Framingham City Council Aims To Cut Schools Budget

The City Council Finance Subcommittee, under the leadership of George King and Mike Cannon met again on Monday, May 15th, 2023. At that meeting a Public Hearing was held on the budget. Gerry Bloomfield was the only member of the public who turned up, and he delivered his customary dystopian summary of world problems, plus a call for low taxes. Councilors noted the poor public attendance and chatted briefly on how that might be fixed. George King’s take was that pretty much no one appeared because the budget was not controversial. That is an interesting take on the budget and shows how poorly informed the community really is.

The Mayor’s office has now posted a set of budget documents on the city website at:

https://www.framinghamma.gov/2210/Budget-Central-Financial-Reports

but what remains missing is a report designed to communicate to the community in a readable, compact form, what is actually happening in the budget. No one in the community really knows what the strategy is nor what the plans are, as John Stefanini noted in an earlier meeting. That is why basically no one turned up to provide input to the City Council.

This newsletter will continue to attempt to fill that gap.

What was interesting in this meeting was the discussion which followed the Public Hearing. George King and Mike Cannon continued to drive the tax cutting train forward. Their focus is simply on lowering the Mayor’s proposed property tax levy increase from 1.9% to 0.9%, which translates to a $2 million budget cut, as the tax levy is about $200 million.

And the tax cutting train is headed straight for the school district budget.

George King and Mike Cannon remain convinced that the school district is ‘swimming in money’ because they think that the latest state Chapter 70 increase of $16.2 million (M) is overblown.

Chapter 70 state aid is directed specifically to provide additional educational support for low-income students, special needs students and students whose native language is not English. The state has a very accurate formula for figuring out the level of support and the large Chapter 70 increases flowing Framingham’s way are precisely calibrated to our rapidly shifting student demographics.

But King and Cannon think they know, better than experienced state experts, what level of aid our most disadvantaged students need. That thinking has fueled City Council pressure on city financial management and already caused $10 million/year to be diverted away from Framingham students.

Here’s how.

The Framingham Public Schools (FPS) FY24 proposed budget includes a $11.4M increase, so even the mathematically challenged can see that, since Framingham received $16.2M in Chapter 70 state aid, about $4.8M has already been diverted away from the schools into city coffers. The same thing happened last year, when an $11.8M Chapter 70 increase and an FPS FY23 budget increase of $6.8M meant that $5.0M was diverted to city coffers.

Chapter 70 state aid is recurring money, so the total diversion to city coffers in the last two years totals: $5.0M+ $5.0M+ $4.7M= $14.7M, which is largely paying for the Farley ($5.8M), McCarthy ($3.7M) and Dunning ($7.4M) roof replacements. Going forward, after FY24, the Mayor will have $9.7M/year to handle the remaining $75M in school roof replacements.

In Framingham, the boosted state Chapter 70 aid for education simply is too tempting a target for skimming off large chunks to fix our self-inflicted roofing problems.

That tradeoff, whereby the city lowered the funding of the school district by almost $10M/year to fund school roofs has already been discussed at length in:

https://patch.com/massachusetts/framingham/framingham-cuts-education-10-million-year-fix-infrastructure

However, the skimming operation is now expanding beyond roof replacements.

It is astounding that in the May 15th meeting discussion, both George King and Mike Cannon pressed ahead with further cuts to the school district budget. Taking $10 million/year from education funding to replace school roofs is not enough for them. In the $2 million cut they seek in the city budget, they are looking for a good chunk of that to come from the schools.

The King/Cannon tax break engine has gone into overdrive.

I have gotten used to the fact that King/Cannon always talk about ‘efficiencies’, which translates mostly to down-sizing, and never talk about actual things like roads, school roofs or water & sewer pipes and other infrastructure, nor school bus driver pay, classroom aide shortages, nor educational damage to non-English speaking 4-year-olds who are blocked from pre-K programs by family income and pre-K capacity barriers.

So, George and Mike never think in terms of the real impacts of the cuts they propose.

It is just an accounting exercise to achieve their tax break goals. Also, George was very concerned about a narrative getting out that he was seeking cuts to the school district budget, although that is what he seeks. He prefers to think of it as ‘tidying things up’. An accounting exercise. Go figure.

Accounting exercise or not, I do know exactly what George King is after, as I was chairperson of the School Committee Finance & Operations Subcommittee for 4 years, from 2018 to 2021, working closely with George on budget issues, and ensuring that the City Council Finance Subcommittee was always in the loop on school district budgeting strategy and plans. I know George’s financial objectives very well.

George wants to gut an account which typically provides up to $2 million in reserve funds for students with the greatest special needs.

The oddest thing about George is that he continues to suffer from a major misunderstanding about that part of school finances which deals with funding designed to ensure our students with the most severe special needs are properly supported. FPS spends about $20 million/year on out of district tuitions, which pays for placing those students at facilities which deliver them the specialized care they need. One of the risks in this area is that, without warning, a student can move to Framingham and need $200,000 or more in annual support. Lincoln Lynch, the FPS Executive Director of Finance & Operations, knows that risk very well, as when he served in Norton, he had 16 high needs students move in in one year.

To guard against such volatility, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recommends that each school district maintain a special education reserve, which, following their rules, can hold as much as $6 million for Framingham. Framingham has maintained such a reserve for many years and a sound reserve amounts to about $2 million. The current level of reserve is $600,000, which is low due to budget pressures on FPS. Yet George has his eye on that for a reduction to zero.

Lincoln Lynch and I had perennial fights with George over this reserve. George thinks that all year end money remaining in FPS reserves should be transferred to the city. That would gut the reserve account and remove a critical protection for high needs students. George’s incessant attacks became such a problem that Lincoln and I collaborated on drafting a specific School Committee policy to protect our most vulnerable students. See that policy at:

http://z2policy.ctspublish.com/masc/browse/framinghamset/framingham/DIBA

So, the game is on.

Will the King/Cannon tax break engine be able to convert the FPS special needs reserve into a tax break?