What happened at the Worcester Public School meeting on Thursday: FY24 here we come!

 The agenda that has everything on it is here. The video of the meeting is here. 

May 12. Mark your calendar!

The meeting opened with two public presentation under petitions: one on Neighborhood Strings, the second Anya Geist, a student at South High, who is completing a Teen Justice Fellowship Project on anti-Semitism and Holocaust education. Note that Ms. Geist's project is going to Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports for further discussion.

FY24 preliminary budget report
The report of the superintendent was the preliminary FY24 report; I've uploaded just that PDF here. The presentation from Brian Allen begins about 19 minutes into the meeting. I'm pretty sure I say every year that if you're at all interested in the WPS budget--and if you're in Worcester, that should be you!--you should just watch it. 

A few things I'd highlight as a seasoned budget watcher: 

• Remember that we have used ESSER funding both to hold our budget harmless with regard to enrollment losses two years ago (aka: we didn't lay off elementary teachers during the pandemic) and that we have been frontloading some of our expected Student Opportunity Act increases. Mr. Allen represented those like this (the images are from previous budgets): 
  
  

  So this then needs to get absorbed into the FY24 budget (subject to consideration of continuing, just like everything else): 
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
• Leading to the crucial takeaway on where we are walking into the FY24 budget planning with: 
  
  
  
  

  That essentially is a level service budget (running with projected percentage increases). This led to today's headline on a budget shortfall. 
  Please note: this is early days for us. There are going to be tradeoffs of current spending, of what the administration wants to continue, of what is needed elsewhere. 
  
  
  
• It's crucial to note, not only for our budget (the budget is student enrollment based) but also for all sorts of district planning: our student enrollment is up over 500 students from last year. That's a lot of kids! 
  
  
  
  Do note that the presentation itself goes more deeply into where those increases are (and where the decreases are) by school. The boosts, as seen above, are Head Start and elementary, so those are students that will be with us awhile, and this impacts the whole district. Expect more to come on that. 
  
  
• Worcester is of course (and as intended) one of the big gainers under the Student Opportunity Act. You can see that in Mr. Allen's walk through of how we get to the foundation budget: 
  
  
  
  Do keep in mind that most of that SOA funding increase is due to the third year phase in of increases in the low income rates; Worcester is group 11 of 12 groups, with 72% of our students considered low income. 
  
  
• Mr. Allen proposed for budget priorities for us in our Legislative advocacy:
       1, Inflation: The Student Opportunity Act caps the inflation rate at 4.5%. The actual inflation    rate for this year would be 9.3%. Advocacy for the real rate started back in January with a joint letter from MASC, MASS, AFT-MA, and MTA to the Governor and legislative leadership.
       2. Out-of-district special education tuition: The Operational Services Division issued a 14% tuition increase for tuition for out-of-district special education schools back in the fall; you can find their issued tuitions from last month posted here. As if in response, Governor Healey Friday filed a supplemental budget that includes $75M (more, as her House 1 budget already included $15M) in what's known as extraordinary relief.
  (In my comments I again noted that the MSBA being uncapped from its $800M cap, reinstating the Accelerated Repair program, and getting the state to cover the inflation in current projects from ARPA funds would be a good third one.)
  
  
• Mark your calendars!
  
  

Subcommittee report

Governance reported out, and I cannot tell you how glad I am to report that we have updated the student dress code. In addition to the much more reasonable language around how students can actually dress (about time), it also quite plainly states that students can only be disciplined for dress code infractions if they are violations of the Code of Conduct. In other words, the dress code violation has to rise to the level of the list of clear disciplinary infractions in order to be treated as one. Again, about time!

There was also a report on the strategic plan. If you're interested in this, I'd recommend watching the actual Governance meeting; this section starts about 23 minutes in. This started with Mr. Allen reviewing what had been shared with us earlier, which appeared to be a draft outline for next steps. That includes this: 

Mr. Allen then passed that meeting over to people from Hanover Research, who gave this presentation (I asked for that Friday). They have been hired via WEC, funded by a grant. 
In the Governance meeting, Laura Clancey, chairing the meeting, asked for questions, and asked about funding. 
Let's say Sue Mailman and I had many questions, particularly about the contract with Hanover Research, but also about process. I think that this is not a process the School Committee currently is steering, which isn't how this is supposed to work; I won't say more here as I said plenty at the meeting. 

Other business

We sent a number of items off for reports or work in subcommittees: a requested report on Chromebooks; one on Ch. 74 (vo-tech) programs; a list of courses for possible approval for next year; next year's student handbook (which is revised annually).

We sent the much-reported (some even accurately!) item on revising the homework policy to subcommittee. For informational reasons, let me note that what it actually says is: 

To consider a review of the Homework Policy and explore no homework dates, expectations around homework overall and utilize parent, student and educator feedback

....really. That's all it says.

We passed revised position descriptions for the School Safety Director and the Chief Diversity (now becoming Equity) Officer. We made revisions to but held the document of the Chief Personnel (as a proposed revision?) or Human Capital (as proposed?) Officer, so we can see them all.

We unanimously passed support for federal HD 1269, the "Healthy Meals Help Kids Learn Act of 2023," proposed by Representative Jim McGovern, which would raise the reimbursement for free lunch 45 cents and for free breakfast 28 cents with a yearly adjustment in both cases. 
 
We also had a deliberation over endorsement of state HD485/SD1697, around support for vocational education in capital projects, most significantly to regional vokes; adding a DESE office regarding vocational education; and outlining requirements on access to middle school students by vocational schools. On a vote of 3-2-1 (Laura Clancey wanted to speak and wasn't seen; she did not vote), it was held for more information at the next meeting. 

And our next meeting is now scheduled for April 13, with the second April meeting after April vacation on the 27th. 
Do note that F&O meets Monday the 20th at 5:30; TLSS meets on March 27. 

Two important Worcester Public Schools updates

 no, not school weather related!

• The agenda for Thursday night's meeting of the Worcester School Committee, including the preliminary presentation on FY24, is now available online here. This does include the annual "where are we actually at" calculation: 
  
  
  

• This afternoon, the Worcester School Committee sent a letter, per our vote on February 27, outlining our concerns with the Worcester Cultural Academy Charter School's financial relationship to Old Sturbridge Village, the proposed management fee under the public purpose limitation, conflict of interest issues with their trustees, and the civil rights concerns given their lease with the Roman Catholic diocese of Worcester. It is accompanied by 184 pages of documentation. 
  Now over to the state officials to respond.

Eliminating school lunch fees increased participation

 ...by a lot.

Incredibly important report released last week by the Food Research and Action Center looking at participation in school breakfast and lunch programs during 2021-22, when universal coverage of lunch was still national.

As K-12 Dive (rightly) highlights, participation in school lunch programs went up 51% during that school year! 

Just feed kids, folks. It works.

Three years on: civility and gender and power

 This has been buzzing around in my head since the Board's vote. I'm still wrestling with how to put this; there is much more to be said on this.
As always, this is simply my personal perspective as a single member of the Worcester School Committee.

The pins on my lapel the night the Board met.
The raven says "Nevermore."

When asked for their reflections on the public hearing regarding the proposed charter school, Board of Ed members Matt Hills and Michael Moriarty both said something similar.

They said the hearing was civil. 
That people were respectful. That people were polite.

And both men meant that as praise, clearly, from the context of that remark: it was good that Worcester had been respectful.

I have blogged, generally live, Board of Ed meetings at this point for years. I've followed the appointment of a new Commissioner (I was at the meeting at which it was announced the prior Commissioner had died in office that morning), the changes to regulations required by federal law changes, the shifts under federal administration changes, the various responses to a pandemic, and much more, including lots and lots of votes on charter schools.

And yet, I haven't gone back to the end of February vote to cover it. 

Partly, it's psychosomatic; I had norovirus during the meeting, and I can feel the symptoms coming back when I open the video. 

But also, this was a vote that I put a lot into (as has been noted; thank you for that), and I genuinely do not remember one in which the level of contempt for the thoughtful, logical, relevant concerns was quite as clear as this. Far from being treated with respect, we were dismissed.

But there have been other meetings recently that have been similar.

Let's note, for example, the Commissioner and Board's ongoing (and usually not properly posted) dramatic exasperation with the Boston Public Schools, which often is led off by the Commissioner expressing his sardonic puzzlement over how it is that whatever it is they've decided is the problem this month could be possible when city and district leadership came before the Board and assured  them, and so forth.
Tell me he would have done that if Marty Walsh were still mayor, or if Tom Payzant were still superintendent. 
But Boston is, and has been, under female leadership--women of color, in more than one case--for some time now, and so this mocking tone is something the Commissioner brings to the Department's purported oversight. 
And the Board's "oversight" of the Boston Public Schools is of course much less oversight than it is following wherever it is the suburban writers of the Boston Globe feel is the latest "scandal" (seldom if ever informed by anything happening in the education world at large) which somehow (again, without posting) find their way to the table of the K-12 education system for the entire nearly one million students in Massachusetts. 

And thus while I am at heart an optimist (I don't know that I could bear to do what I do otherwise) to some degree the vote at the end of February I suppose shouldn't have surprised me. The known motivations of a Board nearly entirely appointed by Governor Baker have been well-known, and largely have little to do with the largest concerns in public education at this time. (Let me note the quite marked exceptions of the Secretary, and the student, parent, and labor seats, as so often.)

We were respectful, it seems, but we were unheard. While I have, as a member of a public board myself, respect for processes of public procedure, gestures towards 'respect' may not be heard.

There is a massive effort across the country to privatize public education funding through voucher expansions. Last year's Supreme Court Carson v. Makin decision opened the door wider to public funding of religious schools, something which could well be built upon should the Supreme Court decides in favor of the school in Charter Day School v. Peltier. Trans youth are under open attack across the country, including in Congress itself. There is a wave of book banning and limitations of education across the country. Far from grappling with the systemic inequities in education, we have states doing nonsensical things like setting up CRT hotlines. Youth mental health has been declared a national crisis. 
And teacher turnover has hit a new high.

Today marks the third anniversary of the weekend when it was made starkly clear to us in Massachusetts that we in local leadership were on our own--it's the weekend when literally every single superintendent in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts called off school due to the pandemic prior to the Commissioner (who had told superintendents to hold off) and the Governor taking action. That it wasn't catastrophic was due only to local leadership.
Unfortunately, that lack of leadership was indicative of what we would see throughout, and now, with crises of many kind spreading across the country, we have this lack of support and lack of care and thought and focus only continuing. 

I'll say what I said when I ran to get back on the Worcester School Committee three years ago:
We deserve better.

I do not know how we get out of this without major changes on the Board (the Board, recall, appoints the Commissioner). The only way that happens is action by the Governor, unless the Legislature takes the step (as it did in the 1990's) to remake the Board itself. 

It is, though, a disservice to not only local leadership in education, but to everyone in public education in Massachusetts, and most importantly, to our students throughout the Commonwealth to allow this lack of focus on the raging emergencies in public education to continue. 
It's simply far too important.

a few notes on Worcester for FY24 from the Governor's budget

 The gold standard--and what you might think of as the Worcester School Committee's opening round--on this will be the report of the superintendent at next week's meeting (the 16th), when Mr. Allen will give us a preliminary look at the budget numbers. No pun intended. Ahead of that, though, a few quick notes from me:

The preliminary FY24 release from the state sets Worcester's foundation budget at $477,974,879. It's crucial to remember, though, that the foundation budget includes all of the Worcester students who attend charter schools and all of the Worcester students who choice into other districts. The charter tuition for next year is $40.7M; the choice out is $3.7M; those get subtracted from the above, while the reimbursement and the school choice in get added back in. 

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: the preliminary calculations were released over February break, prior to the February Board of Ed meeting. As such, the state had to make a choice on which way they'd assume the vote would go on the new charter school.
Is anyone surprised they assumed the Board would vote in favor?

That then is why our charter tuition is up from $33M to $40.7M. That also means our reimbursement--the funding that reimburses for an increase on a three year taper--is also up to $11.3M. School choice in has nearly doubled to $1M (that's 100 more kids choosing to come to Worcester, I think?).

 $477M, or rather $445M or so, once you sort out the above, is a lot of money, so a quick note on where this is coming from. Remember that Worcester is one of the largest gainers under the Student Opportunity Act, and, quite intentionally so: 77.6% of our students are low income. A third of our students are English learners. Thus those pushes within the formula to boost funding in those areas really play out in Worcester's foundation budget.

The thing about the $477M, though, is: who is going to come up with that money? The answer is another indication that the state funding formula is working as intended:

Almost exactly a quarter of the foundation budget is city funded. The vast majority of K-12 school funding in Worcester is state funded.
Thus, while the foundation budget is up $47M, the city carries only $6M of that increase; the remainder is state funded. Again, that is working just as intended: the standard measure of wealth that the state uses demonstrates the Worcester cannot carry the majority of the school budget.

If this interests you at all, tune in March 16! 

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! 

What happened at the first March meeting of the Worcester School Committee

And my apologies: it has been a big news week in Worcester, and I have been ill so I haven't been updating (I plan to spend some of the time I anticipate being snowbound this weekend catching up). Here, in any case, is what happened at the March 3, 2023 Worcester School Committee meeting, for which I was remote. As always, this is my perspective as a member of the Committee, so keep that filter in mind!

The agenda is here; the video of the meeting is here.

Note that we did open with executive session covering our negotiations with seven collective bargaining units, and we had public comment regarding those negotiations.

The report of the Superintendent was on Innovating in education. It starts about 11minutes into the video. Among other things, this gave us a demonstration of Chatbot GPT writing a lesson plan. Let me highlight a few things:
Here's where we were going:

                  

And education is caring for the present, while enabling for the future.
        

And we're moving towards this Vision of a Learner (which is how we're continuing what had been the Portrait of a Graduate) and then what that would mean. 

We had two reports out from Standing Committees: the February meetings of both Finance and Operations, and of Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports. I never got to summarize that F&O meeting, so let me just quickly note a few things:

• in terms of transportation, all of our large buses are now owned as well as operated by the Worcester Public Schools. We have added back, for the first time in two years, athletic after school runs (only two so far; more to come for spring). There is another delay on the midsize buses (yes, supply lines, still).
  
  
• There's $22.8M in ESSER funding going to HVAC and hot water. The bulk of this is going to HVAC work in nearly every WPS building. HOWEVER, in doing the full look at what is necessary, the report also noted that we need $200M in HVAC work alone. We have to pay attention to the enormous backlog we have in facilities.
  
  
• If there's anything at all that you're wondering about from a capital budget--that is, big work on buildings--side, the quarterly facilities report is the place to look. Our eyes, of course, are closely on (for example) Burncoat, where the wait for acceptance in the MSBA pipeline for a full renovation or rebuild has now resulted in a NEASC accreditation issue; we're in the process of getting a full review of exactly what it is that they are looking for and what that will cost (as, again, we've discussed over several meetings now). As always, though, there is a lot more in the report, as we have a lot of buildings. 
  
  
• we transferred a million dollars as a result of this report, and if you review the quarterly budget report (and do read our quarter budget report! They are an incredibly clear way to follow what goes on with our budget!), you'll see why: utilities are up! Way up! And we also (like many districts!) continue to have positions open, and so we've transferred money from salaries to overtime (specifically for custodial coverage). And on that last, as I said above: we have a lot of buildings, and a lot of space, and we're doing it with many fewer people. That has an impact. 

On TLSS, they discussed the ongoing use of tutoring services in the district; at this point, the administration is determining if the usage and utility justifies the cost. They also discussed school lunch and recess times--families and students may be interested in this comprehensive chart of all of them--with a motion to move all elementary schools to a 20 minute lunch without impacting the 30 minute recess, and reporting back on feasibility. The administration reported that lunch time at the secondary schools is sufficient. There will be further work and reports forthcoming on the district providing drivers ed and of the discussion on conduct and effort in grading policies. 

WE ARE CHANGING THE DATES OF OUR APRIL MEETINGS due to so many holidays and a vacation week! Stay tuned!

We are also required by state law to hold a public hearing--of the full committee!--on our budget after it comes out but before we deliberate. This year, WPS budget day--mark your calendars (you think I'm kidding? I do!)--will be FRIDAY, MAY 12! We will be deliberating and passing the budget on Thursday, June 1 and Thursday, June 15, so the hearing will be sometime between May 15 and 31. Stay tuned for that, too!

And in response to a parental concern, I've asked the administration to look at our bullying policy. More on that in a forthcoming report of the superintendent. 

The full Committee next meets Thursday, March 16. Please note that there is a meeting of Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports on Tuesday, March 14; Finance and Operations meets on Monday, March 20.