The Worcester Education Collaborative and the Worcester Education Equity Roundtable conducted a community forum to provide crucial information and insights into the preliminary Worcester Public Schools budget for 2025-26 amidst the current state and national education context. The event occurred on Monday, March 17, 2025 from 4:30-6:00 pm on Zoom.
The event began with presentations from the Mass Budget and Policy Center. Viviana Abreu Hernandez, President of the organization, described the research and policy work of the organization and its use of an equity lens to analyze how budget policies affect vulnerable populations in the state. Colin Jones, Deputy Policy Director for the organization, followed by describing the state budget process in general and the state funding mechanisms for K-12 education in particular. He also discussed the importance of the Student Opportunity Act in promoting greater equity in funding and the impact that inadequate inflation adjustments had on those equity efforts.
Brian Allen, Deputy Superintendent for Finance & Administration for the Worcester Public Schools, followed by providing an overview preliminary district budget for 2025-26 presented to the school committee last month. He described the contributions that enrollment increases, the Student Opportunity Act, and other factors will have on the available state revenue for the district. In describing the planned expenditures, he emphasized links to the district’s strategic plan and was responded to the plan’s key priorities. He also described a new equity-based budgeting process that the district will use this year to promote greater equity and reduce opportunity gaps experienced by Worcester students. He concluded by describing the process to be used by the school district to develop a proposed budget and identified opportunities for parent and community input to this process.
Throughout the presentations, event participants were invited to submit questions to the presenters. The event concluded with a question-and-answer session involving the three presenters. Questions focused on the equity-based budgeting process, implications of possible federal funding cuts, and strategies for increasing state and local funding for education in the future and resulted in a rich conversation by the three presenters on these issues. There was broad agreement among the presenters and in the comments from event participants of the need for additional funding for education in Worcester and Massachusetts suggesting that revenue from the Fair Share Tax and the state’s Rainy Day Fund could be used for this purpose. The event concluded with a comment from one participant: “The legislature needs to get the message that it’s not just raining – we’re headed into a hurricane.”
Program Overview:
Welcome | Noe Medina, Worcester Education Equity Roundtable
State Context on Education Funding | Viviana Abreu-Hernandez and Colin Jones, MassBudget
Overview of Preliminary Worcester Public Schools Budget for 2025-26 | Brian Allen, Worcester Public Schools
Panel Discussion and Q&A
Panel:
Brian Allen, Worcester Public Schools
Viviana Abreu-Hernandez, MassBudget
Colin Jones, MassBudget
Moderated by Noe Medina
Sponsored by the Worcester Education Collaborative and the Worcester Education Equity Roundtable, this event is intended to help our community work together towards a stronger, more inclusive educational system for our children and our community. The Worcester Education Equity Roundtable is generously supported by The Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
