Happy Birthday, John Adams!

Born this day in 1735

As tonight, the municipal contribution study group is taking public testimony here in Worcester, perhaps we can offer this from a Worcester school teacher: 

The Whole People must take upon themselvs the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expences of it. There should not be a district of one Mile Square without a school in it, not founded by a Charitable individual but maintained at the expence of the People themselvs they must be taught to reverence themselvs instead of adoreing their servants their Generals Admirals Bishops and Statesmen.

from a letter to John Jebb, September 10, 1785

On the Chapter 70 study committee: what they are, or at least SHOULD, talk about

Sorry, I know the first of these public sessions already happened this week. This fall is somehow feeling particularly slammed for me...remember, they also will take electronic submission of testimony at C70PublicComment@mass.gov.
Also, yes, again, this is me posting as me and not in any other capacity.

When I last wrote on this for you, I shared what isn't going to come up in the study commission because it isn't things with which they are charged. 

Note that those are all things about which we should be talking, too! We really cannot ignore how harsh not having SOA increases is going to be on the districts that have been using them to ensure they can maintain services, because inflation isn't keeping up with costs, much as so many other districts have been pushing local increases for the same reason.

In other words: 

INFLATION INFLATION INFLATION

However, again, this study is specifically to study the "municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution" so it's looking at what I think of as the SECOND part of the question: once we have decided what a "minimum adequate per pupil budget" is, where does the money come from? 

Here are some things that I expect to come up, some of which are written right into the study language itself:

On the chapter 70 study committee: First, what they aren't going to talk about

The budget conference committee, you might remember, agreed that the chapter 70 study commission from the Senate FY26 budget¹ would be in their agreed upon final budget.

 ...and so here we are, with an announcement last week that the required hearings for this study are starting on the 23rd. This seems rather last minute as an announcement, even as one understands that they need to get going in order to have the report back, as required, by June 20 of next year. 

Note that is this is very specifically a study "to improve the adequacy and equitability of the formula to determine a municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution." Thus much in the way the Foundation Budget Review Commission was only about the foundation budget--the "how much does it cost to educate a child" question--this is very much only about local contribution. 

Because this started to get long, I'm going to break this into two parts: first what they won't talk about, then what they will or should, given the scope of the committee.
You can find part two here.

Conference committee for FY26 is out

 A lot of the education money had been agreed upon already, but two education policy matters of note:

• the House-proposed "freeze and send to study" on vocational admission regulation changes is not in the conference committee budget, thus those regulations will stand as approved
  
  
• the amendment the Senate passed for a chapter 70 study is in the conference committee budget 

I've updated my spreadsheet with the numbers from the conference committee. There are a number of studies in the education sections: sex ed, transportation, teacher workforce, in addition to the above. Do note that the full SOA increase is being covered by Fair Share, which...I would argue is not what I, anyway, thought I was voting for. 

Note that, while the conference committee has finished its work, it's highly unlikely that we'll have a state budget today, as Governor Healey has ten days to make vetoes if she wishes.

“I still believe in hope*

From my notebook
From last April 

Okay, so clearly my New Year's Day post on the state senate potentially taking up school funding came from a place of skepticism.

But Senator Jo Comerford is clearly so excited and happy on her Instagram post from the same day that I feel like a heel for only that take, so let's try for the optimism that is the thing one needs to keep on trying in this field of education. Our kids, after all, deserve better.

Yes, the proposed Worcester Public Schools FY25 budget is posted

 And you can find it online here.

and there is our rueful fish in his budget habitat

I am not going to give you any analysis in this post--I haven't cracked this open yet!--but let me give you a few tips in reviewing:

• Revenue matters. As much as we all immediately want to plunge into what the recommended allocations are and aren't, the money has to come from somewhere. The majority of the Worcester Public Schools' funding comes from the state--which is what's led to this push around inflation, which is the main reason for the FY25 budget gap--

  

  from page 18; as a side note: the federal grant triangle here is back down,
  because the ESSER funding that boosted it is gone
  total federal grants was $70,633,666 (FY22), $83,720,834 (FY23), $65,411,638 (FY24)

  
  
  ...but there is a state mandated balance between that and city funding for the general fund budget. The first place I always flip (and the one thing I did check right away yesterday) was if the city's budgeted spending is projected to meet the state requirement. This year that's on page 377:
  
  
  
  ...and the answer is no: we're $1.1M short.
  Now, if you follow the math, what's happening is that we're still catching up from the $3M from FY23; plus this current year, it was back to a little over $1M until the School Committee had to cut $800K from the budget due to the charter school tuition/reimbursement coming through other than what was expected.
  
  
  
  Nonetheless, not meeting the state mandate again. 
  And as a reminder: 
  
  
  

  

  from page 10

  
  
• I know you're going to look at the school by school, but remember that isn't how the budget gets passed. Particularly in a year where there are cuts, anyone with a connection to a particular school is going to flip to those pages first (they start on page 234). I get it.
  The budget is not passed school by school, however, and school committees in Massachusetts don't have that level of authority over the budget (or assignment authority at all).
  The budget is passed at the cost center level, which is the account by account section of the budget that starts on page 155, as listed in the table of contents.
  I anticipate, by the way, that this may be a struggle for the Worcester School Committee this year, with the new makeup of the committee. Committee members cannot move money in such a way that it will only benefit their own district.
  If you're going to advocate, keep this in mind with your advocacy. 
  
  
• Most of those numbers are big. This sounds silly to say, but small changes are not what makes big differences in a budget of this size. As I've said before, and no doubt will again, don't get caught bikeshedding the budget. 
  
  
• The budget isn't done until the bottom line is voted. This is a proposed budget; each account gets reviewed and passed by the Worcester School Committee over June 6 and 20 (starting at 4), and the bottom line is approved on on the 20th.
  
  
• They have to hear from the public first. It was only recently posted, but the public hearing date is Monday, May 20 at City Hall at 6 pm.

Go review it! Be grateful we get the comprehensive budget document we do!

And let me know if you have questions I might be able to answer. 

Two quick notes on the framing of the city budget

The Worcester City Council sees the proposed city FY25 budget for the first time Tuesday. I don't have time now to go through everything they have going on with that, but I did want to make two quick notes, as it appears this year's passive aggressive language is surrounding the increase in required city spending.

Let's first just note that the city hasn't met the required spending for the past two years, and is projected not to meet its required spending for the current year, either: 

just realized I didn't source this; it's DESE Chapter 70 district profile, 2/21/24

And as (sigh) this inevitably, and yes, right in the budget, involves another round of "but this doesn't count capital or debt service," that is correct and also STANDARD, which means that, for example, all of those shiny new schools you see MSBA celebrating are in communities that are ALSO carrying debt services which ALSO doesn't count for them, and yet they not only are meeting net school spending, THEY ARE SPENDING WELL OVER IT.

Moving on: the increase required of the city is determined by the municipal revenue growth factor, which is also how it is calculated across the state for every community. Yes, this year's 5.01 is the highest it has been in some time: 

As noted on the slide, MRGF is calculated by the state by the actual changes in a community's:

• State-imposed levy limit of 2.5%
• New growth
• State aid 
• Prior year local receipts

Decisions the city may make regarding those inputs--not tapping the levy, pushing new growth into areas that don't include schools, and so forth--make no difference to the state, as the city's available revenue has still grown by that much.

And finally, to the carrying of costs: as has been ongoingly noted, the majority of Worcester's budget is carried by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. By the percentage of the foundation budget the local community is required to contribute, Worcester is 349 out of 360 (or 12 if you want to count up from the bottom); Worcester's in red:

Possibly especially because I am going to be in the State House tomorrow alongside those who will be arguing that the state should fund the inflation rate in such a way to make up prior years under the cap which would benefit Worcester: it is difficult to have that taken seriously when the city doesn't meet its required spending, and then complains about that required spending growing when it is and remains among the lowest percentages in the state. 

What you can do on the Worcester Public Schools budget

By now, if you are the family of a Worcester Public Schools student or a staff member, you will have read the letter sent from Dr. Monárrez earlier this week regarding the FY25 budget and had a bit of a chance for it to sink in. If you haven't read it, I include the letter in full below at the end. 

You may also well have seen headlines from all over the state about school budgets facing real hardships this year.

Let's first note that it is not new information that the Worcester Public Schools are facing a budget gap. As noted in the links in the superintendent's letter (blogged about here), the district has noted the $22M budget gap since the release of the Governor's budget. We knew of the issue with the inflation budget as far back as the fall. 

There is a danger we run into this time of year, of the relative scope of the budget and budget issues being difficult to grasp. This isn't true exclusively of Worcester, but it is as true of Worcester as elsewhere. While, as noted, the gap is 4.4% of the WPS operating budget, that is a significant amount of money. 

This raises two related issues:

No, DESE didn't make the numbers up: a bit of a Q&A on FY25

While it's not uncommon this time of year for me to get questions about the state budget, never have I found myself standing in front of quite so many groups, answering so many phone calls, typing so many emails that involve some version of "no, DESE doesn't make these numbers up."

To that end, a bit of a Q&A on FY25. 

For those who might find it useful on municipal contribution

I was over at Wachusett Regional this week, presenting on state school funding with a focus on how municipal contribution is calculated. Sharing the recording and the presentation should it be useful to others. 

I do think for regionals in particular having a solid, shared understanding of how municipal contribution is calculated is really important. 

Comments on the local contribution study

 As you may remember, one of the several studies required by the Student Opportunity Act is one on local contributions. Comments for that study are due this week. Here is what I submitted; please do note the opening paragraph.

Let me begin by noting that my comments here reflect solely my own perspective as a single member of the Worcester School Committee, albeit one that spends a significant time on school finance. These comments do not reflect my employer, the Mass Association of School Committees, nor necessarily those of the rest of the Worcester School Committee.

I think it's of utmost importance to stress that the underlying principle of the local contribution for Massachusetts public schools—that communities that have less local wealth contribute less—is sound. This is the philosophy of the commonwealth, that the wealth the state is held in the common good, interpreted through the McDuffy case, requiring that the state's people as a greater body provide for all the children in the state through its public schooling, even when, or especially when, the local community cannot. At least philosophically, Massachusetts holds that zip code should not determine one's education. 

Proposed FY21 Worcester Public Schools budget

A budget is a moral document.
What we fund is what we value. pic.twitter.com/4xRtRdOoSR

— Tracy O'Connell Novick (@TracyNovick) March 18, 2019

This year, of all years, I'd urge you to think of what we are doing in this light.

If you're here looking for information on budgeting for policing in schools, that post is over here.

Probably the most important thing to know about the FY21 Worcester Public Schools budget is that the budget as proposed is unlikely to be the budget we end up with. The budget is based on running a regular year, and it's based on the Governor's House 2 budget proposed back in January, pre-pandemic and before the resulting economic catastrophe. Both of those are things that we're going to have to change.
Everyone is awaiting the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's guidance reopening schools--and awaiting if it is something that we are able and willing to follow, to speak for myself--and awaiting the state budget. The first is supposed to come out in three weeks or so; the second we may not have until August.
So to some extent, this is a bit of a fictional universe. And thus, this is kind of a hard blog post to write, because my heart isn't really in it, as we're...not going to do this.

Nonetheless, we are required to have a budget by June 30, so on June 4 and 18 at 4 pm, the Worcester School Committee will deliberate the budget proposed by administration, and we'll have to pass something.
And then we'll have to come back and do it again over the summer, one assumes.

On the 4th, we start with public comment at 4 pm, so please do weigh in as you have thoughts. 

Joint Committee on Ways and Means FY21 hearing on FY21

coming you today from the Malden Senior Center, just down the street from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in downtown Malden, where the Joint Committee on Ways and Means is having their FY21 hearing on local aid and education. These "on the road" hearings are frequently chaired by the nearest rep and senator, so today we have Rep. Christine Barber and Senator Jason Lewis, as Barber reps Melrose and Somerville, and Lewis reps Malden. This hearing, like several of the others, are a bit of a set piece; they aren't open to anyone to testify. That hearing is at the State House on March 24 at 11 am. 
And this decidedly will NOT start on time; I'll start updating once it does. 

DESE update on February MASBO

Rob O'Donnell
Powerpoint is here
walk through House 2
$303.5M increase in Ch. 70
changes in Health insurance, guidance, special education out of district, EL, low income students
all others getting increased by inflation
the law doesn't specific the rate of implementation
"needs to be an equitable manner"
low income headcount expansion "up to 185%" of poverty is in the law

October Board of Ed: update on school finance bill

And we have Wulfson, Johnston, and O'Donnell up for this one
I assume they're just going to talk; there isn't a written backup
Craven: I think this is one of the more complicated parts of the agenda today
Wulfson: both House and Senate have passed major school finance bills that would significantly update the foundation budget
mirroring in large ways the Foundation Budget Review Commission recommendations
"by design" much of the increase of funding in this bill will go to cities, concentrations of English learners and low income students
bills to retain traditional minimum aid, adds another hold harmless provision (for those who would have done better if the formula hadn't changed)
phased in changes in 2021
circuit breaker program will add transportation to what is subject to reimbursement
MSBA borrowing capacity increased
additional studies and work in years ahead
with DoR to report back on local contribution side
tasked with coming up with a new methodology for calculating low income students
"inclusive, but hopefully not burdensome"
study to financing issues related to recovery high schools
asked to staff a commission "of unique problems of our rural schools"
two bills will now go to conference committee which was named yesterday
chairs are co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Education
"have established a clear track record of being able to work together and reach a compromise position"
minor technical corrections in funding bills which DESE is working on
"that part should go smoothly"
have to do with what role the Department and the Commissioner will have in helping to ensure that this new infusion of dollars in improving education for our students
reminder that this bill is "not an appropriation bill"
will be up to the budget each year to implement
all will have to be funded each year
Craven notes that it is not "severable" because it is not a appropriation act; the Governor can either veto, sign it, or amend it, but he has no line item power
Riley: in 1993, "it was a grand bargain...the dollars were going to get X"
"this seems to be a little less restrictive"
original bill "did allow for more oversight as a state"
"we think we'd love to be able to have some oversight, but it's not certainly to the extent that it was in 1993"
Peyser: "I think that's well said."
West: "and we've made that position known as the conference committee convenes"
Riley: "I think they're aware of our position."

S. 2348: "An act relative to educational opportunity for students"

pushed out over Twitter Thursday

LINKS:

• The bill is on the state site here 
• I have the PDF posted in my Dropbox here. 
• The summary (from the Legislature) is here and the Q&A here. 
• If you're going to go through the bill itself, you might want to have the fact sheet open with you, as well.

it earns the sticker

In terms of process, please note that the bill has come out of the Joint Committee on Education and goes to the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Then it goes to the full Senate. Then it goes to the House Ways and Means Committee. Then it goes to full House.
Then to the Governor.
It is not, I will observe, accidental that the Senate President and the Speaker of the House jointly presented the bill with the Joint Committee chairs. That's a show of unity and support.

Squirrel!

Reference:


Just in time for the rally at the State House tomorrow, we've now reached the "SQUIRREL" part of the foundation budget bill discussion, where everything gets thrown against the wall.

In the past week, I've seen arguments invoking the regional salary percentages and their comparisons to the municipal wealth formula; I've seen arguments that we somehow must preserve circuit breaker funding as is (ignoring why we have it); I've seen arguments that we must have "more accountability" ignoring that we have enormous amounts of accountability under a system that the state has never fully funded.

And now we have the "but Boston" invocation.

If you really think that those arguing that Boston shouldn't get more money care a whit about equity, please go ask them what they think about the 17.5% of the foundation budget that districts significantly more wealthy than Boston, serving significantly less diverse and more wealthy students than Boston get.
And unless and until they're arguing that the 17.5% aid going to those communities should also be taken away, and unless and until those same people are arguing for a low income implementation that fully meets the Foundation Budget Review Committee's recommendation, spare me your sudden concern for what you're depriving we Gateways of.

What we owe each other

Inspired this weekend by the various observances of justice, of proclamations of good news, and also by this 2012 piece from Charlie Pierce, which includes the following:

It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and enobled by the effort... A basic philosophy of selfishness is being inculcated into our politics. It will render us incapable of reacting when our democratic patrimony is swindled out from under us. There are thieves abroad in the land, making off with the blessings of the political commonwealth, and their most basic alibi is that it never existed in the first place. Once we accept that as our true history, the future is pretty much lost.

I was at an event last weekend about education policy and the question came, as it often does: how are we to fund what is needed in education in Massachusetts?

Part of the answer is that we already do. We just don't do it everywhere.

There's been a lot of talk online (publicly and otherwise) around fairness and a lot of sharp elbows around keeping what is perceived to be "mine" this spring. What I'm not seeing nearly enough of is concern for first recognizing and then meeting greatest needs.
This may mean recognizing where there are not the same needs.

Among the various workbooks posted by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for our perusal, as usual, is one that gives town-by-town calculations:

If you head right, over in column L, we find a column that is of great interest:

"CEY % found" is what the header says, which is "Combined Effort Yield as a percentage of foundation."

What's that?
The combined effort yield is the calculation, based on property taxes and income taxes, of what each town and city could afford (by a uniform calculation that applies to every town and city across the state) to contribute to their local district's budget. Bluntly, it's a measure of community wealth.

The "% foundation" calculates what percentage of the local foundation budget is covered by the local municipality's combined effort yield. How much of that local "adequate" (scare quotes intentional) school budget could be funded by local property wealth if that was all that was being used?

Important note: Massachusetts has districts that are funky outliers in many ways! Before we go any further with this, it is crucial to remember that we have, for example, whole towns in which single digit numbers of kids are going to school. Apply that sort of foundation budget against ANY town's community wealth, and it's going to be overwhelming in the ability of the town to fund. Those are not the ones to latch on to.

Keeping that in mind, if you sort by column L (largest to smallest), you get a list for which the first 25 is this: 

We start right off with two outliers: Mount Washington and Gosnold, which come close to framing the state's southern border, as Mount Washington (population 167 at the 2010 census) is the community that is the southwest corner of the state, and Gosnold (population 75 at the 2010 census) is the town of the Elizabeth Islands that trail off the southern end of Falmouth, so only Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket are farther southeast. Check those foundation budgets! It appears that Mount Washington has a single (middle school?) student and Gosnold has two elementary and one middle school students. Yes, those districts have significantly more ability to fund than that. 

You'll see then that, not surprisingly, we bounce back and forth a bit between the Berkshires and the Cape, both regions with, often, significant property wealth and small (and shrinking) school enrollments. Outside of Alford (part of Southern Berkshire Regional), however, the foundation budgets aren't necessarily outliers. This does, though, give perspective on why the Cape and the Berkshires fought to get income (something which many of those towns don't have as much of) included in the revamped calculation of combined effort yield, rather than straight property wealth.

As we skim down, we start to get into more of what are (if you're using the more facile sites) considered "good schools": Weston, Cambridge, Lincoln, Wellesley. And look at how much of the foundation budget those local districts can cover of their foundation budgets by the combined effort yield: 

• Weston at 340.6% 
• Cambridge at 278.5%
• Lincoln at 249.8%
• Wellesley at 228.1%. 

They can, in other words, afford to pay two or three times the foundation budget of their schools!

Off the bottom of what I've clipped above, we also get: 

• Newton at 188.9%
• Brookline at 180.3%
• Concord at 174.6%
• Watertown at 159.7%
• Wayland at 159.4%
• Carlisle at 147.3%
• Somerville at 143.7%

...you'll note that we're dropping pretty rapidly here, though, even if you keep in mind I'm dropping the Cape and Berkshire towns. I could continue here, but remember that the statewide average last year was 130%! 

I note this first because the above towns are actually funding their schools at levels that otherwise elude us. In FY18: 

• Weston funded their schools at 221.3% of foundation
• Cambridge at 234.6%
• Lincoln at 206%
• Wellesley at 177.7%
• Newton at 169.8%
• Brookline at 182.2%
• Concord at 219.3%
• Watertown at 181.8%
• Wayland at 179.5%
• Carlisle at 215.4%
• Somerville at 132.2%

These are towns that are, at the very least, covering their foundation gaps in health insurance and special education, ensuring that underfunding doesn't impact other parts of the budget.

I also point this out because one of the choices the state legislature is making, even as it chooses not to move ahead with the funding needed in the foundation budget for kids who are learning English and kids who have low income, is to continue to fund 17.5% of the foundation budgets of districts like those above; moreover, the Legislature continues to increase the state aid of these districts at $30/pupil, again. This is done, one presumes, from some notion of "equality."

Here's what the other end of column L looks like, however: 

• Worcester CEY 27.9% of foundation
• Orange CEY 27.8% of foundation
• Lowell CEY 26.2% of foundation
• Southbridge CEY 26% of foundation
• Fitchburg CEY 25.2% of foundation
• Lynn CEY 23.8% of foundation
• Fall River CEY 23.3% of foundation
• Brockton CEY 22.5% of foundation
• Chelsea CEY 21.8% of foundation
• New Bedford CEY 20.9% of foundation
• Holyoke CEY 19.9% of foundation
• Springfield CEY 15.9% of foundation
• Lawrence CEY 14.1% of foundation

The state notion of "equality" pushing those increases per pupil doesn't extend so far as to ensure that all, including those above lacking local resources, districts are funding at the levels above foundation the top districts are. It doesn't extend so far as to ensure that all districts don't have the health insurance and special education gaps hit the classroom. 

There has been a notion advanced this spring that somehow the latter districts don't "deserve" to have local representation; that because they are poor, and thus majority state-funded, their districts should be state controlled. This is predicated on the false premise that the wealth within a municipality--a municipality made of particular kinds of historical decisions about whom could live there and whom could not, among other things--belongs solely to that municipality. This is of course an extension of the dispute over to what degree what we as individuals earn belongs to us an individuals.

The Constitution of Commonwealth, however--and, reaching even farther back, the history of Massachusetts even as a colony--states straightforwardly that the distinctions of family or town wealth are not what is to determine the type of education a child receives in Massachusetts "for the preservation of their rights and liberties." To use such determinants is simply unconstitutional. We as individuals, children as individuals, are not "left to struggle on our own" as Pierce states above; we are a commonwealth. 

We should act, and budget, as one. 

Ah, Boston

Photo via Wikipedia Commons; jug is in the Worcester Art Museum
For why see: http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2010/09/crooked-town-of-boston.html

Boston, I love you, but you sometimes drive me straight over the edge.
I see the updated version of the Boston Globe's "everybody is angry with the House" article includes this:

It remains unclear what role Boston’s concerns about the bills factored into the stalemate. Representative Chynah Tyler, a Boston Democrat, said she could not support a bill that pumped millions into other systems but would shortchange Boston. 

“I am concerned that several schools in my district that are currently failing our students, including Madison Park Vocational Technical High School . . . would not have received the resources for those schools to move beyond the category of failing,” she said in a statement.

Please note that I am not particularly singling out Rep. Tyler here ('though she is the only one arguing against the bill in the article), as her sentiment is not that uncommon (and it used to be more common).
I'm not going to get into Madison Park here--Madison Park is complicated!--beyond noting that there are lots of vocational schools operating with substantial urban populations that aren't seeing the same difficulties as Madison Park. (As I've said in the past, I'm not going to hold Worcester Tech up as a model to follow here, because I don't advocate for moving to admissions requirements due to their incredibly segregationist outcomes.)

The notion that Boston is somehow being "shortchanged" by the funding system is the issue we need to tackle here, and that's going to involve a bit on how this all comes together.

There's a decent chance you've seen one of these before; this is the Boston Public Schools FY19 foundation budget spreadsheet. This is the calculation of how much it costs to "adequately" (scare quotes intentional) fund the education of the children in the Boston Public Schools.

You can always click on these to make them bigger.

The argument for Boston usually goes something like "Boston Public School students have a lot of needs. Many of them are poor, many are learning English, and many need additional helps." Since Madison Park is cited, we can also add "and vocational education costs more money."

All true. All also included in the calculation of how much the Boston Public Schools need to run for next year: 63% of BPS students are economically disadvantaged, and there's additional funding for that (all the way over on the right). The new ELL model with a range of additional funds is in the pink in the middle. And vocational is just to the left of the heavy black line; BPS is serving 1371 vocational students, and that is calculated in.
Yes, the Boston Public Schools have high need kids! AND the Boston Public School students' high rate of need is included--just like every other district in the state--in their foundation budget! We entirely acknowledge that in the calculation.

Now, set that aside and turn the page, because now we have to come up with that $861,999,612 that the Boston Public Schools need to run next year.
That would be this series of calculations which asks and answers the question: how much of that can the city of Boston afford to fund itself?

Boston is a wealthy city. The kids who attend the public schools are not, as a group, wealthy, but the city is wealthy. While the city is no longer number one in income inequality--it's number seven--those at the top are still making 15 times what those at the bottom are making.
Thus the city of Boston, with $145 billion in property valuation (FROM ACTUAL TAXES in 2016, so, no, the non-profits don't count against you!) and $433 billion in income (2015, again, actual revenue numbers), can afford to spend--by the same calculation they use for every community in the state--$961M on schools, in that green box above...
...which you might note is more than the foundation budget for the Boston Public Schools next year.

So, one might ask, why is are the Boston Public Schools getting any aid at all?
Well, because everyone does; the target is for every district to get no less than 17.5% of their foundation budget in state aid.

But that isn't all Boston--and lots of other districts--get.

If all Boston was going to get was that 17.5%, next year the state would kick in $150M (see the green box) next year to funding the Boston Public Schools.
But last year, the state contributed $218M towards the Boston Public Schools (check the top left line). And nobody wants to tell their constituents that they're getting less aid than they got last year.
So Boston not only gets the $218M from last year again, they also get an additional $1.9M in a minimum aid increase.
In total, then Boston gets $220M in state aid through Chapter 70, of which nearly $70M is not foundation aid.
So:

• The Boston Public Schools serve many kids with many needs, which is included in their foundation calculation. 
• Boston can afford to fully fund its schools by the same state formula as everyone else.
• Boston gets 17.5% of their school budget in state aid, anyway, like all other wealthy communities.
• In addition to this, Boston gets hold harmless and minimum aid increases, so everyone gets more than they did last year, regardless of need.
• Next year, that aid totals nearly $70M.

Again, I don't say this to spot anyone in particular: Boston has a lot else going on, with where schools are and aren't, and which kids go where, and hidebound historians watching every move. And it's clear to me that from the ground up, what sounds like a lot of money is instead resulting in budget cuts at schools.

I also know it's a whole lot easier to yell at the state than to yell at the city. 

When we're talking about OUR money and how best to serve ALL our kids, accuracy matters.

Let's be accurate about Boston. 

UPDATED TO ADD: But what about the Foundation Budget Review Commission? Wouldn't it hurt Boston?
Well, if by "hurt" you mean "would require that the city spend more on their schools by increasing the foundation budget," I guess. Boston doesn't immediately get additional aid in an implementation of the recommendations, since it already gets so much hold harmless aid. It would have to eat through all of that before it gets more aid.
Boston already spends well over foundation on its schools, however: the BPS budget for FY19 is $1.1 billion. There's about a hundred million in transportation in that (that's outside of foundation), but even so, we're looking at spending towards foundation that, while it's bounced around a bit, is generally over ten percent.
(I'd like to look at how Boston spending over foundation compares with districts comparable in their wealth to schools ratio.)
So, no, unless you object to the city possibly having to spend more on schools OR on Boston not just getting a boost in state aid "because," implementing the Commission's recommendations doesn't hurt Boston (or its schools). 

By Jove, he's got it!

Stunned silence followed by cheers from me to WBUR's Max Larkin for capturing Boston's relationship with the Chapter 70 aid!

But that’s where state education officials object. They answer that there aren’t many cities or towns in Boston’s position.
State aid is calculated based on how much a city can afford to pay on its own. The fast-growing tax base in Boston and neighboring cities like Cambridge and Somerville make them decidedly unlike other towns which are facing de-industrialization and economic downturn.
Ten years ago, Boston was taking in almost $266,000 in tax revenue for each of its students. In last year’s budget, that number had risen to nearly $400,000 — driven primarily by an increase in property values.
According to state thresholds, Boston now has more than $100 million more than it needs to cover the basic expenses of its public schools. But the state doesn’t ask Boston to take care of itself, instead opting to cover more than the “minimum aid” threshold of 17.5 percent.

Read it, bookmark it, print it out and frame it. I don't recall this ever being captured by a press outlet before!