...and because it is school vacation week, you might miss it, but the agenda is here.
I suspect they'll be spending much of their time on the update on early literacy (the free space the bingo board for this meeting is for "high quality instructional materials"), and the regulations bear review, but I'm looking forward to the only Board of Elementary and Secondary Education appearance of current Acting Secretary Amy Kershaw, who is the Early Education and Care Commissioner.
Excellent piece from The Hechinger Report, capturing much that I haven't seen covered locally, about the state's antisemitism commission:
Massachusetts is a deep-blue state, and the commission started its work before Donald Trump was elected to a second term. But the report and recommendations are being published in the context of the Trump administration accusing schools and universities of not doing enough to combat antisemitism and pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from higher education institutions, notably Harvard. The same week the commission released its report, the U.S. House Committee on Education & the Workforce launched a coordinated investigation into alleged antisemitism in three public school districts, in California, Pennsylvania and Virginia. This is happening even as the administration is pulling back on enforcement of antidiscrimination protections of Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ students and those with disabilities, among others.
This work has proven controversial, starting with the definition of “antisemitism” and continuing with the proposed solutions and broader implications for communities. California’s new law was immediately challenged with a lawsuit brought by teachers and students who say it violates free speech. And in Massachusetts, the commission’s final document was met with a “shadow report,” issued in direct response by Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff, a group of Massachusetts-based experts in fields like education, law and Holocaust and genocide studies.
Most notably:
Concerns about the Massachusetts report begin with its definition of antisemitism. It advises educators to embrace the definition developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a multinational nonprofit focused on Holocaust education. That definition, also used by the Trump and Biden administrations, gives 11 examples of antisemitism, several of which could be interpreted primarily as political criticisms of the state of Israel — like claiming that the existence of Israel is a “racist endeavor” or drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy with that of the Nazis. The shadow report notes that Kenneth Stern, one of IHRA’s lead drafters, himself has warned against the definition being “weaponized” and urged institutional leaders not to adopt it as formal policy.
Not covered here--I suspect because how Massachusetts does this is a Massachusetts thing--is that the report has no authority over schools; it was a special commission, and the report has not gone to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
However, it bears thoughtful watching.
Over the weekend, Governor Healey, speaking of the proposed ballot question which would roll the income tax back to 4% from 5%, said that the question, which she opposes, could mean "65%" of all education funding would go away.
Reading that, I scratched my head as to how 65% of specifically "all education funding" would be cut, and apparently, I wasn't alone, as today, State House News Service has the following:
I thought this piece from NBC on parents opting their children out of technology at school, of interest:
National organizations representing administrators, school technology officers and teachers have urged caution against lumping in classroom screen time with recreational device use at home, saying they need to prepare students for employers who expect students to be fluent with digital tools and artificial intelligence.
But the parents opting out point to research showing that students who used computers at school performed worse academically and that information is better retained when read on paper. And education experts say there’s a significant difference between educating students about technology and completely relying on educational technology.
“It’s a bit of a mirage,” said Faith Boninger, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Education Policy Center who has studied flaws in digital platforms used by schools. “Students don’t need to be consumers of this technology in order to be able to use it in 10 or 15 years, when it’s likely going to be something else entirely.”
I found it particularly interesting that, towards the end of the article, they have quotes from Montgomery County, Maryland:
The Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations is pressing the district to provide a formal process to request “non-screen alternatives” for families that have “made the conscious effort to limit their children’s exposure to screens.”
Lisa Cline, a Montgomery County mom who chaired a parent advisory committee focused on technology, said she opted her son out when he was in third grade and then requested each school year that his teachers keep him off screens as much as possible until he graduated high school last year. She said she hopes to work with the advocacy group Fairplay for Kids to launch a national campaign urging parents to opt out of school-issued devices.
“I think it’s a win, actually, if we get to that point where the default is you opt in,” Cline said.
Montgomery County schools were in the news last year as they were the district sued in the Mahmoud case, which I wrote about here, in which the Supreme Court provided for pretty sweeping parental opt-outs on religious grounds for their children in public schools. While the case is not mentioned in the article, I suspect that is only a matter of time.
Locally, I'm still rather stunned that this was part of the reporting of a local subcommittee meeting:
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| Bluesky post from Governor Healey's account says "Government should embrace new technology --safely and securely--to make life easier for our families and businesses" |
Analyze the beneficial and harmful effects of computing innovations (e.g., social networking, delivery of news and other public media, intercultural communication).
It would behoove the Governor and her administration to do so before continuing to thrust this unwanted change upon us.
In the second case, high school and middle school students in Massachusetts have been organizing walkouts to protest against ICE. This analysis, research, organization, and action is directly reflective of the state's required civics project in both middle and high school, for which you can find the reference guide below.
Most notably, the overall requirement is:
Students complete the real work of engaged, informed participants in a democracy by identifying issues and advocating for change in their communities.
And:
They move beyond the walls of the classroom and exercise their voice.
The thing about education: it isn't, in the end, supposed to be theoretical. Either we mean it, or we don't.
I am a big fan of "just feed people who are hungry" sort of outreach, and locally, the Mustard Seed Catholic Worker does that. So does St. John's Food for the Poor, which is also now running the overnight shelter here in Worcester. In both cases, please note that there are ways to sign up to volunteer on those pages, too.
Just as monarch butterflies use milkweed plants to deter predators and create safe conditions during migration, immigrant families need community support when facing ICE enforcement. Be the milkweed.
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| my photo taken some years ago in western Mass |
Maine Educational Policy Research Institute proposes a 90/10 model for calculating how much of their costs districts can afford to cover with local funding. That means 90% of the expectation would be based on property taxes (the current system) and 10% would be based on the economically disadvantaged student rate. Researchers found that rate to be the best proxy for the poverty level in a community.
Note that Maine's formula does include transportation, which Massachusetts does not include. Also this is an "I know, right?" with a different answer:
Johnson said special education is the area of the model that is “the most under stress.” Because of a step in the formula that bases state funding on past spending, the current formula disproportionately privileges wealthier districts.
But before changing the formula, the institute proposes shifting special education to a regional model, wherein districts would collaborate on providing special ed services. Researchers are planning a forthcoming special education-specific report.
Excellent commentary piece from South Dakota:
....passage of the bill flies in the face of local control for school boards. While SB 198 leaves it up to local boards to decide on discipline and what constitutes a school day, it takes away their power to decide on the use of cellphones in a one-size-fits-all policy.
The beauty of local school boards is that they reflect the wants and needs of their communities. Some have students squirrel away their phones all day. Others give students access to their phones during lunch. Still others use the freedom for students to have a phone during the school day as a lesson in responsibility.
Banning student cellphone use in schools sounds good on the surface. So did substituting ag classes for science classes and allowing athletes to substitute sports participation for a gym credit. Whenever the Legislature gets into the business of micromanaging school districts, there are pitfalls aplenty.
...and what cameras might have been placed on district property by the police1, due to what has been uncovered in an article jointly reported by The 74 and The Guardian:
The audit logs originate from Texas school districts that contract with Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that manufactures artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers and other surveillance technology. Flock’s cameras are designed to capture license plate numbers, timestamps and other identifying details, which are uploaded to a cloud server. Flock customers, including schools, can decide whether to share their information with other police agencies in the company’s national network.
Multiple law enforcement leaders acknowledged they conducted the searches in the audit logs to help the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforce federal immigration laws. The Trump administration’s aggressive DHS crackdown, which has grown increasingly unpopular, has had a significant impact on schools.
Note that this may well not even be your local police department doing the search for ICE:
Flock searches are typically broad national queries, and officers do not select individual cameras, he explained. Instead, with each search request, the system automatically checks every camera that Flock customers share with the nationwide database, including those operated by school districts.
The closing is very apt:
“School districts are in a unique position, they have a unique level of responsibility to protect their students in specific ways”, including their privacy, Wandt said.
It's worth noting that Flock has partnered with Ring, they of the Super Bowl ad that, while attempting to convince us all that they wanted to find lost puppies, made it newly clear that having a Ring camera is to now be part of a national surveillance network. While the comment from Ring was:
For the record, Ring says Search Party is not designed to process human biometrics, and that Search Party footage is not included in the company’s Community Requests service, which allows law enforcement to request video for voluntary sharing by Ring users.
...do you want that on your house? Let alone in your school.
Go ask.
__________________________________________The Secretary announced his departure on Instagram this afternoon:
State House News Service reports here. WGBH reports here.
The Secretary, as a reminder, is an appointed position, serving at the pleasure of the Governor. They head the Executive Office of Education, and they have a voting seat on the three Boards that oversee public education in Massachusetts: Early Ed and Care; Elementary and Secondary Education; and Higher Ed.
Zrike has been superintendent of Salem since 2020; Lt. Governor Driscoll was mayor in Salem when he was appointed and was a member of the School Committee. He previously was the receiver of Holyoke.
Don't miss this piece from ProPublica on the children in the detention center in Dilley Texas.
When I asked the kids to tell me about the things they missed most from their lives outside Dilley, they almost always talked about their teachers and friends at school. Then they’d get to things like missing a beloved dog, McDonald’s Happy Meals, their favorite stuffed animal or a pair of new UGGs that had been waiting for them under the Christmas tree.
They told me they feared what might happen to them if they returned to their home countries and what might happen to them if they remained here. Thirteen-year-old Gustavo Santiago said he didn’t want to go back to Tamaulipas, Mexico. “I have friends, school, and family here in the United States,” he said of his home in San Antonio, Texas. “To this day, I don’t know what we did wrong to be detained.” He ended with a plea, “I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.”
ProPublica features their letters here.
Don't miss their art, as well as their words.
The Portland Press Herald this weekend took a look at the attendance in Maine due to ICE activities:
More than half of all multilingual students in South Portland, and nearly half in Portland, were absent on some of the most affected days. Between Jan. 20 and 28, Black and Hispanic students in Portland missed school at a rate 30 percentage points higher than their white peers.
Absence rates varied on a school-by-school basis: In Portland, one elementary school was missing as many as 34% of students some days, while others were missing less than 10%. At Biddeford’s PreK-2 school, 23% of all students — and 58% of multilingual students — missed school one especially stark day during the second week of the operation.
They do a nice job with graphing.
When I posted about the Worcester School Committee taking up the FY27 budget projections for the first time, we didn't yet have the FY25 net school spending compliance report. The summary file of that is now available, and now we can see what impact the $3.8M the City Council transferred from free cash, as highlighted in yellow in Ms. Consalvo's presentation here:
San Francisco Unified signed a contract with OpenAI before putting it before their school board, where it appears on their consent agenda.
As the San Francisco Public Press notes in their coverage:
Even if students do not have direct access, data such as school work, academic records, behavioral information and digital interactions can be especially sensitive, since minors have special legal protections. Once shared with vendors, student information can be stored, analyzed or reused beyond public view.
Artificial intelligence chatbots can present privacy problems for schools, said Lee Tien, legislative director at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which scrutinizes how many public institutions, including schools, use technology and collect private data.
The timing and handling of the agreement raised questions about how San Francisco school administrators evaluate and approve technology tools, and whether meaningful oversight occurs, Tien said. When procurement decisions come in advance of review by accountable leadership, public discussions about surveillance and transparency can be shortchanged. “It’s simply rubber-stamping decisions that were being made, and you don’t know why they were being made,” Tien said.
Such a procurement decision, unless it exceeded five years, wouldn't even need to come to the school committee in Massachusetts at all.
The days on which I agree with the American Enterprise Institute are few, but this opinion piece by Robert Pondiscio, entitled "Why are school buildings so ugly?" struck a chord:
A century ago, we built schools that looked like cathedrals: soaring, columned, sunlit. Even in modest communities and small towns—especially there—they were grand civic statements, rooted in the idea that public education was a serious and noble undertaking. Just as courthouses and libraries once signaled dignity and permanence, so too did public schools. You were meant to feel small walking in, but in the best way: awed, inspired, aware that something larger than yourself was happening here. And once you were old enough to set foot inside, you were part of it.
I will gladly concede that my opinion might be Philistinism; I don’t know enough about architecture to fill a thimble. Perhaps my tastes are outdated and anachronistic. But to my untrained eye, too many schools built from the post-war decades to today resemble garages, warehouses, even prisons. Instead of announcing themselves with architectural pride, they disappear into the landscape. At worst, they actively depress it. That transformation isn’t just aesthetic. It’s moral, cultural, and political; I cannot shake the nagging sense that uninspiring school buildings reflect our shrinking vision of education itself—from temples of intellectual and moral formation to utilitarian spaces built for the drab instrumentalism of “college and career readiness.”
I'm so glad you asked: there is indeed!
Recent research published by Judy Hanwen Shen and Alex Tamkin at Cornell University has found that "[n]ovice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition in the process." From the coverage in Ed Tech Innovation Hub:
The findings have implications beyond software development, particularly for education systems and professional learning environments increasingly adopting AI tools. The researchers argue that AI-enhanced productivity should not be assumed to translate into long-term competence, especially in settings where individuals are expected to supervise, verify, or correct AI-generated work.
The study also raises concerns about overreliance on AI in safety-critical or high-stakes domains, where human oversight depends on strong foundational skills. Without intentional learning design, AI use may reduce the very expertise needed to manage automated systems effectively.
The authors emphasize that AI can support learning when used intentionally, but caution that widespread adoption without structured pedagogical approaches could weaken skill development over time. They conclude that organizations and educators should focus not only on what AI enables people to produce, but on how it shapes the process of learning itself.
(emphasis added)
These are conversations that are badly, badly needed in education. They are absolutely not being had, in the mad rush to ensure it is adopted in classrooms.
I thought this, from The Harvard Crimson's reporting on the Cambridge School Committee, was of interest:
The School Committee also addressed growing concern over technology usage in schools, an issue raised repeatedly during public comment. The discussion followed a policy order last year asking the district to assess students’ screen time and set a formal policy on AI usage.
Murphy said the district’s responsibility is to ensure the benefits of using technology in the classroom are not “outweighed by the types of risks and potential detriments that are also associated with technology being as ubiquitous as it is.”
He recommended the discussion on AI use be moved to the School Committee’s curriculum subcommittee to “provide a forum” for parents, educators, and students to voice their concerns. The district also announced plans to conduct focus groups to gather feedback from educators across different grade levels.
“Trying to strike that balance and understand that nuance — that we want to capitalize on what's available to us, while not falling into, or falling prey to some of the pitfalls,” he said, “I think that's a really difficult conversation.”
A few things of note here:
Yesterday, two Minnesota school districts (Twin Cities suburbs) and Education Minnesota, the teachers' union, filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security1 to keep ICE agents away from their schools and bus stops. From K-12 Dive:
“DHS’s presence in and near school property has created an atmosphere of fear, for native-born citizens, naturalized citizens, and legally present immigrants alike,” the lawsuit, filed by Fridley Public School District and Duluth Public School District, said. “Parents across the state are afraid to send their children to school, and schools have had to adjust their programs.”
The grounds for the suit, per The New York Times:
The lawsuit argues that the policy change usurped decades of federal precedent. Since the 1990s, the lawsuit says, the federal government had instructed immigration agents to minimize impact in places with children present and to get special permission and operate discreetly if necessary.
The suit asserts that the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that requires certain notice and procedures when making a policy change.
Never rule administrative procedure out.
____________I'm not able to attend this evening--training another committee!--but I did want to note that the Worcester School Committee is receiving their first look at FY27 (next school year's budget) at tonight's meeting. You can find the presentation here.
This has now become when we also get the first look at the cover art of the budget book, which I always appreciate:
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| enjoying the spooky overtones here; are we foreshadowing FY28? |
And when it comes to education funding, well, I'll let Mark Lieberman of EdWeek take this:
Ultimately, Congress comprehensively rejected the Trump administration’s proposals to slash billions of dollars from federal education investments. Schools nationwide can expect roughly similar year-over-year funding levels this fall for key programs like Title I for students from low-income households, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act for special education services, Title II for professional development, and Title III for English learners.The final legislation doesn’t require the Trump administration to halt efforts to shift Education Department programs to other agencies, and it doesn’t explicitly prohibit the administration from taking further steps to diminish the Cabinet-level agency.It does, however, include requirements for the department to consult more closely with Congress on the status of its efforts to shift responsibilities to other agencies. It also includes nearly $400 million for Education Department staff compensation, only slightly less than for the previous fiscal year despite recent staff reductions that have nearly cut the agency’s ranks in half.The legislation also supplies funding for several smaller agencies the Trump administration had already moved unilaterally to defund, including AmeriCorps and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Most education funding is forward-funded, which means allocations for the current fiscal year will hit schools in the upcoming school year. Typically, formula funds for schools start flowing to states in July. Grant program competitions can happen throughout the year.
The Office of the Attorney General, Division of Open Government--aka, They Who Oversee The Open Meeting Law--filed their annual report with the OML Advisory Commission late late last week. State House News Service coverage is here.
Of note:
During 2025, 395 OML complaints were filed with the Division for review; 9 of those complaints were subsequently withdrawn by the complainant. Many more complaints were filed with public bodies in the Commonwealth but not filed with the Division for further review, likely because either the complainant was satisfied by the public body’s response and remedial action taken, or because the complainant understood from the public body’s response or from communications with our office that the issues raised did not fall within the scope of the OML. In total, the Division received notice of 703 complaints filed with public bodies in 2025.
And:
The most frequent violations found were: 1) insufficiently specific meeting notice; 2) inaccurate or insufficiently detailed meeting minutes; 3) deliberation outside of a posted meeting; 4) convening in executive session for an improper purpose; and 5) meetings not accessible to the public.
Only six were found to be intentional violations (good!), and yes, they are listed in the report by name.
Do note:
Site visits at recently completed schools established a baseline for comparison in future assessments. Site visits were not conducted at schools in the MSBA’s Core Program pipeline unless construction had been completed
You can download the full survey results here.
And while I knew this--it's true here in Worcester, after all!--I'm a little mesmerized by where this timeline starts:
Now being tracked by K-12 Dive here
A DHS spokesperson later clarified to K-12 Dive that immigration enforcement activity in schools should be “extremely rare” and would first require “secondary supervisor approval.”
K-12 Dive filed another request for records in January 2026 and is awaiting a response on their release. DHS has also not responded to multiple requests for comment.
From The New Yorker this week:
Among the untold thousands of children nationwide who have been swallowed up in ICE dragnets, six of them are students in the Columbia Heights school district. One is a fourth grader who was abducted with her mother when they were driving to school; they are currently being held in the notoriously abject South Texas Family Residential Center, in Dilley, Texas. Two seventeen-year-old students were also taken: one, a boy, is back home, but the other, a girl, is in Dilley. On Thursday, a pair of siblings in the second and fifth grade were taken into federal custody with their mother; they, too, are in Dilley.
So is the sixth student, Liam Conejo Ramos, a five-year-old boy from Ecuador. A single image of the little boy, snapped by a neighbor at the scene of his abduction, has become iconic of Operation Metro Surge, which is what the Department of Homeland Security calls their occupation of Minneapolis. In the picture, Liam stands next to a salt-stained S.U.V., bundled up for the cold and wearing a bright-blue winter hat with fluffy white bunny ears. Behind him, the disembodied hand of a federal agent grips his Spider-Man backpack.
Liam, along with this father, was the subject of a scathing court order by Judge Fred Biery yesterday; the full text is here
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Liam and his father were released yesterday and are back home in Minnesota. Though he is home now, note that the impacts of what happened to him will be long-lasting.
What it's like to be the superintendent there now:
Even Zena Stendvik, the superintendent of the Columbia Heights public school district, often patrols outside with parents and staff.“I stopped wearing my high heels to work,” Stendvik told HuffPost. “I wear my boots to work, because I have had to run out onto a corner or into the back of the high school.”“I stay on the perimeter of our school and help direct students, either to go back into the building or, you know, just stay with me and watch for a second to make sure it’s OK,” she said. “We have numerous staff and, like you said, grandmas and grandpas and other people at every corner of every school building, every morning, every afternoon.”
Granlund, in her capacity as school-board chair, has repeatedly demanded that ICE agents leave public-school property; in the first of these encounters, a few weeks ago, a masked ICE agent used his phone to record Granlund, her car, and her license plate, while reciting aloud her full legal name and address. Teachers at Highland Elementary School routinely stick around after dismissal to patrol the perimeter of the high school next door—where Homeland Security agents often loiter—as it lets out for the day. “I’ve seen first-grade teachers and music teachers with whistles in hand, running toward ICE,” Zena Stenvik, the Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent, told me. “Literally, educators are putting their bodies between ICE agents and children.” On January 21st, an ICE vehicle pulled into the loading dock of the high school; in a video of the incident, taken from a classroom window, students can be overheard in a hubbub of jeering, incredulity, and fear.Recently, Granlund was picking up her son from the high school when she heard that ICE had descended on a nearby apartment complex, one that is home to many students in the district. She ran with some teachers, blowing their whistles, to the parking lot where ICE agents had been spotted. In a video of the incident, about a half-dozen women, unarmed and dressed for the classroom, square off against at least four masked agents of the federal government, their chests puffed out under bulky tactical gear. The women scream at ICE to get out, that they are not welcome in their community. “Are your moms proud of you?” one calls out. “Do they know what you do? Do they know that you separate families?”
One of the most wrenching passages I read this week was this one, also from Columbia Heights, from Minnesota Public Radio:
Kuhlman said the children’s mother called the school early Thursday to tell them she’d been detained and asked school leaders to bring the kids to her at the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling because there were no family members in Minnesota to care for them.
“We had to deliver them to a detention center,” Kuhlman said.
“The kids were with us. They were safe. They feel comfortable with us because we’re caring adults. But to ask educators to deliver them is horrible, you know?” he added. “I will always abide by a parent’s wishes. And she wanted to be reunited with the boys. She wanted to go together. But great goodness (for ICE) to put us in a position like that. I don’t have words.”
He said the boys cried when he told them what was happening and were frightened and asked to hold a school nurse’s hand when they walked into the Whipple Building.
“She was holding both their hands. It’s a lot of people in there with guns and weapons and formality and security and masks,” said Leslee Sherk, principal of Columbia Academy, another Columbia Heights school leader who helped deliver the children to the Whipple Building.
Those are the second and fifth grader mentioned above.
They are not home in Minnesota and safe.
They should be.
UPDATE FROM MONDAY MORNING: Columbia Heights has had to cancel school today due to a "credible threat."
