Doubling down on education

Many of the state’s largest and most needy districts already receive their target aid, so the list of communities slated for priority funding tends to be more suburban.

Potential recipients south of Boston include Braintree, Cohasset, Duxbury, Hingham, Holbrook, Marion, Milton, Quincy, Sharon, and Westwood, among others.

“I think if you look at the math, it’s clear that the state has some ground to make up here,’’ Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan said.

Although some of the wealthiest communities in Massachusetts appear on the list, Senator Katherine Clark, a Melrose Democrat and lead sponsor of the amendment, said the money would go to a variety of districts that haven’t been treated fairly under an aid formula that tends to take a snapshot of where communities were in 1992, the year before the Education Reform Act created the Chapter 70 formula.

“This amendment really goes to correcting some historical inequities in the way such funding is distributed,’’ she said. “It’s really across the board.’’

In 2007, the Legislature changed the law to guarantee a higher minimum amount of aid, which would have benefited districts not already receiving the minimum. But the recession and ongoing fiscal crisis have prevented the state from meeting that commitment, Clark said.

Numerous districts fall $1 million or more below their target aid, including Braintree, Canton, Quincy, Randolph, and Stoughton. In Plymouth, the gap is $2.7 million. Framingham has the largest gap in the state at $7.2 million.

Sullivan said he would certainly like to see Braintree receive an additional $1.6 million to reach its target, but he can’t count on that money.

“It shouldn’t be this complicated, and we shouldn’t have to wait for casino legislation to receive the education funding that is warranted,’’ he said.

The bill would allow up to three casinos, one of which would be designated for the southeastern part of the state, one for Western Massachusetts, and one for Boston or Worcester. In the southeast, casino developers and federally recognized Indian tribes have looked at sites in Fall River, Middleborough, New Bedford, and Raynham.