Monday, June 18, 2018

Supreme Judicial Court takes Fair Share off the ballot

You can read the decision here. The crux is that it asked two things.
We conclude that the initiative petition should not have been certified by the Attorney General as "in proper form for submission to the people," because, contrary to the certification, the petition does not contain only subjects "which are related or which are mutually dependent," pursuant to art.
But I'll leave you with this:
We recognize that recommendations of this scope and size will need to be phased in to be affordable. However, we also note again what was stated at the beginning of this document: that the good work begun by the education reform act of 1993, and the educational progress made since, will be at risk so long as our school systems are fiscally strained by the ongoing failure to substantively reconsider the adequacy of the foundation budget, We therefore urge that the legislature act on these recommendations with a profound sense of the risks and opportunities at stake for our shared prosperity as a state and, as our constitution acknowledges, the critical nature of education to the health of our democracy. We advise a keen sense of the urgency when it comes to addressing the identified funding gaps, and the moral imperative of reducing the remaining achievement gaps.
The moral imperative didn't vanish with the ballot question.

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