Aliyya Swaby Photo
De La Paz with Rosenberg at report’s unveiling.
A study into why some New Haven schools get more teachers or money than other schools delivered a simple answer: We don’t know.
That got people talking.
The Board of Education dissected the results of this study — conducted by a not-for-profit group called Education Resource Strategies—at its most recent meeting this week. The study prompted a larger discussion about how to make sure individual schools and their students are receiving the level of resources they need to thrive.
Two weeks after Mayor Toni Harp agreed to a $3.3 million local funding boost for the district, board members brainstormed how to spend smarter and more equitably among New Haven Public Schools.
“Part of what we’ve consistently tried to do is provide a level of clarity and decision-making tools to our board,” said Superintendent Garth Harries. The district has been “criticized for not being transparent enough” and is trying to provide the public with an “evolving set of information about our budget,” he said.
When the full board discussed the preliminary schools budget Feb. 23, Mayor Harp asked about the results of the ERS study, which analyzed the district’s data in order to see how it could better use its resources over the next several years.
Victor De La Paz, the district’s chief financial officer, and David Rosenberg, representing ERS, presented the results of that report, which revolved around the questions: How much variation in funding is there across New Haven Public Schools and why?
The answers: A lot of variation and for few discernible reasons.
Click here to read the study.
ERS compared local data to that of seven “peer districts,” all “funded on par,” which include Lake, Hall, Waterbury, Denver, Newark, Baltimore and Washington D.C. (De La Paz said he is working on getting information from urban Connecticut districts.) New Haven spends about $14,000 per child in operational costs, which is in the middle of the group.
The district spends just 6.1 percent of its budget on its central office, which is “relatively lean” compared to the 9.9 percent median of peer districts included in the study, De La Paz said. New Haven spends an above average amount on food service and transportation, and has more teachers for its size than its peers, especially in high schools. Although a couple of factors account for part of the district’s outsize transportation cost – including busing for magnet schools – nothing entirely explains it away.
The district should create a strategy for building equity among schools, in order to “organize resources in the context of student need,” Rosenberg said. Varying per-student funding across schools is good if it is deliberate and channels more resources into “needier schools,” he said.
New Haven weights the amount it spends on different types of students, for example, by allocating more resources to special education students compared to gifted students. Taking into account the weighted costs, ERS found that New Haven has been spending more money per pupil in high school than at the K‑8 level.
And generally New Haven showed a “pretty big spread” in variation in spending among its schools, compared to peer districts – with 41 percent of schools outside 10 percent of the median, Rosenberg said.
Two-thirds of the extra funding in high schools is spent on higher levels of teacher staffing, according to the report. . High School in the Community and Hyde School are the high schools receiving the most resources and/or with the most staff per students, while Engineering and Science University Magnet School and Hillhouse High are on the other end of the graph. Smaller schools generally receive more weighted per pupil funding, while larger neighborhood schools receive less.
But among K‑8 schools, the report found no common explanation for the variation in funding. But the higher spending also correlated with higher staffing levels.
The lack of explanation is an “opportunity to build a funding system that reflects the value system” of the district, Rosenberg said.
The study also included four strategies to address the inequity, including moving staff from high-performing to needier schools and ensuring that schools with more funding and staff have more students. The district could also establish teacher-student ratios for its schools or have weighted funding follow individual children. De La Paz said either of the latter strategies — or some combination of strategies — would be the most viable options, though no individual approach would work perfectly or immediately.
The district is also developing a tool that will allow it to make staffing decisions in real time, taking into account the need of the schools and other positions vacant, De La Paz said.
Board of Ed president Carlos Torre (at center in photo) said that moving staff between schools is useless without a method of “ensuring that’s the right person to meet the needs” of the school. Similarly, shifting students from one school to another to meet specific teacher-student ratios does not take into account whether the right “human resources” are available to meet student needs, he said. Torre compared those strategies to “moving chairs on the Titanic from one side to the other” to avoid sinking.
“Quality of staff is paramount here,” De La Paz responded.
De La Paz has suggested the district cut costs in part by allowing the “natural attrition” of specific staff members, by not rehiring people in positions deemed no longer necessary to schools. Board member Alicia Caraballo has questioned that strategy in past meetings. And Susan Samuels said Monday that she was concerned at the prospect of not replacing positions. De La Paz responded that the district would consider using those funds to add staff in understaffed schools, increasing equity: “Do we replace the position at that school or do we look at a school” with fewer resources?
Torre, Harp and Caraballo renewed their requests for specific data, including individual school kindergarten enrollment numbers and staff vacancies, which they said would help them discuss from more informed positions.
“The budget needs to be complex, but it doesn’t need to be complicated,” Torre said. District representatives give “longwinded” explanations, instead of to-the-point direct responses, he said.
Mayor Harp said ERS and the district should have gone to the Board of Ed before defining and graphing representations of equity among schools. The data on staffing numbers do not take into account exactly what personnel are being compared, “to see if we’re comparing apples to apples,” she said. And some students have “social capital” at their schools that “doesn’t exist” for other students, which is difficult but necessary to include in a report on equity, she said.
She said the district could decrease its relatively large transportation cost by rethinking the current transportation policy — which she said could be “leading to childhood obesity in some respects.” In an “18-square-mile city, is it reasonable” to transport kids “too small distances”? she asked. And having more students walking around could increase the safety of some of the neighborhoods, she said.
Torre said standardizing the start times for schools could also decrease the need for buses. Board members requested upcoming budget proposals and past budgets for each school.
De La Paz said future steps include reviewing specific areas of significant spending, considering investments in certain underfunded schools, evaluating staffing levels in terms of equity, and eventually creating a five-year “resource allocation plan.” He invited board members to submit written questions between now and the submission of the final budget.