PUBLIC BUDGET HEARING

Have thoughts on the FY15 Worcester Public Schools budget?

Looking for the most up-to-date information?

Join us for the Finance and Operations public budget hearing Monday, April 28. 

7 pm [note change; I had it wrong]

Durkin Administration Building

4th floor conference room

This is very literally a public hearing: we generally have a presentation from administration with any new information, we may speak briefly, then we open it up to public comment. This is not when the budget is presented or passed; that happens in June.

Also, please recall: the Worcester School Committee determines internal allocations only. The Worcester City Council determines the budget bottom line. 

Electricity

Those of us searching for good news on FY15 may have gotten a brief glimpse of hope on news of the new electrical contract for the City (and thus the schools), but before you get too excited about possible savings on the new city electricity contract, be sure you read the whole article:

John Odell, the city's director of energy and assets, said the newly contracted electricity rate, which took effect March 1, is slightly higher (7.7 cents per kilowatt-hour versus 7.2 cents) than the contract it had with its previous supplier, Con Edison, but was below market price at the time the city signed the deal with South Jersey Energy. 

So, it is higher than we are paying now, but not as high as it would be if we were to stay with the current provider.
(Not sure I'd bill that as "savings")

Kansas

While the Kansas Legislature did move to fix their unconstitutional funding of the state's schools, they included in the bill something nasty: they took away teacher due process.

Updated administrative costs per pupil

An updated version of WPS administrative costs per pupil (using FY13, our most recently completed fiscal year):

And remember: these costs include city costs that are charged against net school spending. 

Declaring Level 4's: "Where everything's made up and the points don't matter"

Title courtesy, of course, of Whose Line Is It, Anyway?
Since we're talking about possibly expanding which schools the state gets to make decisions around, let's take a look at how we're determining which schools the state gets to intervene in now, shall we?

So, let's back up a step: all schools each year get a CPI (Composite Performance Index) for the entire school and for "high need students." If you'd like to know more about how this is calculated, you can go through the state's presentation here. The short version is that it takes four years of data (if we have them) on MCAS scores and (where applicable) dropout and graduation rates, crunches the numbers, and scales them against where schools and districts "should" be. This new system came in with our No Child Left Behind waiver; if it makes your head spin, you're not alone.
Once there is a CPI for every school in the state, the state can make a list of all of the schools in the state, like this. That gives you not only each school's "level" but also the CPI for both the school and the high needs group and the school's percentile. That same information is on this spreadsheet, and, because it's a spreadsheet, one can sort by column.
If 95% of your kids are tested, and you're hitting 75 or higher on your number crunching, you're called a Level 1. Just about everyone else is Level 2.

Now, according to the 2010 Act Relative to the Achievement Gap, Level 3 schools are the lowest 20% of schools (either by school or by subgroup) in the state; the regulations also include not improving on graduation rate or having less than 90% of kids participating in your testing. So, when you line up all of the schools in the state in rank order, and draw a line at the bottom 1/5, that's your Level 3's.
But what makes a Level 4?
Beyond their having to be in Level 3 status, the only other restriction the state law makes on Level 4 and 5 schools is that they can make up no more than 4% of the schools in the state at any one time (per section 3).
So which schools fall from 3 to 4?
The state, in their explanation of the classification of Level 3 schools (that's a PDF) says this:

The state’s lowest achieving, least improving Level 3 schools are candidates for classification into Level 4 at the discretion of the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education. A Level 4 school may be classified into Level 5 by the Commissioner on behalf of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education if it fails to improve; or if district conditions make it unlikely that the school will make significant improvement without a Level 5 designation.

(emphasis added) 
"...at the discretion of the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education."

Now, as someone who's been following this all since it was actually just in a bill being rushed through the Legislature to get Race to the Top money, I had the notion that Level 4's would of course be the lowest 4% of schools in the state.
When you take the list of schools and sort them by their percentage in the state*, though, Level 4's aren't the lowest in the state. Nor, at this point, are the lowest all Level 5's. Right now, there are 13 schools that are the bottom 1% within their school type--note that the state rounds to the nearest whole number--and that includes one Level 5, one Level 3, and the rest Level 4's.
It gets even weirder if you move up. There is a Level 5 as high as the 15th percentile within its school type; a Level 4 as high as the 10th percentile.

It would be easy to dismiss this as this year's report, but those scores are calculated off of four years of information: it is by its nature a report that is designed not to be terribly volatile. And while there are some assumptions one can make--not wanting to overwhelm any one community, for example--there certainly are choices that were made on which schools would be declared Level 4 and which would not, and those decisions were not mathematical ones.

I say this not to criticize the Commissioner. An enormous degree of importance is placed on these standings, however, and the most critical ones, the ones that do the most damage to a school's image, the ones that cause the most angst in and about districts are the ones that are not based simply on a calculation (however flawed those might be). They're chosen.

So when we're making assumptions and drawing conclusions about what the levels mean, let's keep that in mind.

*That's this chart sorted by column U. 

We didn't meet Net School Spending

Of course, we knew this, but here's the letter from Commissioner Chester.

More on the zombie education bill

I took some more time on the zombie education bill  (H.3984) filed last week by Rep. Peisch, and I have a few more thoughts (in addition to my first post on this here):

I ran through this so fast last time that I didn't take the time to point out: guess who gets to pick the Level 3 "challenge" schools that need turnaround plans? The Commissioner!

Now, there may be those in the Commonwealth under the impression that Commissioner Chester needs even more power over local schools, but I have yet to meet them. Meaning no disrespect at all to the Commissioner, the removal of authority from local districts has not had great results, and I think that the Board of Education has been coming to that realization; the Commissioner was closely questioned at their last meeting as to what differences there were between the Level 4 plans, that had apparently failed, and the Level 5 plans for the same schools that were being proposed. Having the state determine that yet another group of schools needs yet more state intervention is not a good recipe for success.

And here is the bit that I think few people realize: while we like to think that the declarations of underperforming and such are all very scientific and mathematical...they aren't. And I was going to go into this here, but frankly, it needs its own post, which will be coming up next.

The big thing on the Level 4 schools, though, which I am sure no one wants to talk about, was the funding. The reason we don't have more Level 4 schools is funding: extended day (which was required), additional training, more staffing, and the other things that we were required in one way or another to do don't come free, and the state has a tough time requiring them if they don't add funding. It seems as though "challenge" schools, these...shall we call them "Level 3.5" schools?...will need to do these additional things, go through the upheaval and such, and without any funding.

So while this keeps the 4% cap on schools getting state intervention ("challenge, underperforming, or chronically underperfoming," or the new Level 3, plus Level 4 and 5), you're looking at some big push without funding to support it.

And, they will no doubt be in districts that are getting hit by the expansion of the charter cap, as well, so they will have greater concentration of high need students with even less funding.

In digging through the language (and particularly the replacement language), I also found the following:

• This bill is preparing the groundwork for PARCC: in several places, the language "or any successor statewide assessment system approved by the board under section 1I of this chapter” is added after "MCAS."

• The turnarounds of these Level 3.5 "challenge" schools can require all teachers to reapply for their positions.

• The turnaround of these schools allows for funding by private foundations, including to increase salaries at that school.

• The budget of "chronically underperforming" schools are to be available to the school's receiver (if appointed) without further vote of the School Committee. Good-bye quarterly reports! Further, such a school may accept and expend grants received without public acceptance of the School Committee or approval of the superintendent. Good-bye public transparency! (that's section 16, if you're keeping track)

• Additionally, in Level 5 districts, the Commissioner can have the Secretary of Administration and Finance appoint a "chief procurement officer," which would seem to subvert the financing, procurement, and distribution structure of the district. While Level 5 districts can be under a state receiver, this was explicit in anything previously.

• The bill dabbles into the MSBA's authority as well, saying that any building for which MSBA has provided funding that is taken out of education use are still okay (and can still be reimbursed) as long as the building is returned to use as a school building within two years (under current law, it could do this, but it doesn't have to). 

• Charter schools can wiggle around the current 18% cap of a district's Net School Spending if they throw all kids in the district in a lottery OR they're creating an alternative program. Same problem as ever with these, though: no teeth, no enforcement. That can raise the charter cap in districts to 23% of a school district's net school spending.

I would also note the following:
State Auditor Suzanne Bump is due to come out with a report on charter schools later this spring (no one's clear on exactly when). We don't know what it's going to say yet, but moving ahead on any action around creating more or expanding those we have is silly when a comprehensive report is on the horizon. The Legislature should absolutely not move ahead of the auditor's report.

This bill remains in House Ways and Means. I would urge you to contact your state senator and state representative if any or all of the above concern you.