Board of Ed for May: budget update

 memo here, though there is also a presentation

Hills: not the Board purview for how the resources are allocated (except in some ways it is, which is why the submit a budget request)

Bell: Senate Ways and Means has released its version of the FY27 budget; in formal session now deliberating
continues many of same themes of earlier drafts
committed to working with everyone on issues facing rural districts of which they are aware

happy to entertain questions

Martinez asks steps in the budget process, as it is his first time through
Bell: have seen some headlines on Legislature being committed to earlier process
once through Senate, conference committee formed, deliberates, releases budget that is then passed by both chambers
Smidy asks about how advocating works from Board members
Hills directs to Secretary and Commissioner
Zrike: "we think we do that together in tandem"
would love to talk to Board members about that
met with collaborative members in Northampton: hearing concerns from across the state
"coming on later in the budget process"
"data and information to bring back to the budget process"
"learning this process now"
"very productive conversations with the Legislature"

Board goes into executive session for  Doe et al. v. Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Mass. Superior Court, C.A. No. 2481-CV-00994. State House News has this as to why: 

 The case, filed in Middlesex Superior Court in 2024, is a class action suit alleging that the department fails to fulfill its statutory duty to provide special education services to incarcerated students with disabilities. Mass. Lawyers Weekly reported last month that the class action survived a motion to dismiss it in Superior Court, with a judge ruling DESE has a non-delegable duty to provide special education in jails

They will not return to open session 

Board of Ed for May: Opening comments

 The Board today is meeting at Hudson High School, the school of student member Isabella Chamberlain. The agenda is here; the livestream will go up here. 

chalking outside of Hudson High School today

There is a good chance this will start late. 

April 2026 Board of Ed: House Ways and Means budget update

 Look, there is a document on this! There is also a PowerPoint, which NEVER happens
This is also being taken out of order on the agenda

Martinez notes the literacy grant wasn't in the House Ways & Means budget, nor were the literacy institutes, nor reimagining high school grant (pay for AP exams) and support early college and MyCap

To read so far this week

 Hey, we're off to a not-great beginning of the year here--among other terrible things, Massachusetts just had its first reported pediatric deaths from flu, so please get vaccinated, regardless of what RFK Jr says--and news in the education universe is likewise mixed. Here are some things I'd recommend reading:

• Politico takes a look at how Trump may further mess with education in 2026. Remarkably, this is NOT actually a depressing article!
  
  
• California, like Massachusetts, does not require kindergarten. CalMatters looks at if this might be the year that they do. 
  (California is at least discussing it; to my knowledge, this isn't being raised in Massachusetts at all.)
  
  
• Vermont is undergoing another look at their school district arrangement. As Vermont is largely rural, this Hechinger Report piece is relevant elsewhere.

Not that anyone asked me but: on state education priorities

In their past two meetings, the Board of Ed has established priorities; in November, for the FY27 budget request, and in December, for the Commissioner, which he proposed as being the foundation of a strategic plan. 

I'd first note--and I do realize that the Board here is constrained by state deadlines on budget--that the above is really backwards; you always want to establish your priorities before you do your budgeting. You set your values before you spend your money. 

With that in mind, then, let's consider first the priorities, with a connection to what one would then need for budgetary priorities. 

Let's first note that he started with this slide: 

...which I just find super disheartening as framing. Someday, someone is going to note? remember? that public education is guaranteed by the state "for the preservation of their rights and liberties" and that it is for the good not only of individual children, but for all of us. THAT is what we should be leading with, anytime we are asking how we are doing.

On the Senate's Ways and Means budget

In the Senate Ways and Means budget released Tuesday, most of the education lines are parallel to the House budget, with these exceptions: 

The circuit breaker is still down from the Governor, so the open question here is what they're doing with the supplemental, which does have supplemental circuit breaker funding in it.
Related to this line, incidentally, is that there is word out there that the Legislature doesn't plan to take action on the supplemental budget until taking action on the FY26 budget, despite some of the funding in the supplemental budget for circuit breaker being for FY25. That's WAY too late. If the intent is for it to be for FY25, it needs to get to districts this fiscal year, which it will not if they wait until conference committee.

The Senate puts rural schools back to $16M.


The charter school reimbursement is down $14M from the House Ways and Means budget, with no clear reason as to why*. I've taken a look at some of the bigger districts on the updated preliminary cherry sheets and district by district loss in charter school reimbursement compared to the House Ways and Means budget:

•  $2M Worcester
• $3.5M Springfield
• $1.75M Lowell
• $500K New Bedford
• $1.5M Lawrence
• $1M Fall River
• $1.5M Brockton
• $389K Barnstable
• $478K Chelsea
• $657K Everett
  
  

UPDATE: Having taken a look at the updated DESE numbers, the Senate just doesn't fully fund charter reimbursement. The account should be $215,792,970; it's $183,828,858. It's funded at 85.2% of what it should be.

I hear a lot of people talk about "deals" and "commitment" this time of year. This is not either.

___________________
*Boston's charter reimbursement is up by about $4M, but tuition is also up by $10M, which I assume is the approvals from the Board of Ed meeting earlier this spring coming through.

Interviews for the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education

 

Coming to you live from Mass Bay Community College in Wellesley

My rundown of the finalists can be found here. My initial perspective on them can be found here.

There is a livestream of this, which will be going up here. UPDATED: video is here.

Posting as we go. 

Jack Elsey, Lily Laux, Pedro Martinez to be interviewed

and Craven just said a whole bunch of things including the schedule which I missed because I was trying to find the livestream...sigh...it also isn't written down, as best as I can tell

The Board is soliciting feedback on the finalists here. 

Joint Committee on Ways and Means hearing on education and local aid

 

sign from Amherst Regional

Coming to you live today from the Joint Committee on Ways and Means hearing at UMass Amherst. A number of the surrounding districts are here--Quabbin Regional brought a bus; Amherst Regional walked over--and I just hope someone told all these people that they don't take public testimony. If you're here and need power, by the way, I have a power strip at one of the outlets, so come over if you need it.

I'll post as we go. Note that they have us in what is the airplane hanger of an auditorium on the first floor of the Campus Center, so I can barely see the committee members; I'm making no promises on being able to identify speakers.

They'll start with intros then have the Secretary with the three Commissioners.

When what you've heard isn't the case: busting some common misconceptions on the Student Opportunity Act

First required xkcd:

I'd like one of the major issues in education, too, but all I can do is in my little corner of the universe.

With the consensus revenue hearing on Monday, we are about to kick off the FY26 budget season here in Massachusetts, which will be the fifth of six years of implementation of the Student Opportunity Act revision.

...and yet, still I hear some of the same misconceptions and misunderstandings circulating about the SOA. 
So, as we enter that season, here's a counter to some common things I hear.

On FY24 House 1

 With my ongoing apologies for so much of this being so late due to my illness last week!

Governor Healey's proposed FY24 state budget--known as "House 1," as it is the first year of the Legislative session--was released last Wednesday. As has become my custom, I'll be tracking the state budget education accounts in a spreadsheet which I am sharing here.

House 1 fulfills this year's obligation regarding implementation of the Student Opportunity Act. That is, should the chapter 70 proposal pass as written, the state will be 3/6th of the way to the targets in the SOA (plus inflation) as passed in 2019. Chapter 70 is budgeted at $6.5 billion for FY24.
Naturally--because math!--this means we have the highest amount of chapter 70 aid in history!

A few things to note on Chapter 70:

• the Governor's proposal uses the 4.5% cap on inflation (for most; health insurance, which remember has its own cap, is 5.16%). While this is what is written into the SOA, this is nowhere near the inflation rates that districts are seeing on...anything. This is an issue (and one the Legislature could fix).
  
  
• Check out the progress we've made on the low income increment! The red bars are FY21:
  
  
  
  BIG changes, particularly up the the highest concentration of poverty end!
  
  
• This budget continues with hold harmless plus $30/pupil aid, BUT that's fewer districts than ever! The foundation budget increases continue to chip away at many district's hold harmless backlog and break more through into foundation increases.

That's of course most of the money, but there are other education accounts of note. 

• Circuit breaker is funded at $503M (up from $441M). This is an account I expect to see a lot of attention to, as the state put through a 14% increase in out of district special education in October for the coming year. That's going to drive a lot of sending tuitions right up through the circuit breaker, and that's not including advocacy at the state level that the circuit breaker be reset.
• There's a substantial increase in non-resident pupil transportation from the nominal $245K to $5.1M.
• It looks as if there's a real effort to meet need in the McKinney-Vento line for homeless student transportation, with an increase from $22.9M to $28.6M.
• Regional transportation reimbursement is funded at $97M (up from $82M). Remember, this account has had a weird few years, with the move out of and then back into schools, as it reimburses based on actual transportation costs.
• Charter school mitigation is level funded at $243M, but the administration says that it is fully funded. That means, I think, that charter enrollment is level. Charter tuition is up because the foundation budget is up; that increase is what triggers reimbursements. Tuition isn't increasing so much that the account needs additional funding, though, which to me would say enrollment must be flat. 
• House 1 increases early college grants by $3M to $13M.
• It boosts innovation pathways from $4.8M to $5.8M.
• MCAS is nearly level funded.
• MCIEA (the assessment consortium) is funded at $550K; usually it doesn't get funded until it gets to the Legislature.
• Rural school aid, funded at $5.5M is here at $7.5M.
• One thing I am worried about is the universal school lunch funding isn't in the budget. The Governor has promised that it is in an upcoming supplemental budget. Maybe it doesn't seem like how we get the funding doesn't matter, so long as we get it, but I am concerned about this moving the funding out of the budget into what by definition is one time. If this is something we think the state should do, we should budget for it, not use leftover money for it. 

We next will turn to the House; the House Ways & Means budget will be out next month! 

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. 

On Governor Baker's FY21 budget proposal

I am sorry it has taken this long for me to get this into a blog post. I did tweet this out when the budget went up online on Wednesday.
The Governor's budget--House 2 in this second year of the Legislative term--is online here. You may also find useful the FY21 Chapter 70 school finance page from DESE (much more descriptive that previous years) and the cherry sheets (the net state aid calculations) for municipal and regional.
As last year, I have started an Excel spreadsheet with the accounts, the FY20 projected, and the FY21 proposed, along with any notes. Please feel free to use and share it, and let me know if there are ways it could be more useful.

It is the first year of the implementation of the Student Opportunity Act, so the first question is, was it implemented?
I think my answer on that is "mostly, but," as I said to Commonwealth Magazine when they called me this week.

• The estimation was the 1/7th of implementation of the Student Opportunity Act would take an additional $300M in Chapter 70 aid statewide; that was hit. 
• The new law guarantees $30/pupil minimum increases with hold harmless; that was done. 
• House 2 does increase health insurance by the GIC three year average increase of 2.34%, rather than the inflation rate for the rest of the foundation budget, which is 1.99% (which is not great at all). 
• The special education rate does take the 1/7th step towards the goal rate, plus 1/7th of the new enrollment counts
• Likewise English learners category takes 1/7th step towards the goal. 
• Low income...does not. Remember that this year, the state was directed to use the FY16 free/reduced count as a percentage to apply to this year (unless the direct certification count was higher). That added 46K kids to the count statewide, which increased the amount of dollars devoted to this category. As a result, the Governor's budget implements only 4/100ths of the goal rate. The state was directed to implement the changes in "an equitable and consistent manner" and I would argue: this isn't it.
  To give some idea of what this looks like, here are the rate charts for FY20 and FY21: 

• 

  This is FY20, the current year. Note the length of the bottom lines, particularly the very bottom one, relative to the three through six, which are the grade level foundation rates.

  
  

  

  This is FY21, the budgeted year. Note again the length of the bottom lines, the low income increments, relative to three through six. We are to be getting the bottom one equal to that in seven years. Unless not.

The danger in both state and local budgets has always been that the "new money" was going to leave those doing the allocations with the impression that they didn't need to fund other accounts (or to the same level), because schools should just pick up those activities with the new aid. This is certainly the Governor's framing of the budget. Not only are a number of accounts zeroed out--civics education, financial literacy, computer science--but several are severely cut:

•  extended learning time (7061-9412) is cut by $10M (it's a $13.9M account cut to $3.9M).
• likewise, the after and out of school grant is cut from $8.5M to $2.5M. 

Given the resources being made available in a single year of a seven year phase in, this is abrupt and not borne out by the resources put forward.

For those looking at other accounts, some of which also had SOA requirements: 

• regional transportation (which we last saw getting a boost in the supplemental budget) is budgeted at $75.8M, which is where it came out of conference committee last year. That was about an 83% reimbursement level; no doubt costs of grown, and I have yet to hear projections for this year.
• McKinney-Vento homeless transportation reimbursement is $11M, which is level funded from last year's conference committee budget. The supplemental did add another $2M to that, but unless that is re-appropriated to the schools, that goes to the general fund in municipal districts. $9M was 37%, implying that $11M was about 45%, but I would think that costs have also gone up. 
• MassBudget projected that the circuit breaker account would have to increase by $22.5M in order to incorporate transportation, as required by the Student Opportunity Act; the account goes up by $23M. However, this means there is not space in the account for the usual growth of costs. It isn't clear that this is appropriately funded.
• Similarly, charter reimbursement was projected by MassBudget to need to rise $29.4M in order to be at least 75% as required by the new law; the line increases by $19.4M in the Governor's budget. I am told that it is expected that once actual enrollments at charters are known this will be closer to what is needed. 
• educational data services (7061-9200) is going from $579,786 to $1,078,231, and I have no idea why, and I cannot find any explanation of it. I can't find any explanation of anything; are they not posting any narrative this year?
• recovery high schools were sent to study in the Student Opportunity Act, as their costs aren't being covered: last year, they were funded at $3.1M, while the Gov's budget has them at $2.6M.
• rural schools have been added the past several years, generally on a budget amendment from Senator Adam Hinds. Thus it is a bit of a victory for it to be in the Governor's budget this year, even if it is at $1.5M, rather than the $3M that is projected for FY20.
• (upon consideration, adding this): it does not appear the Governor is requesting additional appropriation for the Department, despite the SOA reporting requirements. Someone has to do the target calculations and review and respond to the reports; it appears that it's going to be the same stretched staff already there. 

It's always important to remember--and particularly important this year--that the Governor's budget is where the conversation starts. Get some idea of where your district is (if you haven't gotten your hands on circuit breaker projections, ask!), and go talk to your reps and senators. 

The House deliberates the Student Opportunity Act

Coming to you live from the House gallery which has not been renovated and thus has not as much access to electricity, alas. I like their carpeting, though. No photos allowed.Or snacks. Or liquids other than water.

awaiting the opening of the gallery

You can watch the session here. The bill (H.4137) is here. 
I will warn you that I cannot identify most House members by sight or voice. Sorry. 
posting as we go

Senate amendments on the funding bill

...which was reported out of Senate Ways and Means as S.2350, An Act Relative to Educational Opportunity for Students (AREOS?); the amendment are online here.
Note that a significant number of these, including the first ten, are from Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, a prolific writer of amendments.

I'll include the numbers, but I'll cluster these by topic, as there are overlaps:

Regional Transportation reimbursement:

• 1 reimburses regional transportation at "not less than 85%"
• 2 creates a commission to study 100% reimbursement for regional school transportation
• 11 sets regional transportation reimbursement to 85% but takes out "subject to appropriation"
• 36 removes the "subject to appropriation"
• 43 would add any municipality over 95 square miles to transportation reimbursement; they must be using a different list than I, because I have Barnstable as the largest and it's less than 60...if you check the sponsor, you'll be shocked to find this would, it appears, apply only to the town of Plymounth, which still encompasses much of the original Plimouth Plantation. 

Minimum per pupil increases:

• 3 increases mimimum per pupil aid to $35/pupil
• 4...to $40/pupil
• 5...to $50/pupil
• 6...to $100/pupil

Reviews of the foundation budget:

• 7 amends to review every five years (the bill proposes 10)
• 8 does the same but with different language
• 14 bumps labor representation to two
• 35 also sets the foundation budget review commission to every 5 years
• 36 requires a foundation budget adequacy study

Circuit breaker:

• 9 boosts circuit breaker reimbursement to 80%
• 10 sets the approved reimbursement threshhold to $34,345 from $45,793. 

Reports:

• 15 requires school level reporting on mental health supports
• 17 makes more specific the reporting out on use of funds and specifically bars the Commissioner from decreasing them
• 24 requires than any new reporting be considered in light of other reporting the state already requires
• 31 requires sort of "workforce preparedness" reports
• 34 ties the district's improvement plans much more closely to declarations of underperformance 
• 38 makes it clear that the district (not the state) is to determine what changes are necessary
• 39 would add "college completion" to the report the Secretary would give each year
• 52 adds student growth to what is being considered in the plan of how funds are used
• 65 requires that the report from districts including reducing disparities (rather than student achievement) 

Phase in:

• 16 provides for the annual consensus revenue agreement on implementation that was in the Promise Act and earlier bills
• 25 requires phase-in be equitable but also allows for a phase-in extention to 2030
• 53 requires proportional phase in of the recommendations
• 59 requires an annual report on phase-in as well as an annual hearing 

Special education:

• 28 bumps the low income assumption to 5% across the board

Recess:

• 12 mandates 100 minutes of recess a week for K-5 and forbids making it shorter

Charter schools:

• 19 requires that the financial impact of charter schools be considered when considering their applications
• 29 creates a charter school policy commission 
• 51 deducts charter reimbursement from net school spending calculations (huh?)
• 60 creates a working group on charter school funding and reimbursement 
• 61 would take any charter reimbursement not funded out of the charter school's allocation 
• 62 includes minimum aid in the provision of Ch. 70 (so a district can be funded over foundation due to state requirements) and locks the out-of-district transportation reimbursement in as part of the full provision of the act (I don't think I entirely understand that one)

Athletics:

• 13 requires that each district with an athletic program have a licensed athletic trainer

Other commissions:

• 18 specifically DROPS "expanding use of technology to deliver instruction and enable operating efficiences" and switches " encouraging ways to reduce costs and improve educational outcomes" to "encouraging ways to improve fiscal health and educational outcomes" and "reorganizing" to "optimizing" from the recommendations to come from the rural schools study
• 20 creates an Unfunded Mandates Task Force
• 22 would have the report on Rural Schools only report out on low-income districts unless warranted by the study
• 23 would add an appointee of the minority leader of the House to the 21st century advisory committee
• 27 requires that the commission reporting out on municipal wealth specifically consider the impact of Prop 2 1/2
• 33 would require a study of the circuit breaker and out-of-district special education provision
• 63 creates a commission on debt-free higher ed
• 64 adds some members and some new reporting requirements to the Rural Schools Commission
• 66 would create a special education commission to study provision of services 

MSBA:

• 21 prioritizes "school safety" funding in MSBA considerations
• 44 would further bump the MSBA funding cap to $800M

Parent engagement

• 26 requires that such parental engagement required by the bill specifically considers specific subgroups in doing so and report out on it

Homelessness

• 30 requires reimbursement of homeless student transportation, less federal reimbursements by November 20

Municipal calculation:

• 31 is intended as a sort of smoothing of municipal wealth calculations, requiring that in towns of less than 6000 people, the bottom and top 5% of residents be dropped from both the income and property values 

Recovery high school:

• 40 would allow for creation of a reserve fund locally for recovery high schools
• 41 would add reimbursement for recovery high school transportation
• 42 would study the costs of sending students to a recovery high school 

Early college high school:

• 46 would recognize early college programs for the same level of funding as vocational programs
• 47 would add early college to the spreadsheet at an increment above high school but below vocational (that was the Governor's plan)

Random other things:

• 45 requires a "school-based threat assessment team" at each secondary school that would create a threat assessment policy
• 48 creates an innovative health partnership
• 50 would add Easton to the Cambridge labor market adjuster 
• 54 allows 71B (out of district special education) schools to apply for the grants in the bill
• 55 mandates that each high school student must meet with a guidance counselor at least one each year
• 56 would create a certification for autism services
• 57 would bring back a full-day K grant specifically to get it everywhere in the state
• 58 creates a certification bonus for districts running programs leading to vocational certification
• 67 would set "(a)strong institutional leadership, (b) active student engagement in their education; and (c) differentiated instruction" as what is considered in awarding 21st century grants
• 68 would require financial literacy instruction
• 69 would creating a "Learning Innovation for Tomorrow" (LIFT) fund for funding innovation in education in districts 

The Senate takes this up for debate Thursday! 

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.

Conference committee budget passes both chambers: a few notes

The conference committee released the FY20 budget Sunday evening (you can download it here) and both House and Senate passed it yesterday. I've updated the K-12 spreadsheet where I've been tracking the budget here.
As you can tell from the spreadsheet, many of the accounts were passed at the Senate levels, including the Chapter 70 rates:

This is good news on low income:

It's not as great news on English learners: 

...where the House was more progressive than the Senate. The Foundation Budget Review Commission called for a flat rate for this; we've had a rate (on top of the base) for a few years now, and I have to confess that I'm increasingly persuaded that we ought, like the House had it, be funding in a progressive towards the older end model, due to the steeper climb (and shorter time available) for students learning English later. 

Nonetheless, the passage is intended as a step towards the Commission, and that's a good thing.

It's interesting to note how many of the accounts in fact fund at levels even higher than the Senate did, due, one assumes, to higher than projected state revenue, but also effective local advocacy on a number of these lines. For example:

7009-6600, Early College is $2,500,000 in the conference committee budget, which splits the difference between the Governor's originally proposed $3M and the House's (amended) $2M.

7010-0012, METCO is up to $24.2M, a level about $2M above last year, 'though that includes $45K for late bussing to Lexington and Arlington.

7035-0002, adult education is up to $41M, with about $450K of that in earmarks; it was budgeted at $33.3M last year, and, as we heard at the Board of Ed in December, is significantly underbudgeted and so not meeting the needs.

7035-0006, regional transportation reimbursement makes it to $75.8M. The last official estimate I saw on this put the Governor's $68.8M at a 76% reimbursement, which by my back of the envelope puts this at about 83.8%.

7035-0009, McKinney-Vento reimbursement, which DESE estimated $9M was 37%, goes up to $11M.

7061-0011, circuit breaker, gets boosted to $345M. I'm leery of any projections on this one, as MASBO has been getting updates from DESE about how reimbursement requests are piling in, but it was at $319M last year, which should give you an idea of how much special education costs are skyrocking.

7061-0016, low income pothole, was all over the place during deliberations: the Governor didn't have it, the House had it at $16.5M with some pretty clear allocations, the Senate didn't fund it (but had the higher low income allocations in Ch. 70). They came through with $10.5M in the conference committee for districts that saw a hit on the shift from low income to economically disadvantaged being the count.

7061-9010, charter reimbursement (the Governor wants to call it "mitigation" now), was not only about the money but about the language. House 70, the school funding bill proposed by Governor Baker, would change allocation back to 100/60/40 for the first three years of an increase to a local charter school, but also would make that reimbursement only to districts seeing enrollment changes above the prior five years. The House put this language into their budget; the Senate made the 100/60/40 change, but didn't change the allocation method. The conference committee makes none of these changes only the 100/60/40 change, but also did boost the final amount to $115M, with the $15M halved between districts spending more than 9% of foundation on charters that get less than 41% (as that's the balance between state and districts statewide) of their foundation budget in state funding, and those seeing high enrollment. In both cases? Read Boston.

7061-9400, MCAS, came through at the originally proposed $32.2M, and the only news here is that there was no news on this line this year.

7061-9401, MCIEA, piloting alternative assessment, was not funded in any of the originally proposed budgets, but funded at $550,000 by Senate budget amendment.

7061-9607, recovery high schools, had been budgeted by the Governor at $2.5M "to meet projected need," which didn't feel accurate. The House went to $2.6M, the Senate back down to $2.5M, and the conference committee puts it at $3.1M.

7061-9611, after school programs came out of conference committee stuffed with earmarks,bringing the total to $8.2M and making this article in the Salem News misleading.

7061-9013, rural school aid, funded at $1.5M last year, was not funded by the Governor or House, was funded at the same $1.5M in the Senate, but ended up at $2.5M in conference committee. Count this one up to Senator Adam Hinds, who has been waging a single Senator push on this (to sympathy from his colleagues, clearly).


We aren't done yet! The budget is now with the Governor, and in Massachusetts, the Governor has a line item veto, which the Legislature likewise can overrule. Updates as I have them! And as always, ask rather than wonder!

Senate Ways and Means FY20 budget

First, note that I have updated this spreadsheet on which I am tracking the K-12 budget accounts in FY20. If you'd like the Twitter thread of account by account, it is here.

A few notes:

• To be just entirely honest: I'm wearily disappointed. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have caught my disbelief that the Senate uses the Governor's--not the House's--preK through 12 foundation dollar amounts, thus leaving out a health care increase; that the Senate overall cut (pretty drastically) the English learner funding and reworked it to favor lower grades; that the push towards low income wasn't bigger, as it's still less than 50% of high school per pupil. I checked lines several times because I was sure I had to be reading something incorrectly. The general understanding of the field has been that the Senate can be counted on to get real needs and big picture. Instead, this foundation budget calculation in particular argues that someone needs to explain to the Senate (again?) the huge gap in health insurance, how learning a language works, and the vast gulf of needs that poverty causes. And I am so tired of this case having to be made, yet again. 
• The economically disadvantaged, progressive towards greater concentrations of poverty, is legitimately a good thing. I am less than impressed by the "largest ever" phrasing, however. This is something for which the meaningful measure is against real need now, not past funding levels.
• There is a rural line of $1.5M.
• This budget has come pre-loaded with earmarks right in the DESE line (the location isn't unusual). While I am sure that those districts can use that funding, the use of power to ensure that state funds are specifically targeted to a district, rather than use of that power to ensure all such need is met is not how equity happens. Remember: if you want an earmark for it, it is probably more than your district that needs it.
• The charter mitigation line, while it is down a bit, makes the switch on percentages (to 100/60/40, increases the facilties line, but it does not make the switch in which districts are funded, as it does not include the language tying funding to enrollment increases greater than the prior five years. Assuming no one tries to amend the Senate language, the battle on this then goes to conference committee. 

House Ways and Means FY20:

Bringing to mind this classic from Peggy Lee...

On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee released their FY20 budget. The cherry sheets, specifying the amount of aid by municipality and district, have not yet been updated; however, DESE did us the enormous favor (due I think to pleas from the school business offices) of sharing the Chapter 70 spreadsheets for House Ways and Means (they aren't online; that's my dropbox). I've updated the spreadsheet that I've been using to track the K-12 accounts for FY20 here. I also found the write-up that Roger Hatch did for MASS useful. Amendments were due Friday--yes, very much not a lot of deliberation time there--and can be found here; I'll get to a post on those in the next week, as deliberation won't start until Monday, April 22.

We'll get to the accounts in order eventually, but I want to start with the ones that worry me most first.

Governor Baker at MASBO

Today MASBO has their annual Solutions Fair, and Governor Baker is giving the keynote. One assumes that the Governor addressing school finance people will involve school funding, thus posting to come here. 
Secretary Peyser is also here with the Governor.
Part of his introduction references the day his budget is filed being one of the biggest days of the year for the people in this room

Governor Baker: I really appreciate the work that you do
"I always say that I served on the board of selectmen rather than the school committee because the school committee is too hard."

2018 MASC Delegate Assembly

You can find the resolutions being considered here. 
Resolution 1: Arming of Educators
Resolution 2: Small and Rural Districts
Resolution 3: Elimination of the Federal Department of Education
Resolution 4: Regional School Transportation
Resolution 5: Reporting and Accountability Standards
Resolution 6: Reproductive Health
Resolution 7: Gender-Identity Inclusive Athletic Participation
Resolution 8: Sports Wagering
Resolution 9: Access to Information for Parents of Special Education Student