In recent years, the Chelsea Public Schools have relied on a financial lifeline from the State Budget as their fiscal situation has grown more challenging.
This assistance comes through what is commonly called the ‘Pothole’ account, officially known as the ‘Hold Harmless’ provision. The account is designed to support districts whose low-income student counts were affected by a change in counting methodology implemented three years ago. Unfortunately for Chelsea, this year’s allocation represents a significant reduction.
The district received $1.214 million from the Pothole account last year, but this year that figure has dropped dramatically to just $296,000 – a decrease of nearly $1 million.
“The whole idea of the account is to hold us harmless for the change in the way they calculate the funding, which has taken dollars away from us,” Supt. Mary Bourque stated. “Come to find out, it was slashed this year at a rate of about 56 percent, so we are not held harmless because that would mean you are at 100 percent. By their own admission, we aren’t held harmless at 100 percent.”
State Sen. Sal DiDomenico expressed his disappointment with Chelsea’s Pothole account funding level and noted the difficulty in securing a long-term solution to the problem. He had advocated for such a fix in his education funding bill proposal.
“I’m disappointed that was also not addressed within this session,” DiDomenico remarked. “It would have been addressed with (the education) bill and it’s another reason I’m disappointed with how all of this happened.”