Testimony on FY19 in Worcester

The video of last Monday night's public hearing on the Worcester Public Schools' budget is posted.

• The presentation begins at about 3:50
• Mr. Comparetto's question about the funding of police is at 27:10
• Public comment opens at 32:40

An exchange that was remarked upon was Superintendent Binienda's remarks about police in schools; you can find that at 54 minutes in. 

As I said Monday, I can't talk and liveblog, so I'll insert here that my comments start at 1:08:08. 

I don't know if I can echo with any more fire and fury what was already said by Mr. Foley, but I was thinking that this is the thirteenth anniversary of my first budget hearing, which was also chaired by Mr. Foley. I went because my daughter was entering kindergarten the following fall, and you were closing the elementary school that she was attending, which means, since she'll be a senior this coming fall, that her entire career has been spent in a school system that is chronically underfunded. I don't know if I can tell you what that feels like as a parent (I know I don't need to tell you, Mr. Foley), but it's heartbreaking. The phone calls to representatives: there is a bill that did actually pass the Senate for all that the House is trying to pretend it's not there--it would be convenient to them if it went away--but the first thing that needs to happen is a commitment from the state. We don't go anywhere without that. If that takes legal action on our part, please allow me be the first to encourage you to take that, or not the first, but among those who are encouraging you to take that. That is absolutely necessary. We were told, in fact, at the anniversary of the 25th celebration at the State House by Representative Alice Peisch, who was serving on the Wellesley School Committee at that point, that in fact it is the studied opinion of those who were serving that the Ed Reform law of 1993 would not have passed had it not been for McDuffy. In other words, legal action may be required.

The other thing, echoing what has been said or maybe reflective of what has been said...the process in terms of the budget? There were things in it that surprised me. And maybe that's because maybe there wasn't a discussion--not of the funding sources, because we're always extraordinarily well informed on that--but of the priorities of the administration and the School Committee. I feel, as a citizen, that I didn't have a good feeling for that until the budget came out. I'd recommend that you maybe consider that as you roll forward.
And then specifically in terms of the schools and the eleven million dollars that Mr. Allen referenced: I've served on site councils, I've been in and out of, I think, six or seven schools over the course of our tenure: I believe I've only been to one site council meeting that ever had a principal talk about the budget with their schools, and that's actually written right into the MGL. So in terms of the allocation meetings that the principals have with administration, if I could request that the School Committee ask administration to ensure that the principals talk to their site councils and perhaps let the parents know that they're going to talk to their site councils--and I imagine that students and teachers would want to know, too--ahead of their allocation meetings, perhaps we could make this a little bit more of an informed community process.

In terms of the budget itself, I looked for what I always look for which is basically where are we going as a district? This is supposed to be the directions. It felt like the budget was almost in conflict with itself. There are some things that made a lot of sense: finally increasing translation services to something approaching actual spending--that's good. Expanding English language learners, obviously we need to do that. The secondary was something we saw from enrollment.

But we have a district that's majority children of color--it has been for two years--majority first language other than English, we have the highest percentage of English language learners in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--we're up to more than a third, and it's interesting, that's more than doubled in the past fifteen years--and the vast majority of our kids are poor. And in reading the rest of the budget, I didn't see a lot of things that actual reflected that reality, which was disturbing to me.
Certainly, cutting tutors has been well covered. Given the gaps and the fact that we keep getting hammered over our head about third grade literacy, I don't know how we can possibly do that, even if the "enrichment"--and I wouldn't call it enrichment if what we're going to do is more literacy, frankly--is going to substitute for some of that. There's no adds to guidance, no adds to psychology, no adds to adjustment counselors.
The data department is basically being almost entirely decommissioned, and maybe that's reflective tonight in some of the comments around the efficacy of policing. We can't afford as a district with a Level 4 school that has as much attention being paid to us at the state level to not have a cabinet level position that's doing data crunching, and I say that as someone who voted against the position originally! We can't afford that! We can't shove that down as far as it's being shoved in the org chart!

I wrote a check--actually, I wrote two checks--two checks for ninety dollars because they went to two different high schools for AP tests this year. The way that the district is pushing AP courses on high school students and the way that the high school schedule is being constructed makes it virtually impossible to graduate without taking AP courses. And we have a policy in Worcester that if you take an AP course, you have to take the test. The "low income rate" is fifty dollars; we've got kids who are taking three, four, and five. We're at 77 percent low income the last time we could check. That's unconscionable. There's no way that we should be putting kids in this position. And we totally are. The teachers send home a form, the parents are to sign it...usually it comes home in October. And the grant? I know we're going to hear about Title IV in a second. It only covers math and science. I know I'll be writing a bigger check next year, but we can't keep doing this to kids. It's absolutely horrific.

We've flat funded PD. You heard about implicit bias training. We absolutely should be doing that.

I appreciate the increase in technology, but I wonder again, given the level of income most of our students have access to. I know that we have students who are waiting for their parents to come home to use their cell phones to do their homework, because that's the only technology in the house. Two to one Chromebooks in the schools aren't going to answer that problem. I know when my kids get home, there are three screens that go on; we need one for every kid. It's great that we're going to have Chromebooks in the schools, but if you're not managing that around homework, you're going to have a huge, huge issue.

And again, facilities is flat funded; it looks like capital is more or less flat funded. We've got some really old buildings out there. The MSBA isn't going to save us on this one. So, that's one you really need to take to the city. I would point to you, as I have in emails, the Comprehensive District Review was clear that was something that should be a priority partnership between the schools and the city, not just the district putting together a capital plan, but the city putting together a plan to fund it. In terms of, I know that this is the subcommittee that partners with the city, that's something that I would like to see as well. Secondary schools are nice, but we have a whole lot of elementary schools.

So in short, there are some adjustments that I think need to be made around having a budget that is reflective of the student population of the buildings that we have and the community the district serves.