1.At public participation, Judi Paradis, a parent and school librarian and 32 other parents had sent a letter to Kay Donovan,the SC and the Advocate asking for a certified librarian in every school in Arlington. She spoke on behalf of that letter bringing up the current deficiencies in the Arlington school library program. We are deficient in every measure according to the guidelines of the School Library Media Association, and especially in staffing as we only have 1 certified librarian to share among 7 elementary schools. We need to give the libraries a priority in the spending of resources. The State Library Association is lobbying to require a certified librarian in every public school. The ties between library services and literacy is known so we need to support this service.

2. Rep. Anne Paulsen, Rep. Jim Marzilli, and Senator Bob Havern spoke about what is happening at the state level concerning future budget issues.

Sen. Havern said there are 3 major issues:

He indicated it is reckless to decrease the income tax rate to 5% as reserve funds are low and Medicare keeps increasing. Further, in public polls in Massachusetts, funding education has fallen to a lower priority than before, only 12% of the public now consider it of highest concern. Health care, taxes, jobs come first. This is not good news for education, even though it's probably because we have a bad economy now so people are focused more on the here and now rather than investing in the future.

Now that Speaker Finneran is gone, Bob Havern still doesn't see much change for education as the Governor and other leaders weren't educated in the public schools themselves. It is thought, at the Statehouse, that Arlington is one of the wealthy communities so they can afford funding decreases. He thought we should rely on income and sales taxes for education rather than property taxes, but that's a very long term idea.

He doesn't like the idea of increasing school fees because we are a commonwealth and the people who fall through the cracks are those who won't be able to pay those fees. A reasonable state income tax would easily pay for the services we need or a dedicated sales tax.

Rep. Paulsen said that if the court rules to equalize education and we give more funding to urban, poorer communities, this will hurt suburban communities. The money has to come from somewhere so either those communities that lose out will have to increase property taxes. Although as we well know, proposition 2.5 overrides are not easy to pass so we may just end up cutting services. She stressed that we don't want to lose the good suburban schools! And the support of the taxpayers who send their children to these schools. She also thought we shouldn't be depending so much on property taxes to fund the schools.

Further she thought the charter schools have not been evaluated properly, only by the Charter schools themselves and we are spending $170 Million of state funds on them! Yet the expenses don't cover the costs when we take back from the public schools to pay per student charges.

[My comment: If you ever took elementary economics you would understand that when there is an economy of scale such as your average school system, the marginal cost of one extra unit is minimal and is not the "average cost" of each unit. This is why when you take away one student you don't decrease the cost to the local school but the school ends up paying the full cost of an average student to the charter school! This is why local school systems end up subsidizing charter schools and cannibalizing themselves. I think it would be fairer to make a formula whereby a local school district doesn't lose funding per pupil lost but per class/teacher lost!]

Anne said that the Romney income tax cut to 5% will result in service losses. We have already cut the big waste out of our government, we continue to implement all cost saving measures and efficiences we find, but this won't make up for the loss of revenues. The public needs to understand that our public schools and other services are valuable and necessary and a great opportunity! This is the future of our Commonwealth.

She cautioned about the School Building Assistance legislation as it is worded in such a way that it is harder for suburban communities to get put to the top of the list. Also, as this is earmarked, the $150 Million it costs can't be used for any other education needs. So we may end up paying for nice buildings but losing the great classroom teachers to staff them.

Rep. Marzilli said that the state has a $750 Million structural deficit. (3/4 of a Billion dollars!) This means we will see cuts in services or we will need new revenue just to keep what we have this year. He said he sees a long tough road ahead. We had 2 months of good revenues, but now revenues are mediocre and projections are not looking so cheery. Arlington is a unique community with wealthy demographics but has no more growth possible. This needs to be taken into account or we'll end up losing big time with any funding formula change.

Jim continued by saying that government reform will not get us the money we need as the reforms we are finding are only small ticket efficiencies. We can make some changes to reduce energy costs such as requiring energy efficient building practices (better insulation, energy efficient lighting) energy efficient street lights. But this won't make up the $750 M deficit. We need to be honest with how much in savings we can find. And how much will end up being service losses.

He said that the governor's big reform combining the MDC and DEM did not save us anything, we still lost $3 Billion worth of services in the recent past. Since we aren't saving much with these reforms we are getting service cuts instead. The MA Taxpayers Foundation notes there is virtually no environmental protections being enforced, single women and children are losing their homes (requirements have changed so instead of going to shelters they are ending up in cars or on the street) and so on.

He said the public needs to understand how their tax money is being used to provide essential services to them. The MA Taxpayer Foundation makes it clear that the tax burden in MA is below the national average. We have cut more than any other state. From 1991-1999 we cut $4 Billion from our state budget. Our number of public employees/capita is below the national average. We are undertaxing ourselves and underproviding services! Is this really what we want in our Commonwealth?

Rep. Paulsen adds that it has become popular for people to think about their own pockets rather than thinking about the welfare of us all. We need to start talking more about caring for each other. People are falling through the cracks.

Jeff Thielman wanted to know why the legislature won't just pass a veto proof increase in income taxes. Rep. Marzilli pointed out that 2 years ago he and 40 of his colleagues/160 did vote to restore the tax rate to 5.95%, but not enough legislators voted yes to make it veto proof. Tom Finneran did stop some of the worst tax cuts. At least Gov. Jane Swift understood that we really did need these revenues even though she talked about tax cuts, Romney doesn't seem to care if our children get the education they need or if our elders get the care they need as long as he gets the political boost he wants. He seems to be using tax policy as a political weapon.

Paul Schlictman points out that the Hancock/Botsford case determined that the children of MA must be schooled according to the 7 frameworks of Ed. Reform. But Arlington doesn't even meet these 7 frameworks. School committees are not able to put overrides on the ballot to get the funds they need to implement these legally mandated guidelines. He said the Board of Education indicates the problem is accountability but Paul sees here in Arlington that is not the case. He thinks that No Child Left Behind is just punishing school districts, 70% of MA school districts with more than 4000 students were sanctioned already (Arlington did not get sanctioned, yet). He thinks these sanctions put pressure on schools to save money by getting rid of everything that isn't tested on the MCAS, like 11th and 12th grade since that comes after the required 10th grade test!

Paul wished that our current legislative delegation were in leadership because then we'd have good advocates for education funding. He pointed out that as 3 of our current State Board of Education members work with charter schools, how can they be working for the best interests of the public schools. This is a conflict of interest. He acknowledged that although there are some areas of MA where charter schools do provide a good function, such as in some poor Boston areas, but in areas like Arlington, losing 4 children to a charter school means losing a teacher or teacher's aide! He thinks we may need to get rid of some of the worst of the charter school issues but not all charter schools.

Rep. Jim Marzilli said he would work with Paul to file legislation to take care of this obvious conflict of interest of State Board of Ed members.

3. Superintendent Donovan spoke about the school system Financial Report. Basically the increase in funds we received from the state supplemental budget ($174,000) will be used to take care of increased staffing needs at the high school to decrease class sizes, to take care of an increase in special education costs and pay for necessary teacher assistants for special needs children, and to increase nurses by 1/2 position. She said Arlington schools are requesting help from the State to pay for our increased costs in helping children who are coming from a group home in town for children with special needs.

She said we did receive more minority resumes than in previous years thanks to greater outreach, we interviewed more and did hire more. However many have also left the system so there hasn't been a major change in total minority staff.

4. Joanne Gurry reported on the 2004 MCAS results. She said we have done very well at all levels and have decreased in our failures. Any Arlington difficulties mimic statewide problems. There are more standardized tests being mandated. Students who are English language learners (ELL) will be tested twice this year: once in the fall and once in the spring to establish an ELL baseline. Then they will be tested once every year after that in addition to MCAS tests. As of 2005-6 school year, all students in grades 3-8 are federally mandated to take reading and math tests each year. In addition there are history and social studies tests and various science tests-students are required to pass one science test. Arlington has been encouraged to take the national NAEP standardized test-if we do well, businesses look at the results of this test as they like moving to areas that do well on this test to be ensured of an educated workforce. Also there is the NEPA English test which measures English proficiency.

[Digression: It gave me a headache just listening to all these requirements for standardized testing being placed on our children, and we know there is no funding coming forward for this or additional personnel being hired so that these new mandates are in addition to the work our teachers are already doing. It made me think that we need to develop a Political Office Proficiency Exam (POPE) to see how they'd like to have to pass an exam before being allowed to run for office or serve. I'd especially like to see Presidential candidates taking the Political Oval Office Proficiency Exam (POOP) ;)]

According to Joanne, we are now in cycle 3 of being evaluated according to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and there are 5 more 2 year cycles to come, after which 100% of all students must pass all these exams every year or else the schools will been sanctioned and labeled as Needs Improvement, needs Corrective Action or needs Restructuring.

As Paul S. says "This is a train wreck waiting to happen" as it is impossible for students to infinitely progress to 100%, especially when it is broken down for each subgroup to pass the same level of stringent requirements. You can think about NCLB like being in an elevator that is flooding, the shorter people will drown first, but even the tallest will drown eventually. The way the law is designed we'll end up underwater by 2014 if the 100% requirement is not changed.

Paul said, many states and legislators think that NCLB will not be reauthorized in 2008 without significant changes as this 100% rule is a statistically impossible goal to meet. Massachusetts chose to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind with a difficult standardized test (MCAS), unlike many states.

Joanne Gurry stressed that Arlington's scores so far are wonderful. We will never end up on the Restructuring list. Our High School failure rates are very low, we need to get more students into the Advanced and Proficient categories. Our failure rates at all grades are extremely low and we need to move more students into the advanced and proficient levels. We are one of the few districts with over 4000 students that did not get sanctioned this year.

These are my notes taken to the best of my ability and I will be glad to make any corrections to them.