LYNN — State Sen. Brendan Crighton (D-Lynn) is sponsoring three bills that would allocate more money to school districts with a large amount of low-income students, in the hopes that it will help solve segregation issues in certain communities.
One of those bills, “An Act Modernizing School Construction,” is co-sponsored by Crighton’s fellow Lynn legislators on Beacon Hill, state Reps. Daniel Cahill and Peter Capano, and aims to revamp the city’s aging school infrastructure.
“We have 11 schools over 100 years old in the city of Lynn,” said Crighton. “We need to start building more schools in Lynn. As a commonwealth in the current formula, the funding available for the MSBA is willfully insufficient and we’ll never be able to pick up the pace to address these issues.”
The proposed legislation would double revenue for school construction, update the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s (MSBA) formula with an equity lens — specifically, in providing sufficient funds to school districts with large proportions of low-income students — and would modernize funds so that all school districts receive additional state funding for MSBA-approved projects.
The legislation also proposes that districts with a disproportionate amount of schools in need of renovation be allowed to use up to 1 percent of their funds for new construction or renovation. It would also require the MSBA to regularly revise its standards for funding, which the bill’s co-sponsors say are outdated due to the rapid increase of construction costs since the MSBA’s inception in 2004.
Another Crighton-sponsored bill, “An Act Promoting Racially Integrated Schools,” would create a voluntary, competitive grant program for school districts to address segregation between districts and within schools.
This bill is modeled off of the federal Strength in Diversity Act — passed last year by the U.S. House of Representatives — and the Obama-era Opening Doors, Expanding Opportunities grant program, which was discontinued by the Trump administration.
“This basically empowers communities through grant funding for those school districts that want to look at ways of creating more diversity and desegregating their school system,” Crighton said. “It would be more or less of an incentive for districts to take a look at ways they can improve diversity in their schools.”
The legislation also includes a data collection component so that information about the level of racial segregation in all public schools and districts is annually reported by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE).
DESE already collects the majority of that information, but the bill would require it to be broken down for the public to easily track and understand.
Crighton’s third bill, “An Act Establishing a Special Commission to Study Racial Segregation in Housing and Public Schools,” recommends the creation of a commission that would submit a report to the legislature on how to improve integration in housing, education and transportation.
“I think everybody recognizes that, while many of our schools in the suburbs are becoming more diverse, there’s also many communities, like Lynn and other gateway cities, that are becoming highly segregated schools where you don’t have that diversity,” said Crighton.
The bill would require the commission to submit its report within a year. That panel would be made up of government officials, subject matter experts, and individuals who have been appointed by legislative caucuses and public commissions from communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by racial segregation in housing and education.
Crighton said diversity was one of the best things about his experience in the Lynn Public Schools and he thinks every student benefits from learning in a diverse classroom setting.
“So many of our students today aren’t experiencing that, and I think we need to look at ways to improve it and identify what the problems and causes are,” he said. “In terms of segregation, having the best possible 21st century, state-of-the-art schools is important for where parents choose to live and where they choose to send their kids to school.
“I do see this playing a role in the segregated school system that we now have in many communities in Massachusetts.”
