Amendment #534 to H4400

Stakeholder Data Advisory Group Recs

Representatives Jones of North Reading, Hill of Ipswich, Poirier of North Attleborough, Gifford of Wareham, Frost of Auburn and Smola of Warren move to amend the bill by adding the following section:

“SECTION XX. Chapter 69 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2016 Official Edition, is hereby amended by adding the following section:-

Section 37. (a) There shall be within the executive office of education an advisory board called the stakeholder data advisory committee to promote effective resource allocation decisions at the local level in collaboration with the office of education and the department.

(b) The stakeholder data advisory committee shall assist the department in identifying, implementing and assessing cost-effective ways to achieve the following 3 goals: (1)  streamline financial reporting, eliminate duplicate reporting requirements, and improve data quality; (2) strengthen the department’s capacity to analyze and report staffing, scheduling and financial data in ways that support strategic resource allocation decisions at the district and school level; and (3) strengthen district capacity to use data to make strategic resource allocation decisions. The advisory committee may recommend the following department actions to achieve these 3 goals, including: working with the Massachusetts teachers retirement system to obtain individual teacher salary information; developing strategies for securing more school-level financial data, including, where appropriate, developing ways to apportion more district expenditures to schools automatically; improving data accuracy by identifying more ways to automate the identification of outlier data on education personnel information management system, hereinafter EPIMS, staffing and end of year financial reports from districts to prompt district review; strengthening training for district staff to improve accuracy and consistency of data reporting with special attention to: the use of clear and consistent definitions, and expected use of reports tab to explain significant changes or outlier data; eliminating duplication of effort at state and local levels by: aligning finance data with staffing EPIMS and enrollment student information management system data collections, and aligning grants management and reporting with end of year financial reporting; identifying potential models, requirements, impacts, and estimated cost for a new financial reporting system; developing more powerful, actionable and publicly-available information and reports that combine and benchmark staffing, scheduling, and district or school-level funding data to support strategic resource allocation decisions at the local level; expanding research focused on identifying promising practices for efficient and effective district and school resource allocation; collaborating closely with the Massachusetts Association of School Business Officials, Inc., and the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (MASS) to develop the on-line and other training and support that the department, education collaboratives, and local district and school staff need to make effective use of the current and new data and research; and take other actions deemed necessary to achieve these and other goals.

(c) The advisory committee shall assist the department in performing a cost-benefit analysis of a range of options for actions deemed necessary to achieve the goals set forth in subsection (b).

(d) The advisory committee shall report its progress to the board and to the co-chairs of the joint committee on education of the general court at least semi-annually, and make such recommendations for new funding as are necessary for the department to achieve the goals.