And so to Council

 

The vote of the legislative body of a city or town shall establish the total appropriation for the support of the public schools, but may not limit the authority of the school committee to determine expenditures within the total appropriation.
MGL Ch. 71, sec. 34

While I haven't said anything about the recommended FY24 WPS budget this year--I think perhaps the longer I do this, the more leery I get about pre-deliberation--I do want to note a few things as the bottom line of the WPS budget is before the Worcester City Council tomorrow.

We’re now told: after graduation. 7? Maybe? 

The total appropriation for the FY24 WPS general fund (no grants, no revolving funds) recommended for adoption is $467,693,121. Of that, $129,215,192 is recommended to come from the city. 

from page 14 of the FY24 WPS budget

Thus of the increase, 90% of it comes from the state.

Should that be what is adopted, that would put the city at $1.4M over the minimum required spending. 

You can find that on page 418, by the way, which is always one of the first places I check with our budget. That outlines actual municipal spending on schools, including the cityside spending that "counts" as school spending. It looks like this for FY24:

That right there, plus the schools' capital budget as I mentioned yesterday, is really the only thing the Council has any purview to discuss tomorrow. They cannot, as MGL Ch. 71, sec. 34 notes, control in any way the allocations internal to the school budget; that is entirely under the purview of the School Committee.