Excellent school governance piece by Joshua Starr

Many school system leaders pay too little attention to formal policy, which is a mistake since you can draw a straight line between a policy, subsequent rule changes, and resource allocation. Equity, school assignment/admissions, and curriculum policies can form the backbone of a leader’s efforts to improve outcomes for children. Policy changes should be made transparently with the public, and they should be based on data. An open discussion about a proposed policy gives the leader opportunities to lay bare the issues that may be preventing improvement. If done properly, the process for creating a new policy or changing an old one can be a powerful engagement tool for the public. Once a policy is set, the school board is bound to uphold it, and the leader has an opportunity to align resources to the desired state.

The full piece is here.

Should it be of interest...

The presentation I did yesterday was on the role of the school committee, specifically for school business administrators.
It's in my Dropbox here.

DESE update from Jay Sullivan (school finance) at MASBO

reorg at DESE in finance: Roger Hatch's last day was September 1
"I'm the last man standing"
as soon as all the plans have been finalized, let everyone know what the situation is
has sent out emails to everyone who has requested an extension on end of year reports by today
had a conference call last week: a number of resources out about Erate
"pretty exciting situation"
you can get free consulting on if you have infrastructure capacity
Municipal modernization act
"help clarify and ease the burden on local officials to some degree"
some of it related to procurement: OSD going around the state doing check-ins
sped stabilization fund: helpful to schools
some issues regarding regions: a number of issues
DoR submitted a twenty page summary; will link on website
"a lot of this stuff is cleaning up language"
Section that requires OSD to create procedures for lessening cost of textbooks, through (among others) bulk purchasing
working on school data reports (acronym apparently is RADAR?)
meeting with districts over the summer whether we need to expand the chart of accounts, whether it's sufficient as it is
one of the things that came out of the FBRC was the need for more data
ELL and low income, in particular
Economically disadvantaged "a huge political football"
kinds of spending that is necessary to help serve that population
framing things such that if we ask you for more detail on this "is it feasible? how difficult is it to provide" but don't think we asked "how useful it is"
talked about expanding detail on Schedule 19, but essentially there's one line in the 2000 series (that's teaching) "that's got to be 70% of your expenditures"
"we're not asking districts to submit updates" "analysis by paralysis"
"we have to have rules for the 10% that cover the 100% of the districts" to protect those "who fund the minimum as maximum"
"when you build a house, you don't build a foundation and put a roof on it. The foundation is the base; it's the minimum that you need. Then you need to add to that."
updating chart of accounts in 2001
question on if the information would be published
Title I; to issue a report card for every school in the Commonwealth that calculates school spending, school by school
continuing looking to cleanse our data
"what should be charted where" by accounts
tells of a district that spoke of their one-to-one technology program, and they'd spent no money within their chart of accounts on technology for several years
if the data's no good, what good is it?

Legislature keeps hearing need for more services for low income kids: how do we determine what it gets spent on?
Is it just additional staff? How do we articulate that?
thinking of changing the chart of accounts, adding a program column to demonstrate where low income funding goes

9C cuts?
no pothole account
earmarks all in DESE's main admin account
sending anyone who had an earmark through the grants process, so they'll get paid monthly
"it's because they don't want to send all the money out the door"
every two months we get a 1/6th allotment of the yearly allocation
"they're not going to give all that money to us to send out to districts"
circuit breaker at 70% not due to 9C cuts; "totally underestimated indicator claims"
came in substantially higher this year than it did in the past
"we didn't get everything we asked for" in the budget
"still holding $5M for extraordinary relief"
"thinking that it might occur; I don't know. We're waiting to hear what happens with revenues."

Looming financial disaster (and why you should vote No on Question 2)

Let's start with this excellent and petrifying chart from the Boston Public Schools administration:

Slide deck has 10 slides by City of Boston, 6 slides by #BPS #NoOn2 #KeepTheCap pic.twitter.com/5Me9d93xkU

— Kristin Johnson (@KrissyCabbage) September 21, 2016

The Boston finance office notes that this is a 25% increase over time which they thought was "reasonable." So it could be even more severe than that.


School spending increases in Massachusetts isn't tracking at anything close to that steep line. It isn't even tracking at the 3 new schools a year line.
And that's just Boston.

There's been this tennis match on claims on school funding during this Question 2 debate: increase funding to district/pull money away from districts. If you're interested in how it works, I'd recommend MassBudget's post on that (and that probably needs a post, too), but here's what isn't entering into that assertion from the cap lift side:  

If in fact the cap lift proponents intend no change other than removing the cap on charter schools (which is what the ballot language actually says), the state is going to need money for up to twelve new charter schools a year. That's facilities money (charter schools aren't eligible for the Massachusetts School Building Authority, so they have an increment for that), and then, after they've redirected the per pupil amount to the charter, there's the state reimbursement, allowing the district time to make the coming budget cut.

The state already isn't funding that amount in full, and it hasn't for several years; the last calculation I saw estimated that we'd see 54% this year. That means that maybe they'll get to all the first year 100% reimbursements (after they do the facilities amount), but they won't get much, if any, farther. So, as others have pointed out, the reimbursement isn't some windfall of money, anyway, and it also isn't being funded.

If we already can't fund the reimbursement with the number of new and expanding charters we have, how are we going to fund 12 new ones a year?

Vote no on 2.

Public records law update (at MASBO) H4333

Rosann DePietro: Now four statutes instead of one
"probably coming your way, because what else do you have to do all day?"
the law takes effect for the most part this January(2017)
put templates in place before it takes impact
law didn't change the definition of a public record
"everything you have as an organization is a public record unless it isn't"
but now if you get it wrong and a requestor sues you, you not only have to proceed the record, you pay their attorneys' fees
part of updating the website goes into effect in July
most changes benefit the person making the request, not the person receiving the request
more timely access, at a reduced cost, with greater electronic access

MGL Ch.4 sec. 7 (26) is where the definition is
exemption C: personnel or medical files, or "unwarranted invasion of privacy"

School district must appoint and publicly identify a "Record Access Officer"
who that is must be "posted conspiciously" on district website and in administration offices
modifications to response timeframes
long all requests, how handled, fees
if producing records is unduly burdensome, must send written response in 10 days with explanation
25 days: need to offer modification to make request not unduly burdensome
provide project charge before moving on
Supervisor of Public Records may grant an extension, not beyond 30 days upon showing good cause
5 cents a page maximum
no fee if no response in 10 business days
population of more than 20,000, cannot charge first two hours
otherwise, can charge up to $25 an hour
municipality may petition state supervisor for exception
must respond electronically, unless records are not electronically or respondant doesn't want them electronically
common records should be posted online; response may not be a direction to the website
all records must be maintained in the custody of a Custodian of Records
requester may petition Supervisor of Public Records for a compliance determination if district has not complied
may compel you to comply, or get AG involved who can take you to court
if court disagrees with supervisor's ruling in your favor, you may not be assessed attorney's fees, BUT requester can bypass appeal to supervisor and go straight to court (so what then?)
recommend setting up a template to track requests
Read the law (it's chapter 121 2016 acts)
consider initial round doing for free to see how long it will take as a test
General response from group is that fees go to general fund and thus don't go to district at all
Maybe a revolving account is needed in future amendments?

Excellent Globe editorial on the foundation budget review commission

Excellent and timely editorial in the Globe this morning:

The ruling holds up an unflattering mirror to Massachusetts, where the school-aid formula, also known as Chapter 70, has remained unchanged for 23 years. In that time, the educational landscape has been profoundly altered by a variety of factors, especially demographics and special-education needs. The formula is designed to have an equalizing effect, with less wealthy districts receiving more state aid than wealthier ones. But the system’s starting point, known as the foundation budget (the funding level needed to provide an adequate education to all students in a district), has been found to underestimate the cost of educating students by at least $1 billion. Per-pupil spending ranges from more than $25,000 (in Cambridge and Provincetown) to about $11,000 (Southampton and Grafton). It is politically difficult, to say the least, for a group of legislators to negotiate a new funding formula, especially if it’s a zero-sum game that will give to some school districts while taking from others. Efforts torevise the funding formula have centered on adding money to the school-aid budget, a politically easier task were there additional funding to be had. But there isn’t. Governor Charlie Baker and legislative leaders face making cuts as budget funding gaps continue to surface.

Why the charter sector "growing at the same rate" as the rest of public education should concern us

So today's much-vaunted study to push the ballot question to lift the charter cap comes from the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation. They've found, they've said, that the spending within the charter sector has grown at about the same rate as spending in the rest of Massachusetts public education. They put forth that charters, with 4% of the student population, are spending 4% of the K-12 education funding.

If that is in fact the case, that's really a problem.

There's often a back and forth about numbers of students with particular needs served by charter schools, 'though the information at a certain level is available online. What's too often missed in this conversation is that special education funding has no relationship to the actual enrollment of kids with special education needs. Right now, special education is funded at a flat 3.75% of kids enrolled in a district or charter school. That is included in the funding whether or not the school has any kids with special education needs. 

What isn't broken out in the state profiles is levels of student need. I think we all recognize, for example, that the kids who have a learning disability who need extra classroom support are different from kids who need a one-to-one aide to (for example) manage their feeding tube and breathing apparatus. Both of these kids and everyone in between are in district schools. That is not the case with charter schools. Yet charter schools, too, get that same flat 3.75% of enrollment for special education.

And special education, as has been recognized for over a decade now (check the footnotes) is costing significantly more than what's in the foundation budget (see page 9) and is rising considerably faster than the increase in inflation. Thus this isn't only a gap: it's a gap that's growing at an exponential rate every year.

Thus if in fact we are spending 4% of K-12 spending on 4% of the population that's in charter schools, we should be concerned.

We should also be concerned that a group that regards itself as a fiscal watchdog wouldn't understand this.