In reaction to coverage of the Superintendent's FY2010 budget proposal...
As working with the superintendent to arrive at an approved budget is one of the most important functions of the School Committee, I wanted to share my thoughts on the budget recently proposed by Dr. Young.
First of all, we must recognize the challenge and hard work that goes into creating a budget for an organization as complex as the Newton Public Schools. It is a significant effort and one which, unfortunately, is seldom rewarding or fulfilling. That being said, I do have some concerns and suggestions.
My immediate reaction to the budget proposal was that it is more of the same. What do I mean by that? This budget is presented in comparison to prior years’ budgets. Each section describes the change from prior year and justifies why the change (up or down). This approach, while easy to follow, does not in any fundamental way solve the structural financial problems facing our schools. This budget misses an opportunity to do one or more things differently.
The first opportunity is to throw out last year’s budget and start from scratch using a top-down, priority based budgeting approach. In this method you establish the amount of money that is available (in this case dictated by the mayor), then establish the priorities of what you want to achieve (in this case outlined by the school committee). From there you examine how much money you are willing to allocate to each priority and continue until you run out of money to allocate. This is obviously an iterative process as once the list of what falls off the table is known priorities may be revised. Even if this approach does not drive the budget to completion on its own, it can lead to surprising conclusions that might not otherwise be discovered.
The second item that I was surprised to see omitted from the budget proposal was explicit discussion of the upcoming contract negotiations. I had read through nearly the entire budget document before I saw in the press that the budget proposal called for wage freezes on the contract. I quickly went back to the document and searched for “contract”, “freeze”, and “COLA” and found nothing relevant. Why were the assumptions used in the budget not explicitly stated in the document? Why were the potential budgetary impacts of varying contract scenarios not explicitly described? I remember the passionate and vivid comparisons made in both text and tables of the “Override Budget” compared to the “Allocation Budget” last year. Why the reticence to be equally explicit now?
The final point I will discuss is the opportunity to demonstrate data driven decision making. This is something that the School Committee has been requesting for some time and as such should be a priority within the budget. The example I will use is the proposal to expand the math coaches program on page 41 of the document. This comes enticingly close to using data. 2008 MCAS test results are cited as is industry research. However, the description of the pilot program that placed coaches at the six elementary schools with the lowest MCAS scores doesn't describe the change in MCAS scores at those schools compared to the changes at the schools without math coaches (*1) -- it is clear that the point has been missed. This seems like an obvious way to measure the success of the program. Instead the proposal says:
“Experience to date indicates that the presence of a coach – a strong, competent, and caring colleague whose focus is on mathematics teaching and learning - has a powerful effect on teachers’ willingness to make improving their mathematics instruction a priority. Conversely, schools without math coaches have had a much more difficult time improving mathematics teaching and learning, though they have benefited from system wide professional development delivered by coaches.”
In general, the budget document is missing the same section for every item. After "What is the Need?" and "What is the expected outcome of this proposal?", should be "How will effectiveness be measured?", only then does "What is the cost?" make sense.
RSS Feed