Board of Ed for February: budget!

 "real challenge" per Martinez at federal level on funding, related to enrollment decline and other things
pay attention when things like this are said

Bill Bell on the Governor's budget

SOA implemented in full as of FY27

concern of how chapter 70 is working; increasing number of districts receiving minimum aid
Department, Commissioner, Executive Office, A&F "aren't tone deaf to the issue"
commitment to see through implementation of Student Opportunity Act; what leaders want to do after that "remains to be seen"

circuit breaker growing by $100M into next budget year

haven't received word on what the education funding levels would be for federal grants in entitlement grants
baseline is funded nationally, but allocations remain to be seen

Legislators have begun their process of budget hearings: education and local aid is March 23 in Lawrence

Hills asks if they have the resources needed to implement the goals
Martinez, in essence, says it is a start

Smidy: the capacity is very limited in the field
even with allocations and grants, a lot of schools are not going to be in a position to move forward with these initiatives if they don't have the resources to move forward

Craven: need a sense about what costs are being piled onto districts
Martinez: not only the need, but also where districts are in 
"when we use the word 'advocacy' we're using it too loosely"
nah, that's still advocacy; you just want specific advocacy
"how do we become strategic about our resources..."
this is what people say when they aren't going to give you more funding to do more things
report on local contribution coming in June 

Bell: another attempt to meet the needs of local districts and communities that exist within a capped revenue environment 

And adjourned

Board of Ed for February: regulation updates proposed

 These are in response to the Protect Education Equity Act as outlined here 

update regulations consistent with federal law on discipline procedures for students in special education
regulation for interpretation and translation for public schools
proposing to go out to public comment 
anticipating vote in June 

amendments to special education regulations 603 CMR 28
technical amendment (adding "state" to law in definition of IEP)
new section 28.11 of discipline procedures
mirror federal requirements

new regulations for translation and interpretation services 603 CMR 57
requirement is not new
law requires state to established clear statewide standards
qualification of interpreters both general education and advanced (requires specialized knowledge)
similar for translation
experienced-based pathway for those who served for at least two years in a district

non-regulatory actions by DESE 

proposal for a 60 day comment period

aha! "use of AI would need to be checked or verified before being released to a family"

so they aren't barring dumping an IEP into an LLM? Because that's a violation of FERPA

Board of Ed for February: early literacy

 Kershaw opens (which is interesting, because of course she's early ed!)
PRISM grants, Literacy Launch, high dosage tutoring
"struggling to see improvement statewide"
grade 3 "dropped during the pandemic years and has not yet bounced back"
"there's been lots of legislative interest"

Board of Ed for February: opening comments

 The agenda is here. The livestream is here. The meeting is fully remote.

tree in my backyard
why they are fully remote

Today will be (I believe) the sole appearance of  Amy Kershaw, as Acting Secretary of Education, as Steve Zrike will have started before their March meeting. 

Not enough people know that this is a thing: one for the map people

You may or may not already be familiar with the Leventhal Map and Education Center (which resides at but is not part of the the Boston Public Library).

They have this Atlascope where they've uploaded maps of Massachusetts and then--here's the fun part--they LAYER then, so you can find places over time!

They recently updated Worcester with a 1911 one, which joins the 1886 layer they already had, which I had to take a photo of part of Tatnuck Square:

 ...because that's Abby Kelley Foster owning the property after Stephen's death. 

two* Massachusetts school budget charts you might find interesting

 I took some time this past week to update some slides from work, and there are two that I thought might be of general interest.

As you may or may not know, the state school funding system is based on an underlying split of 51% of the foundation budget coming from the local communities and 49% coming from the state. Now, that's foundation budget level state aid and  required local spending, so both of those aren't what actually happens. It continues to be the local part that's really different, though. Here's what FY25 (which the state recently released actual spending data on) was: 

Green is chapter 70; blue is local spending

Now, please keep in mind that this is reported net school spending--it doesn't include grants, and it also doesn't include things like transportation (which regional districts have heavily reimbursed). It is however most of what is spend on schools in Massachusetts, and chapter 70 is 38.5% of the above total.

Now some of that above state aid is, as I've been noting, hold harmless aid. Hold harmless aid is, of course, aid that ensures a district doesn't get less aid than the year before. Because the state also ensures districts get an increase in aid each year, this can accumulate, such that the amount of state aid a district is receiving is increasingly far removed from the needs of the district and the ability to contribute of the municipality.

As I was putting together my annual comparison of two districts with very similar foundation budgets that have very different levels of need and very different abilities to contribute this year: 

Dartmouth, which has much less need in its district, and much strongly ability to contribute than Southbridge, as seen above...

...is, due to minimum per pupil increases adding up over time, now required by the state to spend more than Southbridge through state-supplied funding. In other words, the state gets both Dartmouth and Southbridge schools to foundation, and then adds funding to Dartmouth's state aid, lest Dartmouth's aid be less than before. 

As always, I post this not to pick on Dartmouth, or indeed anyone; we could easily do this with a large number of districts across the state. I am, however, going to continue to note that this isn't equity

*yes, there are three charts, but it's the first and the third I thought you'd find of interest

Board of Ed meets Tuesday

 ...and because it is school vacation week, you might miss it, but the agenda is here.

I suspect they'll be spending much of their time on the update on early literacy (the free space the bingo board for this meeting is for "high quality instructional materials"), and the regulations bear review, but I'm looking forward to the only Board of Elementary and Secondary Education appearance of current Acting Secretary Amy Kershaw, who is the Early Education and Care Commissioner.