PUBLIC COMMENT IS NOW OPEN on prohibiting gender affirming care for young people. Comments are open until February 17, 2026.
The grossly expressed summary:
This proposed rule would require that a State Medicaid plan must provide that the Medicaid agency will not make payment under the plan for sex-rejecting procedures for children under 18 and prohibit the use of Federal Medicaid dollars to fund sex-rejecting procedures for individuals under the age of 18. In addition, it would require that a separate State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) plan must provide that the CHIP agency will not make payment under the plan for sex-rejecting procedures for children under 19 and prohibit the use of Federal CHIP dollars to fund sex-rejecting procedures for individuals under the age of 19.
("sex-rejecting" is what they've come up with? Really?)
Earlier this week, the AP reported on a case of a middle school girl in Thibodaux, Louisiana, who was ongoingly bullied by boys at her school with AI-generated nudes. When the school ongoingly did not deal with it, she and others fought one of the boys on a school bus. She was kicked out of school; the boys did not face consequences from the district, 'though it appears that they are facing legal consequences now.
Two things:
The responses of administrators in this story are maddening: "At the disciplinary hearing, the girl’s attorney asked why the sheriff’s deputy didn’t check the phone of the boy the girls were accusing and why he was allowed on the same bus as the girl.
“Kids lie a lot,” responded Coriell, the principal. “They lie about all kinds of things. They blow lots of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do it all the time. So to my knowledge, at 2 o’clock when I checked again, there were no pictures.”
The superintendent commented that "a “one-sided story” had been presented of the case that fails to illustrate its “totality and complex nature.”
After an appeal to the school board to get her back into her school: “She’s already been out of school enough,” one of the girl’s attorneys, Matt Ory, told the board on Nov. 5. “She is a victim.
“She,” he repeated, “is a victim.”
Martin, the superintendent, countered: “Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators.”
I continue to see headlines of districts passing what they appear to be calling "an AI policy." One policy? Really? Because unless you've gone through your policies and found all of the places where AI could impact district operations, this isn't covered in policy. Did you consider the above in your bullying policy?
As I am typing this, I am seeing AFT President Randi Weingarten attempt to defend her position on AI on Bluesky:
We know students, like the rest of the world, are using AI. Teachers need to be equipped to deal w/all the issues AI creates. Our approach starts with maximizing safety & privacy and empowering educators to make educational decisions, so AI tools can benefit not harm www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
Please enjoy this waving snowman from Palmer. The snowman has nothing to do with the post, but we need to take our happy things where we can.
There were five eyebrow raising moments during the meeting--two from the Commissioner's priorities, and three from the graduation discussion--that I want to be sure we don't miss, as much as everyone's attention right now may be elsewhere.
Some school safety and privacy experts said the recent incident at the Florida middle school is part of a trend in which threat detection systems used by schools misfire, putting students under undue suspicion and stress.
“These are unproven technologies that are marketed as providing a lot of certainty and security,” said David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database.
Even more remarkable is the response of the company:
“We don’t think we made an error, nor does the school,” Alaimo said. “That was better to dispatch [police] than not dispatch.”
To leave out what sending schools unnecessarily into lockdown does for student and staff mental health, actual student safety, not to mention their education, demonstrates how little this industry actually cares for the well-being of students.
And never forget: this is indeed an industry. Fear sells.
Now, however, the Trump administration is wielding the power of the Justice Department in new and, some say, extreme ways. Hundreds of career staffers, including most of those who worked on education cases, have resigned. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights also has been decimated, largely through layoffs. The two offices traditionally have worked closely together to enforce civil rights protections for students. The result is a potentially lasting shift in how the nation’s top law enforcement agency handles issues that affect public school students, including millions who have disabilities...
The Justice Department’s lawyers historically have worked on a few dozen education cases at once, concentrating on combating sexual harassment, racial discrimination against Black and Latino students, restraint and seclusion, and failure to provide adequate services to English learners.
In the last 11 months, however, the agency has sued over and opened investigations into concerns about antisemitism, transgender policies and bias against white people at schools. It sued at least six states for offering discounted tuition to undocumented immigrants and pressured the president of the University of Virginia to resign as part of an investigation into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. And it joined other federal departments to form a special Title IX investigations team to protect students from what the administration called the “pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.”
Remember, the idea here is that they're hearing testimony which will inform the Executive branch, House Ways and Means, Senate Ways and Means in agreeing on a revenue projection.
The major players here are Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael J. Rodrigues, House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz and Secretary of Administration and Finance Matthew J. Gorzkowicz.
Rodrigues opens by introducing his colleagues...and my video went down posting as we go
Tara Goodhue, who teaches science at Lowell High School will bring all recognized together in May hey, she's a Clark alum! And took urban schooling She's the child of a teacher knew she wanted to work in a city school district speaks of being inspired every day by her students, and that they make her laugh every day "really easy to feel overwhelmed" "committed to spreading a message of hope" "we cannot stand frozen as the forest burns" envisions a fishing derby in Lowell
Member Fisher: I'm biased; I don't think I taught you, but I taught that class at Clark was reenergized listening to you
Grant: "let's go back to school!" amplifies her voice and story
Mohamed: find nature anywhere "thank you for going outside and taking kids outside"
Rocha: high standards, not high stakes to hear your sense of humor warms my heart
Craven: "I learned something about lichen that I won't forget today"
I'm doing this one remotely so I can switch over to the consensus revenue hearing at noon. Updating as we go...
Public comment:
Jodie Alencar: adult education learner, speaking of his experience learning English as an immigrant from Brazil "I am one of the faces of adult education in Massachusetts"
This one happens to be on Route 122 in Barre, part of the Quabbin Regional School District.
A few weeks back, my morning trip to a school district put me behind a bus in a local district. It was an elementary school run, and so even in November, most stops had adults alongside waiting passengers of various sizes. There were last hugs, backpack handoffs, parting parental wishes before students joined their peers on board.
Is there anything we do that shows more trust in other people than putting our kids on a school bus?
I don't just mean putting our kids on a vehicle driven by a stranger; that's just the start. They will spend their day with adults who we trust with everything about them: their physical safety, their emotional well-being, their sense of self, and yes, their educational development.
I think this is why so many of us are particularly appalled by someone driving past a bus with its lights flashing for a pickup; it isn't only that children can be hurt or killed (though it's certainly that). It's that we've agreed, tacitly, that we together keep children safe by all stopping for a bus that has stopped for them. It matters more than whatever the rush we may be in to get somewhere. Kids' safety comes first.
Except, of course, as a society, we have decided it doesn't, when on the eve of the anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, students studying for a final exam at Brown University are shot.
Kids and their safety should matter more. But America has decided that it doesn't.
On Tuesday at noon, the Joint Committee on Ways and Means is holding the consensus revenue hearing. For those of you who don't mark this on your calendar in big letters, this is when the two chambers of the Legislature together with the executive branch hold a hearing to inform their decision as to how much money they'll budget for next fiscal year, FY27. State House News Service last week noted in a timely article that this number is more and more not what they spend at all.
Since fiscal 2019, when Senate and House Ways and Means Chairs Sen. Michael Rodriguesand Rep. Aaron Michlewitz began leading the budget committees, four fiscal years ended with total spending that outstripped the next year’s enacted budget.
The pattern raises questions about whether the formal annual budget — debated for months and trumpeted each summer — has become less a blueprint for state spending and more of a starting point that lawmakers revise dramatically and with increasing regularity through midyear spending.
What it will do is begin to give some sense of how they're thinking about next year. I'm also looking forward (?) to seeing if anyone else is concerned about the massive impact the federal changes to Medicaid and SNAP are going to have on this and following budgets.
I am planning on following this, but all online, as one cannot quickly get from Everett to Boston!
__________________________________________ *As a reminder, the schools he named were: Brockton: Arnone Community Elementary School
Chelsea: Clark Avenue Elementary School
Framingham: Harmony Grove Elementary School
Springfield: Lincoln Elementary School
Worcester: North High School
As I noted back in October, there were changes made to how the federal government is managing SNAP and Medicaid that will have impacts on school funding and on the state budget. I said then, and I continue to fear now, that I don't see indications that Massachusetts is making this part of our preparation for FY27 and beyond.
Unfortunately, Mahmoud’s author, Justice Samuel Alito, wrote the opinion so sweepingly that this interpretation is entirely plausible. He evinced no concern for the rights of other students—like, say, the children of LGBTQ+ parents who might feel stigmatized by the removal of books that depict families like theirs. And he contemplated no clear limits to parents’ freedom “to direct the religious upbringing of their children.” Instead, he indicated that when parents’ faith-based demands conflict with democratically enacted education policies, it is the parents who must win out and the contested policies that must yield. So the Amish plaintiffs in Miller v. McDonald are not off base when they say that Mahmoud establishes their right to send their kids to school unvaccinated. Alito’s decision is so recklessly capacious that it arguably allows parents to challenge even the most basic school-safety measures on religious grounds.
Mahmoud did at least acknowledge that infringements upon this newfound First Amendment right may survive if they are “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling government interest.” The plaintiffs argue that the existence of New York’s medical exemption proves that there is no compelling interest in overturning its religious exemption, insisting that these opt-outs are analogous. But they are not: As the 2nd Circuit explained, there is “a difference in magnitude” between the frequency of religious and medical exemption, with families claiming the former vastly more often than the latter. Medical exemptions are also easier to police, since states can require licensed doctors to explain why each child has a legitimate need to forgo vaccination. Public health experts have shown that religious exemptions were linked to recent outbreaks—like New York’s measles epidemic—while medical exemptions were not.
This came out from DESE's grants office this morning. While it is not new information, I thought it was a useful summary:
On November 12, a “continuing resolution” was passed to reopen the federal government through January 30, 2026. However, most school year 2026-2027 federal education funding levels have not been resolved and are still subject to negotiation (ESSA, IDEA, Perkins, etc.). If Congress cannot come to an agreement on FY27 funding levels by January 30th, they must either pass another “continuing resolution” or shut down the government yet again. It should be noted that the national school meals program was the one major area of federal education funding that did receive a new full-year appropriation, through September 30, 2026. Early the following week, the U.S. Education Department (USED) informed state education leaders of its intent to transition the management of several major programs to other federal agencies. The announcement stated that the majority of programs currently managed by the federal Office of Elementary and Secondary Education will transition to the U.S. Department of Labor via an inter-agency agreement. These programs will include Title I-A, Title II-A, Title III-A, Title IV-A and B, and the McKinney-Vento Homeless Act, among others.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) programs will, for the moment, remain at USED, as will the Office for Civil Rights. USED officials noted that signed agreements with the Department of Labor and other agencies are only a first step and could not provide immediate details on the timing or specifics of the interagency transitions. These details will vary by program. The federal press release includes links to several federal fact sheets, including one on elementary and secondary education.
...4,000 food gift cards — each worth $100 — will go to individuals and families who stand to lose SNAP benefits on Nov. 1....$150,000 will go to the Worcester Public Schools so students and their families have access to nutritious food
Now, I know I wasn't alone in observing that there are 24,000 students in the Worcester Public Schools and 72% of them count as low income, so that was not going nearly far enough. At least, I am sure we all thought, it was something.
So I had to re-read these paragraphs from the T&G last week twice to be sure I understood this correctly:
A recent example of the slow pace of bureaucracy is how 4,000 food gift cards were distributed to Worcester families who temporality lost federal food aid benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the recent government shutdown.
Donations received by the United Way of Central Massachusetts paid for the cards, each with a $100 value, and Morales said 800 have been given to families of students in the Worcester Public Schools. More cards are available, but families must fill out an application and that takes time.
Morales also noted 1,300 of the 4,000 food cards were disbursed by the Worcester Community Action Council before Thanksgiving.
So...just over half the cards went out BY A MONTH LATER?
And families of kids in WPS had to FILL OUT AN APPLICATION to get the cards?
Every day, the Worcester Public Schools feed any child who attends. No one fills out anything, because--and this is quite explicitly why the federal program works as it does!--WE KNOW THAT IS A BARRIER to food.
Well, well, well, what do you know? If you lay off hundreds of people who deal with civil rights complaints in the U.S. Department of Education, what do you end up with?
...a growth in its massive backlog of those complaints.
Thus on Friday, U.S. Ed called back hundreds of those employees, though not without the trademark unprofessional snark that is a current hallmark of the agency:
In the email to employees, the department said “it is important to refocus OCR’s work and utilize all OCR staff to prioritize OCR’s existing complaint caseload.”
“In order for OCR to pursue its mission with all available resources, all those individuals currently being compensated by the Department need to meet their employee performance expectations and contribute to the enforcement of existing civil rights complaints,” the email notes.
Remember, Secretary McMahon has repeatedly said that the mandates Congress has for the Department can and are being carried out, but as USA Today notes:
Education Secretary Linda McMahon's decision to tap into her own laid-off workforce provides further evidence her agency is struggling more than she has publicly indicated to meet its legally mandated responsibilities.
Since cutting the department in half earlier this year, many families waiting on resolutions to their civil rights complaints have been stuck in limbo. Colleges have also reported significant issues with the federal financial aid system.
I should note that the first report I saw of this was in FedScoop.
The state also now requires school districts to prove they are getting a better deal by contracting with an outside provider rather than having their own fleets.
I want to do some poking around and find out more about the law and what caused that to be the case.
But they're fighting like dogs in the town across the river Over a brand-new crosswalk that won't matter come winter Lord, sometimes folks just need something to be angry about What're you angry about?
As illustrated by some of the public testimony at the Worcester meeting, the big reason that such moves fail in the U.S., per the review by the Post?
Motorists are hostile to measures that slow traffic and favor pedestrians.
As a result, then:
Local leaders give token or tepid support. Spending on pedestrian-friendly improvements is not prioritized. The U.S. government, meanwhile, never backed up its pledge with federal action or significant funds.
Motorists in the U.S. want to go really fast in their big cars, and our system revolves around that.
Pedestrians, though, are all of us at one time or another. Even those who drive everywhere occasionally have to exit a vehicle to get somewhere.
And one group that doesn't drive at all? Children.
Children walk, and ride bikes, and wait for school buses. And children, thus, bear a disproportionate burden of systems that advantage cars over those who don't drive.
Children, also, don't vote or donate to lobbying groups.
If we actually want to prioritize kids, we need to prioritize the safety of those outside of our big steel cages that go really fast.
This post in part brought to you, also, by thoughts I had whilst shoveling sidewalks Wednesday, a day Worcester had school after the Tuesday storm. While the roads are plowed by the city, the sidewalks—how thousands of children in Worcester get to school—are not, and sidewalks also do not have to be cleared until 24 hours after snow stops. That means Worcester’s children made their way to school Wednesday morning on uncleared sidewalks.
Budgets are moral documents; what we fund is what we value. We don’t value pedestrians, including our schoolchildren, enough to ensure their winter safety.
From an article in Futurism, Microsoft's (to give the latest example) sales pitch isn't panning out:
Regardless, the dustup suggests that enterprise customers are far from convinced that large AI agents are ready to autonomously complete complex multistep tasks. It’s yet another indication that companies are struggling to convert the enormous hype surrounding generative AI into actual revenue, a concerning trend considering the billions of dollars AI companies are burning through right now with no end — or return on investment — in sight.
This is, of course, because it continues to absolutely not live up to the hype:
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found earlier this year that even the best-performing AI agent, which was Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro at the time, failed to complete real-world office tasks 70 percent of the time
What I find incredibly alarming is how many people who are in positions of power and authority refuse to look critical at all on this matter. We're continuing to see it pushed across the education sphere, including (particularly of concern to me) in matters of school finance.
Consider what a 70% failure rate looks like for school budgeting.
I am just seeing this, but for those who read or follow such things: the Office of the Inspector General has issued a report on Brockton in FY23. You can find it here. Coverage in MassLive, Boston Globe, and The Enterprise
In 2024, 59 countries experienced large or disruptive outbreaks – almost three times as many as in 2021 – and a quarter of them had previously eliminated measles.
Somerville, Easthampton, and all the rest have indeed updated their lawsuit in light of the moving of powers of the U.S. Department of Education out of that office. From the New York Times coverage:
The education coalition argues in its lawsuit that the annual appropriations law approved by Congress requires the Education Department to carry out its programs and that Ms. McMahon lacks the authority to shift these functions to other federal agencies.
“The information and actions coming out of the Department have been unpredictable, chaotic, and unprofessional,” the education coalition said in the lawsuit. “This experience is unprecedented in administration changes.”
Something I want to flag, arising from this article in last week's Boston Globe flagging--rightly!--the drop in immigrant students enrolling in our schools1is a persistent miscommunication in the piece (from those quoted) about what happens to state aid to a school district if enrollment drops:
STATE AID IS NOT LOST.
Massachusetts has a "hold harmless" provision in the calculation of chapter 70 funding. That provides that every district gets at least as much aid as they got the year before.
If, once the full chapter 70 aid calculation is completed, a districts would get less aid than they would have received the year before, the hold harmless provision kicks in, and the district gets the same amount of aid they got the year before. To this then is added a minimum per pupil increase in aid, which by state law is $30/student but last year was $150/student.
While many of the districts discussed in the article are not districts that are usually in hold harmless--they're districts that not only are growing, but they have growing levels of need, both of which are provided for through the state calculation of school funding--they would nonetheless NOT LOSE state aid if their enrollment fell.
Their aid may well not grow by the levels to which they are accustomed, nor grow at a level to keep up with expenses, but it would not be "lost."
Let's not mess this one up.
____________________________________________________ 1And huzzah again to new Boston Globe reporter Marcela Rodrigues who is keeping focused on this. It matters! And she gets the stories across well!
It was another of those news rounds where if, like me, you were offline for an hour, you missed a major thing and had to play catch-up.
On Tuesday of this week, the U.S. Department of Education signed a series of agreements with other federal departments. Those agreements move functions of U.S. Ed to those other Departments, as EdWeek charts out here. Most of it is going to the Department of Labor—demonstrating truncated view of the function of the public education system—though several go to the Interior, and one to HHS. As yet, there is no move of IDEA which covers special education to HHS, as has been floated a number of times.
It's worth noting that this isn't the first of such moves: career and technical education grants were moved to the Department of Labor earlier this year. Those who have been paying attention say it has not gone well.
Secretary McMahon was quick to say that funding would continue to flow to states and from there to schools. As Matt Barnum wrote in Chalkbeat, it's quite possible that schools will see little change, so long as those other departments actually pick up the ball. The AP, though, captured the concern that I've had all week:
Instead of being housed in a single agency, much of the Education Department’s work now will be spread across four other federal departments...The plan increases bureaucracy fivefold, Washington state’s education chief said, “undoubtedly creating confusion and duplicity” for educators and families. His counterpart in California said the plan is “clearly less efficient” and invites disruption. Maryland’s superintendent raised concerns about “the challenges of coordinating efforts with multiple federal agencies.”
It is state education agencies that coordinate with the federal level, and it is those state agencies that now have to chase funding down across multiple federal departments--departments not set up to interface on those programs--in order to get the funding to states and then to districts. Those state agencies, if they're anything like our own (and I'll bet they are) are understaffed already.
It's also worth noting that objections have not all fallen along party lines, as covered in the same article:
Yet some conservatives pushed back against the dismantling. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said on social media that moving programs to agencies without policy expertise could hurt young people. And Margaret Spellings, a former education secretary to Republican President George W. Bush, called it a distraction to a national education crisis.
“Moving programs from one department to another does not actually eliminate the federal bureaucracy, and it may make the system harder for students, teachers and families to navigate and get the support they need,” Spellings said in a statement.
Those who work in the Department have also noted that this makes no sense. This is doing it for the sake of doing it. As I noted elsewhere earlier in the week, this feels a lot like the phase some kids go through where they have to push every rule and will come back with "TECHNICALLY..." when they are called on it.
TECHNICALLY, they haven't closed the Department of Education. I suspect that isn't going to be good enough for the judges that have already told them to knock it off.
Some of us have often referred to Worcester's election year as "everybody wants to be a school committee member" season, as very frequently in past years, city councilors show a sudden interest in creating policy1 for the Worcester Public Schools in a fashion that is WAY out of their purview.
Schools: There are a few items, both from the Public Works Committee and Councilor Ojeda, having to do with school cafeterias, food waste, and students providing meals to poll workers, possibly all of which are outside the purview of the City Council. I note these here because a few years back the Council frequently had items on the agenda that only the School Committee had authority over, but it’s been awhile since that’s happened.
City Manager request Chief Sustainability Officer work with
the School Department to facilitate a food waste study in the
schools cafeterias. Said study should quantify the
percentage of food waste created compared to the amount
of food distributed from the cafeterias.
14b. Request City Manager provide City Council with an outline
of a two (2) year plan to appropriate funding to work with
the Worcester Public Schools (WPS), supermarkets, and
local organizations to utilize food waste to help combat food
insecurity. (Ojeda)
14c. Request City Clerk work with the Superintendent of Public
Schools to determine the feasibility of Worcester Public
Schools students providing poll workers with meals during
each Election Day. (Ojeda)
While the inquiry--and let's be clear that it is no more than that--of the last item is under Council purview, as elections are (to a certain extent), now that the schools are closed for students on election days in Worcester, this seems a rather expensive (to put it mildly) undertaking. As most polling places are not in schools, I don't know why this would be the schools' problem to solve.
But food waste studies of the Worcester Public Schools cafeterias and a two year plan on food waste in school cafeterias? Those are both totally not under the Council purview (nor on their committee on Public Works).
Further, the school nutrition program of the Worcester Public Schools is entirely funded through federal USDA funding. There isn't even any budgetary interest possible here.
I'd suggest the City Council interest itself in things that are actually under its purview, and leave the oversight of the public schools' nutrition programs to the district.
________________________________ 1Somehow this never seems to extend to the very much under their purview matter of funding the schools below the legal requirement. That would require their requiring something of their actual employee, the city manager, as opposed to making speeches about children on matters over which they have no control. Yet here we are.
2And cheers to whomever started posting it as a PDF that actually just OPENS on the city site, so we don't have to DOWNLOAD it to open it!
The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is above all an invocation...Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it. Without being didactic, authentically artistic forms of cinema possess the capacity to educate the audience’s gaze.
I've been in a couple of sessions recently on federal grants (most recently DESE did one this morning), so providing a few highlights:
Always remember that federal education grants are almost all what's called 'forward funded' meaning that we have the current fiscal year's funding already.
Thus discussions of the FY26 federal budget--which is what the shutdown happened around--are funding that are/will largely impact our NEXT fiscal year at the state and district level, FY27, and thus NEXT school year.
There are BIG differences among White House/House/Senate's bills, with the Senate being the one that essentially level funds and has the least changes. As the Senate can only act on a bipartisan basis, there's some thinking that the Senate's option is the one that will win out.
The Senate bill also included language that required that funding to states go out as soon as it was available--none of this wanting to recheck stuff that hung up grants this fall!--but it's anybody's guess as to if that stays in.
The continuing resolution to fund the government expires January 30, 2026, so expect us to get countdown clocks again soon.
The CR passed reverses the reductions in force RIFs initiated just after the shutdown began and prohibits the Administration from initiating any new RIFs through January 30, 2026, when the CR expires.
One piece of good news: Because the CR funds full year appropriations for, among others, USDA, the continuing resolution that passed fully funds school nutrition through September 30, 2026, so that isn't iffy around government shutdowns.
In the last year, school bus driver employment has grown modestly by around 2,300 jobs.1 This small increase (1.1%) is a step in the right direction, but the trend of the last few years remains mostly flat.
Don't miss that that piece also includes charts that matter:
We're entering THE CONFERENCE ZONE at work, so I haven't had time to take a breath, but I don't want to miss some amazing things that happened Tuesday. This HuffPost post on victories you haven't heard of is also a good start. Several of these are of the "you might remember this headline" type; I'll add more as I find them!
You might remember West Ada School District in Idaho, where a teacher was ordered to remove an "Everyone is welcome here" poster which had multiracial hands from the walls of her classroom. Of the two seats that were up for election on Tuesday, challenger Meghan Brown beat incumbent Angie Redford with more than 61% of the vote; Brown is a teacher. The board chair Lori Frasure did win re-election over challenger Dara Ezzell-Pebworth, a social worker, but with only 54% of those voting. The challengers ran on an explicitly inclusive platform that also opposed private school tax credits.
As Peter Greene covers well in Forbes, Central Bucks County School Board, which got all sorts of national attention several years ago and had flipped majorities in 2023, further moved to a 9-0 Democratically-held majority on Tuesday. This was part of a larger blue wave across suburban Philadelphia.
Denver, which had been a hotbed of charter expansion and other things called 'ed reform' saw a pushback on that in the past six years, with this election a test of if that majority pushing back would hold on. They did, with those candidates taking the four of the seats open.
In Cy-Fair Independent School District outside of Houston, Tuesday saw a backlash to the conservative policies that district's board had implemented, as three members lost their seats to non-partisan newcomers, including the board chair and vice-chair. Cy-Fair is the third largest school district in Texas, educating over 100,000 students.
A recently-released brief reports at 61% of special education teachers report using AI to write IEPs or 504s last year. You'll note that this was specifically warned against in the OCR guidance above. Among the issues this can create, in addition to massive student privacy rights issues:
IDEA requires each IEP to be unique and tailored to each students’ disabilities, goals and process for achieving their goals. An AI tool that develops IEPs based on little student-specific information and that is not significantly reviewed and edited by a teacher likely would not meet these IDEA requirements, said the CDT paper.
What should districts do?
I'm going to argue with the article here and say MAKE THIS SOMETHING THAT IS BARRED.
On this eve of Worcester's municipal election, I offer the following thoughts, while looking back to what I wrote almost two years ago about the Worcester School Committee, though this is as much about Worcester City Council as it is about the Committee.
Please enjoy this fun "winter is coming" view of Cannon Mountain last weekend.
As tonight, the municipal contribution study group is taking public testimony here in Worcester, perhaps we can offer this from a Worcester school teacher:
The Whole People must take upon themselvs the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expences of it. There should not be a district of one Mile Square without a school in it, not founded by a Charitable individual but maintained at the expence of the People themselvs they must be taught to reverence themselvs instead of adoreing their servants their Generals Admirals Bishops and Statesmen.
asking for the Board to waive the requirement that charter schools submit single audit by November 1 prior to the government shutdown those single audit requirements were not updated only for those that spend more than $750,000 of federal funding other districts are not governed by a state statutory date; other districts are due nine months after the close of the fiscal year (so March) November 1 is in regulation; January 1 is in state law Curtin: Board doesn't have the authority to waive the statute regulatory deadline of November 1 can be waived by Board
Both of these are taking "competency determination" out of the language: in the Seal of Biliteracy and in student records. The request today is to send the proposed regulation changes out for public comment through December 5, with this back before the Board at their January meeting.
Seal of Biliteracy remove CD; clarify and streamline procedures for notification; transcripts, and terminology; pathways to demonstrate English proficiency; support equitable access
seeing numbers of students completing Seal of Biliteracy growing
Here are some tabs I have open that I'd recommend reading:
When we do facilities in the college class I teach, one thing my students most often remark on is the disparities among play space outdoors: who has a playground? who has access to grass? UC Davis is doing some interesting work measuring heat in school playyards, which particularly an issue for urban schools, where often the only play space is a patch of asphalt, and in a warming world.
You may have caught headlines about Alpha Schools, the chain that claims kids can spend just two hours a day with their generative AI "tutoring" overseen by adults who are not teachers. I urge you to read Wired's extensive piece on the actual experience of families, who are now pulling their kids out due to how their children were treated. This particularly matters as the chain is expanding across the country, funded in many places by vouchers.
With the school year now fully underway, I’ve been dismayed to see how the default position on generative AI throughout the educational landscape has been to ask how we might use it ethically, without considering that the answer to the question might be: “We can’t.”
I’m seeing this at my kid’s high school and at the University of Minnesota (where I work), from my professional organization and from the Minnesota Department of Education. It seems to be the norm pretty much everywhere. But what if we just didn’t accept that these programs must infiltrate every part of our lives? Or at least not the products currently being sold to us, literally sold to us so megacorporations can make more money, but also metaphorically sold to us as inevitable.
We can stop. We can pause. We can demand something better. And we must. Because there is a body count.
More than a decade ago, Springfield and state entered into an agreement to place some of the city’s most troubled schools under the control of the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership, a collaborative effort of the Springfield Public Schools, the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Springfield Education Association, with assistance from some business partners.
In November, officials agreed that Duggan Academy, Van Sickle Academy, Chestnut Accelerated Middle School, Discovery Poly Tech and four schools within High School of Commerce have reached achievement goals and are ready to return to the control of the Springfield district.
The state initially set the transition to take place this summer, but school officials successfully put off that move for a year to give educators enough time to plan for a smooth transition, said Superintendent Sonia Dinnall. The plan was discussed this past week at a School Committee meeting.
I'd missed that there had been a discussion already last year--did that get any coverage at all?--but this is in keeping with Massachusetts moving away from not having democratically-elected local control of its schools, with Holyoke now out of receivership and Southbridge moving there.
Here in Worcester, I'd urge you to send MONEY (money is always better than food donations to food banks; they can get more with it than you can!) to the Worcester County Food Bank. I am also a donor to the Worcester free fridges, where you can bring food or you can donate money; see their website for more information on both. For information on more local resources, as well as how to give, please see FoodHelpWorcester.
Also, this makes the school nutrition efforts that much more important. Here in Massachusetts, remember that we have universal free lunch; if you know of hungry families, please ensure their families are taking advantage of that.
After a two-hour proceeding, Judge Jason Braun ruled the boy can stay in the United States for now, but he must remain at the juvenile detention center in Winchester, Virginia until his case is heard again Nov. 5.
Lattarulo said the teen, who he said appeared very sad throughout the hearing, told the court he misses his mother in Everett.
“He’s probably maturing at a pace I wouldn’t like because it’s such a wake-up call to a child to be in that facility,” Lattarulo said. “I don’t think he’s good. He’s as good as he can be. When I talked to him, I could tell he’s trying to find strength in his voice, but you still hear the 13-year-old child.”
“ICE’s targeting of not only adults without criminal convictions, but also children and families, negates the administration’s stated policy of going after the ‘worst of the worst’ for deportation proceedings,” they note in an Oct. 3 letter signed by eight other New York Democratic U.S. representatives, including Ritchie Torres and Jerrold Nadler.
They demanded to know the total number of students — from kindergarten to college-age — arrested by the Department of Homeland Security since President Donald Trump took office in January. They want to learn how many remain in ICE custody, their average length of stay and what percentage were or are being held alongside their families.
They further asked how the U.S. government is meeting its legal obligation to educate these children and, more specifically, about the quality and language proficiency of the teaching staff.
“The Department of Education has the responsibility under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution to ensure that all students have equal access to education,” they wrote. “Please provide copies of curricula, sample lesson plans, and rubrics currently in use at ICE detention facilities, processing sites, and Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters.”
Sorry, I know the first of these public sessions already happened this week. This fall is somehow feeling particularly slammed for me...remember, they also will take electronic submission of testimony at C70PublicComment@mass.gov. Also, yes, again, this is me posting as me and not in any other capacity.
When I last wrote on this for you, I shared what isn't going to come up in the study commission because it isn't things with which they are charged.
Note that those are all things about which we should be talking, too! We really cannot ignore how harsh not having SOA increases is going to be on the districts that have been using them to ensure they can maintain services, because inflation isn't keeping up with costs, much as so many other districts have been pushing local increases for the same reason.
In other words:
INFLATION INFLATION INFLATION
However, again, this study is specifically to study the "municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution" so it's looking at what I think of as the SECOND part of the question: once we have decided what a "minimum adequate per pupil budget" is, where does the money come from?
Here are some things that I expect to come up, some of which are written right into the study language itself:
I'm at the ASBO conference this week in Fort Worth--ASBO is the Association of School Business Officials--and one of the "must attends" for me is always the federal policy update jointly done by ASBO and AASA (that would be the superintendents). This stems from that presentation yesterday.1
Setting aside for a moment:
that we do not currently have an operating federal government
because we do not have a federal budget or continuing resolution
and that some of the proposals for the federal budget have been alarming
I want to talk here about something that is actually going to happen because it is actually law and appears to not be in what is being planned for, at least from what I have seen in Massachusetts.
...and so here we are, with an announcement last week that the required hearings for this study are starting on the 23rd. This seems rather last minute as an announcement, even as one understands that they need to get going in order to have the report back, as required, by June 20 of next year.
Note that is this is very specifically a study "to improve the adequacy and equitability of the formula to determine a municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution." Thus much in the way the Foundation Budget Review Commission was only about the foundation budget--the "how much does it cost to educate a child" question--this is very much only about local contribution.
Because this started to get long, I'm going to break this into two parts: first what they won't talk about, then what they will or should, given the scope of the committee. You can find part two here.
As we were warned, the Trump administration is using the federal shutdown as an excuse to issue layoff notices--including a little 'oops' moment at the CDC, which they're now blaming on a coding issue--leading many of us to wonder just how much of the U.S. Department of Education will exist as of Tuesday after the holiday weekend.
Amid the smoke bombs and screams that ricocheted throughout a South Shore building last month during a massive military-style immigration raid, one man heard a knock on his door.
On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.
“I wasn’t planning on letting her stay, but I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed.
“I didn’t want them to take her,” said the man, who didn’t want to be named because he fears he’ll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.
“I gave her my bedroom, and I just told her, ‘Just stay there. Don’t open, don’t, shh, just stay quiet,’” he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears.
Adults and children alike were pulled from their Chicago apartments, crying and screaming, during a large overnight raid that has left tenants and neighbors shaken.
“I’ve been on military bases for a good portion of my life,” said Darrell Ballard, who lives in the building next door. “And the activity I saw – it was an invasion.”
Ballard recalled seeing residents detained outside the building for hours, after seeing a Black Hawk helicopter flying over the five-story building in the city’s South Shore neighborhood and military-sized vehicles and agents filling the parking lot early Tuesday morning.
Leominster family says ICE agents held their daughter outside their home so they would turn themselves over
Agents ask the parents to come out of their house multiple times as their 5-year-old sits in the driveway surrounded by federal immigration officers, video shows
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.
The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.
I could go on and on and on...the horror of what our federal government is continuing to do to families, to do to CHILDREN has no end of monstrousness. This is terror being done in our name as Americans.
The longer I have been a parent, the more I have come to realize that one of the starkest dividing lines among us is if we can see ourselves in another person's position. I shudder at the position we put parents in, at the horrific way we are treating families and children.
We know that one of the ways that genocide are successfully (which is a terrible adverb to use) executed is through making it common not to see those against whom it is being perpetrated as not human, as other, as less than. One recounting of the Chicago raid includes:
One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘fuck them kids.’
How great is the clever title? A building foundation...the foundation budget?
The upshot is that if Shrewsbury has nine schools, and Worcester has fifty schools, and each can build one new school at a time, when we get to the end of any set of time, Shrewsbury can rebuild all of its schools before Worcester has rebuilt a fifth of theirs.
Many of you are no doubt under the impression that this money goes, as is intended by state law, to the school districts themselves. This is, however, is the case only for regional school districts. For municipal school districts, because charter school tuition reimbursement isn't designated as going to schools "without additional appropriation," the money goes to the city or town general fund.
Cities and towns have long since passed their budgets. Unless someone takes additional action, these funds you intend for schools will not go to schools.
Were it possible for you to pass these funds with language so designating them, that would be most useful.
If not, perhaps you could ensure that the Department of Revenue generates updated cherry sheets, and you could ensure the cities and towns in your districts are aware of where the money should go?
With very sincere thanks,
Someone who wants to ensure the Worcester Public Schools gets their $2M
1As a reminder, here are all the amounts over $1M:
...which is pretty depressing. A few things to read:
Chris Geidner over at Law Dork, who observes that it hasn't really been a summer that is SCOTUS-free, given the shadow docket land we live in
Elie Mystal, writing in The Nation, who gives us five of the worst cases before the court. Observe how many of them directly impact our students and their futures.
I did want to call to your attention this recently released report from the Center on Poverty and Inequality from Georgetown Law which analyzes the impact on state budgets of federal legislation:
OBBBA introduced a new state matching requirement for benefits and increased the state share of administrative costs. Under OBBBA, states must cover part of the benefit costs for the first time, and their share of administrative costs will rise from 50 percent to 75 percent.
Click through to see the map on which you can hover; I share this because this is the result for Massachusetts:
The text reads:
MASSACHUSETTS
State Cost Share Pre-OBBBA:$91,939,795
State Cost Share Post-OBBBA:$530,559,697
Increase in SNAP Share of State Budget477%
I am fairly certain that no one in Massachusetts is budgeting for that, or even is able to.
Martinez: has not yet opened but has made progress on these conditions ask to approve conditions for opening Fall of 2026; extension of dates is under discretion of Commissioner, including additional training for the board members conditions will be overseen by DESE staff Martinez: "won't let something open under my name that isn't ready to serve students"
