The school committee met twice this week to continue the difficult decisions ahead of them as they prepared to finalize and vote on a balanced budget for FY25.
I took a look at the total student expenditures and compared it to inflation https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913- I only was able to find statistics on total expenditures up to 2022 https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/analysis/finance.aspx?orgcode=01780000&orgtypecode=5&. I think that total expenditures is probably a better metric than local revenue because the total amount of revenue could go up even if local revenue went down if state and federal revenue more than offset the local revenue or alternatively local revenue for schools could massively increase but total school spending per student could go down if state/federal revenue was lost. If you know where to find the total expenditures for 2023, 2024 and what we would expect for 2025 let me know because I am pretty curious (I was only able to find information around proposed local revenue). I found that except for 2019 the school expenditures outpaced inflation. I think your article gives some reasonable explanations for that such as increased need for special education and mental health due to the pandemic and other factors, I can't give hard numbers but extrapolating the data out to 2025 suggests that this particular budget is outside of recent historical trends and I am not sure how to account for that even with any of the factors that you mentioned. I watched some but not all of the town meetings around the budget override and I didn't see any explanation around what about this year in particular is special as compared to 2023-2024 where there wasn't a budget override maybe one time covid funds were lost and not substituted by any other increases in state and federal revenue.
The other thing I am not sure how to determine is if providing more money will lead to better outcomes. While it is certainly likely that some programs will be lost the relationship between school funding and outcomes is not particularly strong for example if you compare Wakefield to Melrose, Wakefield spends more money per pupil bust has worse outcomes at least as far as test scores https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/analysis/nextgenmcas.aspx?orgcode=01780000&orgtypecode=5&
For all we know the money that is being proposed is both inadequate and being misallocated, maybe more money needs to be spent on teacher pay to attract the best candidates or more should be spent on counseling to improve mental health or any number of other programs. Maybe I missed the meeting where this was covered but I am not sure what the goals that the school is trying to achieve and how funding fits into any of those goals.
Rather than watch city council meetings, I would invite you to watch school committee meetings. In every meeting, they discuss the budget and how closely expenses are mapping to budget numbers, and what is falling outside of budget numbers (and why). What has happened since COVID, so the 2019-2025 expense numbers, is that specific costs have risen astronomically, without any assistance from the state or federal government to help offset these costs. These are the transportation and out of district costs for the highest need students. That is outside of any addition to inflation increases on goods and services. Plus the teachers, who are already paid very low, will get a 3.3% raise each year until 2025, when their contract will be renegotiated. So while a budget might assume a specific per-pupil cost, that goes out the window when there is even a slight increase in out-of-district placement (that is, on average $100,000 per student). As well, I'm not sure that looking at academic outcomes is the best metric...with more high-needs kids, especially those being place out of district, I'm sure those specific metrics are implicated, and I'm not sure that's how we want to measure how we assist our students. I can understand your point, but I'm honestly not sure how we add in the specific factors from the pandemic: more students with more needs. What I do know, from listening to school committee meetings, is that costs are sky rocketing in certain areas, vastly outpacing the budget numbers.
Sandy, First, thank you for all the work you do to help us understand these numbers. You're filling a real void in this community. From reading your posts and other documents I came up with the following figures and was hoping you could confirm that they're generally correct or let me know where I'm off. FY25 School Committee budget (maintaining level services approved by the School Committee): $51 million. Chapter 70 funding from the State: $12.1 million. Offsets: $5.6 million. Remaining amount needed to fund the budget as approved by the School Committee: $33.3 million. The city can (or will) fund $28.9 million. The shortfall is $4.4 million, or thereabouts. Again, is this basically accurate or am I way off. Thanks, so much. Patrick DeVivo, 129 Pearl Street
Good point! From other districts that provide this program: The Language Based Learning Disabilities programs provide intensive instruction to address students’ developing language skills. The program’s focus is on the development of skills in the areas of reading, speaking, listening and writing.
I took a look at the total student expenditures and compared it to inflation https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913- I only was able to find statistics on total expenditures up to 2022 https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/analysis/finance.aspx?orgcode=01780000&orgtypecode=5&. I think that total expenditures is probably a better metric than local revenue because the total amount of revenue could go up even if local revenue went down if state and federal revenue more than offset the local revenue or alternatively local revenue for schools could massively increase but total school spending per student could go down if state/federal revenue was lost. If you know where to find the total expenditures for 2023, 2024 and what we would expect for 2025 let me know because I am pretty curious (I was only able to find information around proposed local revenue). I found that except for 2019 the school expenditures outpaced inflation. I think your article gives some reasonable explanations for that such as increased need for special education and mental health due to the pandemic and other factors, I can't give hard numbers but extrapolating the data out to 2025 suggests that this particular budget is outside of recent historical trends and I am not sure how to account for that even with any of the factors that you mentioned. I watched some but not all of the town meetings around the budget override and I didn't see any explanation around what about this year in particular is special as compared to 2023-2024 where there wasn't a budget override maybe one time covid funds were lost and not substituted by any other increases in state and federal revenue.
The other thing I am not sure how to determine is if providing more money will lead to better outcomes. While it is certainly likely that some programs will be lost the relationship between school funding and outcomes is not particularly strong for example if you compare Wakefield to Melrose, Wakefield spends more money per pupil bust has worse outcomes at least as far as test scores https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/analysis/nextgenmcas.aspx?orgcode=01780000&orgtypecode=5&
Although this review is old, I don't see much evidence that the research has changed around school funding and outcomes https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1303&context=edconsiderations
Here is a counterpoint to that idea though, although the author mentions here that the relationship is small https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=c5ac56ccc2f172cdcee48ec468f3041bb5c91794
For all we know the money that is being proposed is both inadequate and being misallocated, maybe more money needs to be spent on teacher pay to attract the best candidates or more should be spent on counseling to improve mental health or any number of other programs. Maybe I missed the meeting where this was covered but I am not sure what the goals that the school is trying to achieve and how funding fits into any of those goals.
Rather than watch city council meetings, I would invite you to watch school committee meetings. In every meeting, they discuss the budget and how closely expenses are mapping to budget numbers, and what is falling outside of budget numbers (and why). What has happened since COVID, so the 2019-2025 expense numbers, is that specific costs have risen astronomically, without any assistance from the state or federal government to help offset these costs. These are the transportation and out of district costs for the highest need students. That is outside of any addition to inflation increases on goods and services. Plus the teachers, who are already paid very low, will get a 3.3% raise each year until 2025, when their contract will be renegotiated. So while a budget might assume a specific per-pupil cost, that goes out the window when there is even a slight increase in out-of-district placement (that is, on average $100,000 per student). As well, I'm not sure that looking at academic outcomes is the best metric...with more high-needs kids, especially those being place out of district, I'm sure those specific metrics are implicated, and I'm not sure that's how we want to measure how we assist our students. I can understand your point, but I'm honestly not sure how we add in the specific factors from the pandemic: more students with more needs. What I do know, from listening to school committee meetings, is that costs are sky rocketing in certain areas, vastly outpacing the budget numbers.
Sandy, First, thank you for all the work you do to help us understand these numbers. You're filling a real void in this community. From reading your posts and other documents I came up with the following figures and was hoping you could confirm that they're generally correct or let me know where I'm off. FY25 School Committee budget (maintaining level services approved by the School Committee): $51 million. Chapter 70 funding from the State: $12.1 million. Offsets: $5.6 million. Remaining amount needed to fund the budget as approved by the School Committee: $33.3 million. The city can (or will) fund $28.9 million. The shortfall is $4.4 million, or thereabouts. Again, is this basically accurate or am I way off. Thanks, so much. Patrick DeVivo, 129 Pearl Street
It would be helpful to include a short explanation of the "language based learning program" whenever it is mentioned. I don't know what it is.
Good point! From other districts that provide this program: The Language Based Learning Disabilities programs provide intensive instruction to address students’ developing language skills. The program’s focus is on the development of skills in the areas of reading, speaking, listening and writing.
It's such a confusingly named program; most learning is language based.