Vikram Venkatasubramanian, Westford Resident
In all the discussions about the school budget override, while emotion seems to be the guiding sentiment in arguments, there appears to be a gap in looking at impact from historical data. Chelmsford reduced their school spending circa 2008 and I posit that it would be a good exercise for people to look at impact to their schools and property values in the 15 years since. There is also value in looking at towns like Acton, Lexington, etc that have high performing (better student outcomes) schools and higher school spending to review outcomes of their students as well as impact to property values. I write this letter to exhort voters in town to do the arithmetic for their own homes and consider the economic impact to them as a result of either a yes or a no vote i.e. where does each person stand to lose more money as a result. Here is what I see for data from Chelmsford:
- Based on data from the Massachusetts Department of EducationÂ
- Chelmsford has a 300% higher drop-out rate than Westford
- Chelmsford trails Westford significantly on both MCAS and SAT performance
- Chelmsford has an overall accountability score of 55 in comparison to Westford’s 88
- In terms of school rankings, irrespective of which source you use, Westford outranks Chelmsford by a distance.
- Rewinding the clock to 2007, both towns were ranked similar but in the 15 years since, Chelmsford has only managed to claw their way back to where they were before.
- Further, there is a clear and sharp drop in school rankings in Chelmsford in the 5 years right after they closed schools and cut spending (source).Â
School spending results in increase in property value. This is not speculation but has been researched and proven by the National Bureau of Educational Research (source) as well as by a separate study by Harvard University (source).Â
In terms of impact, let us take just one example – if we consider the impact of cuts to the AP and higher level classes alone that are identified in Dr.Chew’s deck, we can see from the DOE website data that given the 3X number more children in Westford that leverage these classes, our impact is going to be significantly higher i.e. we have more kids in high level classes than Chelmsford even though our total number of students is smaller! This means a much higher percentage of our kids will be left behind when these courses are offered on a lottery.
All of the above points basically point to negative student outcomes and negative economic outcomes in terms of housing values as a direct result of a NO vote if that happens on Saturday. This is NOT speculation – numbers do NOT lie!
Irrespective of the outcome of the vote, there is going to be economic impact to people in this town. The intent of my letter today is to exhort every family to do the arithmetic for their own homes and understand whether the immediate increase in taxes is numerically smaller than the loss of value on future gains on their property. Given the mean and median home sale prices in Westford, I think the arithmetic will prove to everyone that a Vote NO is a bigger hit on the wallet in the long term. This arithmetic exercise, I believe, allows for a reasonable and dollar to dollar comparison of the outcomes that should better inform people on making an informed choice tomorrow rather than base their vote on emotional or political lines.
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