Monday, November 16, 2015

Slides you missed tonight on the Foundation Budget Review Commission:F&O (updated with pretty slides)

UPDATED with slides from the finance office. I've skipped the slides that explain what the FBRC findings are, as we've done that. Note that these are Worcester Public Schools numbers. As always, if you click, they'll get bigger. UPDATE: here's the full presentation

Update on health insurance gap 

Update on sped gap


What does that leave us for gaps (with our pulling money from elsewhere to fund special ed and health insurance)?

Note that the above doesn't mean we're overstaffed in sped; we're undercalculated. The gap is very visible in non-special ed teachers; as I noted, that's 660 teaching positions that the foundation budget calls for that we don't have. 



Nine million (all WPS side) gap in administration spending (remember that the next time someone tries to sell our being overstaffed), eleven million short in O&M (imagine the difference that would make in facilities!), more than three million short in teacher PD, and another nine million short in instructional materials and technology. 
Think about what that district would look like. 

I posted Mr. Allen's assumptions in my notes on this section; given 80% of our current Community Eligibility number of 45.5% at $2000 per pupil, we get this on low income:
For a final slide (including ELL and inflation) that looks like this:



A quick note on this: one of the first things that comes up on these calculations is "where is the money going to come from?"

Here's the thing: the money is already coming from somewhere. On health insurance and special education, it's coming out of maintenance. It's coming out of classroom teachers, librarians, guidance counselors, and other teaching staff. It's coming out of supplies and technology budgets. We are taking money that is badly needed to fund these two categories.
And, as you see above, that's the bulk of the money.
So, if we're okay with taking the money out of crumbling buildings and large class sizes and copy paper that we run out of, then I guess we can afford to ignore this.
Otherwise, we've got to move on it.

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