School Committee member Kirsi Allison-Ampe and Linda Hanson, president of the Arlington Education Association, provided testimony to the state Foundation Review Budget Commission in March 2015. Here are their remarks:
Thank you for your time and attention today. We greatly appreciate the efforts of the Foundation Budget Review Commission to clarify what is needed to fund the high educational expectations that are required for success in our current economic climate and that are now mandated by our state regulations.
We feel the current Foundation Budget calculations greatly underestimate the costs of educating today’s students. A comparative analysis of our local spending and Foundation Budget supports this conclusion.
Specifically, we request: adjustments to accommodate higher than average out-of-district placement costs, increases in funding for Special Education for both in- and out-of-district students, increases in funding of pupil services to cover nurses, social workers and psychologists required to work with the rising levels of challenges in today’s student population, increases to fund mandated requirements, and changes to the wage adjustment factor calculations, to better reflect the entire local market.
About Arlington
Arlington is a town of 43,000 people in the Greater Boston area. Arlington Public Schools enrollment has burgeoned over the past 5 years, increasing 9.1% since 2011. This growth shows no sign of stopping. Although Arlington has spent more than 40% in excess of Foundation Budget for many years, APS spends significantly less per pupil than the state average ($12,533 vs. state $13,999 in FY13) and also much less than a set of twelve towns (T12) locally selected as a basket of communities economically and demographically most similar to Arlington ($12,533 vs. $13,505 T12 average in FY13).
The primary source of education funding is the town: out of a total FY13 budget of $63.9 million, only $8.1 million was received in Chapter 70 aid. Arlington is densely populated and has very little commercial business, thus almost all its tax revenue (94%) is derived from residential property taxes. Providing the resources for the type of education parents expect and the state education department requires has become a burden disproportionately borne by the local communities. The Foundation Budget has not kept pace with the unfunded mandates, nor the more extensive needs of today’s students.
Today, any increases in Arlington’s total Foundation Budget, for example from increased enrollment, directly translate into more Chapter 70 aid to our town. But at the same time, any additional dollars needed but unaccounted for by Foundation Budget must be raised by local taxes.
We also have concerns about the Chapter 70 calculations, because they do not take into account several important factors, such as a town’s land available for development, availability of non-property tax revenue, actual per household income, etc. However, we understand that the charge of the Commission is to look at the Foundation Budget formula. We thus limit our discussion to this topic. Additionally, while we, too, see significant shortfalls in funding of health and other benefits, we know this is well recognized and do not focus on it here.
Analysis of Arlington Spending
When APS spending is analyzed in the manner presented to you by DESE, it is similar to the than the averages seen statewide:
But this type of analysis hides much budgetary pain. For many years Arlington’s special education out-of-district total costs have greatly exceeded the Foundation Budget’s expectation — averaging over 6 times the Foundation Budget amount. Pupil Services and Insurance and Retirement Programs have also run well over Foundation Budget expectations at approximately three times the allocation (see chart below).
And these differences add up. In FY2013, APS spent an additional $17.6 million over Foundation Budget in six categories, money beyond the $31.7 million dictated for these areas. This included $1.4 million for Instructional Leadership & Classroom and Specialist Teachers combined, $1.1 million for Guidance, Counseling and Testing, $2.9 million for Pupil Services, $6.5 million for Insurance, Retirement Programs and Other, and $5.8 million for Payments To Out-Of-District Schools, all amounts beyond Foundation Budget estimates.
Keeping in mind that Arlington spends well below the state average in per pupil costs, a picture begins to clearly emerge: the Foundation Budget does not account for adequate funding of a Massachusetts education.
Cutting Costs, Increasing Fees
Arlington has made myriad cost cutting efforts over the years. We joined the GIC in 2011 – effective in 2012. We participate in a collaborative to decrease special education transportation costs and have increased interventions to help struggling students before they are referred for Special Education assessment.
Our athletic fees are some of the highest in the area, but necessary in order to maintain an athletic program. “Extras” at the elementary school level like certified librarians, foreign language instruction or free musical instrument instruction are long gone. We have raised class sizes at all levels. In some budget years, we have had to decrease the diversity of high school offerings and increase the number of directed studies to trim expenses and balance the budget.
Rising Social-Emotional & Health Needs of Today’s Students
Each year we are seeing more children with significant health and/or social and emotional issues. To address the increasing social, emotional and health needs of our students we have added support staff such as social workers, nurses and psychologists. This has been the main area of increase in our budget over the past few years. Our principals and teachers list these support staff as their number one priority. Keeping these students in school and on track for learning requires additional resources not adequately reflected in the Foundation Budget.
These professionals are a necessary part of adequately meeting the needs of today’s students and should be factored more heavily into the Foundation Budget.
Special Education Costs – Appropriately Serving Our Most Challenged Students
We appreciate that DESE brought the costs of Special Education across the state to your attention in their presentation on 3/10/15. We, too, see significant imbalances here. The easiest number to identify is out-of-district (OOD) tuition. In Arlington, for at least the past several years, our OOD costs have exceeded Foundation Budget estimates each year by over 500%. Between FY11 and FY13, we spent an average of $6.7 million dollars each year in OOD tuition costs, vs. the Foundation Budget estimate of $1.1 million. Special education circuit breaker does not offset these costs in a meaningful way – average reimbursement for this period was only $1.5 million annually.
Comparing our numbers to the state, we have a higher percentage of students in out-of-district placements. We have more students who require out-of-district placement, and at a higher cost.
Nowhere in the Foundation Budget formula does accounting exist for a higher than average occurrence of highest need students.
Unfunded Mandates and Increasing Standards
Every new initiative has a cost in terms of time and resources for professional development, or staff to carry out the mandate. Some mandates cost districts significant amounts to implement and to maintain once implemented. Examples include the introduction of the Common Core curriculum, the new Educator Evaluation system, the increasing requirements for English language acquisition instruction for English Language Learners (students speaking English as a second language), and the continued push to decrease the achievement gap for high needs students.
Adoption of the Massachusetts Common Core State Standards meant each district had to review all curricula, determine where additions and substitutions were necessary, and create and purchase new materials to fill gaps. Much additional training and professional development were required to introduce the new frameworks and instructional techniques. Furthermore, the requirement in the Common Core to fully integrate technology translates into much larger budgets for technology as well as IT and instructional technology support.
The new evaluation system has pushed districts to spend more money on administration, whether they are curriculum leaders or building based administrators, in order to fulfill the many evaluation components. Districts require adequate staffing to ensure that all educators are observed, coached, and supported in a constant improvement cycle. In addition, the state education department, in an effort to close the achievement gap, is now requiring levels of service for ELL learners that were formerly recommended. This means more ELL teachers must be hired to meet the standard.
Together, these mandates add hundreds of thousands of required dollars to budgets both past and future. Yet there has been no adjustment in the Foundation Budget for any of them.
The final area of unfunded mandates is found in the Race to the Top waiver. While closing the achievement gap is a laudable goal, the requirement to continue moving forward at a prescribed pace to close the achievement gap has necessitated increases to the school budgets to help the most struggling students in the high needs groups meet the academic achievement of their non- high needs peer group.
Students who come from higher poverty backgrounds, who do not speak English as their native language, and/or who have learning disabilities, require a much higher level of support than students without those challenges. As the testing bar rises, even more resources are required for these students. To continually increase the number of students in the high needs groups who score proficient and above on the state tests in math, science, and English language arts each and every year requires additional resources not currently provided by the Foundation Budget calculations.
The Wage Adjustment Factor
The final area to which we would like to draw your attention is the wage adjustment factor. It can be found on the lower left corner of each district’s Foundation Budget worksheet and is applied to all Foundation Budget categories except instructional equipment, employee benefits and special education tuition. The wage adjustment factor is more weighted toward the region’s average wage, but still uses a town’s average wage at a proportion of 20%. If, like Arlington, the local economy largely consists of restaurants and small businesses, the resulting lower average local wage drops the wage adjustment factor down from 1.058 to 1.030. This ‘minor’ difference of 2.8 percentiles diminishes Arlington’s Foundation Budget by over a million dollars.
Our teachers come from all over the greater Boston area and are subject to the cost of living and other economic factors in this larger region. The regional economic trends are a more accurate indicator than the extremely local prevailing wage in a given town. The wage adjustment factor is supposed to be controlling for market forces.
To say that our teacher wages are pegged to the wage of the prevailing industry in town does not capture the relevant wage factor for our community. Teachers are subject to the cost of living in the region where they work and live, and the competitive wages in their career field. The wage adjustment formula should be altered to solely utilize the region’s average wage in calculating the wage adjustment factor, eliminating the local average wage portion.
Conclusion
Fully educating all children in the Common Core era and adequately preparing them for a productive life is an important and ambitious goal. Many aspects of recent state and federal reforms have raised the bar for districts and brought about positive changes for students. However, local communities have been left to absorb the lion’s share of the cost for these new initiatives.
State funding for special education has not kept pace with the costs of appropriately educating students with complex needs. The mandates for higher levels of service have not been accompanied by the necessary increases to fund the implementation of those services and programs. A comparative analysis of our local spending and Foundation Budget supports this conclusion.
We hope the Foundation Budget Review Commission will take a close look at the actual cost of educating today’s students to the standards the state has set. We specifically request a close analysis of the calculations for in-district and out-of- district Special Education costs, increases in funding of pupil services to cover nurses, social workers and psychologists required to work with the rising levels of challenges in today’s student population, and increases to fund new state mandated requirements.
Finally, we request you review and rethink the way the wage adjustment factor is calculated, to more fairly and accurately reflect the actual market for each community. Massachusetts is a state that prides itself on its national reputation for great schools and a strong educational system. Please help communities achieve our common educational goals with state financing that matches our ambitions.
This letter was published Monday, March 30, 2015.
