Framingham Cuts Education by $10 Million/Year to Fix Infrastructure

It is not often that major decisions are made in a city or town which will affect its community for years to come. It is especially rare for those decisions to be both highly adverse to children’s education and to have been accomplished with obscure financial maneuvers which camouflage their effect.

And yet we are, without any doubt, in one of those rare moments.

Three major crises are actively damaging the Framingham Public Schools (FPS). All can be solved if the $10 million/year which has been shifted from the school district budget is returned to education in full measure. The Mayor has other options available for addressing the very real infrastructure problems in the city. The worst approach right now would be to attempt to remedy years of avoidable infrastructure neglect, by deliberately defunding education. Systemic education damage is almost impossible to repair.

All arguments made below are based on data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website:

https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/general/general.aspx?topNavID=1&leftNavId=100&orgcode=01000000&orgtypecode=5

and the FPS FY24 budget book:

https://www.framingham.k12.ma.us/cms/lib/MA01907569/Centricity//Domain/81/2023%20Packets/03.29.23/Framingham%20Public%20Schools%20Fiscal%20Year%202024%20Budget%20Book.pdf

To grasp the scale of the problem, one must understand that the school district annual budget is composed of two major pieces. The first is the ‘local contribution’, which is funded by the city from annual property tax revenues. The second is the state Chapter 70 aid, which is designed to provide much needed additional support for low-income (LI) students, special needs (SPED) students, and English language learner (ELL) students, whose first language is not English.

The chart above is taken from the FPS FY24 budget book at p.96 and shows the history of the local contribution and Chapter 70 aid for the last 10 years.

Chapter 70 aid has steadily and reliably increased each year, calibrated to inflation, growing student numbers and changes in demographics for LI, SPED and ELL students. There has been a rapid increase in Chapter 70 aid in the last two years, due to an astounding shift in student demographics.

This school year signaled the first time that the Hispanic/Latino student population became the largest demographic group in the schools, at 47.3%. The White population is second largest at 38%. Just 4 years ago, the proportions were reversed, with Hispanic/Latino at 27.4% and White at 55.7%.

Even more remarkable is the magnitude of the demographic change in the kindergarten class (K), where the current numbers are Hispanic/Latino: 56%, White: 28%. Just four years ago, the proportions were reversed, with Hispanic/Latino: 30%, White: 50%.

That is why the state is rushing much more Chapter 70 aid to Framingham Public Schools!

The contrast with the evolution of the local contribution could not be more dramatic.

The city local contribution rose steadily from FY15 to FY22 at an average annual 2.8% increase, tracking inflation and student population increases very closely. The last 4 town years (FY15-FY18) saw the strongest support for local contribution increases, whereas the first 4 city years (FY19-FY22) saw support weaken as the zero annual property tax levy increase approach of the City Council took effect. During all those 8 years the local contribution increased. But, as the chart shows quite clearly, the local contribution has plummeted in the last two years. Cut by $4.98 million for the current fiscal year: FY23, and cut by an additional $4.77 million for the upcoming fiscal year FY24.

Just as the state rapidly increased its Chapter 70 aid to address an historic shift in student demographics, the city moved in the opposite direction, rapidly cutting its annual support of the school district by almost $10 million. Th effect of this has been to block the entire intent of Chapter 70 aid to bring real help to our most disadvantaged students.

This is crystal clear in the recently approved Framingham Public Schools (FPS) FY24 budget, which includes an $11.37 million increase, equivalent to a 7.4% annual increase, to cover:

1. Overall student population increase: 4.3%.
2. Inflation increase: 2%, largely determined by staff contract compensation increases.
3. A special additional increase to address a state mandated increase in out of district (OOD) special education (SPED) tuition costs: 1.1%

Here you see the effect of the $4.77 million cut in local contribution funding, as the Chapter 70 increase is $16.14 million, but only $11.37 million of that increase reached the schools.

What stands out is that there is NOTHING in this FY24 FPS budget to address three growing crises in the school district, all of which affect the Chapter 70 target demographic the most:

1. Late buses due to a chronic shortage of bus drivers, which affect south side students the most.
2. Reduced classroom support for English Language Learners and special needs students, due to a chronic shortage of classroom aides.
3. Rapidly changing student demographics, which demand immediate implementation of free, universal pre-K education to avoid severe early educational damage to our youngest kids.

These three remarkable threats to the educational viability of our school system could be easily solved if the $10 million in local contribution education funding, siphoned off by the city, were returned by the Mayor and invested in our students, rather than used to address the burgeoning city infrastructure backlog in water & sewer, roads and roof replacements. Note that this does not leave the Mayor between a rock and a hard place, as he could slow down the payoff of the city pension liability so it completes in 2040, rather than 2030, and get his $10 million/year from that financial maneuver, rather than by irretrievably damaging the schools. Brookline stretched their pension liability paydown date from 2030 to 2040 a few years ago to solve an infrastructure crisis. We can too.

Let’s show specifically how to invest the $10 million/year to solve all these problems.

First, late school buses.

Anyone paying attention to this problem can see that we are in trouble, but the harsh reality is that we could see the entire school bus transportation system collapse at the start of school in the fall.

NRT, the school bus company, has only been able to supply about 55 drivers this school year, rather than the 77 specified in the contract. It is obvious from recent presentations they have made to the School Committee that the problem is bus driver compensation, which for Framingham is $29/hour. NRT serves many other communities where the pay rate is much greater. In Westborough, it is more than $32/hour. Westborough gets 24 drivers of a contracted 25. So, Westborough gets 24/25, while Framingham gets 55/77. In Marlborough, it is $34/hour. It is obvious we must raise the pay rate. There is ample opportunity for the school district to simply increase driver pay. It would cost $500,000/year to go to $35/hour. But so far nothing has developed in that direction.

The real danger for Framingham is made even more clear by two further facts.

At present, NRT is preventing Framingham drivers from switching to other districts to get higher pay. But for the next school year, they will allow drivers to switch. Further, NRT has now notified the city solicitor that it may not be able to meet its contractual obligations this fall.

If ever there was time for the Mayor to act on this, it is now. Just give back $500,000/year of the $10 million/year and put an end to the current late bus chaos.

Next, classroom aides.

The pain from the shortage in classroom aides is less obvious to the community, but it is obvious to the parents of affected children, who suffer silently in class each day, as they slip further and further behind with inadequate educational supports. We have 260 classroom aide positions in FPS and last year, there were 140 vacancies, and turnover was 25%, much higher than any other staffing category.

The situation is very much like that for bus driver pay.

At present classroom aides, who get paid by the hour, make less per hour than school bus drivers. Just shifting them up to a competitive rate to stop turnover and fill all the vacancies would likely take about a 20% pay boost, just as we should be doing for school bus drivers. That would cost the city about $2.5 million/year. The Mayor should give back $2.5 million/year of the siphoned off $10 million/year and give our ELL and SPED children the support they desperately need to succeed.

That leaves $7 million to solve the pre-K problem.

It’s worth reiterating that the magnitude of the demographic change in the kindergarten class (K) is huge. The current numbers are Hispanic/Latino: 56%, White: 28%. Just four years ago, it was Hispanic/Latino: 30%, White: 50%. The K class has 724 students this year, which stands in stark contrast to the 270 pre-K kids the district serves with its BLOCKS program at Juniper Hill School. The full-time program at BLOCKS costs parents $7,000/student, and the demographics are, Hispanic/Latino: 37.2%, White: 41.3%. The contrast of a pre-K with the White population dominant, but the kindergarten with the Hispanic/Latino population dominant is an equity nightmare.

So, the pre-K program is dramatically underserving the Hispanic/Latino student population because it is expensive, and has just a third of the needed capacity.

It is well known that investments in the early years of education pay off handsomely in later year student achievement, so there is a huge opportunity here to boost student achievement by rapidly expanding our pre-K program and making it free. Although there are small scale efforts underway to make some progress in this direction, at the current pace, the full solution of universal, free pre-K education for all our youngsters is 5-7 years away, and apparently tied to the new Southside school project.

Also, anyone who thinks that the MSBA school building program is going to pay for a new elementary school and a pre-K school must be smoking something. Delays on a Hemenway replacement school, located on the southside, can be managed. Delays to pre-K expansion cannot be tolerated.

In this regard, Farley is the obvious place for the school district to expand pre-K. There will soon be a load of space available to be easily transformed to pre-K classrooms, at low cost, once Mass Bay Community College moves to its new quarters on Franklin St. at the end of the year.

What would a full, free pre-K expansion cost? The current pre-K serves 270 students and costs $3.4 million/year. Almost all pre-K SPED kids are already in pre-K and their support costs $0.6 million/year, so expanding it to 800 students would take an additional $2.8 million * 2 = $5.6 million/year. Further, pre-K tuition fees, paid by parents, which currently bring in $1.2 million/year, would be terminated and no longer provide revenue, so the true cost of universal, free pre-K expansion would be $6.8 million/year. These estimates are based on data in the FPS FY24 budget book.

In summary, $10 million/year can be used to fix the late school buses ($0.5 million/year), the aide shortage ($2.5 million/year) and the pre-K expansion ($6.8 million/year). The spare $0.2 million/year could handle any errors in these estimates.

Education and student achievement must remain cornerstones of the foundation on which the future of the City of Framingham is built. The Mayor must work with the City Council and the School Committee to return the $10 million/year local contribution to the FPS FY24 budget, and use it to boost school bus driver pay, classroom aide pay and to complete the transition to universal, free pre-K within the next year, which would guarantee that Framingham joins Boston and Springfield in setting the standard for ensuring that low income students, special needs students and English language learners are embraced and achieve their full educational potential.

If you are still with me and are exhausted from reading this article, think only of this.

Picture a Latino or Hispanic kindergartner in the school district, who waits an hour for a late bus, but eventually makes it to school. There he/she has to contend with catching up on learning English with kids who already are a year ahead, because they got to pre-K and he/she did not. The aides, who would normally provide language support, are in short supply because they are underpaid. At the end of the day, the bus is late again by an hour, and our youngster finally gets home, accompanied by a family member or friend who also spent a total of 2 hours waiting for a bus to arrive or depart. Then their family is having a hard time financially because inflation has been driving up food prices, and they have minimum wage jobs and no health care coverage, which caused a big problem in the pandemic.

If this child is not reading proficiently by the third grade his/her prospects really diminish. By the end of third grade, 75 percent of struggling readers won’t ever catch up. In fact, one of the most important predictors of graduating from high school is reading proficiently by the end of third grade.