Okay, Worcester, here's something else you can do!

On Tuesday's Worcester City Council agenda: 

That the City Council of the City of Worcester does hereby support the Worcester Public Schools’ advocacy for a higher inflation rate in the Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) foundation budget. 

Thank you, Councilor Haxhiaj!  

The Worcester Public Schools, in their FY25 budget memo to the state delegation, said the following: 

Fixing the Inflation Calculation: The inflation rate for the FY24 Chapter 70 inflation adjustment was 8.01% and for FY23 it was 7.08%. But the law caps the annual inflation adjustment of the foundation budget at 4.5%. As a result, districts did not receive funds to cover a significant portion of inflation that they had to pay for in expenses.
The way the Chapter 70 formula originally worked, that would not be a long-term problem because the lost inflation would automatically be added back to the foundation budget in the following year. But a technical change made almost a decade after the law was passed inadvertently changed that. Now when the cap reduces aid below the level needed to keep pace with inflation, that reduction is locked in forever and reduces future aid. A simple fix that maintains the 4.5% cap but makes sure that the formula makes up for lost inflation would solve the problem. That would increase Chapter 70 aid by $217 million, with additional under- inflation “catch-ups” in future years. It is important to make a permanent change in the law so that all of the aid lost is eventually made up. That is necessary to allow the Commonwealth to meet the real-dollar targets in the Student Opportunity Act. 

Action: Support the proposed language to correct a flaw in the calculation of the inflation adjustments in Chapter 70 by the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and the American Federation of Teachers of Massachusetts.

Please be sure the Worcester City Council hears from you, either this weekend, or via public comment Tuesday, to support this advocacy.

A few things that may be worth mentioning in your communication:

• The inflation rate in the foundation budget is 1.35%. There is no aspect of any budget that is increasing by only 1.35%. That will guarantee cuts.
• The inflation rate used to account (as noted above) for years in which there was an overage by carrying it over into future years. That is no longer the case.
• The Student Opportunity Act, as marvelous as it has been, is NOT for cost increases from one year to the next. It very specifically is to address historic undercalculation of categories within the foundation budget. SOA in no way removes the responsibility we have as a state to ensure that the "fair and adequate minimum" keeps up with what is needed to educate our children.
• The city's local contribution will not increase as a result of an inflation increase.

You can find the Council's contacts here. Council meets at 6:30 on Tuesday.