a few notes on Worcester for FY24 from the Governor's budget

 The gold standard--and what you might think of as the Worcester School Committee's opening round--on this will be the report of the superintendent at next week's meeting (the 16th), when Mr. Allen will give us a preliminary look at the budget numbers. No pun intended. Ahead of that, though, a few quick notes from me:

The preliminary FY24 release from the state sets Worcester's foundation budget at $477,974,879. It's crucial to remember, though, that the foundation budget includes all of the Worcester students who attend charter schools and all of the Worcester students who choice into other districts. The charter tuition for next year is $40.7M; the choice out is $3.7M; those get subtracted from the above, while the reimbursement and the school choice in get added back in. 

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: the preliminary calculations were released over February break, prior to the February Board of Ed meeting. As such, the state had to make a choice on which way they'd assume the vote would go on the new charter school.
Is anyone surprised they assumed the Board would vote in favor?

That then is why our charter tuition is up from $33M to $40.7M. That also means our reimbursement--the funding that reimburses for an increase on a three year taper--is also up to $11.3M. School choice in has nearly doubled to $1M (that's 100 more kids choosing to come to Worcester, I think?).

 $477M, or rather $445M or so, once you sort out the above, is a lot of money, so a quick note on where this is coming from. Remember that Worcester is one of the largest gainers under the Student Opportunity Act, and, quite intentionally so: 77.6% of our students are low income. A third of our students are English learners. Thus those pushes within the formula to boost funding in those areas really play out in Worcester's foundation budget.

The thing about the $477M, though, is: who is going to come up with that money? The answer is another indication that the state funding formula is working as intended:

Almost exactly a quarter of the foundation budget is city funded. The vast majority of K-12 school funding in Worcester is state funded.
Thus, while the foundation budget is up $47M, the city carries only $6M of that increase; the remainder is state funded. Again, that is working just as intended: the standard measure of wealth that the state uses demonstrates the Worcester cannot carry the majority of the school budget.

If this interests you at all, tune in March 16!