Executive orders on education

 This afternoon, Donald Trump signed an executive order: 

...to prohibit federal funds from going to K-12 public schools that teach critical race theory (CRT) or gender issues.  

Politico had "it's coming" coverage earlier today which you can find here.  

This is of course the same sort of "we piled a lot of words on top of each other" thing we saw earlier this week with the Office of Management and Budget funding freeze. 

I would say the questions this opens are two:

1. How are they going to enforce it?
   Public education in the United States (as, amusingly, Trump himself as noted) largely the province of the state and then local districts. The federal government doesn't have that much power, or, relatively speaking, that much money with which to get schools to do much of anything. Also, most of that money--think of the title grants or IDEA--is tied directly to federal legislation that requires particular things IN THE LAW to be done or happen for the money to be distributed. He can't just make up new rules for the money.
   
   The one concern I have, which I think I have flagged here before, is the possible weaponization of the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. OCR has investigatory powers, and yesterday, they opened an investigation into the Denver Public Schools over a gender-neutral bathroom that that was put in due to student request.* If they're starting that, we could see what essentially is ongoing harassment of those who are protecting student rights. 
2. How much are states/districts/schools going to obey in advance?
   As I said the week of the election, the empowerment of people who do want to discriminate against others is one of the larger dangers to schools under Trump. The people in power are coming after those historically disempowered, and now you can, too!
   Education also tends to be a very compliance based system--and not only for students!--and state agencies, districts, and schools are going to have to resist the tendency to just go along with what the person seemingly in charge says. 

Of course, this also doesn’t look like closing the Department of Education, either, does it. 

And yes, for sure, expect lawsuits on this one, too. 

________________________
*I suspect the story is here: "at least one East High parent had raised concerns at a Denver school board meeting."
Hmmhm.

pushing back works sometimes

 This is just breaking now, as evidenced by how short the CNN piece is, but for now, it looks like pushing back may have worked. 

What a day: on the federal freeze

via GIPHY

What a day, huh? The freeze on federal funds--which itself was frozen by court til Monday order minutes before it was to go into effect last night--was the classic Trump administration "we threw out this big thing and have no ability to manage details like which programs it impacts" maneuver. 

You may have caught the midday memo that specified that, for example, Head Start and SNAP were not included in the freeze. 

Last night, DESE shared with districts the following (CCSSO is the Council of Chief State School Officers): 

CCSSO received the following statement this afternoon from Madison “Madi” Biedermann, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach at the U.S. Department of Education:

“The funding pause directed by the January 27, 2025, OMB memorandum only applies to discretionary grants at the Department of Education. These will be reviewed by Department leadership for alignment with Trump Administration priorities. The temporary pause does not impact Title I, IDEA, or other formula grants, nor does it apply to Federal Pell Grants and Direct Loans under Title IV, HEA. The Department is working with OMB to identify other programs that are not covered by the memo.”

For those a bit up on federal funding, what is of concern here is that, yes, federal grants are "forward funded" in July and October, but then they are drawn down over the course of the year. As AASA notes in their updated post:

We want to clarify that while states are fully allocated their forward funded programs on July 1 and October 1, the actual drawing down for these funds is continual throughout the year. 

Let me note very specifically that while the various updates appears to have excepted most of the education grants, the big one that no one has yet commented on is school nutrition. As EdWeek writes: 

The School Nutrition Association, meanwhile, is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture “to provide more detail on the extent to which this freeze will impact the programs” that provide federal support for students to eat healthy meals at school, Diane Pratt-Heavner, the group’s spokesperson, said on Tuesday afternoon.

If the pause eventually takes effect and funding for school meals does stop flowing, districts will immediately wonder whether they’ll get retroactive payments from the federal government once the pause ends, Thomas said.

“Those programs are running on paper-thin margins,” Thomas said. “Districts have to pass a balanced budget and so, if the meals program goes in the red, they’re going to have to pull money from elsewhere.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the school lunch program, didn’t answer questions from Education Week in time for publication.

I fear that there may be some confusion in Massachusetts and other states that have implemented universal free school meals; the state funding is SUPPLEMENTAL to federal funding on which districts still depend. In Massachusetts, school meals are funded: 

1. First, by the United States Department of Agriculture for meals for students eligible for free or reduced price lunch.
   In districts with high rates of poverty, including most (all?) of our city school districts, this funding is feeding ALL students, regardless of their own finances, through community eligibility. That means the highest need districts are feeding kids almost entirely through federal funds.
   
   
2. Then, through supplemental funding from the state, which fills the gap for districts not using community eligibility to feed all kids (because the finances don't work to support that) by reimbursing districts not using community eligibility. 

Thus, no, Massachusetts and other states that have committed to feeding all kids are not immune to this concern.

I was asked yesterday what the state's plan is for covering this if we lose USDA funding. As far as I know, there isn't one. 

If you haven't called your Congresspeople, please do. 
Pro tip: call their local office. Fewer people do. 

January Board of Ed: vision

 high dosage tutoring in early literacy
this was much more lengthy but we also were getting updated information on federal funding, so I tuned out for parts of it

5 providers in 46 districts
16,958 student seats (which may have been more than one student)

statistically significant gains in 2023-24

MBAE now testifying about the Ignite (they're a vendor) online tutoring through the One8 grant

and there was a video of that tutoring

There is a lot of data being shared here on slides with teeny text

attendance matters; closes literacy gaps more effectively
I also just want to note that the text in all of these slides is way too small

Chelsea and Walpole testifying about their experiences

One8 person: "we were skeptical...the last thing we want to do is put more kids in front of a computer"
"if schools are on green rated science of reading curriculum because you're wasting your money if schools aren't on green rated science of reading curriculum"
"the results are astounding"

Hills asks about scaling up; staffing 
put aside money to "continue the data runs"

Moriarty argues "there is a model here" for the long haul
"this is expensive"
"this expenditure represents a percentage point or two" but seems to represent
encourage school committees "to adopt this cost on a long term"
"it should be as much embedded in a school district's budget as a football team"
districts having the slightest idea of what local school districts are actually struggling with for budgets for starters might be useful 

and now on literacy launch

January Board of Ed: use of time out

link to memo 

used by 40% of public school districts; 60% of out of district programs use such spaces

regulation prohibits a student not being able to leave a space

U.S. Ed updated policy; some practices could be considered discriminatory against populations of students 

MA has been working on for several years

encourage schools and districts to use other approaches rather than time out rooms

DESE increased monitoring as well as competitive grants; most used for PD, supplies and materials

last year, DESE created a working group for potential regulatory updates

goal is maximize amount of time students spend learning with their peers; overuse or inappropriate use may cause academic loss or trauma to students

reducing or eliminating and strategies that result in seclusion is in best interest of students and school communities

safeguarding students and staff

DESE provides technical assistance or formal corrective action as necessary to districts

regulation centers on "what are we allowing?"

January Board of Ed: competency determination

 here is the backup

Curtin: today is "purely for discussion"

January Board of Ed: vocational admission

 admission to career and technical education
West: three meetings of subcommittee so far

possible approaches to admission revision

understanding by process of learning about, apply to and enroll in schools

vocational schools "struggle to gain access" to middle school students
application process is resource intensive for sending as well as vocational districts
schools have their own processes and regional agreements

often see disparities between applicants and admitted students
looked a specific selection criteria; which ones play most significant role in creating disparities
can now task DESE with draft revisions in this area
"may be even to review and send out for public comment" in February

based on what recommendations?

West: fairly naturally from our conversation
"any selective criteria need to be essential to the success of the school if they are having any disparate impact" on protected classes
that's my emphasis
for example: evaluative interview that is rated
could there be a broader way of expressing interest?

Moriarty speaks of visiting a school during the eighth grade visit

January Board of Ed: Commissioner search

 Craven: search meeting on January 13
Over 100 candidates contacted by search firm
next meeting is February 28
encourage individual nominations, as ongoing

Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for January: opening comments

 The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education holds their regular monthly meeting today in Everett. The agenda can be found here. There will be a livestream here.

We're awaiting a quorum in a Board meeting room that is overcapacity (they just started sending DESE folks to their desks to watch), and the press thinks the news today is cell phones. It is enough to make one despair. 

Updating as we go

Call Congress today on getting federal grants unfrozen

 Last night, the federal Office of Management and Budget issued a memo to the heads of departments, freezing federal grants and loans. The memo is a mess of a word salad, but the operational piece is here: 

Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders

Read coverage from Washington Post, The Hill, and Roll Call. 

I am posting quickly this morning to urge you to get in touch with your Congressional representatives as quickly as possible. 

And if you are reading this and are in a state that went for Trump, this is even more urgent for you, as such states disproportionately are dependent on federal funds.

ALSO, universal free lunch programs, like those in Massachusetts, use FEDERAL funds, even if they are supplemented by state funds to provide lunches everywhere. 

School districts draw down federal funds from DESE periodically; this freeze doesn't mean, for example, that we won't be able to feed kids tomorrow. 

UPDATE (noon): you can read this from AASA on what the federal freeze may (?) mean; this is the best thing I have seen so far.

a few quick thoughts on the Governor's budget

 ...which is here, with the education section here, and my "adding as we go" spreadsheet here, though this doesn't include whatever it is that the Globe is talking about here (I imagine that is also buried in those grant lines...I will update when I find them). 

DESE has the FY26 numbers up though the cherry sheets (as of quarter of four on Wednesday) are not yet. 

First, this budget is using Fair Share funding to partly fund ($225M) state chapter 70 aid; it's being called "Student Opportunity Act Expansion" funding, which on the one hand is funding (part of) the fifth year of implementation, which is better than not, but on the other hand is, alongside using Fair Share for free lunch reimbursement, using that "let's think big!' money for some basic commitments that the state has made.
So, meh.

On the foundation budget, we do have a 1.93% inflation rate, which is BAD (if expected). I am willing to bet that school districts are not seeing that rate of increase in many if any of their cost centers, and so how that shakes out is...as you'd expect.

The exception is the health insurance rate--under SOA, that's separate, remember--which is 6.13%, which is closer to what districts may actually being seeing ('though I have seen some double digit ones coming in).

I assume because of the above and because districts have been unhappy about being in hold harmless funding, the Governor's budget is putting minimum per pupil funding at $75/pupil. THIS IS ALSO NOT GOOD. As I noted in my new year post, this is driving us further and further into a funding system in which there is NO relationship between how much state funding a district gets, and the actual needs of either the students or the community. That's not what our constitutional commitment is. 
And you know we're going to hear that there's no money for a more realistic inflation rate, while somehow there's millions (and millions) for "everyone gets more money regardless of need." 
(PS: stop citing the number of districts that are in hold harmless; it isn't making the point you think it is.)

And if you ever hear that SOA isn't working, here's what it is doing (along with much else):

And if that didn't matter to you: your local community was, I'll bet, already funding well over that. Lucky you, but many places couldn't afford it without state aid. 

More as I have time! And send questions if you have them! 

_____________________________

PS: quick note on Worcester: the city's showing a healthy 5.26% Municipal Revenue Growth Factor (yes, that's how much municipal revenue is growing!), and so we have no reason to hear any concerns raised about the city being required to pick up something like 20% of the required MINIMUM increase in funding. 

Recommended reading this cold short week

•  Today, I am reading and taking notes on the Center for Democracy and Technology's "Education leaders' guide to complying with existing student privacy and civil rights laws amidst an evolving immigration landscape" which there is a description of here. 
  
  
• Here's the NPR report on the Trump administration's change of special status for immigration enforcement at schools, hospitals, and places of worship. Note that the statements being issued by districts like Worcester are not out of line with that at all. 
  
  
• This opinion piece from Futurism "AI is like Tinkerbell; it only works if we believe in it" nails it in terms of promises that never pay out on AI. 
  
  

And this is why you turn off the comments...

 This lawsuit in Kentucky is largely about Corey DeAngelis being himself, but it does flag something that I haven't seen enough attention to, despite it being in (among other things) MASC's model policy for districts: turn off comments on district Facebook posts!
Public school districts are state entities, and as such they have the same responsibility not to limit public speech any other government entity does. Unlike, say, public comment at a public meeting, a district Facebook page lacks even the oversight (legally) provided by a chair. Deleting comments and blocking people certainly would appear (by even SCOTUS decisions recently made) to be violating the First Amendment (and, in Massachusetts, the even stronger Declaration of Rights). And even barring swearing violates recent Massachusetts public speech decisions.
And yet, districts (I assume) don't wish to provide a platform for people to defame others and so forth.
The only way to do that is to turn off comments. It's wild to me that so few have. 

________________

Do I need to remind you that I am not a lawyer? I am not a lawyer. You should talk to those who are, though, because that is where this post comes from. 

Just because he says it doesn't mean it's so

 We’re back to the merry-go-round of a Trump presidency as of today, and along with much else, there has been a flurry of “how to manage” messages. 

Here is my quick one: 

Just because he says something is so, doesn’t mean it is. For example, he may claim he is “ending birthright citizenship,” but that isn’t under his power—it is enshrined in the 14th amendment—and he cannot simply reverse that. He has said that he is ending funding for those who protect gender identity, but that is tied up in (at least) federal rule making and probably actual legislation. 

The danger of assuming what he says is so is obeying what he says. On the above, for example, the door opens (further) for harassment of immigrants and trans people.

It thus is that much more important that we take his word for nothing. 

Do not obey in advance. 

updating to note: Others have observed that we don't have the text of any executive orders as of 5 PM this inauguration day, so we don't even know what he thinks he's doing with them. 

I would call this blog post "in which the Globe gets it wrong again," but once you've used that as a title once, you've used it.

Anyway, the Boston Globe (specifically Mandy McLaren, who tends to decide what the answers are before writing articles, as evidenced by, for example, her coverage of literacy) wrote today about Governor Healey's graduation council, as announced in her State of the State address earlier this year. In the article, McLaren repeats a big misunderstanding of where November has left us: 

Hey, speaking of Penny Schwinn

 ...who is making news this morning largely because the President-elect didn't get her name right in his online announcement. 

Schwinn was most recently the Commissioner of Education in Tennessee, but there's a local connection insofar as she was one of the three finalists for K-12 commissioner here in Massachusetts in 2018, when Jeff Riley was hired. 

You can read my notes from her interview here, and my notes on her in general here. I'd suggest paying attention to that whole episode where she left a board to take a charter school job. 

Schwinn resigned as education commissioner in TN in June 2023 to take a job with the University of Florida (remotely) under Ben Sasse, who resigned last July after 17 months in that position. During his tenure: 

Since Sasse’s resignation, he has since faced bipartisan scrutiny after The Alligator first reported Monday that he had tripled his office’s spending — a majority of which was for lucrative consulting contracts and high-paid, remote positions for GOP allies.

He spent $17.3 million in his first year in office. The figure was far higher than the $5.6 million in spending during the final year of the previous president, Kent Fuchs, who has agreed to return as interim president through 2025.

Schwinn was not retained under the new leadership; the Gainsville Sun reported: 

Schwinn, a Republican, previously served as Tennessee's education commissioner and was hired by UF in September 2023 to carry out a series of initiatives throughout Florida’s K-12 schools. Schwinn, who was paid an annual salary of $367,500, worked remotely from Tennessee during her brief stint at UF.

Perhaps her most controversial initiative came to the forefront in March when she recommended that UF's P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, which has a history of maintaining a student population that's representative of Florida's racial and income demographics, move to a selective admissions process. The idea behind the proposal was to help propel the K-12 school, specifically the high school, into the top 10 in the state.

Schwinn's last day at the university was July 31. She will be paid a lump sum of $91,875.

I would imagine we'll be seeing more articles scrutinizing her in the education press in the coming days.  

On the graduation requirement part of the State of the State

 State House News Service has this:

Healey also puts more detail around her plan for a successor to the MCAS standardized tests as a high school graduation requirement. Voters in November eliminated the MCAS as a graduation requirement, an outcome that Healey was opposed to.

"I respect that decision. But it creates for all of us a responsibility, to make sure every student graduates ready to succeed. We need a high, statewide standard. Students, families, and employers need to know what a diploma represents. And without that baseline, it’s always the most vulnerable students who don’t get what they need," the governor's speech says.

Healey will say she is directing a "Statewide Graduation Requirement Council" including teachers, colleges, employers and students to develop recommendations for a permanent and high standard.

"We’ll evolve to a new Massachusetts model for high school excellence that best serves our children. And we'll match high standards with great opportunities – like the Early College and job training programs that give students a leg up on their next step," the governor says.

Will someone please teach her speechwriters "constitutional obligation"? It's the entire point.  

Oh, and by the way? Don't use generative AI, including the top of the Google results, for "Massachusetts high school graduation requirements" because WOW. 

If we lived in a reasonable country

 ...leadership would look at something like this: 

Many districts also used their one-time funding to take care of longstanding needs, like replacing aging infrastructure and outdated textbooks, that schools previously wanted to tackle but could not afford to do so.

...and realize "hey, there's an UNFILLED NEED here! Maybe we should do something about this!"

But instead, no, they're going to waste time persecuting trans students.  

The Globe said the quiet part out loud

 It's WAY down in this piece on teachers' salaries, but hey, they noted the fundamental inequity of funding schools locally!

Currently, about half of funding comes from local governments, and much of the rest comes from state governments, with the federal government providing little support. That means wealthier schools tend to be better funded — and they can raise additional, voluntary pools of money.

 PDF here.

That's Massachusetts in a nutshell: we have local districts that are majority local funded, whose cuts when they come are cuts of things majority state funding districts have never had. 

If you haven't read about vouchers in Ohio

 ...do be sure and read the lengthy ProPublica piece published this week. 

What happened in Ohio was a stark illustration of a development that has often gone unnoticed, perhaps because it is largely taking place away from blue state media hubs. In the past few years, school vouchers have become universal in a dozen states, including Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. Proponents are pushing to add Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and others — and, with Donald Trump returning to the White House, they will likely have federal support.

It clearly cannot be said enough

 “Generative AI is an unethical technology in any way it is sliced.”

Excellent piece "The ethical case for resisting AI" from Dr. Chuck Pearson, writing from the perspective of a chemistry teacher.
Because I tend to approach this from my own framing in English and history, this part particularly struck me: 

It occurs to me that there are a lot of us in STEM fields who need to be thinking about our fields not as technical disciplines where problems need to be solved by any means at the students’ disposal, but as liberal arts where the path the student takes to the solution is as important as the solution itself. If only the answer matters, then absolutely we should be employing technology in any way we can. We need to take the attitude that it isn’t just the answer that matters. 

And the very nature of the technology itself is the evidence that the answer isn’t the important thing. How the answer is obtained, how much damage is done by the technology doing the answering, how much does the student lose by not exercising the tools they have to do the answering? 

When everything is said and done, what are we telling our students about their humanity? What messages do we send about how they are developing their minds to engage the world around them?

He also has a really good set of links for the mess of massive problems--environmental, intellectual property, human rights--that are part and parcel the use of generative AI.  

urgency needed

Last Tuesday, U.S. Border control conducted immigration raids in Kern County, California: 

 “It was profiling, it was purely field workers,” said Sara Fuentes, store manager of the local gas station. Fuentes said that at 9 a.m., when the store typically gets a rush of workers on their way to pick oranges, two men in civilian clothes and unmarked Suburbans started detaining people outside the store. “They didn’t stop people with FedEx uniforms, they were stopping people who looked like they worked in the fields.” Fuentes says one customer pulled in just to pump gas and agents approached him and detained him.

As a result:

 “We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting. This sent shockwaves through the entire community,” said Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, on Thursday. “People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25% of the workforce, today 75% didn’t show up.”

Emphasis added

This week, of course, Joe Biden is still president. That isn't true next week, when Donald Trump, who has made attacking immigrants a centerpiece, is.  

“I still believe in hope*

From my notebook
From last April 

Okay, so clearly my New Year's Day post on the state senate potentially taking up school funding came from a place of skepticism.

But Senator Jo Comerford is clearly so excited and happy on her Instagram post from the same day that I feel like a heel for only that take, so let's try for the optimism that is the thing one needs to keep on trying in this field of education. Our kids, after all, deserve better.

Screaming into the void on IA

 

Headline in "The Hill": AI read to hit its stride in schools in 2025
No, I am not linking to the article.

Sometimes it is a consolation rather than a problem that education tends to operate as a pendulum. Anyone around schools for any length of time knows that much that comes into schools being trumpeted as the next big thing goes away. 

Something that you may have missed is the judge in the Hingham High AI-cheating case denied the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction in a decision you can read here or can read Benjamin Riley having some fun with here. A preliminary injunction--my I am not a lawyer explanation!--is based on the likelihood of the judge deciding the case in that side's favor, and in this case, the judge's answer was "not at all likely." As the decision says:

Despite Plaintiffs’ strenuous efforts to frame this case as one of “first impression in the Commonwealth” about how to deal with an emerging technology, Court need not parse the terms of the Handbook as if it were a criminal statute27 to decide whether Grammarly can reasonably be considered an “author” as the term is used in the Handbook. The Supreme Court has expressly eschewed such an approach. See Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403, 478 U.S. at 686 (“Given the school’s need to be able to impose disciplinary sanctions for a wide range of unanticipated conduct disruptive of the educational process, the school disciplinary rules need not be as detailed as a criminal code which imposes criminal sanctions.”).  

In any event, the Handbook defines plagiarism as “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own work.” Docket No. 24-1, at 25. Even if I were to credit RNH’s testimony that he was “confused” about what uses of AI were permitted, it strains credulity to suppose that RNH actually believed that copying and pasting, without attribution, text that had been generated by Grammarly was consistent with any standard of academic honesty.  

I'll only add: no appropriate attribution is possible, as the actual sources of such generated text are unknowable.  

It's a useful decision to read.

_______________________________________________
While I'd known of the courts' general reluctance to look over the shoulders of school officials (within bounds), I'd not previously read either of the closing citations:

As the Supreme Court has noted:  

    It is not the role of the federal courts to set aside decisions of school administrators which the court may view as lacking a basis in wisdom or compassion. Public high school students do have substantive and procedural rights while at school. But § 1983 does not extend the right to relitigate in federal court evidentiary questions arising in school disciplinary proceedings or the proper construction of school regulations. The system of public education that has evolved in this Nation relies necessarily upon the discretion and judgment of school administrators and school board members and § 1983 was not intended to be a vehicle for federal court correction of errors in the exercise of that discretion which do not rise to the level of violations of specific constitutional guarantees. 

Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308, 326 (1975) (citations omitted). 

In sum, “the Nation’s youth is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges.” Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 273 (1988). This case well illustrates the good sense in that division of labor.

I was not actually going to post on Lawrence

 ...which, State House News Service reports, has now lost its fully elected school committee, as Governor Healey has now signed the bill empowering mayoral appointment for some of the seats. 

Lawrence, of course, has been in receivership since 2011, faithfully electing a school committee that lacks authority over its own district ever since. Rather than moving out of receivership, it moved to a receivership committee; it is difficult not to see Lawrence's fate tied far too closely with the previous Commissioner, the only one with power to remove it from receivership, having served as a receiver there himself. Riley, of course, did not remove any district from receivership during his time; Acting Commissioner Johnston has moved Holyoke out, despite having served less than a year, as yet. 

It was the remark in support of the mayoral appointment that particularly catches my ire: "There was a superintendent that was indicted. All of us knew what was going on with that superintendent. Yet that person kept getting bonuses, was never fired," as State House News Reports.

Yes, the former Lawrence superintendent was indicted in 2014. 
Lawrence's mayor, though he avoided being himself legally held responsible, at the time was subject to a federal investigation, as well as a host of...a lot of mess, including a lot of people close to him actually being held legally responsible.

All of that is bad. But here's the thing: not only is no one saying that because the mayor in 2011 was at least contiguous to a lot of bad stuff, Lawrence should never elected a mayor; the argument is that the current mayor should have more power and the school committee less because the superintendent in 2011 did bad stuff. 

This makes no sense. And it does a disservice to the people of Lawrence. 

And frankly, the way the Legislature and the Governor just went along with this is lousy.

Also, this is being regarded, by many who keep an eye on such things, as lack of support for local elected control of schools. That this could be a pattern was the source of Senator Fattman's objection to the bill; those in Boston hoping to regain elected control of their own schools are watching; and frankly, anywhere that the school committee occasionally goes head to head with the municipal side is a bit shaken today.

Not good. 

___
PS: The T&G appears to have reviewed the above and taken it that this is a move towards trying to get Lawrence out of receivership. It has no bearing on that. This isn't a "new pathway" out; that's just off base.

on state education funding in the new Legislative term

 Senate President Spilka, per State House News Service*: 

As for education funding, Spilka said she's heard from a lot of senators that their districts are having issues with education funding, even as the Student Opportunity Act has ramped up investments.

"So I think every 10 years or so, it should be re-evaluated and looked at... Things are changing so rapidly in schools and in education, so it's time to take a look at at the formula," she said.

...one hopes by "formula," she means the municipal contribution side as well as the foundation budget; you might remember that the Foundation Budget Review Commissioner was just that.  

As I've said, I remain very concerned that what is being heard by legislators is less than solid on what is working on and what is not. And I am quite certain that what is not being heard is how really not great we are as a state on equity and effort. That is what should be the biggest push of any proposed reform.

_____________________

*paywalled; I'll keep an eye out for a repost