Friday, June 12, 2015

Proposal to tie new funding to particular spending priorities

Apologies for it taking me so long to get back to this; I've been sick this week. Here is the full text of the proposal put forward, we're told, jointly by MASS/MAVA/MARS/MASBO at Tuesday's Foundation Budget Review Commission meeting:
Limit the use of new funding to investments in the following initiatives to be described in a publicly accountable benchmarked school improvement plan. The parameters of those individually crafted plans would invest from the following priorities:
1) Provide greater support for low-income and ESL students;
2) Expanded teacher professional development;
3) Hiring staff at levels that support improved student performance;
4) Purchase and implementation of technology and instructional materials;
5) Expanded learning time (day/year/venue);
6)Add instructional coaches;
7) Provide wrap-around services that engage the entire community and families in strengthening the social emotional support system for students;
8) Provide common planning time for instructional teams. 
As I said on Tuesday: no objection (or little objection) to any of those, but that doesn't represent the full context of where the money needs to go back to.
And it misses the larger point: the state is the entity that needs to be held accountable for school funding here, not the districts/

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