I'll still do a full rundown on Wednesday's Finance and Operations subcommittee meeting in its own post, but a few quick things to share:
I highly recommend anyone interested in school finance read Auditor Bump's report on unfunded mandates, released yesterday. As Commonwealth Magazine notes:The report looked at several major categories of state aid and identified $711.4 million in unfunded mandates related to school aid; $448.3 million related to school transportation; and $103.3 million in government aid, mainly related to the Community Preservation Act.
I found this overall comparison useful:
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The transportation piece is particularly interesting. In education, we're accustomed to hearing about regional transportation being not fully reimbursed. Less well known, and significantly less funded, as it is not funded at all, is municipal school transportation.
Note this chart, which reviews, essentially, what the law says and then what is actually done.
There is lots more there, so give it a read.
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The transportation piece is particularly interesting. In education, we're accustomed to hearing about regional transportation being not fully reimbursed. Less well known, and significantly less funded, as it is not funded at all, is municipal school transportation.
If you've been covering the book ban fights across the country, note that this terrible trend has washed up in Massachusetts at Old Rochester Regional. From this piece, it seems the district is handling it well--policy matters! be sure yours is solid and then follow it!--and also that the community is prepared to defend their kids access to materials. Good.
A long piece to read this weekend if you haven't gotten to it is this one from NBC News on the actual impacts of mandatory reporting.
Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes essays in The New Yorker and this week's piece is on what's been left out of the learning loss debate. A sample:
The sudden onset of the pandemic has been the most catastrophic event in recent American history, making the expectation that there would not be something called “learning loss” bizarre. The idea that life would simply churn on in the same way it always has only underscores the extent to which there have been two distinct experiences of the pandemic. One for people who experienced the upheaval but were able to sequester themselves away from its harshest realities, buying groceries online, contemplating buying new houses that could better accommodate working from home, and finding new ways to weather the inconveniences of the isolation imposed by potential sickness. There was another gruesome reality, reaped by poor and working-class families in the surreal numbers of people who have died.
Give it a read.
And while you're at it, you might read this Chalkbeat piece reviewing how such decisions were made.
More blogging to come this weekend!
The sudden onset of the pandemic has been the most catastrophic event in recent American history, making the expectation that there would not be something called “learning loss” bizarre. The idea that life would simply churn on in the same way it always has only underscores the extent to which there have been two distinct experiences of the pandemic. One for people who experienced the upheaval but were able to sequester themselves away from its harshest realities, buying groceries online, contemplating buying new houses that could better accommodate working from home, and finding new ways to weather the inconveniences of the isolation imposed by potential sickness. There was another gruesome reality, reaped by poor and working-class families in the surreal numbers of people who have died.
Give it a read.
And while you're at it, you might read this Chalkbeat piece reviewing how such decisions were made.
More blogging to come this weekend!
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