House Ways and Means budget: this time with more

I am doing one of my periodic comfort re-reads of Terry Pratchett;
this is a good summary of the House budget. Alas, no answers here.

Wednesday's post was a quick one. Here's some more information and some thinking on the House Ways and Means budget on K-12 education; as always, this is me, out here having an opinion in my entirely unofficial capacity. 

The budget is here, though really that's where you download PDFs. Wouldn't it be amazing if instead there were updates to the posting of the Governor's budget, with nice little clickable links, and the ability to see at a glance what changes were being proposed over time?

If you'd like at least the change being proposed, I have now started a spreadsheet of the K-12 education accounts, which is here. (I did not start that with the Governor's budget this year, and, yikes, lesson learned!).

Also, the cherry sheets--municipal; regional--are now updated and seem to be up for good now (they went up and back down yesterday).

House Ways and Means FY25 budget

 I have barely cracked this open, but it's online here. No cherry sheet update as yet.

A few brief things I already know (as always on here, this is my personal perspective):

• Disappointingly, this keeps the same inflation rate as the Governor's budget. 
  
  
• Also disappointingly, this digs us further into a hole for the districts making their way out of hold harmless by making the minimum per pupil increase $104. This costs $37M, and it's coming out of the Fair Share surtax, which, as this is an allocation of funds that has nothing to do with student, district, or community need, is really disappointing.
  This is a genuinely terrible idea, and it's actively working against the reform passed unanimously in both chambers that is the Student Opportunity Act. 
  
  
• 'Though I have not yet found this written down anywhere, I have been told that this has an increase in the low income pupil count for some districts, which has resulted in some districts moving (back?) up a low income group. There certainly is a difference in the state aid for some districts that isn't coming from the per pupil increase noted above. 

That's what I have so far...I do plan to pull together a "tracking the budget" spreadsheet this spring (I haven't yet!), and I'll run through accounts later this week. 

April 4 meeting of the Worcester School Committee

Please enjoy these daffodils from my walk from work in Boston.

While school in Worcester was cancelled, the meeting was not; my meeting was, so I got to this one in person to find that the balcony now has some who are interested in good governance of the district attending in person to keep an eye on things. Excellent. Let me know if you're coming; I'm bringing snacks. 

The agenda is here. The video of the meeting is here. 

Okay, Worcester, here's something else you can do!

On Tuesday's Worcester City Council agenda: 

That the City Council of the City of Worcester does hereby support the Worcester Public Schools’ advocacy for a higher inflation rate in the Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) foundation budget. 

Thank you, Councilor Haxhiaj!  

The Worcester Public Schools, in their FY25 budget memo to the state delegation, said the following: 

Fixing the Inflation Calculation: The inflation rate for the FY24 Chapter 70 inflation adjustment was 8.01% and for FY23 it was 7.08%. But the law caps the annual inflation adjustment of the foundation budget at 4.5%. As a result, districts did not receive funds to cover a significant portion of inflation that they had to pay for in expenses.
The way the Chapter 70 formula originally worked, that would not be a long-term problem because the lost inflation would automatically be added back to the foundation budget in the following year. But a technical change made almost a decade after the law was passed inadvertently changed that. Now when the cap reduces aid below the level needed to keep pace with inflation, that reduction is locked in forever and reduces future aid. A simple fix that maintains the 4.5% cap but makes sure that the formula makes up for lost inflation would solve the problem. That would increase Chapter 70 aid by $217 million, with additional under- inflation “catch-ups” in future years. It is important to make a permanent change in the law so that all of the aid lost is eventually made up. That is necessary to allow the Commonwealth to meet the real-dollar targets in the Student Opportunity Act. 

Action: Support the proposed language to correct a flaw in the calculation of the inflation adjustments in Chapter 70 by the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and the American Federation of Teachers of Massachusetts.

Please be sure the Worcester City Council hears from you, either this weekend, or via public comment Tuesday, to support this advocacy.

A few things that may be worth mentioning in your communication:

• The inflation rate in the foundation budget is 1.35%. There is no aspect of any budget that is increasing by only 1.35%. That will guarantee cuts.
• The inflation rate used to account (as noted above) for years in which there was an overage by carrying it over into future years. That is no longer the case.
• The Student Opportunity Act, as marvelous as it has been, is NOT for cost increases from one year to the next. It very specifically is to address historic undercalculation of categories within the foundation budget. SOA in no way removes the responsibility we have as a state to ensure that the "fair and adequate minimum" keeps up with what is needed to educate our children.
• The city's local contribution will not increase as a result of an inflation increase.

You can find the Council's contacts here. Council meets at 6:30 on Tuesday.

Some suggested reading

• On what is absolutely a test case in Oklahoma on public funding of religious schools; this is the St. Isadora online charter school 
  
  
• On the messed up priorities of a Congress that moves to ban TikTok but doesn't get schools appropriately supported
  
  
• Jonathan Haidt's new book The Anxious Generation has been getting a LOT of press; Nature Magazine has a review which finally puts the claims into context
  
  
• Bill Runey, Superintendent of the Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School District, wrote a column about district budgets this year that will resonate with many

quick note that the Worcester School Committee meets tomorrow

 The agenda is here. The report of the superintendent is on special education. 

There are ten reasons only for executive session. 

March 21 Worcester School Committee meeting

 It's budget season, which means I am all over the state, so I'll do catch up on these as I can; I wasn't at this one and I can't make the next two, either, so they'll be coming later. Do note that the Committee meets this Thursday; the report of the Superintendent is on special education. 

The March 21 agenda is here; the video of the meeting is here. The report of the superintendent on future ready pathways is here.

Note that prior to the public session, there was an executive session on two worker compensation issues and negotiations with the Mass Nurses Association.

The consent agenda was passed. 

The Burncoat High School spirit team was recognized.