Things I learned tonight at CPPAC

• The next school committee budget presentation will be next month after the House of Representatives budget comes out (April).
• Fully funding the circuit breaker (for special education funding) would mean $1 million more for the Worcester Public Schools.
• When four schools were closed in 2007, Head Start was moved out of rented space into those schools with the thought (at the time) that, if the need came up, Head Start could be moved out of those buildings and they could be re-opened as elementary schools. We now enroll more students than we did in 2007 when the schools closed.

Things I knew that continue to worry me:

• “how the state is requiring us or not allowing us to use our grant funding” is continuing to become more of an issue; the state is now being “a little more challenging” on what positions can be funded out of grants
• $1.3 million deficit remaining and it's the “hardest budget in the past five years to balance”

All quotes are from Brian Allen. There was also a fairly extensive discussion that continued well into the meeting (and straight out into the hallway) about the budget. There was concern about enrollment at various schools, about capital projects, about repairs, about the lack of city funding above foundation, and several mentions of librarians.