Skunk at the garden party time

They're kind of cute, though, aren't they.

Though it is, of course, not the done thing to express anything but enthusiasm for additional funding…It is time again for one of my periodic skunk at the garden party posts.

Bailing twine and bubble gum: school funding in the House Ways and Means proposal

 The House Committee on Ways & Means released their FY27 budget last Wednesday, and they're currently taking amendments before the House debate on the budget starts next week. 

I've been considering what to say about it since then (sorry if you've been waiting for me to post on it), and the refrain I kept coming back to is what state law says is the intent of the Legislature when it comes to school funding: 

The full section reads: 

It is the intention of the general court, subject to appropriation, to assure fair and adequate minimum per student funding for public schools in the commonwealth by defining a foundation budget and a standard of local funding effort applicable to every city and town in the commonwealth.

FY27 Governor's budget proposal

As I noted on Wednesday, Governor Healey has filed her proposed FY27 budget; as this is the second year of the legislative term, this is "House 2," as she files the bill with the House. 

As per usual, I'm keeping a running "account-by-account" for K-12 over here. This year, I honestly started by downloading this page from the state website and then playing with it; you might also find that useful. 

As always, dear readers, I post here for me and for you and in an entirely unofficial capacity. 

On revenue

I think the big story here is one Sam Drysdale at State House News Service caught and covered and then...no one picked up their coverage, as best as I can tell, so it is (sigh) only behind their paywall¹. 

On the state FY26 budget

This is of course and as always coming from me who posts on here as me  

First off, cheers to the Boston Globe (yes, you did read that right!*) for this piece which interviews a lot of the right people, who point to many of the important things on this state budget and education! Huzzah! 

The Department of Revenue did issue FINAL (because the budget is signed) cherry sheets for FY26 at the end of last week, and DESE has similarly issued FINAL chapter 70 and net school spending information. Remember, the only way that any of this is changing at this point is if the Legislature decides to overrule vetoes. If you hear anything on that one, let me know.

Let's turn then to the budget we just got. 

a few quick thoughts on the Governor's budget

 ...which is here, with the education section here, and my "adding as we go" spreadsheet here, though this doesn't include whatever it is that the Globe is talking about here (I imagine that is also buried in those grant lines...I will update when I find them). 

DESE has the FY26 numbers up though the cherry sheets (as of quarter of four on Wednesday) are not yet. 

First, this budget is using Fair Share funding to partly fund ($225M) state chapter 70 aid; it's being called "Student Opportunity Act Expansion" funding, which on the one hand is funding (part of) the fifth year of implementation, which is better than not, but on the other hand is, alongside using Fair Share for free lunch reimbursement, using that "let's think big!' money for some basic commitments that the state has made.
So, meh.

On the foundation budget, we do have a 1.93% inflation rate, which is BAD (if expected). I am willing to bet that school districts are not seeing that rate of increase in many if any of their cost centers, and so how that shakes out is...as you'd expect.

The exception is the health insurance rate--under SOA, that's separate, remember--which is 6.13%, which is closer to what districts may actually being seeing ('though I have seen some double digit ones coming in).

I assume because of the above and because districts have been unhappy about being in hold harmless funding, the Governor's budget is putting minimum per pupil funding at $75/pupil. THIS IS ALSO NOT GOOD. As I noted in my new year post, this is driving us further and further into a funding system in which there is NO relationship between how much state funding a district gets, and the actual needs of either the students or the community. That's not what our constitutional commitment is. 
And you know we're going to hear that there's no money for a more realistic inflation rate, while somehow there's millions (and millions) for "everyone gets more money regardless of need." 
(PS: stop citing the number of districts that are in hold harmless; it isn't making the point you think it is.)

And if you ever hear that SOA isn't working, here's what it is doing (along with much else):

And if that didn't matter to you: your local community was, I'll bet, already funding well over that. Lucky you, but many places couldn't afford it without state aid. 

More as I have time! And send questions if you have them! 

_____________________________

PS: quick note on Worcester: the city's showing a healthy 5.26% Municipal Revenue Growth Factor (yes, that's how much municipal revenue is growing!), and so we have no reason to hear any concerns raised about the city being required to pick up something like 20% of the required MINIMUM increase in funding. 

FY26 Consensus Revenue hearing liveblog

 ...will be starting here, though it appears to be the Senate adjourning right now...
I don't write down all the numbers, because I only get them orally

But what did Fair Share get us?

ahem...

I hope by now you've seen that the Fair Share amendment, which taxes at 4% on every dollar over a person's first $1M in income, has far exceeded expectations. As noted back in May: 

Massachusetts has collected about $1.8 billion from a voter-approved surtax on the state’s highest earners through the first nine months of the fiscal year, the Department of Revenue said Monday in a quarterly report.

That’s more than $800 million more than what the Legislature and Gov. Maura Healey planned to spend in surtax revenue for all of fiscal year 2024, raising the possibility of a sizable pot that will land in an Education and Transportation Reserve Fund and the Education and Transportation Innovation and Capital Fund, both surtax specific accounts, once the books close.

Remember, unless you've made a million plus at least a dollar in income? You are not paying this. And if you made a million plus a dollar, you're only taxed the extra 4% on that one additional dollar.

I've seen some confusion about this, so I thought I'd clear up a few things. 

First, the above money doesn't get spent until next year; this is a reserve fund, so the funding goes in and sits until the total is determined by the state comptroller in December. It's pretty clear, though, that the state's been conservative with projections, and this is one where we do really want to spend the money that's coming.

Second, this is funding--like most in the state--that's allocated by vote of the Legislature, signed by the Governor. There isn't some sort of formula where everyone gets some of this. I've heard districts ask how they can apply, or if it's being allocated evenly...that isn't how this works at all. The Legislature decides on what, within transportation and education, they want to spend the money on, and that's where it goes.

Funding was allocated in this year's budget from last year's Fair Share collection. Again, there is a very good chance that you are not personally paying for this--these efforts are not increasing your taxes!--but we as state residents are benefiting!

• universal free lunch - a program much in the news, due to Minnesota similarly funding meals for all students, the reimbursement to districts of the federal reimbursement rate for non-federally reimbursed meals (the wonkish explanation!), this $170M is from Fair Share funding. 
  Yes, we literally have our millionaires making sure all kids eat!
  Remember, the FY24 number is a compromise and is expected to still not be enough to fully reimburse the expense to districts
• $74/pupil increase in minimum aid in chapter 70. I've ongoingly argued that this is not a fair, equitable, way to get aid to districts, and yet...here we are. $37M here for K-12 districts.
• free community college is funded from the Fair Share amendment (there's several lines of public higher ed funding, in fact)
• $110M to regional transit authorities-- aka, local bus systems
• $60M for MBTA physical infrastructure
• $20M for a low income reduced fare program for the MBTA
• $7.5M for ferry services
• $36M for safety work at the MBTA
• $45M for municipal roadwork
• $10M for a skilled workforce pipeline for the MBTA (those bus and train drivers don't grow on trees!)
• $175M for child care grants (operations)
• $15M to reduce the waitlist at early childcare and education for teen parents and homeless families
• $5M for preschool expansion
• $65M for increased salaries and benefits for early education and care
• $18M for reducing the early childcare waitlist
• expanding early college, technical, and innovation pathways at $2.5M 
• the Literacy Launch, funding for both curriculum and professional development, which they compromised at $20M for
• Green Energy infrastructure grants to schools for $10M
• developing a framework for mental and behavioral health funded at $5M

This is all really good stuff! We should be proud that we fought for this money! 
I wish more people were more clear on where it is going. Please spread the word!

Massachusetts, we have a budget, mostly.

On Monday, Governor Maura Healey signed the FY25 conference committee budget. You can find the Governor's signing statement here along with the record of vetoes. 

As the most of the larger K-12 education accounts of the budget were signed as passed by the conference committee, which I covered here, I'm going to skip those and go right to the vetoes, of which there are quite a number that impact K-12 districts. 

(I know, right? You'd never know this from the coverage.)

Do note, though, that DESE has posted the final FY25 Chapter 70 and net school spending requirements. This means we can play "exactly how far back did making the minimum per pupil increase $104 set us from SOA gains?" which I'll get to in a future post.

The following is taken directly from the line item account veto document.

Why do we always come here...on the FY25 WPS budget before Council

Why do we always come here

I guess we'll never know

It's like a kind of torture

To have to watch the show…
from "The Muppet Show Theme"

I had family commitments yesterday afternoon, so I was unable to make it to the Worcester City Council taking up the Worcester Public Schools' budget. Thanks to the wonder of recording, however, we can all relive it, and I think the only way I can bear this is to blog it. 

I post the above, by the way, not to call anyone a Muppet, but to note again that a) Worcester does this backwards, as school committees in Massachusetts send their requested appropriation to their appropriating authorities, and of course the Worcester School Committee hasn't yet met on the budget, b) the Worcester City Council, like any appropriating authority, has very little oversight of the Worcester Public Schools budget.
Both of that, incidentally, are per MGL Ch. 71, sec. 34:

Every city and town shall annually provide an amount of money sufficient for the support of the public schools as required by this chapter, provided however, that no city or town shall be required to provide more money for the support of the public schools than is appropriated by vote of the legislative body of the city or town. In acting on appropriations for educational costs, the city or town appropriating body shall vote on the total amount of the appropriations requested and shall not allocate appropriations among accounts or place any restriction on such appropriations. The superintendent of schools in any city or town may address the local appropriating authority prior to any action on the school budget as recommended by the school committee notwithstanding his place of residence. The city or town appropriating body may make nonbinding monetary recommendations to increase or decrease certain items allocating such appropriations.

The vote of the legislative body of a city or town shall establish the total appropriation for the support of the public schools, but may not limit the authority of the school committee to determine expenditures within the total appropriation.

And also, of course, the city charter in section 5-2 says:

 The city council may, by majority vote, make appropriations for the purposes recommended and may reduce or reject any amount recommended in the annual budget, but except on recommendation of the city manager, shall not increase any amount in or the total of the annual budget, nor add thereto any amount for a purpose not included therein, except as provided in section thirty-three of chapter forty-four of the General Laws.

There are very few questions the Council has purview to ask, and very little they can do, and that's even if they funded schools appropriately!
So when I say I don't know why we do this: I really don't know why this is what is done!
And this is not the first time I have said this.

Supreme Judicial Court takes Fair Share off the ballot

You can read the decision here. The crux is that it asked two things.

We conclude that the initiative petition should not have been certified by the Attorney General as "in proper form for submission to the people," because, contrary to the certification, the petition does not contain only subjects "which are related or which are mutually dependent," pursuant to art.

But I'll leave you with this:

We recognize that recommendations of this scope and size will need to be phased in to be affordable. However, we also note again what was stated at the beginning of this document: that the good work begun by the education reform act of 1993, and the educational progress made since, will be at risk so long as our school systems are fiscally strained by the ongoing failure to substantively reconsider the adequacy of the foundation budget, We therefore urge that the legislature act on these recommendations with a profound sense of the risks and opportunities at stake for our shared prosperity as a state and, as our constitution acknowledges, the critical nature of education to the health of our democracy. We advise a keen sense of the urgency when it comes to addressing the identified funding gaps, and the moral imperative of reducing the remaining achievement gaps.

The moral imperative didn't vanish with the ballot question.

2016 MASC Delegate Assembly

You can find the report of the Resolution Committee here. Full Delegate Manual is here.
posting as we go! 
In receiving his award, Rep. Steve Kulik praises school committees for conducting school business "with great transparency and in the public eye."

President Jake Oliveira: today "sets broad-brush policy goals" for the organization.
resolutions have gone through a three-tiered process: any committee may present a resolution: goes through Resolutions Committee, which deliberate and recommend to Board of Directors, who likewise vet them, and forward them to the Delegate Assembly.
"get to the heart of public policy issues that we raise on your behalf"
analogous to town meeting in how it operates
reminder that some delegates have more than one vote (as they represent more than one committee)

Minutes are approved

That's not how this works (on funding the FBRC report)

From a Bay State Banner interview with Governor Baker in which he commented that his budget is going in the right direction:

In this 2016 fiscal year, the Baker administration put an additional $111 million into Chapter 70 funding, which helps support district schools and is tapped to support charter schools. This represents a 3 percent increase — the highest amount the state has ever provided to municipalities, says the Baker administration. 

The increase is not great enough to bring baseline school funding to the levels they should be within one year but may be on track to close the gap in four years, according to the recommendations of the Foundation Budget Review Commission.* 

No, it isn't.

The increase in last year's Chapter 70 funding was largely caused by two things: changes in enrollment (more kids plus more kids with special education or ELL needs, and other foundation level changes) and inflation (which last year was 1.5%). That chapter 70 increase also includes the minimum increase given to non-foundation communities, which last year was $25/pupil**.

The enrollment changes, the inflation rate which should be observed and the years in which it was not (the rate is negative; inflation isn't), and, I suspect, the communities which receive the minimum increase aren't going to vanish because someone decided to deal with the Foundation Budget Review Commission Report. Further, none of those things are dealt with in the two cost drivers specifically cited by the Banner: special education and health insurance.
The costs in the FBRC are OVER AND ABOVE the minimum regular foundation budget increases. So, no, last year's much-touted $111 million increase over four years isn't going to cover the needs of the FBRC, or even of the two biggest drivers of the FBRC.

But there are a couple of things that I'd suggest the Legislature could be working on even this year around starting to deal with the report:

• Inflation: a slightly negative inflation rate in no way reflects the actual costs of running a school districts. Whether the state decides to change how this rate is calculated--and I would suggest that they should--this year, when the accepted rate is set at something slightly negative, but the general budgetary assumption should be something more than 2%, would be an excellent chance for the Legislature to make up some of the ground lost in the years the state set the rate otherwise. 
• Low income: as I've hammered on at some length, unless the state intends to go for yet another year of using everyone's old numbers (which I believe puts some districts on FY14 numbers), they need to redefine low income in the MGL. Given the substantial negative changes some districts saw in their numbers, I'm not sure that, say, Worcester's estimate would fly. The Legislature should recognize, however, that if there are a substantial number of kids being missed through the Economically Disadvantaged calculation, they're being missed for more than a calculation on lunch, and there needs to be a broader (not-just-DESE) effort to find them. Then maybe numbers like WPS (and others) would work.
• ELL: This is the only one in which a clear number change tied to particular kids was part of the report. That's as straightforward as it gets.

I've heard a number of suggestions that the state could only have the sort of funding needed to substantively deal with the report if the Fair Share amendment passes. Maybe. The concern there is it kicks the whole issue out a few years. The school districts still have kids to educate and budgets to balance now, though; it can't wait.

Don't believe, however, that having the regular chapter 70 increases is somehow magically going to do that.

*The phrasing here is a little deceptive; I don't think the paper intends to suggest that the report said that the gap could be closed this way in four years, but it could easily be read that way.
**Note that this is not actually part of the foundation budget in any way.