Open tabs tonight

 Tabs I have open tonight:

• I urge you to read "A Letter from a Minneapolis Mom" by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl:
  

  This is the story of trying to be a good and moral mom in the city of Minneapolis over the last decade, just like Renee Good and Melissa Hortman were, and how you do it full of uncertainty, in between loads of laundry and grocery runs and kids rolling their eyes at you and generally thinking you’re reckless or a coward, between the Mother’s Day cards that tell you you’re the greatest mom ever

  
  
• Dana Wormald offers commentary on the New Hampshire House Education chair supporting schools segregation, tracing how this gets us (them?) further on support for vouchers.
  
  
• Mark Lieberman went back and did the math to come up with at least $12B that the Trump administration has interfered with in his first year in office.
  
  
• I do recommend reading Matt Barnum's take on the interview last week with Lindsay Burke, 'though I think he's being too generous in finding some explanation in why the federal education policy is incoherent. 
  
  
• I really cannot believe that Massachusetts has two chambers of the Legislature that have decided in all of the things we actually need them to do, they need to weigh in on how we teach kids to read. This straight-up swings the pendulum all one way on reading instruction, which is just not actually how it works¹. And they're going to make it state law, and then we'll be stuck. Such a disservice to us all.

__________________________________

¹stop calling it "evidence-based" and "high quality" in the coverage, by the way; those are not descriptors, but arguments

School in Minnesota this week

I know we're all tuned into different things at different amounts, so I thought I'd share a few things that perhaps you may have missed about school in Minnesota this week.

• The school attended by Renee Good's son Southside Family Charter School had to switch to online learning after threats. It's a teeny little school:
  

  The school was founded in the 1970s as a community initiative to help families, briefly served as an alternative school in Minneapolis Public Schools, and became a charter school in 2006.

  As it focuses on social justice, which was the focus of a New York Post article, it drew attention from...this isn't even a right wing thing. People who don't think children should work towards a more just world, I guess.
  
  

• St. Paul's schools have cancelled school for Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week (Monday is a holiday) to give time to prepare for a remote option for students which will start on Thursday the 22nd.

On Friday, Jan. 9, amid the federal enforcement crackdown following the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, 51% of students whose home language is Spanish did not show up to school. That compares to absence rates around 20% during comparable days a year ago, in January 2025.
Students whose home language is Somali saw an absence rate of about 24% on Jan. 9, up from about 18% a year ago. Others, including Hmong and Karen speakers, saw small but noticeable increases in absences as well.

• As you may have seen, among the places Minneapolis residents have been keeping watch is around schools: 
  

  People who normally might be organizing parent-teacher association meetings are arranging security patrols at their kids' schools to watch for immigration agents. 

  Some parents not on patrol are escorting foreign-born teachers or staff members, driving them to and from their homes and schools to make them feel safer. Others are delivering groceries and prescription medicines to immigrant families who are too afraid to leave their homes or send their kids to class.
  

  You can read more about their work in this Minnesota Public Radio piece. 

If you're looking for ways to support those resisting ICE occupation of Minneapolis and the surrounding area, you can find ways to Stand with Minnesota here.

I was really struck this week by Jenny B. Potter's "I want to write about what it's like in Minnesota right now," which I saw on her Instagram. She also has links in her bio on ways to help.

Not about school specifically, but don't miss the Minneapolis Art Sled Rally, which was yesterday:

Transportation consolidation and lack of competition

 sound familiar? There's some good coverage from Vermont this week:

Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified Union School District, said only one company, Bet-Cha, responded to the district’s last two bids for service. This is despite the supervisory union hiring a transportation consultant to drum up more bids across the Northeast, she said.

Olsen-Farrell said her district faces similar school bus workforce challenges and concerns with lack of vendor competition identified by the Agency of Education’s report.

What's great about this report is it goes back into some causes: 

 Private equity’s presence in the market has generated concern among advocates and school officials around the quality of service available to school districts. Some fear it could magnify workforce shortages and the small vendor pool. 

Azani Creeks, a labor issues researcher and campaigner for the nonprofit Private Equity Stakeholder Project, said the trend is part of an emerging pattern at public schools of outsourcing and privatizing systems like health care, data management and food services to private-equity-affiliated companies.

Private equity companies have been investing in the student transportation sector for at least 15 years, Creeks said, according to tracking by the Chicago-based watchdog organization.

Remember, a private corporation exists to create profit for shareholders, not to provide service for students and their families. 

And this part will sound locally familiar: 

While many districts contract out transportation services, some Vermont school districts, like South Burlington and Champlain Valley, operate their own systems — albeit not without their own workforce challenges.

Jean-Marie Clark, the South Burlington School District’s director of finance and operations, said having an in-house fleet with drivers on staff allows the district a certain level of flexibility and control that they may not get with a third-party company.

“It feels like we are in control of what’s happening and what routes are running and what routes aren’t running, as opposed to that being told to us,” she said.

Staffing shortages remain a persistent issue, officials said, although some districts have found more stability after they increased wages

I'll note again: there are other things districts collaborate (note the word on); this is another to be looking at. 

Chalkbeat talks to Lindsey Burke from the U.S. Department of Education

Here's the thing: I am not a video watcher, but I'd recommend watching or listening to this from this afternoon

Lindsey Burke is  the deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the Education Department. She used to work at the Heritage Foundation and she wrote the chapter on education in Project 2025. 

The reporters subsequently wrote up the interview here; if you'd like to read real time reactions, I think you can see the Bluesky thread here. My takeaway is that we actually have people running these things that think they can make two contradictory remarks and have us not notice. 

FY27 MA state budget built on a 2.7% increase

 So far only State House News has this (sorry, they're paywalled), but next year's revenue figure (at least for now) has been agreed upon and released: 

Secretary of Administration and Finance Matthew Gorzkowicz, Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues and House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz said their tax estimate agreement includes money coming in from the surtax on high-earning households. Excluding surtax revenue, the agreement foresees $42.2 billion in tax revenue for fiscal year 2027, an increase of 2.4% over the current fiscal 2026 benchmark. The most recent national measure of inflation showed prices rose at an annual rate of 2.7% as of the end of 2025.

The headline reads 2.7% because it includes the Fair Share funding:  

Budget managers also agreed to assume $2.7 billion in surtax revenue will come in during fiscal 2027 and to cap surtax revenue spending at the same amount. That would make $300 million more in surtax revenue available for spending compared to the current budget, they said. Massachusetts collected $3 billion from the surtax in fiscal 2025 and that revenue by law is supposed to only be spent on education and transportation.

So they're underbudgeting again...sigh.

 

AI risks outweigh benefits in schools

Rhetoric arguing that technology adoption in and of itself represents innovation and progress is not only false but undermines society’s ability to discern how to effectively harness AI to advance children’s education.

...though I would dispute that the last is possible.

Headline from NPR this morning: "The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits, report says" in one that probably landed on your screen. It's from a Brookings release, and while the full report is over 200 pages (add it to your "to be read" list), the summary (from which the above quote is taken) is certainly digestible.

and in today's edition of people's rights being up for debate

 The U.S. Supreme Court today hears arguments today on barring trans athletes from sports:

Tuesdays test cases are factually very different. One involves an Idaho college student barred by state law from trying out for the Boise State University varsity women's track team. The other case was brought by a West Virginia middle school student barred by state law from competing in school sports.

There are laws on the books in 27 of the 50 American states now, barring trans youth from participating in sports. Depending on how the court takes up the arguments, consequences could vary: 

 Block's fear is that the Supreme Court will ultimately rule that transgender rights generally are subject to the lowest level of legal scrutiny—something called rational basis, which essentially means that a state law is presumed valid as long as the state legislature has some rational reason—pretty much any reason— for its law. And he argues that using that test, trans kids could arbitrarily be kicked out of school...

The Supreme Court has lots of choices about the path it will take in these cases, and whether it will go big or small, observes William and Mary law professor Jonathan Adler. "There's a real question whether the court will confine what it says to the specific context of sports where there's always some inherent line-drawing that may seem arbitrary, or whether it's going to do something more broad," he says. "And the broader the court goes, certainly the more significant these cases are."

As the Washington Post notes in their quoting of Becky Pepper-Jackson, who brought the West Virginia case, the impact on students now is real: 

“It’s really hard to get used to being constantly judged and silently looked at like you’re a monster,” Pepper-Jackson said. “I try not to let it bother me, but it’s a shock every time.”

Some tabs I have open

•  If you're a history buff, you might be interested in the events going on across the state in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the "Noble Train of Artillery," led by Henry Knox that brought the cannons of Fort Ticonderoga to Dorchester Heights. They crossed from New York into Massachusetts Saturday (Hillsdale, NY to Alford, MA, to be exact).
  As you may know, the cannons arriving at Dorchester Heights are what caused the British to leave Boston, which those who grew up in Suffolk County know well happened on March 17. 
  It'll be in Worcester January 31:
  

  Prior to the program at AAS, reenactors with horses and sleds, accompanied by fife and drum musicians, will walk from Worcester City Hall along Main Street to Institute Park.  The procession from City Hall will begin at 1:00 p.m.  At approximately 3:30 p.m., following the program at AAS, reenactors will fire a canon at Institute Park.

  
  
  
• Great work by Mississippi Today on student absence in Simpson County which actually looks at some of why students aren't in school: 
  

  Aaron Thompson drives his two elementary-aged children to school each day, but only when they aren’t sick or the road isn’t flooded. The family of four lives off a ragged stretch of concrete bounded on one side by a hunting trail and, on the other, by a worn bridge dotted with orange traffic cones....The reasons vary by family, with explanations oftentimes exposing a fraying social safety net now relying on younger helpers around the house to take care of elderly relatives and toddlers and teenage laborers in town, who work to contribute to their household income. 

   

• Intriguingly, Matt Barnum (now back at Chalkbeat) is having ​​Lindsey Burke, the current U.S. Department of Education’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, on a webinar on Wednesday at noon to discuss "why the administration wants to eliminate the agency, how officials are already working to do so, and what all this means for students, educators, and parents." I have RSVP'd, though I'm going to see how my blood pressure is doing by Wednesday before deciding to tune in or not. 

Minneapolis Public Schools offering remote learning for a month

 Due to ICE activity in the district, Minneapolis Public Schools are providing remote learning through February 12. Per the AP: 

Immigration enforcement in cities across the U.S. has led to dips in attendance, parents and educators say. Advocates in other cities facing federal interventions have sought remote learning options, particularly for immigrant families that might feel vulnerable, but Minneapolis appears to be one of the few districts to reintroduce the option of virtual learning.

“This meets a really important need for our students who are not able to come to school right now,” a Minneapolis school administrator wrote in an email to their staff late Thursday.

Administrators’ emails to staff indicate the decision to offer remote learning wasn’t a quick one. They refer to long meetings with input from school principals and the teachers union, acknowledging the planning and coordination required to deliver virtual school.

That piece also covers more of what happened at Roosevelt High School on the same day Renee Good was shot by an ICE officer. 

On the same day as the shooting, immigration enforcement agents detained someone outside the city’s Roosevelt High School around dismissal time, which led to altercations with bystanders. The Minneapolis Federation of Educators said agents deployed tear gas and detained an educator before releasing them.

The Minnesota Star Tribune coverage of that is here.

 

federal funding waiver doesn't live up to the hype

 I entirely understand how it is that people might have missed this, but if you do pay attention to school funding, you may have caught U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon touting "returning education to the states" through approval of a waiver for Iowa for combining federal funding, in essence, block granting their funding. As the Department's release says: 

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) approved Iowa’s Returning Education to the States Waiver, empowering state education officials to have more discretion over their federal education dollars. Iowa is the first state to apply for and receive such a waiver, which will allow state leaders to focus federal dollars on work that best improves the achievement of Iowa students.

Iowa’s waiver permits the state education agency to combine four federal funding streams into one. Iowa leaders seek to focus more federal resources on improving student achievement rather than federal compliance. This waiver’s flexibility will reduce compliance costs, allowing nearly $8 million to be redirected from bureaucratic red tape to the classroom over four years. State education leaders will use the redirected funds and the greater flexibility they afford to expand support for evidence-based literacy training, strengthening their teacher pipeline, and narrowing achievement gaps.

If you know anything of how much federal funding flows to states, you may have had that *record scratch* sound in your head when you to the bit about "nearly $8 million" up here. 

Excellent work from Mark Lieberman over at EdWeek gives a more clear eyed assessment on this one: 

 ...in contrast with proposals the state put forward roughly a year ago, the new federal approval touches only 5% of Iowa’s overall allocation of federal education funds, the part that’s set aside for the state education agency. The bulk of federal dollars that flow to school districts each year—$900 million worth—will retain their current structure and spending and reporting requirements.

This announcement could signal an acknowledgment from the department that its legal authority to flatten discrete funding programs and implement unrestricted block grants without congressional approval is limited, said Anne Hyslop, the director of policy development for the nonprofit advocacy group All4Ed, and a former senior policy adviser at the Education Department who helped implement the Every Student Succeeds Act.

It also foreshadows an uphill battle for other states aiming to convert federal education funding to block grants, including Indiana, which submitted a request for that flexibility, along with relief from certain school accountability requirements, in October.

I realize that it isn't going to surprise anyone that the Trump administration is being less than forthcoming on what they're actually doing, but it's always worth calling these out. 

What are we doing here, Worcester?

 I am of course posting this after the Worcester School Committee meeting at which this was discussed. This is partly because this isn't intended as anything other than my thoughts, but it's also rather been a bleak week. It's a hard week to pull together the through line to write. 

New enrollment numbers for Massachusetts are up

 For those who follow such things--and, as it has funding implications, that's many of us!--note that DESE released 2025-26 enrollment figures yesterday. 

Remember that the foundation enrollment is not this enrollment; this is bodies in seats, while foundation enrollment includes charter students, and students who school choice out, while not include students who choice in.

Minneapolis Public Schools cancelled for the rest of the week

 Note that the Minneapolis Public Schools have cancelled for the rest of the week; the following went out last night:

The plural on "incidents" is due to students outside of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis being sprayed with "chemical irritants" by ICE yesterday afternoon, in addition, of course, to the slaying by ICE earlier in the day of mother and poet Renee Nicole Good.

Minnesota Public Radio has more on the Roosevelt High incident now: 

The move came after officials at Roosevelt High School said armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came on school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people, handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders. 

“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” a school official, who spoke to MPR News on condition of anonymity said. 

“They don’t care. They’re just animals,” the official added. “I’ve never seen people behave like this.” 

 

Please go get a flu shot

 Massachusetts, as I noted yesterday, has had its first pediatric deaths from flu this winter: 

The flu has been associated with the deaths of four children in Massachusetts, health officials reported Tuesday as cases continue to surge in the state.

Two of the four deaths were of children under the age of 2 in Boston, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.

The Hill offers this map for the week ending December 27:

 

And note: 

“It is not too late to get a flu shot,” said Dr. Andrew Pekosz, a virologist and professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said during a media briefing in December. “We’re really at the beginning of the influenza season here in the U.S.”

Please, please, ensure your family is vaccinated. This flu is putting people into the hospital and is killing people, including children. From ABC News yesterday:

The CDC estimates there have been 120,000 hospitalizations so far this season, a 48.1% increase from the prior week.

Additionally, the CDC says there have been at least 11 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths due to flu so far this season, including at least nine pediatric deaths.

To read so far this week

 Hey, we're off to a not-great beginning of the year here--among other terrible things, Massachusetts just had its first reported pediatric deaths from flu, so please get vaccinated, regardless of what RFK Jr says--and news in the education universe is likewise mixed. Here are some things I'd recommend reading:

• Politico takes a look at how Trump may further mess with education in 2026. Remarkably, this is NOT actually a depressing article!
  
  
• California, like Massachusetts, does not require kindergarten. CalMatters looks at if this might be the year that they do. 
  (California is at least discussing it; to my knowledge, this isn't being raised in Massachusetts at all.)
  
  
• Vermont is undergoing another look at their school district arrangement. As Vermont is largely rural, this Hechinger Report piece is relevant elsewhere.

Not that anyone asked me but: on state education priorities

In their past two meetings, the Board of Ed has established priorities; in November, for the FY27 budget request, and in December, for the Commissioner, which he proposed as being the foundation of a strategic plan. 

I'd first note--and I do realize that the Board here is constrained by state deadlines on budget--that the above is really backwards; you always want to establish your priorities before you do your budgeting. You set your values before you spend your money. 

With that in mind, then, let's consider first the priorities, with a connection to what one would then need for budgetary priorities. 

Let's first note that he started with this slide: 

...which I just find super disheartening as framing. Someday, someone is going to note? remember? that public education is guaranteed by the state "for the preservation of their rights and liberties" and that it is for the good not only of individual children, but for all of us. THAT is what we should be leading with, anytime we are asking how we are doing.