What's in the proposed FY25 Worcester Public Schools budget: just the facts

 Ahead of Monday's public hearing on the proposed FY25 budget for the Worcester Public Schools, here's a brief look at what is in the document. I'm going to attempt to leave aside opining here on the administration's recommendations (not that I don't have plenty) but stick to an overview. As always, all of this is offered in my capacity as someone who lives here and cares, not in any official capacity at all. 

First up, revenue: 

This budget is projected not meet the city's legal obligation to fund schools for the fourth year in a row:

chart from page 113 of the FY25 WPS budget document

One thing I find ongoingly puzzling about Worcester is its relationship to school funding. The state has, since 1993, had a law that obligates every city and town to spend a particular amount on schools. As I say when I present on school finance to new school committee members: a community saying it met required spending isn't something to glory in; that simply means you didn't break the law. 
Yet Worcester again is not meeting its mandated obligation. The city was only saved from the FY24 hole being bigger because the Committee last June voted (on my motion) to move $600,000 from transportation to instructional supplies.
And if you'd like some historical perspective on this, take a look at this column from 2012, when CPPAC formally requested that the City Council fund schools at 3% over required spending¹. This isn't new, but it is no less lamentable.

There are communities across the state that are moving to overrides this year lest they have the sort of layoffs facing Worcester, too. Those are all communities that are obligated by the state to fund a greater proportion of their foundation budget than Worcester is, as Worcester is eleventh from the bottom in the state in the percentage required.

This chart I made for this blog post.
See that little red line to the left? That's Worcester.
Every community to the right is required to fund a higher percentage of their school budget.

Nearly all communities in the entire Commonwealth are funding over.
And not only has the city funding more not come up with year, at least within my hearing; that the city isn't meeting its most basic obligation has itself not come up. 

Again, Worcester: I don't get it. 

Inflation, inflation, inflation. 

As I heard someone (not from Worcester) say to the Acting Commissioner this week, "This isn't ESSER; this is inflation." I have heard the MOST RIDICULOUS suggestions as to why the district is facing a $22M budget gap this year--if I have time, I have been mulling a "top ten silliest suggestions as to why WPS has a budget gap" post²--but it's really straightforward: it's the state's inflation rate in the foundation budget. 

WPS is one of the only districts I know where the district isn't really waiting for the state to find out how much their budget is going to be: the October 1 student count and the inflation rate as of the fall are the two most important factors; now it also needs the next step in the Student Opportunity Act. Worcester Public Schools thus has been, right along, frontloading the next year's funding increase through the SOA, spending ESSER funding on increases that the district knows are coming, because the rate increases are written right into the law. 
And that worked, right up until the inflation rate came back at 1.35% for FY25. Note, for example, that last year, the 4.5% inflation rate meant a $19.7M change; the 1.35% this year meant $8.7M. 
More generally--and this one, again, is true anywhere--1.35% is not anywhere close to what the increases are in any of the sectors of the budget. It is the inflation rate, not SOA increases, reimbursements, grants, or anything else, that is to be carrying the increase in costs. This one doesn't do it.

Thus the recommendations from administration

When most of what a budget is spent on is people, budget cuts are going to have to be positions.

from page 117 of the FY25 budget document

Take the green section above; add it to the blue section. That's salaries and benefits. 
Aside from out-of-district tuition (which is based on federal and state backed agreements), there is no sector above that is more than the $22M budget gap. A gap of this size is absolutely going to come out of people. 

The Worcester School Committee thus is going to have to, given the revenue they have, vote a budget with budget cuts. And I will opine this far: if any member votes against a budget in June, saying that they cannot support position cuts, they aren't doing their job. There has been no organized effort, beyond speaking with the legislative delegation on inflation (which was mostly administration) to close that revenue gap. The Committee must pass a balanced budget. If you don't get to balanced through revenue increases, you must get there through cuts.

Most of the position cuts are teachers.

Most of the staff of the Worcester Public Schools--of any school--are teachers. Education is what we do, and that takes people, and it takes people working directly with students.

In the teacher account--that's page 158, though I find the charts that start on page 160 very useful--that's:

• in the elementary line, 47 elementary teachers, including 9 kindergarten teachers, plus one lead teacher, plus one assistant principal, plus one coach position are cut.
  As has been noted by the administration, that will impact elementary class size, though the average will be 21 students per TEACHER (always be sure it is phrased by teacher, not adult) per class.
  I will observe that part of the reason the School Committee kept positions on through the pandemic, even as enrollment dropped, was concern not only for students academically (the only thing we have pieces of research on around "impact" on class size) but for their social and emotional well being. 
  
  
• in the secondary line, 41 secondary teachers are cut.
  At the secondary level, the difficulty is this: I suspect the cuts are being made such that they "don't impact course offerings" meaning that all the courses are still being offered. That, however, has been less of the challenge in Worcester than if the courses are offered enough. If there's only one section of AP Gov, and it meets at the same time as AP Spanish, students have to choose. That's what Worcester high schools look like with fewer teachers³. 
  
  
• in the student support line, two school counselors and five psychologists are cut.
  The psychologist positions are vacant--and note administration recommends a "pipeline" program working with the colleges.
  
  
• in the special education line, the narrative disagrees with the chart: it's either 67 or 70
  This is part of what is clearly being set up as a sort of recreation of how student needs are met, as some of what is also going on is going through the Q teams. 

The allocations of how many staff are where is done by formula, which you can find on page 350 and following. 

Let me offer here the bit that weighs in on me the most about the above. 

If you've followed WPS budget presentations at all, you may be familiar with the teacher gap chart; this compares Worcester's number of teachers to what the foundation budget--the state's own standard!--would set out for Worcester. The most recent version of this, from Mr. Allen's presentation to the Worcester School Committee in February, looks like this: 

Bluntly: this is why we have the Student Opportunity Act. This is why Worcester was prepared to sue the state (again) over school funding, This is why students from Fall River actually did file suit. This is the basic, fundamental failure to appropriately fund schools in Massachusetts. The "fair and adequate minimum" is neither fair nor adequate, and it isn't even a minimum.

And if I am counting correctly, in FY25 as proposed, we'll go 96 non-special education teachers backwards, leaving us with a new gap of 403 teachers.
In the fourth year of the Student Opportunity Act.

That's simply infuriating. 

Teachers are not the only position cuts.

• all of the building substitute positions (p. 163) are cut (70), plus 6 subs that covered for the administrator pipeline program
• net, 25 paraprofessional positions (p.164) are cut: 24 special ed, 6 kindergarten, 4 classroom, and 3 "ASP programming" (which...I don't know what that is) are cut, but, if you see below, there are a total of 28 positions being proposed to be added
• the transportation department (p. 167) cuts 5 open special ed drivers and 5 big bus drivers plus a technology systems coordinator and a transportation liaison; transportation also has one of the position "freezes" which I haven't seen mentioned much (more on those below)
• in administrative clerical salaries (p. 176), the Chief Academic Support Officer clerk is cut; note there is also some moving of who counts where in that account in part due to Workday implementation
• in school clerical salaries (p.178) if I am understanding the text correctly, there are eight vacant positions that were moved to the prior account but were cut there
• in non-instructional salaries (p.180) where there again is a lot of moving going on, there is a single cut in the human resources section
• in nurses (p.184), there is a cut of a single position (from Chandler Elementary moving students back from the Y), and maybe seven clinical care positions which were grant funded ('though this isn't what the chart says)
• in educational support (p.185), all of the literacy tutors, all of the MCAS tutors, and all of the EL tutors are cut. 
• in the administration account (p.156), the Chief Equity Officer, the Director of Guidance, the Director of McKinny-Vento Services, and the Director of Teaching and Learning, plus a special education coordinator, the alternative program coordinator, the principal of the Caradonio New Citizen Center, three supervisors of English Language Learners, and a secondary assistant principal are all cut. 

Note that all of the above necessarily means the unemployment account is more than doubling, to over $1M.

You can find that on page 211. 

Not all the position drops are cuts

In a number of accounts, positions are one year "freezes" rather than cuts, keeping the position on the books, but not funding it for FY25. That is:

• in administration, the budget document says the Chief Academic Officer is not funded. As there has not been a CAO in Worcester since 2016, I suspect this is actually the Chief Academic Support Officer (?), a position that does not appear on the org charts anymore, (those positions that did report to the CASO are reporting to the Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning) and would be vacant with Annie Azarloza becoming superintendent in Rochester, NH. That would also align with the cut in the administrative clerical salaries account above. If someone knows otherwise, tell me, and I will fix this.
  The assistant IT director is also kept but not funded. 
• in transportation, the 7D operations supervisor is frozen
• in administrative clerical, the second support position (there are two who report to the Clerk of the School Committee) is not funded but is kept
• in non-instructional salaries, the software developer position is kept but not funded; a financial analyst position is kept vacant as well

But not all position changes are cuts

In every budget year, there are still going to be additions. In addition to the positions already added during FY24, including those that are being moved from grant funding, here are the new positions the administration is recommending to the School Committee: 

• four deans, one for each middle school 
• 70 day by day subs (we didn't have these when we have had building based subs)
• 15 (21-6) climate and culture specialist positions (one assumes largely for the middle schools) plus 7 new positions to replace the security guards to, one assumes, staff sign in desks at the secondary schools and administration building⁴ 
• 2 more custodians for the new (and much larger) Doherty High

Not all cuts are positions

• The one I think parents and teachers will feel the most if it goes through is the $100/student supplies budget is being cut back to $75/student. This increase was made quite directly through School Committee action last year, 'though it never made it to schools, as it was frozen at the administration level. That line is part of instructional materials (p. 205), in which the general fund allocation overall is going up by 3%; that's due to the textbook budget being picked back up by the general fund, as well as the central administration materials going up by about half a million dollars. 
• in miscellaneous education OM (p.207), there are several cuts: fees and licenses are cut nearly in half (what is gone isn't specified); dues is down 19%; and rentals are being cut by parking at Gates Lane and Goddard Elementary (that would be Richards Street), the gym for Challenge and Reach, and the rental at the Y for Chandler Elementary.⁵
  
• The second thing (beyond the above) families will feel the most is the cut (in the above account) of the mailing of report cards. Families are received report cards via ParentSquare for the first time last quarter ('though they were not loaded on the app at the time that we were notified), and now the district is cutting 19% of the postage and document budget with report cards coming "electronically or directly by the school." (The school supplies budget is what is being funded by the above line.)
• in utilities (p. 212), natural gas is projected to be down 24% from this year's budgeted amount, and fuel oil (now only used by the generators and at Foley Stadium) by 20%.

Remarkably, (perhaps the only bright spot), the facilities maintenance budget (p.214) is, per the plan outlined even prior to the strategic plan, up by 16%.⁶ 

It is now the public's turn to weigh in.

The hearing is tomorrow at City Hall at 6 PM.
If (like me) you cannot make that, you can, of course, always contact the School Committee directly.

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¹Yes, new friends, we used not only to have extensive public meeting coverage in the T&G; we used to have full-time actual columnists who did research, knew the background, and wrote regularly about them! Mourn the loss with me! 
 ²"If the superintendent had been born in a zip code starting with a zero" would sum up the silliest I have seen so far, but by all means, I'd welcome your personal favorites! It will motivate me to in fact write this!
³Ask me how I know.
⁴done in the main office throughout the rest of the district
⁵I haven't heard or seen the consolidation of Chandler Elementary back to the single building otherwise mentioned, and oddly, you kind of have to read the whole budget to gather that it is. One assumes--I hope?--that this means that enrollment is down enough for the building to cope, but it's a little odd for more not to be said about this
.⁶absolutely positively necessary and still way underfunded!

If you made it this far, please enjoy this sunset off Falmouth I saw this week.