On FY24 House 1

 With my ongoing apologies for so much of this being so late due to my illness last week!

Governor Healey's proposed FY24 state budget--known as "House 1," as it is the first year of the Legislative session--was released last Wednesday. As has become my custom, I'll be tracking the state budget education accounts in a spreadsheet which I am sharing here.

House 1 fulfills this year's obligation regarding implementation of the Student Opportunity Act. That is, should the chapter 70 proposal pass as written, the state will be 3/6th of the way to the targets in the SOA (plus inflation) as passed in 2019. Chapter 70 is budgeted at $6.5 billion for FY24.
Naturally--because math!--this means we have the highest amount of chapter 70 aid in history!

A few things to note on Chapter 70:

• the Governor's proposal uses the 4.5% cap on inflation (for most; health insurance, which remember has its own cap, is 5.16%). While this is what is written into the SOA, this is nowhere near the inflation rates that districts are seeing on...anything. This is an issue (and one the Legislature could fix).
  
  
• Check out the progress we've made on the low income increment! The red bars are FY21:
  
  
  
  BIG changes, particularly up the the highest concentration of poverty end!
  
  
• This budget continues with hold harmless plus $30/pupil aid, BUT that's fewer districts than ever! The foundation budget increases continue to chip away at many district's hold harmless backlog and break more through into foundation increases.

That's of course most of the money, but there are other education accounts of note. 

• Circuit breaker is funded at $503M (up from $441M). This is an account I expect to see a lot of attention to, as the state put through a 14% increase in out of district special education in October for the coming year. That's going to drive a lot of sending tuitions right up through the circuit breaker, and that's not including advocacy at the state level that the circuit breaker be reset.
• There's a substantial increase in non-resident pupil transportation from the nominal $245K to $5.1M.
• It looks as if there's a real effort to meet need in the McKinney-Vento line for homeless student transportation, with an increase from $22.9M to $28.6M.
• Regional transportation reimbursement is funded at $97M (up from $82M). Remember, this account has had a weird few years, with the move out of and then back into schools, as it reimburses based on actual transportation costs.
• Charter school mitigation is level funded at $243M, but the administration says that it is fully funded. That means, I think, that charter enrollment is level. Charter tuition is up because the foundation budget is up; that increase is what triggers reimbursements. Tuition isn't increasing so much that the account needs additional funding, though, which to me would say enrollment must be flat. 
• House 1 increases early college grants by $3M to $13M.
• It boosts innovation pathways from $4.8M to $5.8M.
• MCAS is nearly level funded.
• MCIEA (the assessment consortium) is funded at $550K; usually it doesn't get funded until it gets to the Legislature.
• Rural school aid, funded at $5.5M is here at $7.5M.
• One thing I am worried about is the universal school lunch funding isn't in the budget. The Governor has promised that it is in an upcoming supplemental budget. Maybe it doesn't seem like how we get the funding doesn't matter, so long as we get it, but I am concerned about this moving the funding out of the budget into what by definition is one time. If this is something we think the state should do, we should budget for it, not use leftover money for it. 

We next will turn to the House; the House Ways & Means budget will be out next month!