Worcester School Committee on FY18 (round two)

Round one notes are here; the sequence of accounts are here; the budget is here. They'll be picking up with special education tuition at $18.6M.
Mayor says they're picking back up with personal services

City Manager Augustus and Superintendent Binienda at CPPAC

at least nominally on budget, but we'll see where the questions go...

Supt Binienda: FY17 adopted budget $322M; FY18 recommended $334M
not including grants
increase of over 3%
"foundation budget is really well below what we need for what we need to do."
runs through account by account increases
notes special education increases, translation (which is hard to project and legally required)...
"process we have is a really great process": resource allocation meetings
principals meet with their schools, fill out resource allocation form, meet with district managers
each school has an hour to an hour and half to make their case
priority 1, 2, 3
"try to fill priority 1 for this year"
were able to fill all priority 1 for this year

Worcester school meetings this week

and there are a few...
The Governance and Employee Issues subcommittee meets on Wednesday at 5:30. Of note at this meeting: they're reviewing the student handbook--which suggests no substantive changes--and section I of the district policy manual (that's Instruction)--which I also don't see anything to raise eyebrows on--with one exception: they're about to let vocational students out of the two years of foreign language requirement ('though that's only in the handbook, not in the policy manual...and the two should agree). That would mean that students who don't complete that requirement would be ineligible for admission to (for example) UMass, which is why the MassCore requirements (including the two years of language) were adopted.
They're also hearing about collaboration around the Byrne Criminal Justice grant and discussion of municipal governance and of registering students to vote.

On Wednesday night, the final CPPAC meeting of the year is 7 pm at the Worcester Art Museum, and the guest speakers are Superintendent Binienda and City Manager Augustus to talk about the budget. A good time to ask questions...

The School Committee picks up budget again at 4pm on Thursday. The sequence of accounts is here, and they left off with security guards. There's a lot left to get through. If past experience is a guide, they'll go as far as they can til 6, recess to executive session, come back at 7 for the regular meeting, and pick up budget again once they've completed the regular meeting.

The regular meeting has a LOT of recognitions.
The report of the superintendent is on the ALICE security protocol, which includes training students and staff to fight intruders, rather than lockdown. The presentation is here. It appears, from the presentation, that the administration adopted this protocol without a school committee vote or any public notice.

There are also responses to motions made during and surrounding the budget deliberation two weeks ago: the motion on non-fulfillment of transportation, on leasing buses, on the wall by Tatnuck Magnet School, on Seven Hills charter school and WRTA grant-funded transportation, on McKinney-Vento transportation reimbursment (36% last year), on the Foley Stadium revolving fund, on graduation expenses, on what the crew team needs, on the repair of athletic equipment, and on athletic supplies purchased.

Mr. O'Connell is proposing having public meetings and hearings as part of the development of the new South High School.

He also wants to discuss departmental consolidation with the city.

He also is suggesting two meetings a month in summer (continuing the regular year schedule) and an additional meeting in months that have a fifth Thursday.

Miss McCullough is asking for a report on itinerant special education staff caseloads, specifically referencing Boston, and also a report on "what, if any, orientation, training or ongoing professional development is provided by special education department leadership to principals, as it relates to itinerant special education staff."

The committee is being asked to accept a donation of $19.10 for classroom books, of $1000 for SAT for seniors, of $1000 for a scholarship (due to Mr. Allen's award), of $676 for special education transitions, of $250 for the alternative program (from an award they won!), of $660 from Intel, and of $13,000 from the Quinsigamond Village Improvement Council for equipment. They're also being asked to vote a prior year invoice of $585 and invoices of $7695.

Mr. Foley is suggesting the following:

To ask the Mayor and the Superintendent to develop a new approach to the School Committee agenda that will make the meetings more effective, productive, and deliberative. Suggestions would include the establishment of a consent agenda for items such as routine approvals of donations and recognitions, the development of criteria for recognitions, designated meetings for honoring recipients of recognitions, and the presence on the agenda at each meeting or every other meeting an important educational policy issue facing Worcester Public Schools that school committee members would learn about (through materials distributed prior to the meeting) and discuss with administrators at the meeting.

There is an executive session scheduled for 6 pm on a grievance, contract negotiations with the teachers' union and with non-represented personnel (both non-administrative and administrative), and:

To authorize the Superintendent to negotiate an employment contract for Susan O’Neil, Ph.D. as the Deputy Superintendent, effective July 1, 2017.

...which I assume means that the committee voted in favor of the hire?

Brockton's not kidding

The Mayor has set aside funding to pursue an education funding equity lawsuit against the state:

Carpenter said he agreed on setting aside $100,000 for the cause. “We realize it ultimately will cost more than that,” said Carpenter, speaking to The Enterprise on Wednesday. “We also know we are losing millions of dollars in education reimbursement right now because of the inequities in the current Chapter 70 formula. We can’t sustain that very long. If we have to spend a little bit of money to ultimately compel the state to give us millions more, than we think it’s the prudent course of action. We can’t just sit back and allow this to continue. Our school system won’t survive.” 

Carpenter pointed to a 2015 foundation budget study commissioned by the state legislature, arguing that the state has failed to act on the recommendations, which he said would have benefited Brockton Public Schools financially. 

“Implementing any of these recommendations would mean more state education dollars coming to Brockton,” Carpenter said. “However, to date, the state has not even adopted one of its own recommendations from that commission.”

A couple of observations from the WPS budget before Council

I didn't liveblog the consideration of the Worcester Public Schools' budget before City Council on Tuesday, though I did livetweet it (you'll need to scroll back to May 30). There were a few things I wanted to post on here, though, before it all vanishes into the Twitter backlog. I'm not, incidentally, going to waste either my time or my space on issues that we've long since dealt with

• You may have seen this article on some Worcester schools adding washers and dryers next year. This discussion coming up led to what was probably Superintendent Binienda's best moment of the deliberation:

Lukes talking about providing parental services; Binienda "if a kid is hungry, has a hurting tooth, the student isn't going to learn"

— Tracy Novick (@TracyNovick) May 30, 2017

• Rare praise from Councilor Lukes: 

Lukes comments that the @worcesterpublic budget "is very glitzy; I'm impressed."

— Tracy Novick (@TracyNovick) May 30, 2017

• There were a couple of back and forths about charter reimbursement and the foundation budget review commission that made it clear that, while Council does understand what we're missing on charter reimbursement, many don't understand what we're missing on the lack of the review of the foundation budget. Not okay for a city missing as much as Worcester is...somewhere around $100M a year.

• It's dismaying to hear Councilor King's inquiry around better publicizing Worcester student success through social media with "there's an ad." C'mon, Worcester: use that Facebook page and Twitter feed and join us here in the 21st century!

• There was, though, one sequence that really worried me: Councilor Rosen asked a solid question on the impact of the proposed federal budget on the Worcester Public Schools: 

Rosen asks about impact of proposed federal budget on @worcesterpublic; "it would be devastating" says Binienda

— Tracy Novick (@TracyNovick) May 30, 2017

...so far so good.
Superintendent Binienda then went on an extended discussion of her longstanding concern over funding of AP tests and the state's proposal that Title IV could be used for that. The Worcester Public Schools, however, don't get Title IV money (and haven't gotten Title IV money for as long as I've been paying attention).
She then added school nutrition, but school nutrition funds aren't threatened by the proposed budget. School-based health centers, she added, which possibly could see some impact if there's a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but there's no change in their funding under the proposed federal budget.
Finally, she added Title III. Worcester does get Title III, which is funding for ELL students; it's used to fund seven instructional coaches and some summer programs. But Title III also isn't seeing an impact in the proposed federal budget.
(if you're interested in my sources, I read this from EdWeek  and this from the Washington Post when the budget came out, and just double checked that against CNN,)
So what should the answer have been?
The two clearest impacts are to two programs which are cut entirely under the proposed budget: Title IIA is teacher preparation, which in Worcester funds 14 instructional coaches and a Manager of Curriculum (that's $1.8M a year); the 21st Century grant is Community Learning Centers which run after school at Burncoat Middle and at Sullivan Middle (that's $181,000 a year).
It's also worth keeping an eye on Title I. While that's expected to be level-funded, there's no provision in the federal budget for the ESSA language that now funds school turnaround grants out of the Title I line. That could effectively work out to a 7% cut, depending on how states handle it. Worcester gets $11.6M a year in Title I funds, and that covers most of an administrative position, 14 preschool teachers, 12 other teachers, 34 coaches, 7 wraparound positions, 34 IAs, and nearly 15 grant and support positions. That's a big one.

Yes, it's finance, and yes, that's a big thing I follow. But this is a question that any superintendent in the country should have expected to get this year, but most especially one that gets $29M a year in federal grants. And ours didn't expect to get it, wasn't prepared, and didn't answer the question correctly.

Recommended reading: on college towns and racial stratification in the public school system

...but it applies much more broadly.

Many of the administrators and teachers at these three schools know the research by Oakes and others. But “it’s difficult for school districts to resist the pressure that comes from white, liberal parents with university credentials,” Oakes said. “These parents come with such authority. And it’s hard for parents of color to stand up to the counter-pressure.” Schools in turn often limit themselves to working the edges to address the achievement gap between black and white students, leaving the larger structure intact. “They’re doing the feel-good stuff, but they’re not addressing the political obstacle,” argued UCLA’s Noguera.

This resonates locally, as well, given the pressure to continue to create "gifted programs" without regard to actual impact on student populations. 

Worcester School Committee on FY18 (round one)

The budget is here. The sequence of accounts they're following is here. Page 8 of the PDF has the table of contents which link to the items.