Information from March 28th Meeting on: 1. Budget Development and Decisions; and Assessments, Curriculum, and Common Core

Our third School StatNet meeting was held at Worcester Technical High School on Friday, March 28, from 8:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.

Topic: The meeting included two separate strands, with one focused on district budget development and decision making, and a second focused on what curricula and assessments districts are using, and how these are helping districts align instruction to the common core. The group reviewed summarized data relating to each of these topics. See here for an agenda.

Attendees: The following cities and/or districts sent representatives and/or shared data as part of the meeting: Amherst-Pelham, Ashland, Boston, Everett, Fall River, Franklin County Regional Tech, Hudson, Leominster, Lowell, Milford, North Brookfield, Somerset-Berkeley, Somerville, Springfield, Swampscott, Waltham, Watertown, Webster, Weston, Wilmington, and Worcester. In addition, representatives from the following State agencies attended: Administration and Finance, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, several District and School Assistance Centers, and the Executive Office of Education. Finally, professors/staff from Northeastern University and from the University of Massachusetts Boston attended.
 
Take Aways: Participant feedback and take-aways from the meeting are summarized here. Below is a brief summary of the discussions that occurred with each segment of the agenda.

A few of the issues discussed in the meeting were:

Joint Session on District Strategy: Independently and with others at their table, attendees discussed their districts’ theories of change, discussed what their district would invest in, if given the chance, and discussed where they would cut. To see a summary of what people said in this session, please see here.

Break-Out 1 - Curriculum and Instruction: Summary of K8 curricula and discussion of strategies to implement curricula with fidelity: Participants reviewed and compared which curricula each districts is using for each subject and grade span.

Break-Out 2 - Curriculum and Instruction: Summary of K8 assessments in use and Discussion of protocols for data meetings: Participants reviewed how each district uses assessments and what formats districts use for data meetings.

Break-Out 1 – Finance and Operations: Summary of budget process and budgeting decisions. In this session, the following themes came up as topics that people would like to investigate further:

• School Improvement and budgeting: Attendees asked if some districts had a structured process to tie school improvement planning into the annual budget process. People said they’d like to see a codified protocol of how this might work, including potentially embedding more information relating to school/district goals into the budget document.
• Regional issues: For most topics discussed, and especially for the annual budget development process, it was clear that regional districts have special challenges and/or perhaps opportunities. MARS works on some of these issues and School StatNet staff asked how StatNet can help support that work.
• Benefits Spending: The discussion pointed out how huge benefit-related spending is for districts. Participants said that this is a topic for which much more analysis and discussion would help, so as to identify what levers are available to impact the spending.
• Municipal/District Issues: A number of questions came up relating to how districts and municipalities divide work or negotiate spending. A longer discussion of these issues might be worth doing.
• Privatization: For a number of different functions (e.g. food service and transportation), participants reported on different practices in terms of privatization of those functions. It maybe worth investigating the pros and cons of privatization vs. carrying out work in-house.
• Achievement gap and low-income districts: Participants talked about budget constraints and the discussion highlighted the financial landscape in which districts serving the poorest students have the fewest resources to do so, in many cases. The question was raised as to what can be done?
• Decentralization vs. centralization: Participants talked about how there are some incentives (e.g. regionalization) to consolidate administrative functions and others (e.g. innovation schools/charter schools) to decentralize and divide administrative functions. How do we reconcile those two different trends?
• Quality of data: Participants pointed out that districts report spending by DESE budget category differently, in some cases making it difficult to compare spending trends across districts or over time. The category for teacher coaching and instructional leadership, in particular, is hard to isolate for analysis.
• Out-of-district spending: As with benefit spending, out-of-district is a huge component of district spending that has been growing. Participants talked about how this topic could get studied more in future meetings.

Break-Out 2 – Finance and Operations: In the second break-out, participants discussed the following:

• Development of in-district special education programs: The group discussed several examples of districts trying to develop more in-district placements for special education students. One idea that required more investigation is the possibility of sharing specialized positions between districts. 
• Building-level autonomy and weighted budgets: Participants talked about the challenges and possible benefits with creating weighted budgets.
• Using transportation data case study: Jamie Racanelli from Boston Public Schools presented on how his department uses transportation data. Participants asked about how the department was able to make a culture change and how that culture spreads to other divisions.
• Budget categories and funding sources: John Portz from Northeastern University presented on how the design of budget categories within budget documents impacts how districts and the public can track spending and revenue on a yearly and more frequent basis.

Lunch Discussion 1 – Comparing notes on PARCC implementation: The group discussed how PARCC implementation is going. Participants had a lot of questions, and anecdotes of test-taking mishaps (mostly driven by lack of knowledge among district test administrators). In addition, they wondered if it’s possible for the DESE to provide more information to parents so that districts don’t have to handle the push-back from parents on their own. Receiving recommendations for necessary technology procurement and technology infrastructure improvements would be helpful as well. One big question was how test questions and/or testing results may vary depending on the format used for test administration.

Lunch Discussion 2 – Plans for State/Local Study Team: The group considered a number of possible topics to study over the course of five meetings in the coming year and selected the following topic: Look into how districts can carry out a ROI analysis to support decision making regarding district investments/strategies, perhaps with a focus on what helps close the achievement gap. A meeting in the Worcester area will be planned for the spring.

Lunch Discussion 3 – Discussion of School StatNet Round 2 analytical capacity: This group reviewed different options for what School StatNet may be able to offer in the second year of its roll-out, which begins this spring.

Lunch Discussion 4 – Updates on Edwin Analytics functionality under development: This group discussed the reports that are in the pipeline for release by the Edwin Analytics team.