DESE at MASBO: Student Opportunity Act

Student Opportunity Act : Rob O'Donnell
higher health care rates based on the GIC: 3 year average
separate inflation index for health insurance
fully funding those goal rate by 2027
starting point disparity: do we actually ever catch up with it?
you'll get to the GIC rate, you'll not just get there right away
are the rates in the bill going to move over the implementation
goal rates will change in each subsequent budget cycle
FY20 reflected an incremental increase towards the goal rates

4% in district, 5% vocational district
"this tracks pretty close to actual that we see"

English Learner: similar to what was proposed by the Governor
increases rate and redistributes to have higher rates to high school students
goal rates are expressed in FY20 dollars; they'll also be increased by inflation over the life of the bill

decile system in low income currently
moving away from deciles (about 33 districts in each group) to groups (there are twelve)
setting hard breaks between them
counted up to 133% for econ disad; couldn't reliably count up to 185%
"likely that the economically disadvantaged match will still be the core"
likely some additional counting that will have to take place
possibly further data collection
if you've moved to CEP, you're not collecting forms
DESE may need to come up with some other method of collecting data
until they come up with a new method, authorizes going back to FY16 low income counts as of October 1, 2014, some those numbers together as a percentage of your enrollment in for FY16
that would be your FY21 accounting method
"would use that as the basis to augment" the count
"there are some districts that we're counting more through the econ dis match than we did through the free and reduced lunch count"
"we wouldn't lower your count; this would only increase your count"
jumps about 6% between the lower groups, then goes up more like 10% in the higher groups
would we go back to a form collection or some other method?
"That's the big wild card to the bill"

charter school reimbursement fully funded over three years
don't talk about if it would be done on a six year schedule or a three year schedule
or if it will only be for high enrollment growth
increasing foundation increases charter tuition rates which increases charter reimbursement (if it isn't only tied to increased enrollment)

Data commission

requirement to report by expediture by foundation budget category (there used to be a section that did this in the End of Year report)
Some question on if this will further require a breakout of state versus local spending

Rural school study

Circuit breaker to include cost of out-of-district transportation
"we will be coming out with what we expect to see on a bill" to verify transportation to the individual student
"circuit breaker is student by student"
going to "blow up the program"
we're going to be a half a billion pretty soon

freezes at last year's circuit breaker number and ONLY GOES UP BY INFLATION after that