Two big meetings for the state this week

 And wouldn't you know, it's a double header, because these things aren't coordinated!

• On Tuesday at 9 AM, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has their regular monthly meeting. While I suspect the interim graduation report will be getting attention in public comment, remember that it's an interim report. The final report is due in June. 
  What I'm going to paying most attention to is the Commissioner's 2025 School Accountability Designations, which implies that he has some to make. Whether, as some parents at UP Academy Dorchester apparently fear, he'll be moving schools out of receivership, or, as hinted at last year by then Acting Commissioner Russell Johnston*, he'll be moving some in, we'll have to listen to learn. 
  
  
• 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!


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*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

And as someone in Worcester: I'm really concerned about North, which is in the lowest performing 2% of districts in the state.