June 2025 meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education: opening comments

 On this brutally hot day in Massachusetts, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is having their June meeting. You can find their agenda here. The livestream will appear over here.

Should you wonder if DESE is backing down: no.

I will update this as they go.

Central Mass Special Education Collaborative

audited for FY11
$4.5m in accounts, but had not entered encumberances for the summer
and had not entered OPEB
was (after that) $1.4m
surplus from last year; charge to Worcester is frozen, thus using up $1m of the surplus
currently undergoing an FY12 budget
Allen: that $1m freeze will go away; sped account will go up by $1m PLUS growth
one time freeze used to save teaching positions
double increase for next year
Foley: is this the first time the state has conducted an audit?
Dio: first time the state has paid any attention to collaboratives since their inception
5 out of 28 looked at...finished and moved on
issues uncovered at Merrimack were outside of anyone else's operating experiences
Foley asks how often we have people here: Allen says it seems like every week
audits should be instructive
Dio comments that most collaborative directors locally have been public school employees and are familiar with what is required of them, followed that even as not required

Legislative update

posting as we go...
Legislative update from Representative Alice Peisch and Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, chairs of the Joint Committee on Education in the Massachusetts legislature.

Want to be on the Central Mass Educational Collaborative Board?

The Commissioner is looking for people to appoint. Details after the jump.

Quarterly report of the Central Mass Special Education Collaborative

You might remember that we now get these as part of the new laws under which collaboratives exist.
We now have an update on the audit, how they are going in working towards compliance.
We will also be having their director coming to Finance and Operations when we next meet (which should be soon, actually).
O'Connell asking for final information regarding the audit once it is complete (and asking when that will be).
Foley referring to F&O as part of the conversation there regarding the compliance.

General business, including the audit of the collaborative

Going off to subcommittee:
the annual "changes to the budget"
resolutions for MASC's annual delegates meeting
a Title 1 Parent Advisory Council
more intensive standards for PE
update on implementation on Common Core
...and a bowling club (no word on candlepin or otherwise, though Mr. Monfredo tells me he's a candlepin bowler)
Going to F&O is a meeting with the special ed collaborative to discuss the state auditor's findings: Foley "have an obligation as a school committee under our fiduciary responsibilities..audit to help refine our practices"
Boone: "a number of changes in terms of the governance structure...first board meeting"
updates from our perspective
Allen: "certainly support these audits..." annual audits extensive lists
internal controls
one on retirement contributions will have a financial impact at some point; collaborative reviewing
"excessive fund balance" transitioning their old, cash, basis, to an accrual basis: an accounting issue is being corrected, recreating their FY11 statements now based on modified accrual accounting, unbalance was based on summer salaries
"we insisted on the tuition freeze which saved us a million dollars" (FY13)
"essentially reducing the balance by $1.2m, $1m is a trust fund account, $1.5 tuition freeze ($1m for us)...expenses of (SS) liability will go to the member districts"
"no further action other than the $1m tuition freeze...we want to know what the retirement liability is going to be"
financial statements will be created for FY12 after finished with FY11
"How to best use...the fund balance?"
"don't want to receive the benefit one time...smooth tuition freeze going forward...collaborative does need some balance going forward"
"don't want to be in the situation of a midyear tuition increase"
O'Connell...focus should be collaborative exists to charge what it needs to provide its programs
board needs to be watching this
suggests that F&O consider requiring regular copies of budget, minutes of board meetings,
should we revisit the agreement with the collaborative: is the role of Webster disproportionate to the size of Webster in this collaborate? What should we be doing with this collaborative? Is it meeting our needs?

On the Council agenda

The Worcester City Council has a lengthy agenda tomorrow night. Several items reference the public schools:

• The school system is requesting the creation of a revolving fund for some of our special education programs, such that the tuition of students who come to those programs from outside the system can be set aside for the funding of those programs themselves. You may remember this came through on a School Committee agenda a bit ago, but only the City Council can set up a revolving fund.
• Coming out of Municipal Operations, there's an item responding to a petition from the public on privatizing all human resource functions for the entire municipality, which is giving another go-round on the question of merging HR departments.
• Councilor Lukes is asking about the results of State Auditor Bump's audit of the Central Mass Collaborative. 

6pm at City Hall!

Auditor Bump on Central Mass Collaborative

Speaking of audits, you may have seen the report that State Auditor Suzanne Bump has come out with her office's audit of the Central Mass Special Education Collaborative, of which Worcester is a member.
I'll put all of her office's press release below the jump, and I've put up the full report here.
The press release and the article give you the jist what what they found and what has subsequently happened. Those of you who follow School Committee closely may remember that we voted a few months ago on a designee to sit on the Collaborative's board; Superintendent Boone now sits on their board. We also saved a million dollars this year in contributions.
Many of the rest of the issues have already been fixed.
There's an item on the upcoming School Committee agenda, requesting that the Collaborative board meet with the Worcester School Committee, which should sort more of this out publicly.

School committee meeting on Thursday

The Worcester School Committee meets on Thursday at 7 pm at City Hall. You can find the agenda here.
We're starting off with some honors, including Sheriff Lew Evangelidis.
The report of the superintendent is on school-based health clinics (the back-up isn't up yet).
Governance and Employee Issues is reporting out, as is Finance and Operations ('though only on the budget hearing).
We're getting a report back on MCAS testing issues for this spring (so far).
We're getting a response regarding community input in principal selection.
We're getting a vast list of all non-instructional positions in the system (all 222 pages of it!).
The National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing is back, with a signing statement that...well, read it.
We're receiving a donation from the United Way for Head Start.
We need to appoint someone to the Central Mass Special Education Collaborative Board.
We're accepting a grant from DESE for math and special education.
And it's Bay State Bike Week!

Suzanne Bump, State Auditor

she's pretty popular around here now due to her finding on the requirement on McKinney-Vento funding
Also, the work on the educational collaboratives
"it's all about integrity and public confidence"