Ongoing failure

...the good work begun by the education reform act of 1993, and the educational progress made since, will be at risk so long as our school systems are fiscally strained by the ongoing failure to substantively reconsider the adequacy of the foundation budget.
The Foundation Budget Review Commission conclusion, 2015

And so the "ongoing failure" continues.

The best coverage this morning comes from Max Larkin of WBUR (having dedicated education reporters is GOOD!), but I'd also read Shira Schoenberg at MassLive (quickest off the mark last night!) and the combined efforts of the State House News Service reporters via The Lowell Sun.

A few things to note: the statement issued by Rep. Alice Peisch on behalf of the House conferees repeats the argument that they need to be able to tie funding to particular places:

House conferees release statement on lack of deal on #fbrc education funding bill. #mapoli pic.twitter.com/dlZdODPEIq

— Katie Lannan (@katielannan) August 1, 2018

Note the careful language: the House conferees aren't dedicated to additional funding; they're dedicated:

to ensuring that additional funding in the FY20 budget to support our ELL and low-income students is based on careful analysis that will ensure funding is directed to support the schools, classrooms and students who need it most.

It appears the belief is no, we can't trust district administration and school committees to do that; they need to be directed.
If you'd like to know, incidently, what districts with high need populations do when they receive funding to support those populations, please note what Fall River voted to do with their hurricane relief funds last night.
This misses--at this point, it's difficult to see it as anything other than intentionally--that funds for English learners and funds for low income students haven't kept pace with need. We know this. There is a hole in the services being provided to those students. Or if there isn't a hole in providing for these students--remember how this works--funding has been shifted from other areas that will then need to go back to those areas. This is why I keep tweeting out charts from districts: some holes are different!
And that's why, no, the state doesn't get to decide this, because districts have done this differently.
As I pointed out earlier this month, this was an extensive discussion at the May 2015 Foundation Budget Review Commission meeting as they wrapped up their first round of conversations; after hearing from districts, the Commission DID NOT tie additional funds to anything other than reporting. The House members are refighting a battle that they lost when districts were at the table.

Elsewhere (this is in both the Sun and WBUR), the House throws DESE under the bus:

Peisch, a Wellesley Democrat, issued a statement on behalf of the three House conferees, saying new information from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education "complicated" negotiations and "the exceptionally complex nature of recalculating various increments to the formula as we traded proposals." 

Look, I'm there for calling DESE out when they screw up or make things unnecessarily difficult. If the House received "new information" from DESE this week, I'm going to make an educated guess that they only asked for particular calculations to be done sometime in the past few weeks, as opposed to, say, anytime in the past THREE YEARS the report has been out (or the seven since Cutting Class). Your deciding you'd like some model that hasn't been previously considered to be done now is not DESE's fault. And if the House hadn't waited until the last minute to pass a bill, "the exceptionally complex nature of recalculating various increments to the formula" would also have had more time.
In any case, none of that was news to anyone paying attention.
And it's not okay to attack bureaucrats who don't deserve it, because they can only fight back by making your life quietly miserable.

We get some insight into what broke negotiations from Senator Chang-Diaz's statement:

In the end, House leadership rejected all of our offers on the #FBRC #MAEdu funding reform bill. This is unfathomable and inexcusable. It’s a dark day for our Commonwealth. #mapoli pic.twitter.com/CQ3vpCstTd

— Sonia Chang-Díaz (@SoniaChangDiaz) August 1, 2018

"House leadership rejected all our offers [and] moved the goal posts" would seem to mean that House leadership wasn't even negotiating under the bill the House passed. Not only would that not be negotiating in good faith; it wouldn't appropriately represent the interests of the House as passed in the bill. As the WBUR article puts it, the House leadership went so far as "rejecting one of its own proposals to kill the bill." 

Yikes. I'd be interested, then, in what all the House members who signed onto the full implementation budget amendment think of their leadership this morning. A quick look at the #FBRC hashtag on Twitter this morning shows a lot of constituents with strong opinions.

I don't have a witty or snappy closure this morning. This is on the House: not just on leadership, but on all those who supported leadership.

It's the "various orders of the people" who are let down by this: the poor kids, the kids learning English, and yes, kids of color. It doesn't just reflect badly on the House; it reflects badly on us all that these kids are ones we've decided can be sacrificed for political expediency.