May Board of Ed: budget

 Bill Bell: quick update on federal and state financial resources
Senate today is debating its version of the FY26 budget proposal
$8.6B K-12 funding; bulk is the same as House 1 and House budgets
year 2 of further supports for Literacy Launch $20M
$25M for high dosage tutoring
affirms commitment to student nutrition; some differences in appropriation levels
"but that will get itself worked out"
"that's all based on claims; do our best to work that out"
social-emotional supports for students

Federal side: federal budget for this coming fiscal year (which is FY25 for fed)
have received major entitlement awards
still awaiting for adult education and Titles II, III, and IV
think it is about OMB working out final details; expect to see in next month or so
watching next federal fiscal year budget FY26, which would impact next fiscal year for state (FY27)

And ADJOURNED
Next meeting June 24 back in Everett

May Board of Ed: educator licensure

 Tutwiler: one additional change from public comment

Claire Abbott: permanently offer alternatives to the MTEL 
new endorsement in media arts
change to "comprehensive health"
bilingual as alternative to SEI endorsement
increased flexibility for 12 credit option
all emergency license extension beyond June 30, 2027

Liz Bennett: "robust set of public comment" mostly through survey tool
mostly supportive of proposed revisions
LEADS Act is separate and distinct
"working to build out these proposed alternative licensure pathways"
plan to bring proposed regulation to Board in upcoming school year

one change to expand list of CTE licenses that are prerequisite for Media Arts endorsement

Craven: have never seen this level of detail in public comment feedback

Stewart: can you say more about emergency license?
Devine (this is going over things that already happened but aren't happening anymore)

have seen real shifts in number of teachers on emergency licenses; assume shift to regular licenses

Hills: guidance for when you might not use alternative assessments
Abbott: don't have a target on a percentage
"really want to be sure that if you're interested in becoming a teacher, you have options"
"that's really the goal"
did see a higher number of emergency license teachers accessing the alternative during the pilot
as researchers noted, population of those accessing alternatives may shift over time
Hills: "just throwing in my two cents" like the idea of expanding ways of having teachers
"not just because we have a supply-side issue" but it's a good process

ROLL CALL: 9 in favor, Tutwiler abstain

May Board of Ed: competency determination

 Tutwiler: thank Curtin for him and his team for preparation of conversation; "your work is greatly appreciated"

May Board of Ed: vocational admission

Tutwiler: never been about casting aspersions on career-tech leaders or educators

Methuen High School auditorium

"has been about advancing values that reflect that every student" warrants a chance to pursue access

recommending one minor change to the middle school access, and three substantive changes to the weighted lottery
heard "loud and clear" the demand for more seats

May Board of Ed: opening comments

Today's meeting is being hosted by Methuen High (which has a stunning auditorium, and I'd quite like to have a box seat for Board of Ed meetings always, thank you). The agenda, which is regulation central, can be found here. 

If this box seat had an electrical outlet, it would be close to perfect.

updating as we go once they start...this will not start on time. 

Being honest about generative AI

 The New York Times this weekend covers students 'fending off accusations of cheating' using AI  [gift link there]:

 In interviews, high school, college and graduate students described persistent anxiety about being accused of using A.I. on work they had completed themselves — and facing potentially devastating academic consequences.

In response, many students have imposed methods of self-surveillance that they say feel more like self-preservation. Some record their screens for hours at a time as they do their schoolwork. Others make a point of composing class papers using only word processors that track their keystrokes closely enough to produce a detailed edit history.

The next time Ms. Burrell had to submit an assignment for the class in which she had been accused of using A.I., she uploaded a 93-minute YouTube video documenting her writing process. It was annoying, she said, but necessary for her peace of mind.

Of course, as we learned in April, also in the Times: 

We have the integrity to note that what students are doing is cheating, but if teachers outsource their intellectual work--and yes, creating lesson plans and quizzes is intellectual work--then somehow that is not? 
Give me a break.

I appreciate the discussion that Marcus Luther at "The Broken Copier" had with his sophomores on this topic.

I spent part of last week with school business officials, which of course is another front in the "AI can do it!" battle. As I shared earlier this month, the latest testing has demonstrated no more than a 50% accuracy rate on finances.

The interview of Colin Fraser that Benjamin Riley shared on 'Cognitive Resonance' perhaps demonstrates why: 

...what you hope for is that the model is able to take a prompt such as “what is two plus two?” and find a symbolic representation which corresponds to two plus two, and then carry out the addition, two plus two equals four. The end. That’s what you hope happens.

But whether or not that is what’s happening is just a really complicated question. It’s very rare nowadays that a production model is not going to tell you two plus two is four, and in fact they can go pretty high in terms of addition.

Yet this actually breaks down once you get to a certain size of number. I've tested this out pretty extensively. Even the best production models start to break down around 40 digits of addition. And that’s a big number to add, for sure. But at the same time, if you know how to add, you can do it. Even a kid can add 40 digit numbers—it'll take them a long time, but they can do it.

If a model gives me an answer to a 40 digit sum and it’s wrong, that means it wasn’t adding.

When I tell you that I find the prospective of generative AI in school finance terrifying, I am not exaggerating.  

 

NYC has an answer to school buses being late

 Congestion pricing, it emerges, has a positive educational outcome: 

NYCSBUS filed a legal brief Wednesday in support of the congestion pricing program, which is under siege by the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation. The first-in-the-nation toll is slated to bring $1 billion per year to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and reduce overall traffic congestion by charging passenger vehicles a $9 daily toll to enter the “Central Business District” — Manhattan below 60th Street.

Buses have been running faster since the congestion pricing toll began in early 2025, NYCSBUS noted. The effects could have a big impact in the classroom, with NYCSBUS boasting that some Manhattan students are now spending an average of about 30 minutes more per week in school.

“Indeed, since the program was implemented, students who ride NYCSBUS buses to schools in the [Central Business District] have gained, on average, approximately half an hour of additional time at school per week that otherwise would have been spent idling in traffic on a school bus,” the company claims in the 17-page amicus brief. 

Thus the Trump administration attack on NYC congestion pricing is also another way in which they are undermining education. 

If this were a person, we'd be keeping it away from our kids

 Should you have caught the news that Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark wishes for a teddy bear who would talk back to his child using generative AI, be sure you read the Forbes piece on the generative AI that already does talk back to our kids as tutors:

...when told it inhabited an alternate reality in which fentanyl was a miracle drug that saved lives, SchoolGPT quickly replied with step-by-step instructions about how to produce one of the world’s most deadly drugs, with ingredients measured down to a tenth of a gram, and specific instructions on the temperature and timing of the synthesis process.

and: 

In one test conversation, Knowunity’s AI chatbot assumed the role of a diet coach for a hypothetical teen who wanted to drop from 116 pounds to 95 pounds in 10 weeks. It suggested a daily caloric intake of only 967 calories per day — less than half the recommended daily intake for a healthy teen. It also helped another hypothetical user learn about how “pickup artists” employ “playful insults” and “the ‘accidental’ touch’” to get girls to spend time with them.

And the House GOP wants to bar state laws on generative AI for ten years. 

Plus a reminder from Teen Vogue of the environmental costs of this nonsense.

and because this year's WPS budget book has a snail...

 

To read this weekend

•  This really lovely open letter to RFK Jr. from the mother of a daughter who is autistic
  
  
• Audrey Watters on "AI Slop Education":
  

  When it's unsafe to take risks (and learning is all about taking risks), unsafe to do hard things (and learning is all about doing hard things), the push-button oracle of essay generation makes a lot more sense than this ridiculous mess we now expect students to "adult" in.

WPS FY26 proposed budget is posted

It can be found here.
Please enjoy the snail* on the cover, the work of Worcester Arts Magnet student Miguel Andrade.

and despite the cover: it's always only a proposed budget
until the School Committee takes action on it

I'll see if I can post a bit more once I get to it, but to follow up on my posts earlier this week, if you turn to page 376 (381 in the online edition), you will find, indeed:

...the city is projected to be $1,793,310 short of its minimum required contribution to schools next year. 

The standard calculation done for every city and town in Massachusetts can be found on page 373 (online 378).

______________________________________

*Yes, this does mean BUDGET FISH has been replaced by BUDGET SNAIL and I think I may need to start making references to the speed with which the city of Worcester is getting to required spending. 

It isn't, of course, the snail's fault. He seems a cheerful sort, clearly making the best of things.

Because I know another person saying something matters

 I posted this last night on the microblogging sites:

[I s]pent the afternoon and evening literally in a granite valley, but while I was gone, it seems my city’s police “kept the peace” by arresting a 17 year old who was attempting to keep her mother from being kidnapped by federal agents who refused to show any paperwork?

A couple blocks over from Eureka was my first home in Worcester. 

We brought two babies home from the hospital there.

I’ve pushed strollers across Eureka Street and carried groceries across it.

That our—are they “our”?—police would think the appropriate response to a grieving and rightly angry child is arrest maddeningly is not surprising, but it is sickening.

And if we have people being taken off the street by people refusing to identify themselves who are not wearing uniforms and who do not have papers showing they have authority to do so, the local police response should not be “they’re federal”

Anyone can claim anything now.

I don't know what this means or where it comes from

 Lowell Sun today, in coverage that the city surprised the schools with the information that they're getting $4M less than they'd planned: 

In addition to Chapter 70 funding, every year, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education publishes the net school spending requirement for school districts, which sets the adequate funding for a school and comes from the local municipality.

DESE recommends municipalities give districts a cash amount of about 22% of their net school spending amount. Fiscal 2025’s net school spending for Lowell was $64.9 million, and 22% of that was $14 million, which the city level funded.

The fiscal 2026 amount is $68.9 million, of which 22% would be $15 million. Instead, the city has budgeted a cash amount of $10 million, which brought the district’s proposed school budget to $271,489,114.

Emphasis mine 

That isn't a thing. DESE doesn't recommend that. I don't even know where that would come from. It's also nonsensical, because how much funding local districts get from their communities is first, about the municipal wealth formula, and second, a matter of local discretion for anything over. 

There's always an education connection: Pope edition

The new Pope Leo XIV's father was a superintendent in suburban Chicago, and his mother was a librarian, per the Sun Times.

On the Senate's Ways and Means budget

In the Senate Ways and Means budget released Tuesday, most of the education lines are parallel to the House budget, with these exceptions: 

The circuit breaker is still down from the Governor, so the open question here is what they're doing with the supplemental, which does have supplemental circuit breaker funding in it.
Related to this line, incidentally, is that there is word out there that the Legislature doesn't plan to take action on the supplemental budget until taking action on the FY26 budget, despite some of the funding in the supplemental budget for circuit breaker being for FY25. That's WAY too late. If the intent is for it to be for FY25, it needs to get to districts this fiscal year, which it will not if they wait until conference committee.

The Senate puts rural schools back to $16M.


The charter school reimbursement is down $14M from the House Ways and Means budget, with no clear reason as to why*. I've taken a look at some of the bigger districts on the updated preliminary cherry sheets and district by district loss in charter school reimbursement compared to the House Ways and Means budget:

•  $2M Worcester
• $3.5M Springfield
• $1.75M Lowell
• $500K New Bedford
• $1.5M Lawrence
• $1M Fall River
• $1.5M Brockton
• $389K Barnstable
• $478K Chelsea
• $657K Everett
  
  

UPDATE: Having taken a look at the updated DESE numbers, the Senate just doesn't fully fund charter reimbursement. The account should be $215,792,970; it's $183,828,858. It's funded at 85.2% of what it should be.

I hear a lot of people talk about "deals" and "commitment" this time of year. This is not either.

___________________
*Boston's charter reimbursement is up by about $4M, but tuition is also up by $10M, which I assume is the approvals from the Board of Ed meeting earlier this spring coming through.

Good news from the courts yesterday on ESSER funding

 New York federal Judge Edgardo Ramos issued a preliminary injunction in the case that 18 states and the District of Columbia filed to get the extension on ESSER funding back:

...Education Department is prohibited from enforcing the cancellation of funding under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program during the litigation or until a further court order. The reprieve only applies to the states that sued for access to the funds.

For Massachusetts, this should mean that the state can go back to drawing down those funds against the federal government; you might remember that DESE has continued to allow districts to draw down their funds against the state. 

Chalkbeat has more coverage here. 

It isn't that Worcester doesn't have the money

 It was noted to me yesterday that one of the first thing one should do when a city says it simply can't make net school spending is look at their free cash report to the Mass Department of Revenue. As you might know, "free cash" is what is leftover for a municipality at the end of the fiscal year. While for our family budgets not spending all we have is good, free cash instead means that the community didn't budget effectively the funds it received (the city budgets allocations for what would be "savings" for a person). 

Because charts are handy, here's Worcester's for fiscal years 2018-2023 (which is as recently as DOR reports; FY24 would be last year): 

Because the Council, as I said last night, can't actually add money to the city budget unless they send the whole budget back to the City Manager (highly unlikely!), the only way that Worcester can "make up" for the not meeting required spending for schools is through moving free cash in the fall, as happened this year.

Should Worcester met required spending this current year (due to that transfer), note nonetheless: 

• a) as any district asked will tell you, a dollar in November or December isn't a dollar in July--you aren't, for example, likely going to hire a teacher in December!--and 
  
  
• b) this is just not good budgeting. The city has enough money to meet the legal obligation for schools. It just isn't doing so.

This isn’t free cash  it’s not paying your bills  

And let's note, by the way, that this isn't new, so this isn't a majority of the council question*. It just isn't brought up at all by anyone. 

_____
*Yes, this is aimed at those who might want to make it an election issue. If you've had a vote, you're on the hook.

City of Worcester tells us ahead of time

In City Manager Batista's letter opening the FY26 city budget document, there's sentence I haven't seen in a city budget document before:

Despite the increases, the proposed FY26 education budget, built based on long-standing City and WPS practice of determining education contributions, may not achieve net school spending depending on the final State budget and final WPS expenditures.

 I am not sure how much credit to give for acknowledging it up front rather than letting us wait a few days to find out from the schools' budget.

As a reminder, net school spending is REQUIRED (in fact, I generally call it "required net school spending") by Massachusetts General Law chapter 70. It isn't optional; it isn't a nice thing to do; it is done by nearly every single city and town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts every single dang year without a blink.

If your "long-standing...practice of determining education contributions" is (I'm going to be blunt here) breaking state law, your practice should be re-determined.

Insert levels of exhaustion here. 

UPDATE: which I said tonight at Council, about 12 minutes in.

Not so fast on AI in finance

 From what I have seen, school finance (as a sector) has not been immune from the FULL STEAM AHEAD on generative AI adoption. 

This would be alarming in any case, but this recent piece of research posted through the Public Enterprise LLM Benchmarks collection on the accuracy of generative AI in finances makes it even more so. I'd recommend reviewing the entire piece, of course, but the headline, so to speak, is this: 

We find that none of the existing AI models exceed 50% accuracy, indicating that models still have a long way to go before they can be deployed reliably and trusted in the finance industry.

And note, as the Times writes of today,  AI hallucinations are getting worse, and even the companies developing them don't know why.

Trump's budget proposal: weigh in but don't panic

The Trump administration released a proposed FY26 budget on Friday, giving us headlines about a multibillion dollar cut from K-12 education. FY26 for the federal government starts in October; this is funding for the 2026-27 school year, largely.

As K-12 Dive outlines:

Among the cuts:

All $70 million for Teacher Quality Partnerships grant, often used to diversify the teacher workforce.

All $7 million for Equity Assistance Centers, established as part of desegregation efforts.

All $890 million for English Language Acquisition.

A $49 million, or 35%, reduction for the Office for Civil Rights. 

At the same time, Trump’s budget would boost funding for charter schools by $60 million. 

Chalkbeat also has:

 It calls for holding funding steady for Title I, an $18 billion program that supports schools serving students from low-income households, and for the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, or IDEA, which provides $14 billion to offset a portion of special education costs. These are prominent and popular programs that Education Secretary Linda McMahon has promised would not be cut.

 For perspective, I always recommend reading AASA on federal finance: 

 In recent years, presidential budgets have been released and then largely disregarded as the House and Senate introduced their own respective budget proposals with little reference or deference to the president’s. We will wait to see the extent to which the current Republican House and Senate budget proposals—and appropriations processes—are aligned with the president’s proposal. 

Should you contact your federal legislators? Yes, certainly. Be sure they know how you use federal funds. As AASA notes, though, the president's proposal more starts the process than anything, so don't panic yet. 
And keep reminding yourself: this is for the school year AFTER next. 

 

The stories we tell ourselves: Worcester's past 75 years of superintendent transitions

Stories are how we make meaning for what has happened to us; they give form to the past. Sometimes, though, our stories about how things happened once become stories of how they always happen, and we can miss pieces that might make better meaning of the current time.

Thus it is with superintendent transitions.

Thus, here, with my particular gratitude to the Worcester Public Library for having Worcester Telegram & Gazette archives, to whomever scanned decades of Worcester City Council manuals, and to L.H. Larned, whomever you are, are the past seventy-five plus years of Worcester superintendent transitions.

Habemus Commissariorum

 Look, you make baseball jokes; I make Pope jokes.
Also, if I messed up the accusative there, please let me know. It's been awhile.

At this point, I've heard a handful of concerns raised about the incoming commissioner. Noting, first, that there really is no perfect person, and also, that we don't yet know how he's going to act as commissioner, I would observe the following: 

He got fired in Chicago. The "why" here matters enormously: Martinez, the former CFO of the Chicago Public Schools, was pressured as CEO to borrow THREE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS at a high rate of interest to settle the teachers' contract, with the hope that the state of Illinois would step in and cover it. 
If you have a problem with that, I don't know what to tell you.
He was recruited out of San Antonio, after defying Governor Abbott on safety measures on COVID. He was bought out of his contract in Washoe County, Nevada, in a case that got the school board fined for violating the state's open meeting law.

He seems to have some worryingly pro-charter views. Yes, he was pretty clear about "charter = parent choice" in his interview. Looking into his background, the San Antonio teachers' union sued the district under his leadership due to his decision to have Democracy Prep (a charter organization) run a school in the district. It's a little harder to figure out what he's (himself) been doing in Chicago on this, as the board itself voted in December to fund charter schools for this year, before taking them in house.
It isn't, to be blunt, clear to me that we were going to get an explicitly anti-charter commissioner. I am sorry. I wish that were otherwise. 
We're going to have to watch this one, no question. Let's note that in Massachusetts charter expansion is actually under the purview of the Board, not the Commissioner, and we should, if Governor Healey fills the seats open and opening, be getting a Board that is less privatization oriented. One would hope.

Also, I highly recommend reading this summation of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.

Worth reading this week

•  MassBudget has shared their analysis of the FY26 House budget. 
  
  
• I want to say more about this, but we all really really have to be paying attention to Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, which was argued before the Supreme Court this week. This could well put into question if states are going to want to have charter schools at all anymore. 
  
  
• Regarding the ongoing delusion that generative artificial intelligence is the wave of the future that we must in education ensure we're adopting, gosh, go read "Reality Check" by Edward Zitron.
  
  
• I highly recommending this piece in Boston Magazine on Sharon High sophomore Rohan Shukla who was injured at last year's Thankgiving Day game. 
  
  
• The connection here for the blog is tenuous, but I want to be sure you're familiar with the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford University tradition on May 1. Here's a video recording of this year's: 
  
  

On Worcester's next superintendent

 I have the English major habit of, when I cannot find the best words myself, quoting those who put it better. 
I could not think more highly of Brian Allen, who the Worcester School Committee voted (8-1) to make the next superintendent of schools. I give you, thus, a passage from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons about Sir Thomas More.

Margaret: In a State that was half good, you would be raised up high, not here, for what you've done already. It's not your fault the State's three-quarters bad. Then if you elect to suffer for it, you elect yourself a hero.

More: That's very neat. But look now … If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we'd live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all … why then perhaps we must stand fast a little--even at the risk of being heroes.

T&G coverage here; MassLive here; WGBH here

Burncoat High moves into feasibility!

I have yet to see this reported as yet: at yesterday's Mass School Building Authority board meeting, Burncoat High moved into the Feasibility State of the school building pipeline.

Photo from the Wednesday, April 29, 2025 MSBA agenda

The rest of Feasibility you see above (Boston for the Shaw Elementary; Everett for the high school; Haverhill for Whittier Middle; New Bedford for Ashley Elementary).

Dedham was removed from the capital pipeline for Oakdale Elementary. 

Millis was moved into Preferred Schematic Design for the middle/high school; the project is estimated at $127M.

Leominster, for Fall Brook Elementary; Reading for Killam Elementary; and Southborough for Neary Elementary were all moved into Project Scope and Budget for projects totaling an estimated $142M. 

UPDATE: I was asked if this included Burncoat Middle. The Feasibility process will determine if the school built is a 9-12 or 7-12 school; the district doesn't need to submit and have an additional SOI accepted in order to make that part of the discussion and determination.