March membership Meeting

Today is our March membership meeting at 4:15. There’ll be an update on the Menino/Johnson plan to unilaterally move an estimated 45 Level 3 schools to Level 4 or ‘Turnaround status.’ We will also hear from the AFTMA’s Andrew Powell, a member of the Commission to Study Retiree Healthcare and Other Non-Pension Benefits, about the proposed health insurance changes in store for Mass retirees. The membership meeting begins informally at 3:45 with refreshments. All members are welcome.

Budget hearings are scheduled, and the school district has posted a few pieces online. If you have the time, here’s their introductory pieceand here’s a deeper read of an overview of our school budget. Both are good and well worth the effort — as far as they go. We do wish the department could have better explained how much is lost annually to charter schools. The School Department documents, chock full of miscellaneous data, only had this much to say about charters (emphasis added):

“…Charter schools: The enrollment cap is gradually increasing and more students are expected to move into public charter schools, which means additional costs for BPS (such as transportation) even as money is diverted from our system. This requires BPS to become more competitive even as our relative resources decline. Although we are experiencing an enrollment increase in early grades we continue to see enrollment declines in grades 5, 6 and 7 as charter schools expand in these grades…”