Proposed FY21 Worcester Public Schools budget

A budget is a moral document.
What we fund is what we value. pic.twitter.com/4xRtRdOoSR

— Tracy O'Connell Novick (@TracyNovick) March 18, 2019

This year, of all years, I'd urge you to think of what we are doing in this light.

If you're here looking for information on budgeting for policing in schools, that post is over here.

Probably the most important thing to know about the FY21 Worcester Public Schools budget is that the budget as proposed is unlikely to be the budget we end up with. The budget is based on running a regular year, and it's based on the Governor's House 2 budget proposed back in January, pre-pandemic and before the resulting economic catastrophe. Both of those are things that we're going to have to change.
Everyone is awaiting the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's guidance reopening schools--and awaiting if it is something that we are able and willing to follow, to speak for myself--and awaiting the state budget. The first is supposed to come out in three weeks or so; the second we may not have until August.
So to some extent, this is a bit of a fictional universe. And thus, this is kind of a hard blog post to write, because my heart isn't really in it, as we're...not going to do this.

Nonetheless, we are required to have a budget by June 30, so on June 4 and 18 at 4 pm, the Worcester School Committee will deliberate the budget proposed by administration, and we'll have to pass something.
And then we'll have to come back and do it again over the summer, one assumes.

On the 4th, we start with public comment at 4 pm, so please do weigh in as you have thoughts. 

You can find the City of Worcester's budget--which as you'll see is only a bit relevant--online here.
You can find the Worcester Public Schools budget online here.
Important note: The Worcester Public Schools budget is a 436 page document. It is MASSIVE. I find this enormously useful, but if you'd like, you can piecemeal your way through it by following the links to the parts of it from this page. When I talk about a page, I will link right to that page, but that still usually loads the whole thing, so following links may be slow. Thus the cut and paste images through here.
DO NOT PANIC ABOUT HOW BIG IT IS! It's a big system! If you're looking for something to review: go to the Executive summary, which includes information about where the money comes from, where it goes, and what the changes are that are proposed for next year.
I've also been tweeting some of my observations on this using the hashtag #WorcSchoolsFY21, if that's useful to you. And, of course, if you have questions, please send them along.

If you only somewhat follow this sort of thing from a Worcester perspective, you may have a perspective on the schools and the city budget that looks like this:

To be fair, this is true: $421.3M, or 58.4%, of the City of Worcester general fund budget goes to fund public education in Worcester.

However, this is also true:

Most of the funding for education in Worcester comes from the state. 

From a city taxes perspective, that looks like this:

...of every dollar in revenue the city collects locally, 29 cents goes to the Worcester Public Schools, and 4 cents covers our debt (for building projects). 

And from the school budget perspective, that looks like this:

Most of our money comes from the state.
I also like to add this note: the state requires a certain level of funding from the city from local revenue--the required local minimum contribution--which most districts well exceed. Here's what Worcester's looks like now: 

$688,049 is clearly a lot of money--no argument there--but it also is 0.17% over required spending. The last statewide average I saw of municipal contributions over foundation was nearly 30%.

As I review recommended budget, I use sticky notes for my notes and questions, and this is one that I put up near the front, where it talks about our students: 

So what is the $441,881,680 recommended to be spent on?

Mostly people:

This is really the BIG picture view, but it well shows that schools...have teachers and custodians and nurses and guidance counselors and so on: there's a lot of people involved in running a school system. The Worcester Public Schools have 4589 employees, and this chart shows what they do:

What's new this year? This image on page 123 is, I think, a good way to look at it:

Two things: I don't know if you can read the bottom line, but some of this was already added as part of the FY20 budget (when some additional funding came through), so they aren't all FY21 adds. It's also important to note that this is NOT everything that was included the Student Opportunity Act plan passed in March; in part, this is because the health insurance actual costs came back and they are higher than projected.

...they're also higher than the percent increase for health insurance in the calculation of the foundation budget. Yes, still.

If you're wondering what things look like for your district, I'd recommend checking out the building by building budget.

There is a drop in elementary teachers this year, which is a reaction to enrollment; it does not change the teacher/student ratio (and yes, teacher, not just adult) ratio for elementary. There are additions in secondary, which again has to do with enrollment. You can also see the push on mental health supports, plus the ongoing (and growing) needs for students with special needs and for students who are learning English.

Usually I would write more than this. There's lots more that you can gain from this document.
...but I really really don't think this is how our schools are going to operate this fall.