Some recommended reading about next year's school budgets

Some recent useful reporting on this coming year--and in some cases, even this year, and in all cases, beyond next year's--school budgets:

I've added "geopolitical forces" to my "impacts on future budgets" slide for school district presentations. While this was always true, oil prices show up multiple places in school budgets (not just the buses!), and I'm glad the Boston Globe captured that.

“The bottom line is there’s no wiggle room on municipal budgets almost across the board,” he added. “Any time there is a cost driver that exceeds the rate of revenue growth, yeah, it’s very concerning.”

This lengthy piece by Sam Drysdale at State House News (sharing there via WWLP 22) takes a hard look at declining enrollment and what the means for the state. 

On paper, declining enrollment should mean less state aid. In practice, Massachusetts’ funding formula cushions districts from those losses.

Overall Chapter 70 aid increased to $7.66 billion in fiscal 2027, up 4.03%, even as enrollment fell.

No district receives less Chapter 70 aid than it received the previous year, and every district is guaranteed at least its prior-year aid plus $160 per pupil in fiscal 2027. As a result, only 62 districts are receiving aid driven directly by the formula’s enrollment and need calculations; most are receiving hold-harmless funding plus minimum aid.

Lewis said that is itself evidence the formula needs attention.

“The high number of communities in held harmless is actually one of the clear signs that we need to be reviewing our funding formula again,” he said. “The formula is basically broken for many communities.”

Yet there is a fundamental question about what the formula can realistically accomplish.

Howgate said the state cannot simply create a funding formula that pays districts for having fewer students.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to come up with a formula to give districts money for fewer kids,” he said.

(and cheers to Sam for correctly capturing hold harmless there!) 

speaking of Alpha Schools: update from Springfield

 I'd missed this from Springfield last week: 

Springfield Empowerment Zone Co-Executive Director Matthew Brunell clarified that the pilot was paused due to the cyberattack on Springfield Public Schools that occurred in the beginning of September. He said the pilot will likely not be in use this school year.

Alpha Schools and a foot in the door

 I hope that you've been keeping up with Ben Riley's reporting on Alpha Schools and specifically the experience of students there; you can find his sixth report from last week here. The way that students have been treated should concern us all. 

Largely, though, I am posting to urge you to read the Texas Tribune's report on Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who oversees the public schools of Texas, working to get Alpha Schools into the public school system there. It's a collaborative report with ProPublica, which draws on months of public records' requests. 

Over the last year, Morath and his staff at the Texas Education Agency exchanged a flurry of emails with leaders of companies connected to Alpha about possible partnerships, visited their campuses several times, helped with a one-page explainer about the program to share with school districts and connected them with district leaders, according to communications obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune through public information requests. 

One email revealed that Morath offered to personally introduce an Alpha leader to the superintendent he appointed to lead the yearslong state takeover of Houston Independent School District, the largest in the state. 

“I’d also like to set up another site visit to visit both your Austin secondary and primary with my team,” wrote Morath. “The Superintendent of H.I.S.D. would also like to do a site visit, so l’ll connect y’all separately. And hopefully we can schedule them to happen on the same day.” 

The emails show that state education officials and Alpha affiliates approached at least 10 school districts about the AI program. After the coordination, at least three of those districts — Houston; Fort Davis, in West Texas; and Aldine, near Houston — launched pilot programs incorporating the AI tool. 

The full extent of Morath and his agency’s involvement, as well as the number of public school districts using the AI program, remains unclear. The TEA has not responded to questions about its efforts for months, initially failed to provide some of Morath’s emails in response to public information requests and continues fighting the release of additional communications.

It's bad enough that this is out there and sucking in families at all. That the influence of a state leadership is being wielded in its favor--and this in a state where the state board refused to allow Alpha Schools to open as a charter!--is worse. 

Possibly too many things to read on AI and tech in schools

 

It's a lovely time of year in Massachusetts. 
Do get out and enjoy it.
My photo of a former schoolhouse in Belchertown yesterday.

The tabs I have open: 

Student protests in France

 Not sure about you, but I often feel that there is so much that is an ongoing catastrophe here in the U.S. that what's happening elsewhere---even within education--can be overwhelmed by just our stuff. So I hadn't caught that students in France have been protesting in what began in Paris but has now swept across the country. The reason?

Demonstrators have voiced a range of grievances, often centering on a lack of resources and opportunities for students in disadvantaged schools, despite the promise of France's national motto: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

Students have drawn attention to rundown classrooms that lack basics such as desks and chairs, become sweltering in summer without air conditioning and, in some cases, are infested with rats. Other common complaints include staff shortages and exhausting workloads. French high school students' compulsory classroom hours are among the highest in Europe.

Significant numbers of schools have been closed this week; it's estimated that a quarter of a million people were protesting in Paris. 

The way that the protests are being met by the national leadership is increasing support for students:

 Nearly 500 people were detained Tuesday, the ministry said. The widespread use of arrests, tear gas and riot-control weapons against teenagers is fueling defiance and angering some parents and teachers. Some student groups called for new protests Thursday....in the latest case, a 15-year-old boy lost a hand Monday in an incident involving a police stun grenade. 

There is video circulating online of  Saint-Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko shielding student protestors from riot police, as well as being treated for having been tear-gassed.

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. 

in search of Polaris: on last night's Board of Ed meeting

 I'd like to be able to give you some sort of meaningful summary of last night's Board of Ed meeting on the DESE strategic plan (liveblog here), but it wasn't that sort of meeting.

Polaris? This is as close as we're getting around here...

Let's walk through some main points: