Some recommended reading about next year's school budgets

Some recent useful reporting on this coming year--and in some cases, even this year, and in all cases, beyond next year's--school budgets:

I've added "geopolitical forces" to my "impacts on future budgets" slide for school district presentations. While this was always true, oil prices show up multiple places in school budgets (not just the buses!), and I'm glad the Boston Globe captured that.

“The bottom line is there’s no wiggle room on municipal budgets almost across the board,” he added. “Any time there is a cost driver that exceeds the rate of revenue growth, yeah, it’s very concerning.”

This lengthy piece by Sam Drysdale at State House News (sharing there via WWLP 22) takes a hard look at declining enrollment and what the means for the state. 

On paper, declining enrollment should mean less state aid. In practice, Massachusetts’ funding formula cushions districts from those losses.

Overall Chapter 70 aid increased to $7.66 billion in fiscal 2027, up 4.03%, even as enrollment fell.

No district receives less Chapter 70 aid than it received the previous year, and every district is guaranteed at least its prior-year aid plus $160 per pupil in fiscal 2027. As a result, only 62 districts are receiving aid driven directly by the formula’s enrollment and need calculations; most are receiving hold-harmless funding plus minimum aid.

Lewis said that is itself evidence the formula needs attention.

“The high number of communities in held harmless is actually one of the clear signs that we need to be reviewing our funding formula again,” he said. “The formula is basically broken for many communities.”

Yet there is a fundamental question about what the formula can realistically accomplish.

Howgate said the state cannot simply create a funding formula that pays districts for having fewer students.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to come up with a formula to give districts money for fewer kids,” he said.

(and cheers to Sam for correctly capturing hold harmless there!) 

Here comes Alpha Schools in Massachusetts

 The Boston School Committee this week approved the opening of an Alpha School in Boston. I think those comments quoted are of note: 

The approval was largely a formality. Under state law, the committee had to evaluate whether Alpha met the basic requirements for a school in Massachusetts, though the board has no supervisory role over private schools.

Superintendent Mary Skipper called those state requirements “fundamentals” that don’t guarantee that a proposed private school will succeed.

“I can say that what lies on paper, and what actually it takes [to] make it successful, are very different things,” Skipper said.

Board members also criticized the state evaluation process because it takes resources from Boston’s public school system.

“We are basically approving competitors at a time when resources are short and parents have needs and the needs are great,” said Jeri Robinson, the committee’s chairperson.

Don't think Boston will be the end of it; my understanding is that they have also applied to open in at least Lexington.  

Screen audit in Cambridge

 The Globe writes today about the work the Cambridge Public Schools has done on auditing their screen use. You might remember my writing about this  back in February, when the Crimson wrote about it. You can find the May 19 report to the Cambridge School Committee online here. Their main takeaway:

Again, note that the district has taken the concerns of families seriously, has done real work on it, and the district is changing policy and procedure as a result. 

Second verse, same as the verse

Because the old chestnut--claims that the Worcester Public Schools spends wildly too much money on administration, and more than their peer communities--appears to making an appearance again this year, I will again note that such comparisons are done by the state annually, when districts report their district spending.

A collection of things to read and review

•  The back-and-forth in last month's House hearing on undocumented students' right to a public education revealed their using stats on English learners, which is not the same group at all
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal takes up the topic facing many Massachusetts towns this spring with a look at South Hadley's tax override (that's a gift link).
  
  
• I thought Jacobin's angle on the LA teachers strike (that didn't happen) being connected directly to the resistance to AI was interesting. This would of course be very much in line with the actual Luddites.
  
  
• I recommend subscribing to Benjamin Riley, but if you don't, please have handy his Illustrated Guide Resisting to "AI Is Inevitable in Education"
  Also, he was kind enough of share his family's really disturbing experience with his late father's resisting treatment because of what he received from AI; here's a gift link to The New York Times piece. 
  
  
• Speaking of AI, analysis finds that Google's AI overview is providing misinformation "on a scale unprecedented in human civilization"

daffodils, even

Flashback

 from this WBUR coverage of the Boston Public Schools before their City Council: 

Boston Public Schools could have fined its school bus vendor $1.5 million for missed rides, but chose not to do so. The admission outraged parents and Boston City Councilors at a Tuesday hearing.

WBUR first reported that the district had not exercised its contractual right to fine vendor Transdev $500 for each instance of a “blown trip.” That's when a bus is more than an hour late for pickup or "uncovered" — as in, no driver or vehicle is available for the ride.

On the antisemitism work around Massachusetts public schools

 Excellent piece from The Hechinger Report, capturing much that I haven't seen covered locally, about the state's antisemitism commission:

Massachusetts is a deep-blue state, and the commission started its work before Donald Trump was elected to a second term. But the report and recommendations are being published in the context of the Trump administration accusing schools and universities of not doing enough to combat antisemitism and pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from higher education institutions, notably Harvard. The same week the commission released its report, the U.S. House Committee on Education & the Workforce launched a coordinated investigation into alleged antisemitism in three public school districts, in California, Pennsylvania and Virginia. This is happening even as the administration is pulling back on enforcement of antidiscrimination protections of Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ students and those with disabilities, among others.  

This work has proven controversial, starting with the definition of “antisemitism” and continuing with the proposed solutions and broader implications for communities. California’s new law was immediately challenged with a lawsuit brought by teachers and students who say it violates free speech. And in Massachusetts, the commission’s final document was met with a “shadow report,” issued in direct response by Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff, a group of Massachusetts-based experts in fields like education, law and Holocaust and genocide studies. 

Most notably: 

Concerns about the Massachusetts report begin with its definition of antisemitism. It advises educators to embrace the definition developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a multinational nonprofit focused on Holocaust education. That definition, also used by the Trump and Biden administrations, gives 11 examples of antisemitism, several of which could be interpreted primarily as political criticisms of the state of Israel — like claiming that the existence of Israel is a “racist endeavor” or drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy with that of the Nazis. The shadow report notes that Kenneth Stern, one of IHRA’s lead drafters, himself has warned against the definition being “weaponized” and urged institutional leaders not to adopt it as formal policy.

Not covered here--I suspect because how Massachusetts does this is a Massachusetts thing--is that the report has no authority over schools; it was a special commission, and the report has not gone to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

However, it bears thoughtful watching. 

since I see tech and AI use is in the news here locally

 I thought this, from The Harvard Crimson's reporting on the Cambridge School Committee, was of interest: 

The School Committee also addressed growing concern over technology usage in schools, an issue raised repeatedly during public comment. The discussion followed a policy order last year asking the district to assess students’ screen time and set a formal policy on AI usage.

Murphy said the district’s responsibility is to ensure the benefits of using technology in the classroom are not “outweighed by the types of risks and potential detriments that are also associated with technology being as ubiquitous as it is.”

He recommended the discussion on AI use be moved to the School Committee’s curriculum subcommittee to “provide a forum” for parents, educators, and students to voice their concerns. The district also announced plans to conduct focus groups to gather feedback from educators across different grade levels.

“Trying to strike that balance and understand that nuance — that we want to capitalize on what's available to us, while not falling into, or falling prey to some of the pitfalls,” he said, “I think that's a really difficult conversation.”

A few things of note here: 

1. The "growing concern" is recognized a valid and one, that warrants real engagement.
2. The superintendent recognizes that there is an actual cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done. 
3. Engagement with both families and with educators across grade levels is formally being planned.

I will of course note again that a single "AI policy" is not a thing that can responsibly be done, due to the significant number of areas that AI impacts.  

MSBA 2025 statewide school building survey

 for your reading and activism

Do note: 

Site visits at recently completed schools established a baseline for comparison in future assessments. Site visits were not conducted at schools in the MSBA’s Core Program pipeline unless construction had been completed

You can download the full survey results here. 

And while I knew this--it's true here in Worcester, after all!--I'm a little mesmerized by where this timeline starts: 

 

Office of the Inspector General on FY23 in Brockton

 I am just seeing this, but for those who read or follow such things: the Office of the Inspector General has issued a report on Brockton in FY23. You can find it here.
Coverage in MassLive, Boston Globe, and The Enterprise

It's still inflation

...still

 Big h/t to Superintendent Bill Runey of Dighton-Rehoboth, quoted in the Enterprise coverage of "what's up with these overrides":

The “root cause” of all the overrides is that the state has not been increasing education funding to counteract rising costs, said Superintendent of the Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School District Bill Runey.

And how has this interacted with the end of federal pandemic aid?

 The end of federal money meant to help students recover from the pandemic disruptions is leading to overstretched budgets, Runey said. Districts knew they shouldn’t have used the money for costs that recur each year — like teacher’s salaries — but they didn’t really have a choice, he said.

“We had students who were struggling with learning loss. We had students who were struggling with emotional issues,” he said.

Those effects are lingering beyond the three years schools had access to the extra money, he said, and students still need services from psychologists and adjustment counselors.

“Those services don’t come from a laptop and they don’t come from new cafeteria tables, or a new basketball hoop. They come from people,” he said.

I will also note again: the only reason you're not seeing this in the cities yet is because they've been receiving Student Opportunity Act increases, which, rather than going to the additional teachers, additional services, additional supplies and so forth that were actually why we all pushed so hard for the change are going to cover inflationary changes.
We've got one more year and then that's gone, too. 
Action is urgently needed on INFLATION.  

There's actually some really interesting points on enrollment in this report

 ...but friends, you are not going to glean them from reading the Boston Globe's coverage.

Please enjoy these lovely flowers from Montreal,
which have nothing to do with this post otherwise.

In June, Joshua Goodman, a professor at BU, and Abigail Francis, who is pursuing her doctorate there, released a study looking at Massachusetts school enrollment from pre-pandemic levels to now. Massachusetts is a handy one for this because the state tracks not only public school enrollment but private and homeschool enrollment (not all states do). 

Their research uncovers three main points: 

If you are involved at all in school finances, read about Randolph

 WGBH has a good piece from earlier this week about the town finally paying vendors' bills school side for the first time in a few months: 

School officials — including Superintendent Thea Stovell Herndon and School Committee Chair Lisa Millwood — say the town created a financial crisis by not signing the necessary paperwork. There was no deficit, they said. Instead, the money was in other school accounts, such as grant funds, that simply needed to be transferred to a spending account to cover the bills.

That step, they said, required the assistance of the town finance department.

Millwood described an onerous, bureaucratic process to the town council in June. She said for each transfer, the town finance department was requiring a blizzard of paperwork, organized in a very particular way. “And then it gets rejected, gets sent back and then we fix it again, then it goes back to the town, then it gets rejected and comes back. So what honestly should take us hours to complete is taking us weeks,” she said.

As a result, Millwood said, the town just stopped paying the bills at the end of May.

And further along: 

Records of problems go back years. In June 2023, officials from a consulting firm called TMSolution that had briefly been serving as the schools’ finance manager announced they were leaving the position because “we’ve concluded that we currently are not a good fit for each other.” The resignation letter did not offer details, other than to say “the systems we inherited have presented unforeseen challenges.” Nobody from the company, based in Auburn, responded to requests for comment.

When Annya Washburn stepped into the role in 2024, she says the experience was no better for her. She found a system that used online payments for school lunch charges, but not for anything else. So when the schools adopted a $50 technology fee for laptops issued to students, parents had to pay with cash, bank checks or money orders.

As a result, Washburn said last summer the schools ended up with more than $70,000 in cash and no secure place to put it. She said her supervisors told her not to hand the money over to the town, in part because of concerns the schools would never get the money back. So she opened a bank account and put it there.

But despite being the school finance director, she did not have legal authority to open a bank account.

In a public Town Council meeting in March, Councillor James Burgess Jr. said she had opened the account “in her own name.” While Washburn designated a colleague and herself as signatories on the account, it was opened in the name of the Town of Randolph.

And then recently:

At one point, Council President Chris Alexopoulos had to pound his gavel to stop the bickering among councillors.

The divided council agreed to return for another emergency meeting four days later — Friday, July 18.

At that meeting, Councillor Natacha Clerger announced that after the Monday night gavel-banging, a few councillors convened a side conversation with town and city officials. “In five minutes, we did get everything solved,” she said. 

Solved through a side conversation raises, of course, other questions.

In any case... 

June 2025 Board of Elementary and Secondary Education: State Student Advisory Council

 Craven plans to skip the budget update

Student member Ioannis Asikis reporting out on work of SSAC

in person meetings held in Leicester, Worcester, Everett, and Methuen this year
hybrid model maintained to promote accessibility
expanded reach, made meetings more frequent

grounded work in Youth Risk Behavior Survey, representing thousands, weighed to be representative 
thus not only in students on SSAC only

community dialogue with other organizations and agencies
regions reported out on themes within the survey and made recommendations
overarching themes across the state on mental health and connectness to school
mental health must be as prioritized as physical health
embedded across student experiences
across the state there was seen needs for: 

• better access to support
• improved staff training
• stronger relationships between students and schools

mental health access
connectedness/attendance
stigma reduction on seeking help

on Q on how this gets back to local districts, we get a spin around referral back to regional SSAC groups but "how does it get reported out to school committees" comes up empty because there isn't one
THIS IS A THING THAT COULD AND SHOULD BE CHANGED.
Frankly, there also isn't a throughline on what happens even to these reports once they're given!

on Q on how to get information to students, Asikis notes Secretary Tutwiler's Instagram (acknowledgement in the back of who actually runs that), mentioning also newsletter or email 

Asikis speaks of his own experience as an immigrant student growing into being part of student voice 

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. 

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: 
  
  

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.

New Bedford Light interviews Superintendent Andrew O'Leary

 Cheering for large sections of today's New Bedford Light interview with Superintendent Andrew O'Leary: 

Soon after Trump took office this year, O’Leary got some social media and talk radio flak because he had sent out a letter to school staff informing them that the New Bedford district follows state guidelines that restrict building and information access from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities.

O’Leary feels strongly about his system’s immigrant students. He spoke at a Saturday City Hall rally, objecting to a March 21 New Bedford raid where, he said, several children who attend city schools “woke up to terror” when federal agents in military fatigues broke the door to their home.  

He says the criticism hasn’t bothered him because as superintendent he’s the person who can better deal with rebukes so staff can go about their jobs educating and protecting children. He is particularly concerned, he said, about continuing the New Bedford schools’ inclusive philosophy toward marginalized populations like undocumented immigrants and transgender and nonbinary people.

“All the criticism came to me because you have seen scenarios out there, around the state and around the nation, where this individual teacher and this individual principal got targeted,” he said. His voice then grew quiet. “I would hate to see that” in New Bedford, he said.

And also: 

 Business roundtable-type organizations, he said, have incorrectly convinced the public that schools should be about producing skilled, high-earning graduates for the commercial sector.

That’s the wrong paradigm, according to the superintendent.

“I think we’ve listened to the wrong people around that, and what it does is, it diminishes what a school actually is for: its community,” he said. “It’s a place where students grow and flourish and develop as young people who can contribute to society in all sorts of ways.”

O’Leary is doing nothing less than laying down a marker that the New Bedford schools are not about business or careers or even getting into college, but rather about boosting the people of the city and how they feel about themselves.

“What concerns me the most is that these are community assets,” he said. “Schools are the hubs of neighborhoods. Schools, where our young people are, are one of the most important things that society invests in, and they belong to the community.”

Public schools have traditionally been thought of as something for the whole group, not for one individual, he said.

“Eroding a community asset is something we should raise concern about,” O’Leary said.

Yes, indeed! More of this, please!  

What isn’t being mentioned in state school funding advocacy: a 🦨 at the garden party post

 It is time once again for another of my “skunk at the garden party” posts; partly in response to last week's Ways and Means hearing on education and local aid, I want to flag something which is not, generally, being mentioned.

With thanks to my husband for his photos of actual Worcester skunks

Hey don't sleep on Lynn's fight over charter expansion?

 Hey, all, remember how we in Worcester argued, along with much else, that OSV wasn't a "proven provider" as a charter school, and thus shouldn't be expanded?
And remember how DESE ignored us and did it anyway?

Lynn's currently having a similar argument over a proposed expansion of KIPP Charter in their city. The mayor, superintendent, and teachers' union president were at the Board of Ed last month, arguing this. You can find good coverage in Commonwealth Beacon here. 

The right answer, of course, is for the Acting Commissioner not to recommend the expansion. If it goes to the Board, we'll have to argue that they vote it down.

...which is time to remind us all that the Governor should really appoint three new members...