FYI from BSF, 08.04.23
Summer Reading
The state budget passed this week. It still requires Governor Healey’s sign-off, but all signs point to a big boon for education. Chapter 70 (state aid for public schools) is up, community college is free for a lot more people, it no longer matters how or when you got to Massachusetts to qualify for in-state tuition, and universal free meals will continue in schools for another year.
Boston will see a modest increase in state aid (now north of half a billion dollars), although total education aid was essentially flat from last year.
More than half of state dollars for Boston go to education. But only 2% of those dollars will go to Boston Public Schools (BPS).
Why?
State aid is distributed, at the municipal and town level, to support all of its public school students. This includes children enrolled in charter schools. In funding charters, the state formula is meant to reflect local spending. The result in Boston? With +10,000 children enrolled in charters and the highest per-pupil spending of any major city in the country, nearly all state aid for Boston is spent on its charters.
The state's contribution to BPS ends up being about $10 per student.
We all like to think that Boston is unique; in the case of school funding, it truly is. It is the only district in the Commonwealth that has a high-needs population, a wealthy tax base, and a large charter school sector. The result is a school district that is uniquely reliant on local funding. So far, Boston has been able to afford it.
Recently state surpluses have been the norm, and cities and towns still have about 13 months to obligate federal recovery funds for schools (ESSER) and about 18 months to obligate federal funds for local governments (ARPA). With all this extra money, budget negotiations at the state and local level have focused on addition.
Given the protracted nature of this year's negotiations, it makes one wonder: when federal dollars dry up and/or state and local dollars trickle, what does it look like when the focus is on subtraction?
With a visit from Vice President Harris, Roxbury Community College became a focal point of the national NAACP Convention this past week. PK-12 education was voted by the convention as priority policy.
A former BPS autonomous school leader finds herself in serious legal trouble.
The city continues to make the case for the O’Bryant to move to the West Roxbury Educational Complex.
It’s official - the Massachusetts Teachers Association has put the MCAS graduation requirement on the ballot.
In different cases and contexts, the Attorneys General of Massachusetts and Oklahoma assert charter schools as public entities.
There is a lot of talk of school consolidations with declining enrollment. It has already started in Indianapolis.