Leave your worries on the doorstep

Sunset over Coes Pond on the last day of school 2020

...it isn't good when you start pulling blog post titles from the Depression era, but it's definitely looking grim. Here's The Atlantic in an article titled "The Second Great Depression" speaking of one of the four factors that are concerning economists and weighing down the economy:

A third factor behind a possible second Great Depression is the budget crisis facing states and cities. The federal government does not have to balance its ledger year to year, and perpetually spends more than it takes in. Yet every state but Vermont and most cities and towns are required to remain in the black. Right now, sales taxes, real-estate-transfer taxes, income taxes, fines and fees—they are all collapsing, leaving local governments with a budget gap expected to total $1 trillion next year. Without help from Washington, this will necessarily mean massive service cuts and job losses: namely, an estimated 5.3 million job losses.

The shrinking of the government at the state and local level has already started, as Congress dithers on providing fiscal aid. Michigan is facing a $3 billion budget gap this year and a $4 billion one next year: It has instituted a work-share plan, asking two in three state employees to accept a partial furlough. In New Jersey, the government has asked 100,000 public workers to move to abbreviated schedules. Schools have already let go more workers than they did during the Great Recession, with nearly 500,000 positions lost.

In a piece looking at the need for a national response, the Education Trust notes: 

Now, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects states will face a $615 billion revenue shortfall over the next three years due to the pandemic. Scott said education funding makes up, on average, 40% of state budgets. Former Secretary of Education John King Jr. added during testimony in the hearing that districts get 90% or more of their funding from state and local dollars.

As I have posted before, the hit comes particularly hard on districts that are more dependent on state aid; from the same piece: 

“If you look historically," Roy said, "anytime we’ve had a severe recession whether it was the recession of the early 1980s or the recession of 2008 minorities and low-income Americans were always the ones who were most harmed.”

Back in Massachusetts, this of course was the year where we finally were beginning to implement the Student Opportunity Act; five years ago today, the Foundation Budget Review Commission was deliberating its first report.
Yesterday, though, the Division of Local Services of the Department of Revenue announced that July and August aid would be at the FY20 levels, meaning no implementation of any sort of FY21 budget with changes, so far. The concern of course is that this bodes ill for the rest of the budget:

"Not having this additional funding is a recipe for disaster at this point," Marie-Frances Rivera, president of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, told WGBH News.

"It's essentially $300 million that districts across the commonwealth" will lose, Rivera said, referring to the amount of money in the governor's pre-COVID budget for the Student Opportunity Act in fiscal 2021. That will affect mainly gateway cities who serve the most kids of color and low income kids and English language learners, she added.Those districts were expecting this infusion of cash, which they're not going to get," said Rivera.

It's with this in mind that 100 of us (and growing!) who are elected officials in Gateway Cities co-signed a letter written and organized by Roberto Jiménez-Rivera of the Chelsea School Committee urging state officials to prioritize funding of the Student Opportunity Act in the FY21 budget. Interviews with School Committee members from Holyoke, Springfield, and Chicopee via MassLive discuss why. As Tom Scott of MASS said in the Boston Globe this morning: 

“I don’t understand how people can reasonably plan for the scenarios they have,” Scott said.

This also raised the prospect of the lawsuit against the state that had been withdrawn coming back:

Peter Enrich, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law, and one of the attorneys who filed the suit, said the coalition waited to withdraw the lawsuit until after Baker introduced his budget in order to make sure the first year of the new formula was fully funded. But in the last couple of months, attorneys have started hearing from parents who are reporting that teachers are being laid off, their children did not get the services they were entitled to this spring and they worry about the fall. “From their perspective, a promise has been broken, so they’re turning to us and asking us to look at what their legal rights are,” Enrich said. 

Enrich said the same constitutional issues raised by the initial lawsuit – the right to an adequate education and disparities between districts – persist. “The Student Opportunity Act was a big enough step in the right direction on addressing those concerns that our sense was that it was not an appropriate time to continue litigation and we should leave it to the Legislature and governor to follow through on their commitments,” Enrich said. “But if they aren’t able to or they aren’t willing to, then those constitutional issues are still out there.” 

It's not the first time and it won't be the last that Senator Chang-Díaz summarizes it all:

“It’s the perfect storm for school systems that even as their costs are rising and they’re having to figure out totally new models for delivering the service… At that same moment, schools are confronted with the potential for drastic cuts."

Let me know if you find the sunny side of this street.