The Governor takes an early Halloween

Word got out late yesterday that the Governor had leaked numbers prepared by DESE for the Joint Committee in their deliberation of what has been released as the Student Opportunity Act.
This was, of course, an attempt to derail the bill.
I took up in this thread from last night why it is that this is a concern; it boils down to two things:

• The DESE doesn't--couldn't, in fact, as it didn't even get submitted to the Department until yesterday!--actual local spending data. Thus all that is reported is local costs going up, without a reflection of what local costs currently are. Grafton, cited by the Globe this morning, is a perfect example of this, where their local required spending is projected to increase to...less than they current spend (check page 33).
• The projections can only be so good. Next year's, DESE themselves warned, should not be used for budget planning. For one, they're using a zero enrollment change model, which works for the state, but it doesn't work for individual districts (rare is the district that isn't either growing or shrinking). We don't yet know what low income looks like (DESE would have built some sort of model, but we don't know what). And this also doesn't include all of the interations of the bill, which includes other BIG items, like out-of-district transportation costs.

I recommend reading the State House News report on this.
Also, do read Senator Chandler and Moore's op-ed today.

Liveblog coming as soon as I get over to the State House!