and he huffed and he puffed...

 I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but as we're going to see a bunch more "Baker pushes to have schools back in person" headlines, I did want to note a handful of things quickly here:

• Carlisle, where Governor Baker visited, is a K-8 district of about 600 students northeast of Boston. It is 73% white; it has a student poverty rate of 4.4%. In FY19, they were budgeted to spend about 2x their foundation budget for their district. 
  This is not a district that looks like most of Massachusetts.
  
  
• Baker was there, of course, because Carlisle is one of the relatively small number of Massachusetts districts that is back fully in-person. Not only is this difficult or impossible to do for districts that look nothing like Carlisle, as noted by Carlisle's neighbor (and the other half of its regional high school district) Concord, it also can be impossible for districts that look more like Carlisle. As Concord/ Concord-Carlisle superintendent Laurie Hunter noted in her message to her districts today:
  

  The context and circumstances of the current operations, safety measures, and feasibility vary from school to school and district to district.

  She then--in something she and her Committee no doubt have done over and again this year--lays out the reasons for the decisions her districts have made: the small number of students who are fully remote, the spacing for health, the complications of transportation and nutrition, and so on.  

• This is not, of course, something that Superintendent Hunter, or any superintendent, should be having to argue today, but it precisely the position the Governor has put districts in. Governor Baker has attempted to weaponize any districts that are operating as he sees fit, while ignoring the circumstances that make that possible, creating further dissatisfaction in those whose districts are not operating that way. 
  That most of those are whiter and wealthier perhaps explain why they are being heard. 

• None of this explains why it is that a governor, in the midst of a pandemic with again rapidly rising rates, on the edge of what we know will be a terrible season, in an economic depression, with hunger and homelessness rates either rising or tending so, with both budget deliberations and a presidential transition happening, has decided that his battle is with district leadership. There are actual things he could usefully be doing with the power of the Executive branch. 
  
  This isn't it. 

If you get a chance, Matt Murphy of State House News captures the absolute whiplash of Governor Baker's messenging today.