Testimony before Council on FY25

non-testifying attendee at City Council tonight

Good evening, Mr. Chair,
My name is Tracy Novick and I live at 135 Olean Street here in Worcester.

While I am not here primarily to speak against items 10d, 11o, and 11p, please count me among the myriad of your constituents requesting that you stop wasting time and money on actively working to make our city less safe for pedestrians, bicyclists, bus riders, and, yes, motorists. The base attempts to play politics should be ended this evening and never be revived.

I am here to speak in support of President Verdier’s public petition 8v, the first time I have heard Worcester’s not meeting its constitutional mandate to fund schools for four years running mentioned on a Council agenda. It should shame all of us that it had to be done by the leadership of our teachers’ association.

But of course, Worcester has been here before. In fact, eleven years ago this evening, I was here to speak in support of then-Councilor O’Brien’s motion to fully fund the Worcester Public Schools in the FY14 budget.

Let us be clear: the mandate to fund public schools dates back to the 1993 Education Reform law, a law which was passed in part due to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Worcester schoolchildren by the late Mayor Levy.

Massachusetts General Law chapter 70 section 1 defines “a standard local funding effort applicable to every city and town in the Commonwealth.”

So, no, there is no “Worcester exception” for building high schools. Besides, Worcester is hardly the only city or town in the Commonwealth to be building schools.

Worcester is, however, eleventh from the bottom of 351 cities and towns in the percentage of our minimum budget that we are required to fund from local resources. Twenty-six cents of every local revenue dollar funds the schools, with another three for construction; that is also among the lowest applications of local revenue to schools of which I am aware.

I am aware of no local community in which the schools are facing the revenue crisis--and it is, to be clear, a revenue crisis--on the scale of the Worcester Public Schools in which there has been zero effort on the part of the local funding authority to increase allocations to meet or soften the hit.

As the statewide average in projected school funding for the current fiscal year is 125.5% of the required minimum, the vast majority of local funding authorities see the need in their school districts, and have risen to meet it.

And to again be clear: this city is not in the company of cities sitting on unused tax capacity out of fiscal prudence. It is in the small number of cities and towns that are not meeting their constitutional obligations to schoolchildren.

You make it impossible to effectively advocate for the state to further its support for Worcester’s schools when you don’t meet the minimum requirement locally. 

It is a ridiculous to need to request that our local funding authority not break the law. 

It is however the request I make tonight.