A preliminary look at Worcester for FY23

On Thursday evening, Mr. Allen gave the Worcester School Committee (and us all) our first look at the Worcester Public Schools FY23 (next year's) budget. 

This information is from the Governor's budget (House 2) that came out last week; my write-up on that is here. 

Remember, as a foundation budget funded district, Worcester's budget is particularly enrollment-driven. So, as the T&G reflected today, much of our conversation was about student enrollment: 

Overall, the student enrollment in WPS has looked like this for the past few years: 

But--and this, I think, is being missed a bit in some of the discussion from those who didn't delve into the details--where those drops are coming from matters quite a bit:

It isn't high school.

The big drops are in Head Start and in elementary school. 

Clearly Head Start is a conversation that needs to happen.

In the past, we've been able to track what our kindergarten will look like in five years by tracking the birth rate; about 80% of the births in Worcester were in kindergarten five years later. That hasn't worked for the past two years, as above, and it's an open question as to if we're now hitting a new norm or if this is still an aberration.

Where are those changes? 

Here's the elementary rundown.

and the secondary schools.

Now, as Mr. Allen noted, this is not only a Worcester issue. But what's interesting is that the obvious places for students to turn up? They haven't.

what we do need to ask about is families moving and families homeschooling

The foundation budget is enrollment and inflation driven. Here's inflation:

So, then what does that look like for us? 

As I said in the meeting, this breakdown is something that most districts don't get. Knowing WHY we get the aid we do is really important.

The inflation is an $18 increase; the enrollment change is a $2.5M decrease. 

Those are what would be the usual enrollment + inflation changes that happen from one year to the next. 

The second part is SOA: the final shift in low income count (direct certification +) is another $1.8M and the increases within the sections for SOA are $13.2M. 

Remember that the foundation budget isn't only WPS, so we have to get down to "just us."

Now that's a great deal of money, and an increase of nearly $30M seems like a big jump, right?

But here's the deal: Remember that some of last year, and ensuring we didn't do pandemic-era layoffs and service cuts was in using ESSER funding anticipating increases this year. 

That bill is now due: 

And then there is inflation of our budget:

Yikes.

We do get a note here from Mr. Allen on the inflation rate:

What then are we going to be talking about in the upcoming budget season?

And remember this starts the discussion: