House Ways and Means Budget is out

The House Ways and Means budget came out earlier today. A few education notes for the state, largely swiped directly from the Mass Budget and Policy Center analysis:

• This budget does NOT fund a foundation budget review, which Governor Patrick's budget included. This is a major oversight and should be rectified.
• We already knew the Chapter 70 numbers, due to the agreement between the two bodies on this and local aid; no changes there.
• The charter reimbursement item got an increase! It isn't level-funded! It isn't fully funded, either, but not being level funded is progress; it's up $5 million from Governor Patrick's budget.
• It also increases the circuit breaker for special education funding! And this, they suspect, may actually be fully funded. My goodness, they might be listening!
• It level funds Kindergarten Expansion grants and cuts Adult Ed by $1 million.
• It also eliminates entirely funding for Innovation Schools (that would be new funding going forward, so wouldn't affect the money just received).

There's also a projection for MSBA of $771.6 million; interesting note that the Governor had a higher projection. If, as he proposed, soda and candy were included in the sales tax, it would of course increase those single cents of the tax that go to school buildings.

No numbers specific for Worcester yet: we don't have our (updated) charter school projections for next year, which is the major impact of the above. I'll post if we get anything.