Four takeaways and three footnotes from the preliminary FY25 Worcester Public Schools budget presentation

with thanks to Roosevelt K-1 student Arlo Frutaan for the rueful budget fish
and to Mr. Allen for selecting it for this year's budget

The presentation shared is here, and you can watch the video of that section here:

We can go into this in greater depth as the year goes along, but here's a big four plus three footnotes:

1. Inflation is the story this year.
   The inflation rate in the House 2 proposed budget is 1.35%. That inflation rate is low enough that even districts like Worcester, which sees gains in the foundation budget through the fourth year of implementation of the Student Opportunity Act due to a high percentage of low incomes students, aren't seeing enough of a pickup to keep up. This is in contrast to the past two years of inflation, which were at the CAPPED rate of 4.5%. Those years were not the actual inflation rate, which would have been higher. 
   This is an EVERYBODY story, though (take it from the person who has been talking about this for the past few weeks: this is not a Worcester-only issue); thus the budget fish above (and the importance of the organization of advocacy to the Legislature).
   
   
2. Budgets are built on choices made.
   The projections Mr. Allen shared Thursday are built on choices made by the School Committee already. That includes the SOA bridge funding--that is, using ESSER funds (that's the federal pandemic funding, running out this year) to get to implement intended uses of SOA increases a year in advance of the state funding coming in: 
   
   

   

   That's page 161 of the FY24 budget.

   
   

   And the contractual and other agreements--including, as Member McCullough called attention to, bringing transportation in house!--committed to:
   

   No district's costs, Worcester's or otherwise, are going up only by 1.35%; that's the problem with the foundation inflation rate. And the entire point of the Student Opportunity Act is to make up what districts that Worcester don't have, not to keep up with costs of regular programs, so that shouldn't be what's making up the difference. 
   
   
3. $22 million is a lot of money.¹
   That may seem like an obvious thing to say, but the danger with public budgets is that we can lose track of the scale of what we're talking about. The full WPS budget, federal grants and all, is over half a billion dollars. That is a lot of money, but it isn't as if there are many places that $22M can be pulled from.²
   I get edgy when the takeaway is "we've been here before." There's a reason why Mr. Allen's response was a measured "before SOA." We're in the remedy phase, and this is a budget that is starting with a gap. That is not a comfortable place to be.
   
   
4. We're finally making decisions based on priorities set with a long-term vision. ³
   The danger with any budget that makes substantial changes (in either direction!) without a vision is that it doesn't get you anywhere. You can spend money or cut money and do so in ways that make it more difficult to get to what have been set as district priorities.
   The district has a strategic plan now; there's been community agreement, and priorities have been set up the School Committee as to what direction this is going in. 
   That's why I think Mr. Allen's closing, "the administration welcomes School Committee to identify priorities as they relate to the strategic plan and Student Opportunity Act initiatives," is the important part going forward. Those priorities, and the decisions that result from them, MUST be in line with the priorities of the district, already set.

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¹which won't be solved by grants. There were two rounds of comments (both Biancheria and Binienda) that immediately flagged proposed state grant line items--something you'll note was not reported on above--as something of major concern that warranted state advocacy. The WPS budget for FY24 reported $1.9M in state grants, and while the district has received several more since then, we are nowhere near the $20M noted, for example, that the district would have received had the inflation rate been the actual rate rather than capped. Grants are small money. They run out. They're for particular purposes. 
This human inability to grasp the scale of real problems is called "bikeshedding," and it's something school committees ongoingly need to watch themselves for. 

²I genuinely would hope by this point that we've long since left having to have this conversation, but in tired anticipation of yet another round of ignorant and baseless assertions:

WPS FY24 p. 388

Thus Mr. Allen is correct: 

³which aren't separate from the Student Opportunity Act reporting. It seems we're going to get a round of reminders that Member Binienda is a superintendent in each meeting; in this one, it was a line of commentary on districts being required to file 

new Student Opportunity Act plans with DESE by April 1. I have mentioned before the utter absurdity this requirement has been, but Worcester quickly established--and you'll recall that Binienda was superintendent at the time--that the needs we locally had set could work into the buckets DESE had set as priorities. With a strong strategic plan, this is going to be ever more the case.

Don't get distracted by this.