Connected? Reporting this week from Boston

 At 4 PM last Friday, October 2, State House News Service sent an article entitled as follows: 

Headline reads "Ads critical of Boston Public Schools removed from T"

NBC 10 picked up the article, which you can read here. 

Saturday's edition of the Boston Globe included this column from Adrian Walker, headlined "Dark Money comes for the Boston Public Schools," in which he attempted to chase down who it was that was funding the new "Next Chapter Boston" and their $1.5M ad buy. 

This then spun over the weekend into accusations of who could possibly have made the call to pull the ads, cries of censorship, and no movement towards any discovery of who was funding the ads that would have followed Boston secondary school students on their way to school each morning. 

Should we ever get to the bottom of who funded the ads, it is, as Walker notes: 

People who suddenly pour big money into something like that aren’t just trying to “raise awareness” — whatever that really means. They are trying to influence public policy. And the public has a right to know who they are, and what they really want.

The website, for what it's worth, offers a sign-up and a letter calling for "measurable, public goals" in clear language alongside an explanation of how the budget is being used for "evidence-based instructional practices and curriculum in all subjects."
And maybe that's it. But I think that's a lot of advertising for that.

My guess as to what they want is this: I don't think it is a coincidence that these ads went up the same week that the U.S. Treasury released the rules on the federal voucher program. Massachusetts, as has been noted this week, is neither in nor out; Governor Healey had said she was awaiting the rules to decide. Her response last week was:

 “Well, you know, what I understand is that Treasury has released temporary regulations. I don’t know what that means. So, you know, what I’ve said from the beginning is this, and I’ll continue to say, we need to make sure that nothing harms public education.”

Having the local public transit scream that the largest public school system in the state was failing its students would give an extra push to any riding who might have influence on Beacon Hill as Healey is continuing to decide. 

As others, including Marketplace, have noted, it is private education that is most likely to benefit from these programs. And when we talk about private education (especially in a place like Massachusetts), we tend to think of college prep schools with brick buildings on leafy campuses. For states that already have vouchers, though, that isn't what you should think about. You should think about a few reporters at the local brew pub coming one fire inspection away from approval as a private school, as ProPublica reported this week, in a piece in which they applied to create of a private school in North Carolina, Arkansas, and West Virginia.

And even as it isn't that easy in Massachusetts, where private schools have to be approved by their local school committee, within a limited purview, the chance to use federal funds (the dollars here would have been federal tax dollars) for non-public, non-publicly-allocated and -accountable uses is deeply concerning.

And possibly was worth $1.5M in advertising.