Worcester School Committee mid-April meeting notes with lots on finance

I'm still working out how to do this both A) this go-round and B) when I'm doing it from home without a desk. I'm still taking lots of notes, but I'm finding it trickier to type. Because my notes on my blog have always been as much for me as for anyone, though, I'm going to continue to post things from the meetings, even if I have to do it later.
Should you want to take a look, the video is online here. It was, of course, again an entirely remote meeting.

Technically, we had two Worcester School Committee meetings last night: the first was the school choice hearing. This is, note, school choice in to Worcester; school choice out is simply allowed by state law. We actually don't have to have the hearing if we are allowing school choice, and last night, there wasn't a presentation or deliberation; we simply voted in favor of it.

On the regular agenda, the first item was, as I noted earlier this week, Ms. Biancheria's filing of reconsideration of the vote to waive the requirement this spring that students take the AP exam to achieve AP GPA credit. There is no deliberation prior to the vote on reconsideration, and the vote went as the vote on the item itself had gone: 5-2, Biancheria and Monfredo opposed. This, again, means that students who are currently taking an AP course can choose or not to take this spring's AP exam; their Worcester Public Schools GPA will not in any way be impacted by that decision (not taking the exam usually gives only honors level credit).

Our student representative Kwaku Nyarko asked during the section of the agenda that is theirs that we make plans to meet with our student advisory council soon, particularly given the current circumstances. The Mayor agreed, and we haven't set a date, but we'll keep you posted. 

The report of the superintendent was not something that usually happens in April: an update on the next year's budget.
The crux of the problem is this: since our February initial look at FY21, the economy has borne the impact of what UMass Dartmouth Professor Michael Goodman has called "a medically induced coma," in which we have intentionally made choices that have slowed the economy in order to bend the curve of the infections of coronavirus. That may well impact the current fiscal year; it will for certain impact next fiscal year, as was reflected in Tuesday's state economic roundtable (my liveblog is here; the MASC coverage is here). This not only raises questions around Student Opportunity Act funding; it raises questions around regular year to year funding.
I will always tell you watch Worcester Public Schools budget presentations, and this one is no exception; it starts about nine minutes into the video.

Mr. Allen gave us some of that sobering information from Tuesday's roundtable:

All of Marie-Frances Rivera's testimony is here. 

Just to put this into perspective--something which I only realized during this presentation--Chapter 70 for the entire state is $5.4B in the Governor's budget; a loss of between $5-5.7B is the equivalent of the entire Chapter 70 account.
I should probably say here: I don't know what they will do, but zeroing out Chapter 70 is not a thing they will do.
The other thing that's going on here is a projected drop in Title I:

I didn't know the poverty census was a thing, let alone that we'd dropped in our count.

The CARES Act does have funding in it for schools, and the K-12 piece is tied to Title I allocations:

Essentially, though, if we're lucky, the most that will happen with that is an offset.

Generally, the Worcester Public Schools' budget has the advantage of being based off the House budget, which usually is closer to where we as a state end up. We originally would have had a House budget on Wednesday of this week, though; now we honestly don't know when we will have it.
As a result, we're still looking at the same increases that we were in February, but with the cloud that these numbers are even less likely to be where we end up than usual. On the other hand, as Mr. Allen noted later on, we'll be deliberating the budget after the House releases their budget, so we may at least be able to pass a budget that's in line with those recommendations.
The Governor's budget means a $18.9M increase for the Worcester Public Schools. Starting from where a level services budget would be, we have some newer numbers:

The big change there is health insurance, which went from a projected 5% increase to an actual 7.9% increase. That of course knocks us even lower for what is left for new spending:

So where does that leave us? At this point, the administration's budget priorities are:

Remember, the K-6 enrollment has dropped by 176 students. This is a cut of 6 positions; 5 other teachers will have their assignment provided in September, depending on where they're most needed. We were told this would still leave an average class size of 21.

The Extended Learning Time gets hit on both sides; it's mostly funded by the grant the Governor's budget drops, but Title I picks up the rest, and Title I is dropping.

Most of this is compliance--do we have enough special education and English learner services. The two psychologists and one wraparound coordinator are the probably only gains here.
Mr. Foley closely questioned the Student Information System addition; this is a student data management system that would replace SAGE. This is projected to cost $600K next year, with an additional $250K a year thereafter. And this has not had a full vetting of the School Committee, despite the administration having hired a consultant (?) to run input sessions (during the pandemic, incidentally; the superintendent sent out an email and a phone call on this earlier this week) to then write an RFP (one thing that wasn't asked or answered last night; how much does the consultant cost?) to solicit bids to select a vendor.
If that process confuses you, you're not alone.
The plan is for the budget to be submitted to the School Committee (and to the public) on May 15 (electronically). The School Committee voted June 4 and 18 as the dates of deliberation; those generally start at 4. During the same vote, the Mayor said we'd open the first meeting with public comment, so as to fulfill our statutory obligations to hold a budget hearing after the budget is published, per MGL Ch. 71, sec. 38N.

I had asked at the last meeting why the MassHire Central Regional Workforce grant had acceptance signatures from November but only got to us in April; there wasn't a clear answer, so it came back this week and still doesn't have a clear answer. The School Committee is supposed to pass the money once it comes in (and it can't be spent until that happens).

Mr. Foley asked for two reports during our deliberation on the Student Opportunity Act plan, and those both came back.
The first was on the early literacy plan, seeking the data supporting the administration's contentions around the success of the project. It didn't answer the question he had asked on a number of counts, and it also doesn't show, in any way, the success of the program as had been asserted, but rather argues that the program is just beginning. I likewise was concerned about the response, as it gives what seems to be cherry-picked data (why only stop at 2014 without including more recent and consistent years? We now have multiple years of MCAS 2.0). The research overall cited asserts that balanced literacy is a good thing, as is teacher professional development. Again, though, this doesn't support the particulars of this plan, among them the plan to have the entire district use  Fountas and Pinell curriculum and evaluation. As Ms. McCullough noted, the extensive conversation her subcommittee had earlier this year on literacy interventions and dyslexia raises some concerns with what interventions are being used with students.
The second report on early college likewise, as Mr. Foley noted, does not support the effectiveness of this program, nor was their data showing that students who have not been succeeding in school are the ones in the program.

There were a series of items having to do with the current closure. I requested a weekly update from administration on the number of students contacted and the steps being taken to reach those as yet unreached. I had hoped that administration would take this chance to give us a current update, but one was not offered. I also asked that administration report on the families that have no internet, have no devices for accessing the internet, and report back on plans to eliminate this gap in access. This week, the district began asking families this question.
Let me note here what I did last night: we have been out of school an entire month. Other districts during that time immediately flipped to work on the gap in technology--Framingham was handing out Chromebooks as early as March 20--or they took stock and decided they couldn't do work online, as Fall River did. By contrast, after an initial mailing, Worcester put all work online, despite the district knowing from last fall's presentation that at least a quarter of our students lack online access, and despite there being a committee that has been meeting on technology equity (though we haven't seen an update on that, and I'm told there won't be a report until summer). That's somewhere over 6000 kids that have no way to get any of the work that the district has shared. That doesn't depend on teacher agreements or anything of the sort; it just depends on priorities.
Mrs. Clancey proposed that IEP meetings, which we were told at the last meeting were not being held, be held during the shutdown. This is a DESE directive as of last week. The administration had the legal counsel for special education address this, which was odd.
Mrs. Clancey also asked the source of work during the shutdown. The first two weeks off, teachers may have been sharing work themselves with their students. The past two weeks, students are receiving schoolwide work; thus all students at South High have the same English, math, science, and so forth assignments. There have been a number of concerns raised with this plan. In some cases, teachers are also still assigning work for students to do. This can either be overwhelming or enriching. Superintendent Binienda said that the schoolwide work was what students were directed to do, but that teachers could propose enrichment resources for students as well at the school level.
On this as on all else, get in touch with us for your feedback.

The final item was also crucial: the third quarter report with reallocation of $5.9M it starts on page 111 of the agenda). While the report described where the funds were coming from thoroughly, the administration's recommendation of where the funds should then be allocated was largely absent. I asked for that Monday and received answers to move of it yesterday afternoon. I have posted it here.
A few crucial points:

• if school were running, the projected balance would have been $1.9M. Most of this is due to teacher positions that were budgeted but never filled (we don't have enough special education and English learner positions by a long shot). There also are fewer students in out of district special education placements. 
• the additional $4M is due, first, to the administration assuming positions that are open now will be open for the rest of the year. It also is from the other savings from closure: overtime reduction, reduced utilities and trash pickup, reduced transportation. A district saves money by not having schools open. 
• due to both of the above, if the school buildings remain closed for the rest of the school year, there will be additional savings BUT not a equivalent amount. The salary takeback is the big part of this. 
• there have been ways in which this has cost the district money, of course: the printing and postage of the packets (of which we will need more), which cost $70,000; medical and technology equipment to deal with closures; additional cleaning supplies; and unemployment. 
• because our feeding program now isn't feeding as many kids but all nutrition employees are being paid, the nutrition account will be underfunded by summer. 

With all of this in mind, the administration made the following proposal, which is what was passed:

The administration's intent is to loan out about 10,000 of the rented district Chromebooks; 3300 is intended to replace any that don't come back. 

We also discovered that a number of the recommendations from administration involve the purchase of textbooks without their being vetted and approved by the School Committee. This will mean a TLSS meeting before our next full meeting so much vetting might happen. 

More as I have it.