If you were one of the (at last tally and according to YouTube) 88 people who have streamed Monday night’s School Committee meeting, I commend your interest in the Attleboro Public Schools. This meeting was reasonably important, because the Governor has released her proposed State budget, which forms the basis for 95% of the budget for the next school year. Also, I asked a couple of dumb questions, which is par for the course — more about that later.
Bear with me for some background information about the school budget. I didn’t know this stuff before I ran for School Committee, so I hope it’s useful for everyone else too.
It was a surprise to me to learn that the City of Attleboro doesn’t really set the school budget; for an extremely complex series of reasons, the APS budget is driven by a figure that the state calls “net minimum school spending,” which the City is required to spend on the schools. That figure is in itself derived from a fairly complicated formula that takes into account a base figure for each student enrolled at an APS school during the previous budget year, but also adds dollars based on the City demographics and all sorts of other factors. That, plus direct aid from the State (which they call Chapter 70, after the section of of the Massachusetts General Laws that created it), form the basis of the Attleboro Public School budget. This year, the aid from the State is $55,938,155. The minimum City contribution for this year is $46,028,688. So that’s $56 million from the state, $46 million from the City, and as they say, “Bob’s your Uncle,” your budget is finalized? Well….
Not quite. The State defines a minimum. Almost every city in town in Massachusetts spends over the minimum. In fact, from the eleven districts in the state defined cohort that we belong to, we are, I believe, second to last, at 2.5% over minimum. It’s not a close race, either. The median contribution from that cohort is around 15% and the top is over 25%. So when you read that the City doesn’t “properly” fund the schools, that’s what you are reading about. The City’s on the hook for $46 million bucks to make the minimum. Even though this year is considered to be an extremely poor year for Chapter 70 aid, with the City’s anticipated “over minimum” spending of $1.6 million, and by diligently spending the remaining pandemic related funds (which dry up this year), we’re anticipating a budget of around $103 million, which allows us to squeak by doing exactly what we did last year. Don’t fix anything that’s not catastrophically broken. If we got by without enough staff last year, we can do it again this year. That is called a “level service” budget and living under one is to die a death of a thousand cuts. You can never get ahead of problems because you are working frantically to keep the plane in the air. That’s the state the schools are in. It looks good from 10,000 feet: our MCAS scores are good, our graduation rates and other metrics are competitive, enrollment is up, and everyone raves about the new high school with arguably the best CTE program in the state. These things are worth being proud of. But with insufficient funding, those are not sustainable. Every position is one-deep; most people wear multiple hats; technical debt accumulates; some maintenance gets deferred. It’s working, to the ex because Attleboro is a unique community, blessed to have great teachers and a great administration, and the vast majority of them work far more hours than they are required.
Anyhow, this is all a long way around to the dumb question I asked David Sawyer, which you can find at about 55 minutes into the meeting. I mentioned that around the city, there’s a perception that the schools have an endless appetite; that no amount of spending is sufficient. I asked him to help us all understand exactly what they would do with appropriate spending. Of course, that was a dumb question. David Sawyer very kindly reminded me that they do exactly that every year, and that they presented that information in December at a joint meeting of the City Council and School Committee. I got a copy of the document Tuesday, and I’ve posted it here. Essentially, for about $10,000,000, we would: reduce class size (to 22 in K-4 and 25 in 5-12), increase student support, hire curriculum specialists and other positions to perform teacher support, and add a remarkable 70 paraprofessionals.
Now, I’ve lived in Attleboro my whole life. I understand. I don’t expect $10,000,000 to magically materialize. My intent here is to present the information in a non-technical way so that folks can understand why, despite the apparent health of the schools, Superintendent Sawyer believes that the underfunding is a crisis. It’s important to remember, the Administration isn’t asking for money for frivolous purposes. These are all things that they feel Attleboro badly needs. Reducing class sizes, adding appropriate support staff, paraprofessionals, counselors, curriculum specialists — these things are all a foundational part of running a school system. These are things that other local school districts do. It’s what the Administration believes is necessary: not to do new things, but to correctly fund the work that we’re doing now. To make it sustainable and lasting, so that ten years from now, we aren’t facing a crisis and wondering how we managed to screw up the schools so badly.
