about this budget year for Massachusetts schools...

 It is lousy! 

"This is a really lousy year," said Tracy O’Connell Novick describing what Massachusetts public school districts are going through right now as they plan next year’s budget.

Novick is a specialist on finance and state education funding at the Massachusetts School Committee Association (MASCA).

“Right now, my job is abut 60% standing in front of groups saying, ‘your budget is terrible. The state budget is terrible. Here's why it's terrible,’” Novick said.

(60% is probably too high...it just feels that way!) 

There is a Worcester School Committee meeting on Thursday

 Note that there is a Worcester School Committee meeting on Thursday:

https://worcesterschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20240419.pdf

Note that there does not appear to be an executive session, so expect it to start at 5:30

The report of the Superintendent is on climate and culture:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mpW68Tt7_vb9_6_s-5NI2Ftr4ERLijq8/view?usp=sharing

As per usual, no further comments...

On city finances and planning

 At the April 9 meeting of the City Council: 

Toomey makes request under suspension for a five point plan on school building finances needs and renovations.

— Marco Cartolano (@marco_cartolano) April 10, 2024

While it appears to be deleted, Councilor Toomey later clarified on Twitter that she was speaking of amending the city's five point financial plan. 

Recommended reading

My week went a bit sideways at the end here, so I haven't gotten around to a few things I'd intended to write on. In the meantime, here is some of what I have been reading:

• There are many, many things out there about the wave of organizing that is happening on college campuses on Gaza and divestment. I'd recommend this New Yorker piece, this New York Times opinion piece, and this scorcher from Columbia University's student newspaper, The Spectator, which also covered protests in solidary on other campuses; Teen Vogue covered that at the beginning of the week.

• An aspect not being discussed in the AI in education discourse is the absolutely atrocious environmental impact; read about that here in the New Republic.
  Also there's an excellent column in Education Next on artificial intelligence not being a great teacher: “This isn’t just unhelpful; it’s counterproductive to learning.”
  

• MassInc posted this piece "Musing on the House budget, SOA, families, and the state's long term fiscal health" last week. The one thing I would add here:
  

  The House budget increases Chapter 70 aid above levels required by the SOA. However, fully factoring inflation, the funding levels fall below what the SOA called for based on the estimated costs of educating students back in the 2010s.

  ...is that the increase "above levels required by SOA" is done in a way that has nothing to do with SOA, or student need, at all, as it's the $104 per pupil.  

• Today's NPR piece on historical markers, what they are for and not and what they say and don't is well worth the time.
  

  How the U.S. tells its own story is a debate raging in schools, statehouses and public squares nationwide. It has led to social movements and angry protests. But for more than a century, historical markers have largely escaped that kind of scrutiny.
  With more than 180,000 of them scattered across the U.S., it's easy to see why

on educators responding to protests

 It is days like today that I recall then Acting Commissioner Jeff Wulfson's words in 2018, speaking of the protests that followed the Parkland shootings: 

 We talk a lot here at this board about the importance of teaching students about civic engagement and how democracy works. This is it. This is as real as it gets. If this is not what we call a teachable moment, I don't know what is, and I hope our educators take advantage of this opportunity to help model and teach their students about how we bring about change peacefully in a democracy.

Remarkably, DESE sent it out as part of the Commissioner's update that week 

House Ways and Means budget: this time with more

I am doing one of my periodic comfort re-reads of Terry Pratchett;
this is a good summary of the House budget. Alas, no answers here.

Wednesday's post was a quick one. Here's some more information and some thinking on the House Ways and Means budget on K-12 education; as always, this is me, out here having an opinion in my entirely unofficial capacity. 

The budget is here, though really that's where you download PDFs. Wouldn't it be amazing if instead there were updates to the posting of the Governor's budget, with nice little clickable links, and the ability to see at a glance what changes were being proposed over time?

If you'd like at least the change being proposed, I have now started a spreadsheet of the K-12 education accounts, which is here. (I did not start that with the Governor's budget this year, and, yikes, lesson learned!).

Also, the cherry sheets--municipal; regional--are now updated and seem to be up for good now (they went up and back down yesterday).

House Ways and Means FY25 budget

 I have barely cracked this open, but it's online here. No cherry sheet update as yet.

A few brief things I already know (as always on here, this is my personal perspective):

• Disappointingly, this keeps the same inflation rate as the Governor's budget. 
  
  
• Also disappointingly, this digs us further into a hole for the districts making their way out of hold harmless by making the minimum per pupil increase $104. This costs $37M, and it's coming out of the Fair Share surtax, which, as this is an allocation of funds that has nothing to do with student, district, or community need, is really disappointing.
  This is a genuinely terrible idea, and it's actively working against the reform passed unanimously in both chambers that is the Student Opportunity Act. 
  
  
• 'Though I have not yet found this written down anywhere, I have been told that this has an increase in the low income pupil count for some districts, which has resulted in some districts moving (back?) up a low income group. There certainly is a difference in the state aid for some districts that isn't coming from the per pupil increase noted above. 

That's what I have so far...I do plan to pull together a "tracking the budget" spreadsheet this spring (I haven't yet!), and I'll run through accounts later this week.