaks that mold.

Whether its the mayor, state rep, School Committee, or whoever, there needs to be some answers. There also needs to be pressure put on Sen. Robert Antonioni to do whatever possible to get that money back and let it fought out in conference.

Otherwise, the Lottery aid is the same as Romney's budget. But with the schools talking override, this is not good news today.