Board of Ed for September: opening comments

 I'm under the weather, so this one is coming to you remotely...

The agenda is here; the livestream is here. 

DESE has extended the embargo of  assessment and accountability results until 11 AM today.

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 Governor Baker's FY23 budget (a statewide look)

Governor Charlie Baker released his recommended House 2 FY23 budget on Wednesday. The full budget totals $48.5 billion.
Remember, it's House 2, because it is filed as a bill with the House; it is (bill #)2 because it is the second year of the Legislative session. Last year was House 1.

I tweeted out an account by account look on Thursday and Friday. I have also put all the education accounts into this spreadsheet, which I will update over the course of the state budget process. I won't go through all of the accounts here, but I'll hit some highlights.

The Chapter 70 state aid recommendation is $5.9 billion, supporting a $12.8 billion foundation budget for K-12 education statewide. You'll note that this is less than half of it, which is by design; the foundation budget is designed to be funded 59% with local funds. The recommendation is a second one-sixth step towards the goal rates of the Student Opportunity Act, increased by inflation. That's in  the rates for the health insurance, special education out-of-district, English learners, guidance, and low income students. This also increases the assumed in-district special education enrollment to 3.86% (4.86% for vocational), towards the goal of 4% (5% for vocational). It does again use 12 tiers for low income students. The October 1 (2021) count on which this budget is based increased the statewide low income enrollment count by 25,413 students; some of that probably is additional students who are poor, but some of that is better recognition of what already was, as I've been tracking here: 

The calculation uses the 4.5% inflation rate cap of the Student Opportunity Act, as the actual inflation rate would be 5.9%, so, if that was your bet on what Baker would do, you won. The calculation uses 4.51% for inflation for health insurance, which is better than it has been. The budget holds districts harmless on funding—no district sees a drop in Chapter 70 aid alone--as well as a $30 per pupil minimum increase for districts, both of which are of course in the Student Opportunity Act. 

My quick look at some districts shows some real impact on that poverty rate growth kicking in. Orange, for example, made its way out of hold harmless and into foundation aid. Mohawk Trail ate through $1M of their hold harmless this past year. We're getting there!

The circuit breaker reimbursement increases in this proposed budget from $393 million to $414 million; there's another round of the phase in of transportation reimbursement again this year as part of the implementation of the Student Opportunity Act. 

Charter school reimbursement increases from $154 million to $219 million. There are three things going on here. The increases in charter school tuition stemming from the increases in the foundation budget must then be offset by reimbursement. The next step in the phase in to fully funding 100% of charter reimbursement is also in here. The state is funding the next step, which is 90%, though the actual text of the SOA says in FY23, it will be 100%. They're following the phase in by year. In outside section 40, the proposed budget adds a proposed increase to the charter school facilities per pupil increment to $1088, which then would be tied to inflation. As that funding flows through charter tuition coming from Chapter 70, it then also creates a need for reimbursement initially.

Regional transportation reimbursement, funded last year at $82 million, is proposed this year at $77 million. We sometimes forget, I think, that this is a reimbursement account; it's based on completed actual spending. Some of that drop here is reflecting the drop in transportation spending during remote learning in the year from which estimates are drawn. 

Homeless student transportation funding is proposed for a substantive increase “to meet need,” from $14.4 million currently to $22.9 million for FY23, which seems wise.

METCO, funded last year at $28.5 million, is proposed in the Governor’s budget at $27.9 million.

Targeted intervention services, budgeted this current year for $17 million, is proposed to be cut this coming year to $10.3 million. Similarly, after and out of school grants, budgeted currently for $17 million, is proposed to be cut to $10.5 million. Extended learning grants, funded at $9.9 million this year, is cut to nothing. The regionalization grant to likewise cut to zero.
...all of which is rather depressing. 

On the other hand, two of Baker's favorite projects, early college and vocational education, are proposed for grant increases. He proposes a substantial increase in the early college program, funded this year at $5 million, to $9.5 million. What had been the Innovation Pathways program, he renames “Career Technical Partnership Grants,” raising the funding from $600,000 to $4.8 million. 

And for reasons I cannot decipher, the Executive Office of Education--that is, Secretary Peyser's office-- more than doubles from $2.3 million to $4.4 million, “to meet projected need and support new initiatives." I have no idea what that means, nor can I find anything further.  

Senate Ways and Means budget

I posted my notes on reviewing this yesterday in a thread here. 

Moving along...

The Senate Ways and Means page is here; above, they've moved on to "Debate" because they are already taking amendments, which are due by noon Monday.
Just like we talked about in the House budget post, the Senate budget is divided into sections ('though not the same ones, and no, I don't know why they do that. Or why everything is PDFs you have to download). In the Senate, the Fiscal Note is "how we're going to pay for it," Appropriations is the line item spending, Local Aid is, yes, local aid (but with language on how it's being allocated!) , and Outside Sections is "here's some other things we'd like to do while we're doing the budget." For our purposes here, we actually need all of the last three!
I'll tell you up front that the outside sections have both a regional district foundation budget review commission AND a local contribution review commission.

Let's run through the line items first, and then loop back to the local aid and outside sections, both of which have implications on how the foundation budget is or will be calculated.

• DESE's line is up, but it's earmarks (looking particularly like the Senate Ways and Means Chair district there).
• METCO is down $1M from the House to $21.1M.
• The organizations you'd look for for early literacy (Reading Recovery, Bay State Reading) are arranged a little differently, but still there (not cut as in Governor's budget).
• School-to-career is up a bit (about $90K) to make it an even $4M.
• The ELL line is about a million less than the House (for an odd $1,550,002...is that actual spending?) and the earmark for Gateways is gone.  
• Institutional schools is the same $7.4M.
• Adult ed is up a million and a half from the HW&M budget ($32.5M)
• Regional school transportation is $62.5M (same as House W&M before amending)
• The Senate puts in $250K for transportation for non-resident pupils to voke techs (with a proviso that more funding be requested as needed)
• McKinney-Vento reimbursement down a million from the House budget (so $8M)
• AP line down $300K from House
• Breakfast the same, lunch strips the House earmark.
• Ch.70 is up $35.6M (which we'll come back to!) overall
• $15M for kids from Puerto Rico is there; that low income shift pothole from the House is not.
• This is big: Full (they intend) funding of the circuit breaker of $318M (House had $300M)
• Federal impact aid is back at $1.3M (wasn’t in the House at all)
• The other big one on reimbursement shifts: $100M for charter school reimbursement (up from $90M in the House, up from flat funding in the Governor’s)
• Innovation schools planning back in for $100K (this wasn't in the Governor or the House budget)
• MCAS (the battle of line 7061-9400) is BACK DOWN to $27M and no mention of history; that's how the House had it, but it was amended back to the Governor's $35M and with language talking of history expansion, as the Department requested. This one may go to conference committee...
• Possibly relatedly MCIEA has their line back: $200K; that was in neither the Governor nor House budget.
• Targeted intervention line $6.7M (down $500K) from House
• Extended learning time is the same ($13.9M)
• Recovery high schools up $625K (to $3.1M)
• After and out of school line is up $481K, but it’s earmarked (shout out to Recreation Worcester, $400K)
• Safe and supportive schools is down $100K from the House (so $500K)
• Yes, Mass Academy of Math and Science has their $1.4M
• Youth build programs up $650K from House
• Mass Mentoring up $275K from House
• And regional bonus aid for $56,920, which wasn't in the House.

Okay, so what's up with Chapter 70? 

If you go to Section 3, the Local Aid section (which is where lots of local officials go first, because it's where the unrestricted local aid and Ch. 70 numbers are), you find the description of how Chapter 70 is going to work this year. The description of the funding system starts in the paragraph that opens "For fiscal year 2019, the foundation budget category"and ends (helpfully) with the words "The 'minimum aid increment' shall be equal to $30 multiplied by the district's foundation enrollment minus the foundation aid increment." And yes, that is just what you think it is: you just found the minimum per pupil aid increase! The Senate agrees with the House number of $30/pupil.
But there's lots else there: just up from the minimum per pupil is the 100% gap closing (which is a nice little "you don't have to try as hard" to the towns and cities); that boosts the Chapter 70 number for some districts, as it rejiggers the question of who pays for how much. And there's also the description of the employee benefit amounts in the foundation budget. Those numbers are the same as the House; it's being described because so far, that's the part of the foundation budget that they've been tweaking.

BUT THE SENATE DOES SOMETHING ELSE! They've made the ELL funding an increment over the base; in other words, your foundation budget (in the Senate budget) does NOT just count all your ELL students together and fund them at a certain amount each, as the House did. Your ELL students are sorted into their grade categories AND THEN THERE IS AN INCREMENT ON TOP OF THAT!
This does a couple of things: first, it's another foundation budget step (not on dollars, but on process!). Second, it does actually raise the amount of money per student that has ELL needs. Third (attention vokies!): this means vocational students who are also ELL get the ELL bump on top of the vocational rate!
What does that look like? In the House budget, the K-12 ELL rate was $9723 per pupil.
In the Senate, the total for an ELL student is $9941 for full-day K, $9970 for elementary, $9746 for middle, $10,860 for high, and $15,342 for vocational.
So yes, increased foundation budgets! And remember, on something like this, the big boost is going to be where there are larger concentrations of ELL students. And where is that? The same districts that are majority state funded. And that means the Chapter 70 goes up!

To give one example, Worcester's:
In the House $249,894,895
In the Senate $253,211,785
...an increase of $3.3M.
And this is, again, going to concentrate the increase on the districts that most need the boost and to some of the kids who most need the boost.

The outside section has some low income language in it. It adds the following as a new section 3B to MGL Chapter 70:

Section 3B. The department of elementary and secondary education shall make available to school districts a form to certify family income level for the purpose of calculating low-income enrollment. A school district may choose to have its low-income enrollment established through collection of the forms or through a direct certification system established by the executive office of health and human services, which may include the virtual gateway system.

What does that mean? It means that districts can choose to use direct certification (as we do now) OR that districts could use a form to certify family income. Essentially, it allows districts to choose how they count poor kids.
It adds:

Section 16 shall apply in fiscal year 2020. The department of elementary and secondary education shall provide school districts with the family income certification form described in section 3B of chapter 70 of the General Laws within a reasonable time prior to the low-income enrollment count process for the purposes of calculating chapter 70 aid in fiscal year 2020.

...so this isn't for this year but goes into effect next fiscal year (so the state would have to work on this during the coming year).
As I said earlier this week in my write-up on S.2506, the Senate is clearly hearing the district-level frustration around the kids who aren't being caught by direct certification and the subsequent unhappiness with finding more kids and DESE cutting the rates.
I think, honestly, that DESE's going to have a conniption over this idea.

Amendments are due Monday, May 14 at noon. The Senate takes up debate on Tuesday, May 22.

And as always if you have questions, please ask! 

So what did the Legislature pass?

Yesterday, the House and Senate both passed a budget agreed to by conference committee. It was filed that morning, meaning, as noted by State House News reporter Katie Lannan:

7 hours and 56 minutes from release to enactment. #mapoli https://t.co/5JOFwHQzcS

— Katie Lannan (@katielannan) July 7, 2017

Not, let's say, a triumph for public process. Among other issues, this got us a IIA report, which puts the numbers and account numbers in a spreadsheet, which included only the House numbers, not the conference committee numbers (causing some of  us not a small degree of angst!).

The budget now goes to the Governor, who has ten days to consider it and, if he wishes, to issue vetoes, which, in its turn, the Legislature can override. In other words: we're closer, but we're not done yet.

So what's in it for public education?

Chapter 70 came back at $4.746B, which is right between the House and the Senate numbers. As best as I can tell--I have yet to find the actual Chapter 70 language on this--they did this by keeping the $30/pupil minimum increase, keeping--and possibly adding to?--the insurance increase in the foundation budget, but not taking on the Senate's special education implementation of the Foundation Budget Review Committee's recommendation. Let me emphasize that on my part that is SPECULATION, again, because I haven't seen either an explanation or actual language (which should have been part of H3800). That means that most foundation budgets will be higher than both House 1 and the passed House budget, but not as high as they would have been with the Senate budget. As for state aid, the majority of districts were seeing their increase through the $30/pupil, so that doesn't change ('though do recall that the Governor's budget had set that at $20/pupil, so our foundation budget charts are not yet updated). And if anyone finds or has the actual language, please let me know; I'd be interested.

This means, of course, that two years on from the Foundation Budget Review Commission, with districts across the state repeating that we need finance reform, the only change we saw was the fragmentary one in health insurance. This isn't how one truly values public education.

Oh, and Senator Chang-Diaz was one of two votes against it.

The Department's budget is just over $14M, and continues to contain a boatload of earmarks, which I won't go into here, 'though at some point I have a whole rant on that.

METCO is $20.5M, splitting the difference between House and Senate.

Regional transportation reimbursement is $61.5M (which had been as high as $62M, so it also splits the difference).

The circuit breaker, something specified by Senator Karen Spilka as a "painful" cut, passed at $281,231,181, lower than BOTH House and Senate. Note, however, that it is $50,000 lower than what the Senate passed, which, in a budget of this size (and an account of this size) makes that more of a symbolic cut than anything.

Likewise, McKinney-Vento reimbursement was cut from both houses, being passed at just over $80M; this is an account which has never been fully funded.

Note that all of these previous three are reimbursements, meaning the district fronts the money and gets the money back from the state afterwards. There is here, then, less of a hit on the starting end, but we'll see budgets straining on by midyear.

Targeted intervention in underperforming schools passed at $7.2M, which is lower than either house had passed.

The MCAS line passed at $26.9M, also lower than either budget previously passed.

Extended learning time passed at $13.9M, lower than either.

Innovation schools split the different with a budget of $165,000; that's $150,000 with $15,000 earmarked for Pentucket Regional.

There had been no difference in the amount set aside for charter school reimbursement--an acknowledged-as-underfunded $80.5M--so that passed as previous.

Those are most of the major lines. As always, if you have questions, please let me know.

FY18 House budget

...which you can find here (though irritatingly, they're still making you download PDFs).

Really, really briefly:

• it increases Chapter 70 OVER the Governor's budget, both by increasing the health care calculation within the foundation budget (even more than Baker did) and by including a $30/pupil minimum increase per district; the first is an FBRC h/t; the second isn't progressive BUT is less than they tend to do... 
• regional school transportation up by $1 million (to $62 million) from the Governor's budget
• circuit breaker up by $4 million over the Governor's budget
• METCO funding by $500,000 over Governor's budget
• adds a pothole account of $12.5 million for districts that have been hit the economically disadvantaged calculation
• Same funding as Governor's budget for McKinney-Vento, school lunch, and charter reimbursement
• does NOT combine grants like the Governor's budget did (round...two? At least?)

Senate budget amendments

The Senate budget amendments are now posted. The Senate (bless them!) sort their amendments by subject; you can find the education-related amendments here.
The K-12 related amendments (that are not for a particular district) are as follows:

• amendment 121 would increase regional transportation reimbursement from $59M to $63M (which would be 80% reimbursement); amendment 174 would increase it to $61M (73% reimbursement)
• amendment 127 would allow for districts to establish a special education reserve fund
• amendment 189 would raise the amount budgeted on dual enrollment to $2M (from $1M) 
• (not K-12, but) amendment 139 would double the early education salary reserve to $20M
• amendment 140 would raise the non-resident student vocational transportation reimbursement from $1.75M to $3.28M
• amendment 142 would provide "extraordinary relief" for districts "whose special education costs exceed 25 per cent of the total district costs and whose tuition and other circuit-breaker eligible costs...exceed both $1,000,000 and 25 per cent of all tuition and other circuit-breaker eligible costs"
• amendment 146 would change how charter school reimbursement is allocated when not enough is allocated to fully fund, fully funding the capital component and pro-rating the rest.
• amendment 148 would increase the line for regional bonus aid from $110,000 to $278,000
• and there it is! amendment 149 would increase the kindergarten grant back up to $18.5M (level funded from last year and what passed the House); amendment 202 would also do providing further than grants per classroom don't annualize to more than $18,000/; amendment 256 would increase to $23.9M
• amendment 158 would add $100,000 for civic education and engagement
• amendment 162 (without an amount added) would implement an early elementary literacy improvement grant
• amendment 167 would increase school-to-career connecting activities from $2.8M to $5.4M
• amendment 168 would establish a commission to study best practices and costs of serving low incident special education population
• amendment 170 would establish an ELL circuit breaker account for districts that experience at 20% increase (or more) over the previous year
• amendment 175 would put the Foundation Budget Review Commission on a three year cycle with the next report due November 1, 2018; amendment 260 would establish a foundation budget review commission to report out every 4 years (and, coming in from Senator Tarr, this one has broader parameters, including early childhood ed, and funding for teachers salaries at rates to attract and retain quality candidates)
• amendment 177 would establish a $500,000 STEM school to career grant for vocational schools
• amendment 178 establishes further parameters for special education costs within the circuit breaker (it widens who is allowed to apply)
• amendment 189 adds $500,000 for a safe and supportive schools grant
• amendment 190 increases McKinney-Vento transportation reimbursement from $8.3 (level funded) to $24.3M; amendment 254 would increase it to $20.8M
• amendment 193 the "Princeton Pothole Amendment" would allow for reimbursement for a community (Princeton is offered as an example) that "has made significant over payment of minimum local contribution and experienced extreme hardship due to said over payment over three or more consecutive years within the last 10 years.”
• amendment 196 would eliminate the requirement of the use of District Determined Measures in evaluations 
• amendment 199 would study the delivery of special education services
• amendment 202 would expand the John Adams tuition program to non-public school students who voluntarily take the MCAS
• amendment 217 (from Senator Joyce) would make Randolph a Commissioner's district (?)
• amendment 218 would add a bunch more districts to those eligible for pothole funding
• amendment 226 would add $1M to the Parent Child program, bringing it to $14M
• amendment 228 would ensure fully McKinney-Vento reimbursement for districts that spend over $800,000 on it
• amendment 229, Senator Tarr wants to set aside $850,000 for charter schools' negatively impacted by the new economically disadvantaged calculation 
• amendment 231 would raise charter reimbursement to $90M; amendment 255 would increase it to $133M; amendment 258 would increase it to $100.9M
• amendment 232 would require two hours of suicide awareness training for all school personnel
• amendment 235 would provide for a process for getting waivers for unfunded mandates
• amendment 238 provides $150,000 for the Berkshire County Regional Task Force 
• proving that they are certainly well connected, amendment 241 would put the JFY Networks $700,000 of funding in (see my notes on the House budget)
• amendment 244 increases the funding for the inclusive concurrent enrollment to $2M and requires a report on it from DESE
• amendment 246 would create regional schools foundation budget review commission 
• amendment 248 would increase METCO funding to $23M from just over $20M
• amendment 251 from Senator Tarr would move the consolidated net surplus (in thirds) to the Community Preservation Trust fund, the Life Sciences Investment fund, and the implementation of the foundation budget review commission; amendment 257 and amendment 259 also from Senator would also establish alternative ways for funding the foundation budget review commission findings  (it's not clear to me that any of these have enough funding to do any such thing)
• amendment 252 requires a report on the educational stability of foster children
• amendment 262 increases the innovation schools line to $1M but adds a number of new parameters 

The Senate begins deliberations Monday. 

Brown on education

So, we're sending Scott Brown off to Washington. What are his positions on education?
I grabbed this off of his website:

Education
I am passionate about improving the quality of our public schools. Accountability and high standards are paramount. I support choice through charter schools, as well as the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement. I have worked to ensure that all children have access to a quality education. I am a strong advocate for the METCO program, which provides lower income students with broader educational opportunities.

So, what does that mean?

The first two sentences are basically political boilerplate: everyone wants to improve the quality of our schools, and everyone favors "accountability and high standards." Those two words have been used to support everything from standardized testing to school closures to increased funding (and I'll bet you can find them on nearly everyone's website, too). Charters are pretty broadly supported right now (recall that the Democratic president has the same position). Support for MCAS isn't a big surprise: it came in under a Republican governor ('though this had nothing to do with Brown, as he wasn't elected to office yet), and has bipartisan support in Massachusetts. Supporting METCO (especially in a year when communities are going to struggle to pay for it) is a big plus, particularly if he backs it up with money.

From here, I tracked down his voting record (slim; I take it he didn't vote on the Ed Reform bill? I guess it was during the campaign). We get that he opposed (with, it looks like, the Republicans in the Senate) the reorganization that happened when Governor Patrick came into office.

I also haven't found any public statements he's made on education.

He hasn't taken the Political Courage test.

He served on the Education committee.

I think this boils down to someone for whom this hasn't been a core issue (and I don't, by the way, think that this would be much difference with Martha Coakley). I wonder if that will change in Washington, or if his focus will be elsewhere?