by Mary C. DeLai, President, District Resources Group
Just a little over five months ago, school districts in Massachusetts were celebrating the enactment of the Student Opportunity Act, a piece of legislation that promised to invest an additional $1.5 billion in our schools over the next seven years. Subsequently, the governor’s budget released the third week of January included a proposed injection of $303.5 million dollars in our schools for fiscal year 2021. Urban districts like Brockton, Lynn, and Lawrence were the big winners, each poised to receive $20-$30 million in additional funding next year, double digit increases over prior years.
And then came COVID-19. Seemingly, in the blink of an eye, our state’s entire fiscal future has been cast in the shadow of uncertainty. Operating with uncertainty presents challenges for each of us but for schools, uncertainty can be uniquely trying. Children, families, school employees, our communities look to our schools to offer stability and a sense of normalcy.
District and school administrators have taken that charge seriously and are to be commended for the adaptability and resilience demonstrated by all under their leadership. The sudden and rapid shift to remote learning has challenged every assumption ever made as to why and how online learning could not be done. And yet here we are, doing it.
To be clear, we all acknowledge that distance learning is no substitute for what happens in our school buildings each day; schooling is about so much more than content mastery and academic skill building. Particularly with the ever increasing focus on the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of children. For many children in the Commonwealth, schools are a haven from a stormy home life, a place to get healthy meals every day, and a place where they are seen and heard by many caring adults. School is a place to flourish, to build confidence through academic, extracurricular, or athletic successes. For teachers, it is a place of fulfillment, using skills and talents to enrich the lives of children. For other school employees, it is a place they can nurture and care for children and connect with friends and colleagues each day.
Education futurists continue to assert that online, distance, remote learning will be the new trend for K-12 education, evidenced by the increasing emergence of virtual schools. Educators and administrators push back hard, defending our brick and mortar schools as necessary and critical to child development and flourishing. Now, more than ever, COVID-19 is likely to necessitate a hybrid approach; necessity is the mother of invention and innovation.
Schools in Massachusetts are now closed through the end of June. Instruction for the remainder of SY’19-20, will continue remotely, for approximately half the typical school day. No state assessments. Months of lessons left untaught, standards unaddressed, skills undeveloped. And much is unknown about what will happen in September as students would typically be preparing to return to what we hope will be normal operations. Many are warning to expect things to be anything but normal.
Despite the extended school closures, school finance officials are working hard to balance accountability to taxpayers with a felt moral obligation to provide as much financial stability as possible to their employees and vendors. Some districts seem ready to challenge long standing municipal finance regulations to keep vendors whole so they could remain solvent and able to provide critical services in the future while still tending to their fiscal responsibilities to protect taxpayer dollars. Federal relief money for schools appears to be conditioned upon districts continuing to pay employees and vendors. What exactly that means is sure to be anyone’s guess.
School business officials are in a uniquely challenging position right now. They must close out the current fiscal year in the hopes of minimizing deficits in special revenue accounts to which tuitions and fees are deposited throughout the year. Parents and families are being issued refunds for their preschool tuitions, or extended day, transportation, or athletic fees. Many of those districts are continuing to pay their employees and vendors from these funds meaning expenses will exceed receipts, leaving potentially significant deficits that will need to be covered by current year school or municipal operating funds or reserves.
Similarly, given the need for the state to revise the revenue projections upon which initial FY21 state budget proposals were based, municipalities and districts will not know how much state funding they will received until well into the summer. Local town meetings have nearly all been postponed until June and may not have final numbers from the state as they are asked to approve town budgets. City councils will be in the same position as they typically vote their budgets in early to mid-June. Many are already contemplating or proposing “one-twelfth” or temporary budgets. Many municipal leaders are advising schools to anticipate nothing more than level funding in FY’21 but to also prepare for cuts of 5% – 10%, with the urban districts being asked to look at the larger cuts.
What does this mean for school business officials? Planning during uncertainty requires a fair amount of speculation and creativity – something that typically sends chills down the spines of budget developers and finance managers. Despite our reticence, this is a time when as leaders we are called upon to “embrace uncertainty”. Planning in times like this necessitates creative thinking. What are the likely scenarios? What disruptions might we anticipate (short or long term closures, rolling shutdowns, enhanced or relaxed social distancing, extended leave for vulnerable staff, or public health requirements such as protective equipment or temperature screenings)? What contingency plans do we need to have in place for those possibilities?
“Adapting to the challenge of COVID-19 gives America’s schools the opportunity to provide what is uniquely possible in the schoolhouse while seeking new ways to use technology and community partnerships.”
Rick Hess, American Enterprise Institute
(https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/a-blueprint-for-back-to-school)
Over the next several weeks, we will publish a series of posts that we hope will help inform those planning, as well as communication efforts. We will look at where we have been and provide a comprehensive timeline of legislative and public health responses to COVID-19 to date. We will share information on federal funding for K-12 education authorized to date as well as the key provisions of which school leaders should be aware. We will look at key planning considerations and suggested approaches for reintegration planning efforts and for assessing the budgetary and operational impacts of various scenarios. And finally, we will look at how best to support students and staff with a focus on boosting organizational, team, and personal resilience. How can we ensure that our districts are able to not just “bounce back” but perhaps even “bounce forward” – not returning to the way things were, but to a better version of what public education might be.