Joint Committee (Education and Finance & Operations) meets Monday at 5

 Part of the structure of the subcommittees of the Worcester School Committee is that the Finance & Operations subcommittee periodically meets with the Education subcommittee of the City Council "concerning issues of overlapping interest," as the item has it. Councilor Thu Nguyen chairs Education. We'll be having our first joint meeting on Monday at City Hall at 5, and the agenda for the meeting is: 

• gb #1-343 - To consider recommendations from the School Safety Task Force on the removal of the School Resource Officers. (the Education subcommittee also has a similar item)
  
  
• gb #2-60 – Request that the Administration evaluate and update compensation practices whereby school committee members are compensated at 50% of city council level.
  
  
• gb #2-115 - To request City Council ensure City Council and School Committee districts are parallel, so as to ensure public clarity.

Meeting link as follows:  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/96739569567

It's a three subcommittee week in Worcester! PLUS THE BUDGET IS COMING

• TUESDAY, 4:45 pm, it's Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports : virtual tutoring, elementary librarians, social emotional learning, Night Life
  
  
• WEDNESDAY, 5 pm, it's Finance and Operations : third quarter budget report, facilities update, transportation update, warrant policy, Doherty update, the student information system, sports game streaming, playgrounds, enrollment, ESSER spending 
  
  
• THURSDAY, 4:30 pm, it's Governance and Employee Issues: several employee sick bank items, student handbook, strategic plan

And on FRIDAY: 

The FY23 budget is publicly released! 

On the FY22 quarterly transfers

 You didn't think I'd forgotten, did you?

At the last meeting of the Worcester School Committee, I gave the report from the Finance and Operations subcommittee meeting of February 9, which included the second quarter report, included $7.1M in transfers and an update on about $4M in ESSER funding for the current (FY22) budget year.

What does that mean? 

About every three months, administration gives an update to the F&O subcommittee on where the district is with the budget that was passed in June. That's not only how much has been spent from which account and how much then is left of what was budgeted; it's also a calculation done by the budget office of how much the district is projected to spend. In other words, given what we know--how many positions aren't filled, what services are running ahead or behind what was thought, and so forth--how much is the district probably going to actually spend in each account by the end of the fiscal year in June? 

This time--this was the second quarter report--there were some big shifts. More than anything else, that's due to two things, both of which we'd rather weren't true:

• We have--or had at the time of the report--263 positions that are open. Those are positions for which we budgeted, that we have the salary and health insurance funding for, that haven't been filled this year.
• Durham isn't running 27 of the routes that the district contractually requires of them. Routes that aren't run aren't paid for. 
  

All of us would rather have the staff positions filled and the school bus routes running. We don't, though, and so the transfers:

• took all of the funding so far for the positions--salary and health insurance--and moved them elsewhere. Thus (and Member Kamara asked this question at the meeting) no positions are cut through these transfers. 
• took all the funding through the end of the year for the bus routes and moved them elsewhere, as the expectation is that those routes will not be done this year by Durham.

That not only means that the district had the $7.1M to move (and you can see more on where and why in the quarterly report linked above), but it also means that the district has enough funding in the operational budget to cover just over $4M of what was supposed to be funded through ESSER funding as hold harmless this year.

What does that mean? Here's an analogy I used earlier this week; see if it helps.
Say you're running a regular household budget--salary coming in, expenses on things like rent and electricity going out--and something happens with your job. You expect that you aren't going to be earning as much for a time; maybe your hours get cut, but only for a few months. You have reason to expect that the money coming in will go back up.
At the same time, you have a tax refund come in, or someone sends you a gift of money; it's a set amount of one time funding. You decide that you can use this one time money to fill the hole of that expected loss of income.
After you make this plan, something happens that cuts your expenses through loss of service. Say you can't get cable any more. That also means, though, that you don't have to pay for that service anymore, and as a result, you use that savings to cover the loss of your income.
What that means is now you have that extra money still around. 
That's what has happened here: the district has lost service (positions that are unfilled and bus routes that aren't run); we're using that savings to cover expenses that we were going to use ESSER for. Now that ESSER goes back to the unused and to-be-committed category. 

And that is where we are on the budget in the third quarter.

Worcester Public Schools Finance and Operations quarterly report

meeting before the budget hearing...agenda is here

discussion of warrants

for what the heck this is about see here
O'Connell: MGL provides with school committee with statutory authority over finances
all school department bills must approved by the school committee (1995 finding)
"at best, a rather cumbersome initiative to undertake"
"it is in fact a requirement that we have some means of approving bills"
strict enough in fact that checks are not to issued
asking that it be referred to administration for a warrant approval process
have a means of distributing warrants and signing by means of technology
warrants on the school committee agenda in Haverhill, most cumbersome but "possibly most transparent"
"harmonize its own convenience...making information for those who do choose to look at the information in detail"
asks that it be referred to administration
Foley: interesting item from Mr. O'Connell
asks that it be sent to F&O
"what this means operationally, what it means from a budget perspective"
ensure school committee fulfills their responsibility, while not encumbering the administration
O'Connell: asks that the state be contacted as well
what the state recommends for a community the size of Worcester
that the discussion is focused on a recommendation that is reasonable

referred to F&O

Legislative breakfast

For those interested, it looks as though the Worcester School Committee is having a Legislative breakfast next Friday at 8:30 am at Worcester Tech.
The municipal calendar is a handy thing!

Update: the agenda is posted and the backups are the FBRC report and the F&O report on the WPS impacts ('though it's that terrible B&W photocopy again, so I'd recommend looking at this one, instead.) 

2016-18 standing committee assignments for Worcester School Committee

via Tom Quinn at Worcester Magazine:

Accountability and Student Achievement: Chair Biancheria, Vice Chair Colorio, O’Connell

Finance and Operations: Chair Foley, Vice Chair McCullough, Colorio

Governance and Employee Issues: Chair Monfredo, Vice Chair Biancheria, Foley

Teaching, Learning and Student Supports: Chair O’Connell, Vice Chair Monfredo, McCullough

Finance and Operations meets at 6

You can find the agenda here. Notes to follow in further posts.