October Board of Ed: opening comments

 The agenda is online here; the livestream can be found from here.

Among the public comments today is expected to be some from an equity coalition on vocational school admission

updating as we go; sound is very very weak today

A plea from Worcester

 sent this evening to the members of the Worcester delegation to the state legislature

Dear Senators and Representatives,

In my capacity as a Worcester resident, parent, and school committee member, I have started probably half a dozen emails to you since the spring, not sending any of them as it has all seemed too complicated and exhausting to fight through. Two things, though, have happened in the past 24 hours that have made me determined to get something to you, finally, this time.

Last night, Commissioner Riley sent out his weekly update. In it, he issued updated guidance for brass and wind instruments, which reads as follows:

The Department has updated its Guidance for Courses Requiring Additional Safety Considerations for Fall 2020. When in-person school is occurring, wind and brass instruments may be used indoors or outdoors with 10 feet of distance between individuals. Masks, including instrument masks that have a slit for the instrument, and the use of bell covers are encouraged if possible. Spit valves should be emptied onto a disposable, absorbent pad rather than the floor so that contents can be contained. 

I am the mother of a brass instrumentalist, and so am familiar with what playing such an instrument entails. For the Commissioner to suggest that students can play such instruments indoors with instrument masks and bell covers only "if possible" and with no mention of ventilation during this pandemic that we know to be airborne is beyond irresponsible. This is, though, of a piece with guidance that urged only three feet of distancing in classrooms, that set no limits on students in rooms, that made no distinction among students of various ages (and susceptibility to contagion), that elevated individual town data as determinative, and that has, over and again, ignored that there are adults in our buildings. While we have known for weeks (longer, I'd argue) that this disease is airborne, the Department still has not issued any updates addressing that danger.
From where I sit in Worcester, that is negligence. 

Today, Governor Baker filed his FY21 budget with you. While I had hoped for better than the inflation-only increase that was passed in July, I to some degree was also resigned to it. However, to hear the Governor repeat the deceptive framing posed by Secretary Peyser yesterday, that the funding to schools this year surpasses that laid out by the Student Opportunity Act, is infuriating. I have had reason to wonder if the Governor has any understanding of the school funding formula before this, but this statement has confirmed that he either does not or chooses willfully to ignore the principle upon which it is based.
Pandemic funding is precisely that: it is funding for an EMERGENCY. To have that funding then touted as filling the gaping hole in our basic needs is simply wrong; having to spend money to repair my car does not take away my need for gas money. 
Moreover, the funding for the pandemic has been flat: it is distributed regardless of student need, regardless of community need. Every student in every district, whatever its wealth, received that emergency funding. The state's funding formula, on quite the other hand, is progressive: it recognizes that greater need requires greater resources to meet. 
I would argue, in fact, that the pandemic funding, while I do not begrudge it to anyone, has furthered inequity, by allowing additional resources where basic needs have already been met, which then are allocated over and above that. This shouldn't surprise us, as flat funding often does this, as those who study school finance have told us long since.
In fact, such researchers were sounding the alarm on non-progressive use of state resources as far back as April. Far from being warned by this, Governor Baker has barreled us into just that situation.  

To this point, I attach here my testimony, submitted yesterday to the Department, regarding local contribution for education. While it addresses that in particular, you may also find it informative regarding the current year's budget in your coming deliberations. 
School districts across Massachusetts have had an ongoing case of whiplash from the guidance from the Department, with it frequently coming too late, conflicting with other health guidance or best practice, or contradicting what we know to be safe for our students and staff. Compounding this has been a budget that not only does not meet our needs but is touted as going above and beyond. 
I would urge you to do what you can in implementing progressive budgeting funding, which this is not, but whatever you do, I would ask that you please, please be vocal about the degree to which this administration is being intentionally misleading on framing in the budget and frequently making our local planning more complicated in their guidance. 
As always, thank you for your time and attention.
And as always, I am happy to talk further about this with any of you.
Tracy Novick 

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. 

Email to a Worcester parent

 While I was on the Worcester School Committee for six years, it's this pandemic that has really brought home (no pun intended) the reality that we have over 25,000 students in over 16,000 families and 4500 employees in Worcester. That can be a lot of email.
I read them all; I respond to those that aren't petition generated (aka: you wrote something yourself), though that sometimes takes awhile. Because we do have the next steps of the move towards buildings up now for a meeting this week, I found myself writing the same thing a number of times today in response to parents, so I thought I would post it here, as well.

brook crossing, Moreland Hill

Thank you very much for your email, and I appreciate your concerns for your children. For our youngest and our highest need students, I am particularly concerned.

While the shape of the pandemic continues to shift, that has not changed in any way the realities of our student enrollment and our buildings and our buses. Districts that are going back full time--even those that are going back on two day a week swings--have significantly lesser concentration of students in buildings. We have noted for some years now that we have more students attending WPS than we did fifteen years ago when we closed eight school buildings. That has the results we are seeing.
Likewise, having both the programs we run citywide, from WAMS to Tech, and serving the student population we do, in a city in which a significant number of our families lack private transportation, makes any transportation shifts both an equity and an access issue.
The COVID relief has gone for the technology to have our students accessing education now and does not run to rental space, and even if it did, those additional spaces, as the administration noted back in August, would need staffing (and furniture and equipment). Far from having funding for that, we instead only avoided laying off teachers this fall because we could cut the transportation budget. And I should add, that August cut was based on the projection of the state at least carrying through the inflationary increase of our budget, something less secure with no additional aid coming from Washington. 
None of this is to argue, as I said, with your concerns. I know that from a parental perspective this can sound like naysaying. As someone deeply engaged with the finances of schools, though, the disparities you and your family note are the consequences of the decades-old funding disparities that brought Worcester to the verge of a lawsuit last year.
The timing of the pandemic, in this year in which the state was to finally begin to implement better funding, would be ironic were it not also so deeply painful.

Quick FYI, Worcester post on back to school

Note that this Thursday's (10/15) Worcester School Committee will have the next round of back-to-school discussions. I'll link to the agenda once it's posted, as there is a backup on it.

UPDATE: I'll post the backup on its own, as the agenda's not up as yet.

The meeting starts at 7. 

Worcester joint education and finance & operations meeting

 which is mostly on the work being done on schools before reopening; the agenda, including backup, isn't here
Allen: limitations on return to instruction; used MSBA tool for measurement
spacing allows for bringing students back only a single day a week
district doesn't have the capacity to add more buses (due to cost, drivers, and manufacturing)
limitations on spacing severely cut down on number of students can be on
HVAC: use outdoor air instead of recirculated air and increase air filtration
adjust settings, open windows and doors, prevent or minimize recirculation, upgrade filtration
all basement classrooms "have been taken offline and will not be used as classroom spaces or other multi-purpose spaces until further notice"

FY21: Back to the drawing board AGAIN

The Joint Committee on Ways and Means is holding yet another roundtable this morning in hopes of updating what is known about FY21. This is, of course, impacted from last night's round of tweets from President Trump which left the prospects for federal aid for states...unclear? dim? unclear, maybe.
I'll have to jump off (as I'm presenting on Ch. 70, oh irony, at noon, but I'll do what I can here and then catch up later, as needed).

updating as we go
Michlewitz
where our economy has stayed steady and where it has fallen off
uncertainty has been frustrating for all of us "to say the least"
particularly frustrating that the President has cut off negotiations
$92B sent to fed in 2018 alone
President "should stop referencing us as a blue state and start calling us a green state"
in past downturn, MA found itself in a strong position; will not be the case this time

Rodriguez: April roundtable gave a clear sense of challenges
precarious position: still no help from federal government, high unemployment, ravaged by health 
revenues up a meagre 1%
"glaring federal dysfunction and ongoing health emergency"
need to "close an anticipated budget shortfall without federal assistance for at least the foreseeable future."

Secretary Heffernan: recently filed close of FY20 (supplemental budget)
"really base a lot of what we do...on what you all have to say for us today"

DoR Commissioner Geoffrey Snyder testifying: outlook for tax revenues for FY21
Forecasting $25.918B to 28.787B in tax revenue, which could be as high as $5.3B
considerable uncertainty in these forecast
"deep recession"
real GDP decreased by over 4% in first Q, 31.6% in second calendar Q
"naturally" resulted in decline in tax revenue
$2.4T: fiscal support from federal gov't
Move of taxation deadlines from April; "actual collections by themselves did not determine" tax revenues; legislation involved
I cannot even hope to keep up with the numbers he's citing here...going to have to wait to have it in writing...
"confronted with an array of unknowns" for tax collection in FY21
"will generate multiple scenarios on which" tax projections are based
Moody's and IHS Markets have created projections
$7.27B collection for September after adjustment (legislation counted some as FY20)
$69M more than FY20
So far, FY21 agreement has not been revised or adjusted
based on recent projections, DoR now forecasts FY21 in range $25.918B to $28....B
Decline from FY20:  4.1% to 12.4% OR $2.67B to $5.233B less than estimate
"disconnect between stock market and real economy"
now running through the subsets of the tax revenue, which I'm not going to write notes on
"there is considerable uncertainty in these forecasts"
"unprecedented challenges in revenue projections for the Commonwealth"
Michlewitz: why are we having projections for a drop when revenue is up?
A: several components of tax revenue
"the question is, is it going to be sustainable"
"a lot of uncertainties on the withholding side" as job market, unemployment
"withholding happens to be one of the major categories"
"so far numbers are good...but great caution of the remainder of the year"
Rodriguez: range of FY21 forecasted revenue: "that's over a 2 1/2 billion delta"
"we need to select a finite number" for the budget; why such a material difference?
And if you had to pick a number, what would it be?
Synder: a lot will depend on stimulus, as it comes
How the national and Commonwealth's economy responds to any amount of stimulus
"I appreciate the consternation, if you will, on such a wide range"
vendors put more weight on higher end of revenue than on lower end
more than 50% probability on higher end (from vendors)
but when did those models come out? Since last night?

Goldberg (in talking about pensions): "the stock market is not the economy"
And then I had to jump off to present on Chapter 70. You might, though check:
State House News Service
MassLive
Commonwealth Magazine
Boston Globe