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Think of last year, which was supposed to be the first year of SOA implementation is a flat line (there was some inflation, but there wasn't a real gain). Okay, so THIS year, we get the first 1/7th of implementation!

which is great EXCEPT when put in the context of the two usual variables for the foundation budget:

Inflation for all categories save health insurance is only 1.48%. That's just not how much most categories of anything are going up in real costs. (Health insurance isn't going up by 2.78%, either, bet you a hamburger.)

*once we're going out and eating hamburgers again

AND that 30,579 student drop directly feeds the foundation budget statewide. Remember, at ground, our funding system is a student based formula.

I *think* for those who have been around a bit (especially through Q2?) we perhaps have a general understanding that a drop in enrollment does not necessarily translate to a drop in costs. (At least I hope we have that general understanding)

This is a pandemic-related drop in enrollment, relating directly to a pandemic-related drop in the foundation budget.

As much as this was made very clear in

@worcesterpublic

's presentation last week, it wasn't until I was pulling apart

@FRPSsupt

's numbers yesterday that I appreciated quite how this hits the foundation budget.

So, you know that there's a dollar amount per pupil by grade level, right? And then it multiplies by the number of pupils in that category. So X number of kindergartners times the dollar amount per kindergartner, and so forth.

Now each of those dollar amounts goes up (like usual) due to inflation this year PLUS SOA implementation. So you'd expect the totals in each case to get bigger than last year, right? Historic funding change and all?

Nope.

As I said, I looked at this for Fall River yesterday, which made me pull open Worcester today. Here's the categories that went DOWN in enrollment for Worcester (it's all but high school; overall went down, too):

As a result? ONLY the categories highlighted in yellow went UP in dollar amounts over last year: high school, because the enrollment increased, and low income, because the SOA gain was great enough to overcome the drop in enrollment.

And yes, overall (and

@Brian_E_Allen

said this at the beginning last week, but I didn't quite register the horror of this until now), the foundation budget for the Worcester Public Schools, in the first year of SOA implementation went DOWN over last year.

(NOTE: this does not mean our Chapter 70 aid went down. Remember, that calculation is based also on community ability to contribute. And districts also get hold harmless and minimum aid.)

And yes, having budgets drop from year to year isn't, cosmically, unusual. HOWEVER, is this what you thought was going to happen during the first year of the Student Opportunity Act implementation? I'm guessing not. It isn't what I expected, for sure.

So back to my image at the top: what we have is the SOA being held back by the pandemic-related downswing in enrollment--

--of which, by the way, statewide more than half are K and PreK and haven't shown up elsewhere, thus there's a pretty good chance those are students whose families have simply held them out for a year.

Even if you are seeing a gain in your Ch. 70--and Worcester is, to be fair here--what you're seeing is only going to go towards your inflationary increases. And that's for the districts that were supposed to be the big GAINERS by SOA IMMEDIATELY.

Look, this isn't whining. We fought hard for this. Our kids constitutionally are guaranteed more than they are getting. This ain't it.

We at least--at least!--need hold harmless on enrollment (by category: no net losses over the prior year).

I personally will say (as always this is no one's official position on anything) that I really don't want to have another round of "SOA plans" that somehow have to paper over what we're getting isn't even enough to cover structural increases. Let's be real about this.

And all of this is just getting us to where we were supposed to be last February. None of this gets us the sort of cosmic work that really ought to be done as a result of the pandemic.