Joint Committee on Education/ Finance and operations

We're starting with budget this evening.
And posting as we go...
O'Brien mentions that we're meeting at Nelson Place due to it making it on the MSBA list
Note that Paul Moosey from DPW announced that Nelson Place will be on the MSBA board agenda for April 3's agenda.
Allen comments that the slides are lengthy but he'll go through them quickly, mostly slides that were presented in January.
Chapter 70 is up; we don't yet what's going on with kindergarten grant yet; circuit breaker is going down; charter/choice funding is going down; local contribution is going up; federal grants are going down.
(mostly going to add notes on things we haven't see before)
Governor's budget going up $2.7 billion: fully funded the foundation budget, lifting the cap on the number of preschoolers that count towards the foundation budget, extended day for high-need middle schools, increases in out-of-district sped placements, plus $25/pupil minimum aid and fully funding minimum aid (NOTE: last two do not apply to Worcester)
Local contribution TARGET is calculated based on 50% property value and 50% local income wealth redone in 2007; this is the aggregate wealth model
FY14 goal calculated from equalized valuation for (taxable) property and the total income (for the entire state); percentage based to make them 50/50
income wealth of Worcester is greater than property value: target share for Worcester is 30.27% (with the state then picking up 69.73% remaining) but that's the target
charter reimbursement not fully funded (again)
McKinney-Vento transportation funded at 50%

federal funds: starting a million in deficit (as we're largely spending the grants on positions) plus sequestration cutting $1.6 million from our grants

and you've been through how the foundation budget is calculated before...

Changes in enrollment is creating the Chapter 70 increases
And Allen notes that the changes in enrollment is also a change in the students served (409 student net increase, but an increase of 970 ELL students and 663 low income students).

And again, we now have more students today then we did when we had eight more schools.

Here's the student population projections from MSBA and from NESDEC:

And here they are broken down by grade level:

Calculation of local contribution from last year plus the municipal revenue growth factor (4.22%).
THEN the state looks at what the city's target is; the city is only below by 1.02% (you must be 2.5% or above for the state to intervene). So local contribution is $92,324,512 for FY14.

The foundation budget has been growing only from enrollment and from inflation; the city's contribution has been growing only due to municipal revenue growth factor:

General fund budget is estimated to be $301,602,219 for FY14; and again, note that this includes the Governor's recommended additional $3.5 million ($1 million for preschool; $2.5 million for out-of-district special ed)...and message to School Committee here to thus be cautious with this number. Personally betting that the FY14 WPS budget doesn't include it.

$10 M in inflationary changes before we do anything else. 

plus additional needs totaling $14.2 million ranging from additional special education transportation to nurses to elementary class size additional teachers to our technology to textbooks

"Somewhere between an $8 and $10 million budget gap for next year that we need to resolve"

Plus, this doesn't include school safety, playground equipment, rental of space, an exam school/IB program planning year, or PCB next step

At No Change in Elementary Staff (579)

Projected Class Sizes:

Less than 23: 334 (57%)

23-26: 208 (36%)

27-30: 31 (6%)

Greater than 30: 6 (1%)*

District Averag;e Class Size: 22.1

*all six at Chandler Elementary due to lack of space

Add 21 Elementary Staff (600), 

Projected Class Sizes:

Less than 23: 384 (64%)

23-26; 216 (36%)

27-30: 0

Greater than 30: 0

District Average Class Size: 21.4 

'though this does not include the need for additional space

What do our neighbors spend on education?

And where do people choose to send their children?

Where does the money WPS spends go?

How much do communities spend on administration? And how much do the schools spend on administration and how much does the City charge the schools on administration?

Comparing us to other Gateway cities: "In no other case is the city charging more in overhead charges than the school is actually spending"

And we're going into Facilities now...