Item 7.30 A (part 1)

(with a bonus of Quotable Quotes!)

Tonight's City Council discussion of the money saved from health care was, as foreseen, worth seeing. There was, as expected, an initial move to call the problem solved, with a question from Councilor Clancy that asked the city manager if perhaps the School Department might save even more money from the health insurance reforms (in addition to the money saved by the lower fee increase). Alas, no.

There was, from Councilor Clancy, much talk of what "we" are doing versus what "they" are doing, demonstrating once again semantic choice with real meaning. The School Department is a City department; while the School Committee is directly elected by the public and oversees the schools, the funding of the School Department is in the hands of the City Council. There is no "they" in this. It was so pronounced that finally several members of the public corrected Councilor Clancy to "US!" on one of his references. This choice of words demonstrates the intellectual denial of the realities of who makes the funding decisions for schools: the City Council.

Councilor Clancy also made a request of "a breakdown per individual school on per pupil spending," playing politics in the good old fashioned Worcester way of pitting the East side against the West side. After much discussion of students abandoning East side schools for Holy Name and St. Peter-Marian after public elementary and middle school, Councilor Clancy appears to believe that this has to do with some disparity in spending between the high schools. I imagine that both the School Department and some high school teachers would be happy to clear up this issue for the Councilor.

Councilor Petty, who has children in Worcester public schools: "I know that supplies are rare...at least it brings the deficit down." Councilor Petty asked for a report on what assumptions are made in creating the budget. He also said, "We are getting the message from the schools." Keep those letters coming!

Councilor Smith hoped that "we can get this down to zero...solve the problem." We need to point out to Councilor Smith that closing this year's budget gap is preventing a worsening problem, not solving a problem. Let's please not forget the $58.1 million cut over the last six years. We are not getting out of a hole; we are just not making it bigger, or as much bigger. Councilor Smith also wanted to know what the deficit would have been if we had not passed Section 18 (presumable for use in future campaign literature). He closed with "education will be and is a priority."

more to come, post thunderstorm...