WPS in Brief: What happened in May
WPS in Brief: What happened in May
FY24 Budget, Roosevelt School Traffic, Teacher Recruitment and Retention, Proposed Strategic Plan Committee, Who is on the School Committee Ballot (so far).
Welcome to the fifth issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers key topics from the FY24 budget, three school committee meetings and five standing committee meetings. Format is a little different this month because the budget is the main focus.
Let’s get to the fun stuff:
The Proposed Budget!
When I finished reading the 430 pages of the FY24 budget I honestly had no idea how I was going to briefly summarize it for you all. And the truth is I don’t think I can do much better than the budget office with this infographic:
Lots of “adds” which is always a good thing to see when looking at a school budget. The Telegram also covered aspects of the proposed budget. Before we dive in it’s important to have a foundational understanding of how funding for Worcester Public Schools works. If you already read my quick budget primer back in March, skip down to the dollar bill image below. But if you didn’t, or want a review:
Worcester gets over half of its funding from the state. These funds are called “Chapter 70” and make up a good chunk of what is called the “foundation budget,” or what the state sees as the minimum foundation of what is needed to adequately educate our students. The funding formula used by the state to decide how much aid a district gets is determined by:
Student enrollment on Oct. 1, 2022.
An inflation factor (this is capped by the state legislature at 4.5% despite inflation actually being 9.3%).
The state decides what the City of Worcester must contribute (called “net school spending”) based on local income/property tax wealth, which this year is about 28% of the foundation budget. The state then makes up the difference. The Student Opportunity Act (SOA), which was passed in Massachusetts in 2019, is a gradual change of that formula over six years, which increases the amount of funding based on real costs of educating low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, as well as costs for health insurance. Given our student population, this means increases in the foundation budget for Worcester. In anticipation of this increase in funding, WPS started offering programs earlier by using Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (also known as the ESSER Funds) to bridge the gap until we reach year six of full implementation (FY24 is year 3 of 6).
So, for each dollar received here’s a breakdown of where it comes from:
For FY24, the city contribution to WPS increased by 5.2 million for a total of $138.5 million. Taking out the allocation for charter schools and school choice, the city contribution that actually ends up in the WPS general fund is $129.2 million. According to the budget, “It is estimated that the city’s contribution will meet the FY24 minimum spending requirement by approximately $1.4 million, or 0.3% above required spending.”
For some statewide context, Worcester is very much an anomaly for having a significant enrollment increase. WPS enrollment is up about 500 students, with Worcester actually accounting for 25% of the public school enrollment increase across the entire state. Other big districts (Boston, Brockton, Springfield) continued to see declines. This, combined with the Student Opportunity Act formula finally funding at actual cost, Worcester does not have to make the hard decisions that other districts, such as Brockton, are making. Still, WPS enrollment is 1100 students less than it was before the pandemic.
Now that we know where the money is coming from, let’s talk about where they want it to go. I just want to reiterate that this is the proposed budget. School committee deliberates at meetings on June 1 and June 15 before voting on a final budget. No one from the public spoke at the budget hearing, but don’t worry you can still email the school committe your thoughts.
Let’s walk through some of the highlights.
Budget Highlights
There are a lot of increases this year. Inflation for health insurance, retirement assessments, and utility costs were all high. I’m assuming the salary increases include the tentative teacher’s contract, and hopefully a new tentative paraeducators contract. According to the budget office, health insurance and OPEB are something to keep an eye on, and “may have a significant future impact on the budget.”
Facilities
Before the Student Opportunity Act, the state underfunded districts like Worcester, that have a large majority of high needs students. So, in order to keep teachers in front of students, Worcester had to defer maintenance on buildings for many, many, many, years. Our school buildings are in desperate need of updating and $3.5 million a year is not even going to scratch the surface. At the joint meeting of the City Council Education Committee and the School’s Finance and Operations Standing Committee, Councilor Thu Nguyen shared that the city’s capital budget for the schools has not increased in FIFTEEN years. (Thank you to Councilor Nguyen for putting in an order to ask the city manager to look into updating that.) Here’s where the 3.5 million is projected to be spent this year:
Early Childhood and Elementary
Before the Student Opportunity Act (SOA) was passed, Worcester estimated that they had a non-special education teacher gap of about 720 teachers. Since SOA was passed, Worcester has hired 248. The potential addition of 59 more with this budget would fill about 43% of that gap.
Of the 604 elementary classrooms for next year the vast majority (470) are projected to be less than 23 students. Only 9 are projected to be between 27-30 students. Average elementary class size continues to be the lowest in two decades.
WPS plans to lease space to alleviate overcrowding at Lincoln Street and that also allows for 4 new full-day preschool classrooms there.
I really like this idea, and look forward to seeing what comes of it. (Not that my opinion matters, but “preppy K” would not be my first choice in names.)
Wawecus is a small elementary school with about 130 students (one class per grade) in K-6. 82% of its students are classified as high needs. Interested to see how this model works and what innovations we’ll see implemented.
School Safety
The school safety audit results still haven’t been released to the public, but should be in the next few weeks.
At an October school committee meeting administration spoke about piloting culture and climate specialists at North High (three of them) and Sullivan Middle (two of them.) Looks like this is an expansion of that model.
Teachers
Students with disabilities make up about 20% of the student population.
English learners make up about 30% of the student population.
Doherty currently has an Engineering Technology Academy as its Chapter 74 (aka Vocational) program, but will be adding others when the new school comes online.
Student Supports
It’s great to see resources going into student support services around physical and mental health and social emotional support, as Worcester students are struggling. The challenge here will be finding people to fill these positions, which has been a struggle. A number of positions were vacant this whole school year.
At an October school committee meeting the committee approved a Dean of students job description, which was piloted at North High. After a year of trying it out they want to add one to each of high schools for next year.
The budget also provides additional funds for transportation to support extracurricular needs for field trips, performances, athletics etc. Another huge benefit to WPS moving transportation in-house is not just the cost savings, but being able to offer bussing for extra-curriculars, which allows for more access for students.
So that’s the budget highlights. If you’re still reading this, I'm proud of you! Tune in on June 1st to see what the school committee thinks.
Meeting Moment. (Anyone know where we could get $3.5 million dollars?)
There’s traffic around all of our schools during drop-off and pick-up times, but Burncoat Middle/High and Roosevelt are by far the biggest clusters of them all. Roosevelt especially has been getting a lot of meeting time in the last six months, as parents, business owners, district 3 councilor George Russell, and district 3 city council candidate Feanna Jattan-Singh have all spoken at public comment about how unsafe the situation is. In April 2020, the city bought land for parking in order to alleviate the Roosevelt snarl, with councilors at the time saying it was a win-win. But the parking lot is not usable as is. George Russell brought the issue up again at this week's city council meeting.
In this video, Deputy Superintendent Brian Allen explains that there are engineering plans to alleviate the traffic problems at both schools and the projected costs for the projects are around $3.5 million each. The problem is, there are no grants or other funding sources for work relating to school traffic, so unless someone can find $3.5 million, the projects stay in limbo and the traffic stays a cluster for the immediate future.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention.
The Office of Human Resources reported on the current state of recruitment and retention of teachers and gave information about the desired state, strategies, and future steps. (See Telegram coverage here). Here are some stats from the presentation:
As you can see from the chart above, recruitment of teachers reflecting the demographics of the student body has been challenging, as has retaining teachers:
Hopefully the new teacher contract, along with some concerted efforts in these areas, things start to turn around.
Proposed Strategic Plan Committee.
The Governance and Employee Issues standing committee discussed the proposed members of the strategic plan committee. The committee asked the administration to assess it for gaps in representation, but didn’t offer any specific criteria for those gaps. The district’s goal is to get this five year strategic plan done before the start of the school year.
School Committee Elections.
School committee members are collecting signatures and we will know exactly who is on the ballot in the next few weeks. According to the Patch, there are four at-large candidates who have made it on the ballot: Susan Mailman, Tracy O’Connell Novick, Laura Clancey and Maureen Binienda. There is one candidate each in district A (Molly McCullough), district D (Alejandro Guardiola), district E (Kathleen Roy) and district F (Jermaine Johnson). District C currently has two candidates: Jermoh Kamara and Diana Biancheria. Districts B does not have candidates certified to be on the ballot yet, but they have until Tuesday, May 30 at 5pm to get signatures in. For a primary to happen, the at-large race would need five candidates and the district races would need 3 candidates. I’ll write more about the election and the new school committee districts this summer, but in the meantime, if you want to see what district you’re in, you can check here.
Upcoming Dates:
All meetings have virtual options, see the school committee site for more information.
School Committee Meetings to discuss the budget are June 1 and June 15, 4pm
Teaching, Learning and Student Supports is June 12, 5:30pm
Finance and Operations is June 20, 5:30pm
Governance and Employee Issues is June 21, 5pm
Only three-ish weeks left of school! If you find WPS in Brief valuable, please share it with your friends. If you’d like to support my work you can send me a tip. See you in June.
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