Check your comparisons

My sympathies to my compatriots on the Wachusett School Committee on what I can only describe as a gruesome school committee meeting last night, that ended with cuts of over $1.2 million. What positions (because it will be positions) will be cut will be determined at their next meeting on Thursday. Proposed is cutting all library staff and fifteen teaching positions, plus an elementary principal, and a number of service cuts, including athletic transportation. The teaching cuts will result in some classes of 28.

I was thinking in this light of Worcester's FY13 budget and also this list on "hidden costs" in public schools...most of which don't apply to Worcester:

• We don't expect kids to buy their summer reading 
• We don't charge sports fees. 
• We don't charge bus fees. 
• We don't charge technology fees. 
• We don't charge for extracurriculars 
• We don't charge parking fees. 

We fought to bring down class sizes this year (and you'll have to hunt to find one as high as 28).
We have free, full-day kindergarten in every school in the district.
We're bringing back elementary librarians, and we have librarians in our middle and high schools.
Every elementary school has either a full-time or teaching assistant principal.
We added school nurses this year, so we're completely staffed (finally!) at the elementary level..
We've never gotten rid of art or music, and students across the district can get free instrument lessons in elementary schools.
We raised our student supply budget this year.
We offer (without charge) dual language immersion programs at three elementary schools in the city.
We expanded (again) the number of Advanced Placement courses we offer (and we don't charge for them).
We've added Mandarin Chinese to the high school, so kids who started in middle school can continue.
We've added to the engineering program at Doherty and the health sciences programs at North.
We offer a huge number of chances, places, connections to get kids into everything from the UMass Medical School to local colleges to local businesses for everything from college credits to work experience to internships.
...And this is a list literally off the top of my head.

I say none of this to run down our neighboring districts; we're a larger system, we have more options in some ways, and we get more of our support from the state.

At a time, though, when way too many decisions about who's doing "well" and who's not are made by this chart right here, it's useful to consider other ways we could be looking at what we're offering kids.