MA Statement on equal access to education

 As announced by Secretary Tutwiler today: 

Note this in particular:

This joint guidance reaffirms that these recent federal actions do not prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in admissions and access to higher education or other educational settings. It also includes steps that K-12 schools can take to set their students up for success. Schools and higher education institutions should continue to take affirmative steps, within the law, to create and maintain a positive school climate where all students feel safe, supported, respected and ready to learn. This includes reviewing current practices to ensure they comply with all applicable anti-discrimination, anti-bullying and civil rights laws. 

You can find the full statement online here. 

Note that this confirms what I said earlier this week: no district or classroom is going this alone. This is a shared responsibility. 

Four bullet points about yesterday's Board of Ed

Lynn students politely asking to be heard about KIPP Lynn.
If only Pioneer Valley students could have been there.

A few thoughts on today’s charter decisions

• Never assume that you know what a public body’s vote is going to be before they actually vote.

February Board of Ed: CTE admissions

 Sorry, my laptop ran out of charge during this part...moving tweets from my phone over!

proposed amendments can be found here

Johnston: public comment will be strengthen further 

February Board of Ed: adjustment of Acting Commissioner's salary

 this actually is just aligning with decisions that get made elsewhere about those in particular state positions

and it passes

February Board of Ed: teacher regulation

 last night, they discussed the proposal to continue the alternative assessment pilot, post-pilot

new endorsement in media arts

new name and level in comprehensive health, preK-8 and 9-12
(changing from Health/Family Consumer Science in all levels)

flexibility to allow for the bilingual education endorsement to serve as an alternative to the Sheltered English Immersion endorsement

increase flexibility for 12 credit option; at least 6 of 12 to address subject matter knowledge

emergency licenses no longer extended beyond June 30, 2027

remove outdated language

proposal is to open to public comment through April 4
Board planned vote on May 20
sent out for public comment 

February Board of Ed: competency determination

and we're going out of order to competency determination 

February Board of Ed: charter schools

 and on to charter school expansion

• Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School
• Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers: A Horace Mann Charter Public School
• KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School
• Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School
• Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School
• South Shore Charter Public School

February Board of Ed: opening comments

 The Board of Ed meets today at nine. You can find the agenda here. You can find a livestream here. 

Please enjoy this photo of swans preening on the Malden River this morning.

It is a "something for nearly everyone" agenda today--vocational admission! charter schools! teacher licensure! graduation requirements! who is going to be the Commissioner, anyway!--and there is a full room (the usual DESE staff in the back of the room are, I assume, watching from their offices), so I assume public comment will go on awhile.

I will further observe that we are getting another good "who has access" view, where Lynn (bless them) has packed the room, and the Pioneer Valley, which is just as outraged, is not as represented, because do you know how hard it is to get here from Hadley for 9 AM??

You are not alone

 

Dedication to Ben Aaronovitch’s “Broken Homes”

Hi.

Feels like there's a lot going on, doesn't it?

Healey still has seats to appoint

 As the Board tomorrow will vote on FIVE¹--FIVE!!--charter school expansions, I think it is crucial to note that the Board that will vote is one in which Governor Healey continues to leave one seat open and two members whose terms have very very clearly expired. 

Katherine Craven was appointed in August of 2014. There is no reality in which February of 2025 is not beyond her two five year terms provided by law.

Mary Ann Stewart was also appointed in August of 2014; it is now well beyond two five year terms.

Paymon Rouhanifard has not been seen in over a year (more?) at this point, leaving his seat vacant by state law.

Whatever the votes are tomorrow, this is not the Board² that should be voting this.

______________________________________________________________

¹Note that one--Edward M. Kennedy in Boston-- is a Horace Mann, which means it is under control and consent of the local school committee.
²That one is the Secretary's former district of Lynn, a district that barely makes net school spending when it makes it there at all, makes this even that much more wrenching.

“I’m complying with state and federal law"

In case you missed Maine Governor Janet Mills stand up to President Trump earlier this week, you can watch the video here.

While it's (naturally) her refusal to back down that's making the news, what she said matters a lot: her response was "I'm complying with state and federal law."

Executive orders and "Dear Colleague" letters are not federal law.

Please repeat that as often as necessary.

Given the thin-skinned nature of the executive, it isn't surprising that the next investigation by what we used to call the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, but will need to come up with another name for was one into Maine. 

What is new on this one, and this worries me because this is where free lunch is funded from, is that the United States Department of Agriculture also launched an investigation into the University of Maine. This isn't school nutrition, but it is concerning to see this also coming from that department. 

Don't, however, think you can go along and somehow get along with this administration. They're coming for everyone, sooner or later.

And in Commissioner news

 This seems to be running rather below the radar¹ but, the Wallingford-Swathmore School Board of Directors, outside of Pennsylvania, will vote Monday night to name Russell Johnston, currently Massachusetts Acting Commissioner of Education, as their next superintendent. As the local Daily Times reports:

The district said it conducted an extensive search process and expects to appoint Johnston on Monday night and give him a five-year contract. The terms were not yet provided...
Johnston was selected from an extensive candidate pool, during a rigorous six-month search² led by a national educational search firm. Information gathered from focus groups and surveys across the school community was used to develop a candidate profile, the district said.

“It is my great honor to join the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, and I am energized to join a school community that is so committed to excellent and equitable learning opportunities for all students,” Johnston said. “I am particularly drawn to the District’s strong focus on academic excellence, as well as an emphasis on fine arts and co-curricular activities. I am also eager to support the District’s work in ensuring every student, without exception, is provided the opportunities and support needed to succeed.“I lead by listening, and I am very much looking forward to listening to and learning from the students, staff, parents, and school community in Wallingford-Swarthmore.”

As the district currently has an interim superintendent³after having reached a separation agreement with their prior superintendent⁴ last Augus,⁵ the transition will be this spring: 

After May 1, Wallingford-Swarthmore interim Superintendent Dr. Jim Scanlon is expected to transition into a revised interim role with the district for the duration of the school year, to support Johnston through a smooth transition and to provide continuity in leadership, the district said.

That reads to me like Johnston is starting in May? Or is that just when the transition is starting?

Either way, it would appear that Johnston isn't staying on as Acting until we get the next Commissioner in place (unless the Board really starts picking up their pace). 

One hopes this means that they'll spend more than five minutes on the "update" that they get at their meeting--this is part of the Monday night agenda--as they have been for the past few months. 

In particular, this adds to the elephant in the room that Vice Chair Hills raised which has gone not only unanswered, but unaddressed entirely: if the current incumbent of longstanding service does not want the position, and now plans neither to be there for the transition but not even to be in the state, what does that say about the job? 

It is the Board, as the body that hires and evaluates the Commissioner, to pursue and answer that question. Something is not good about the working conditions of that office. I do not know what it is; I'm not in a position to. But if they don't answer that, they're setting the next person up.  

_______________________________
¹Update your Google alerts!
²In Pennsylvania, as in some other states, it is possible to conduct an entire superintendent search in executive session, which Wallingford-Swathmore did.
³making a per diem fee of $1,540
⁴for a lump sum of $300k and an additional $30k contribution to his retirement account
⁵You could say that it hasn't been dull. Though the Acting Commissioner's big push on there being "right" reading curriculum will apparently have parental support. 

The story is still inflation

This is an actual sign at the MRI clinic on Shrewsbury Street.
Sometimes, no more comment is needed.

Earlier this week, I was asked what the impact would be on the districts seeing most of the state aid increases from the Student Opportunity Act once we hit the goal rates in FY27.

Big news on voke admission

 When the Board of Ed meets next week, they'll be voting to send out for public comment a revision to vocational school admission regulation that, to use the Boston Globe summary: 

...that would bar the schools from ranking students based on selective criteria like grades, recommendations from guidance counselors, and personal interviews. Instead, they would be limited to using attendance and discipline as screening criteria for students to enter the lottery pool.

It has certainly seemed to me, as one who has been watching this closely, that the sense was that the state would lose a discrimination case on this. Nonetheless, an important step.

celebrate the wins

 And there was one this week in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, where the decision went for the Ludlow School Committee in Foote v. Ludlow School Committee:

As  this  opinion  has endeavored to illuminate,  we acknowledge the fundamental importance of the rights asserted by the Parents to be informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child's life--including their socialization, education, and health.  Be that as it may--as this opinion has also made effort to explicate --parental rights are not unlimited.  Parents may  not  invoke  the  Due  Process  Clause  to  create  a  preferred educational experience for their child in public school.  As per our  understanding  of  Supreme  Court  precedent,  our  pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children. And the Protocol of nondisclosure as to a student's at-school  gender expression without  the  student's consent does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized  as  a  violation  of  the  guarantees  of  substantive  due process. All told, the Parents have failed to state a claim that Ludlow's  Protocol  as  applied  to  their  family  violated  their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their child.

Coverage from EdWeek is here. 

If you're getting discouraged

 A fourteen year old middle schooler who attends a U.S. Department of Defense school on the U.S. base in Stuttgart, Germany organized a student walkout during Secretary of Defense Hegseth's visit earlier this week. 

For those wondering about the Title IX executive order

 I thought this, in Ohio Capital Journal, was quite good: 

But lawyers and Title IX experts told States Newsroom it remains to be seen how exactly schools across the country will enforce the executive order and how the administration would rescind federal funds for any schools failing to adhere.

Shiwali Patel, a Title IX expert and senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, said the “blatantly discriminatory” order is “extremely broad” and raises “a lot of questions.”

“It touches educational institutions, it touches international competitions, it touches immigration of trans women athletes, it calls for these convenings, it calls for state attorneys general to identify some enforcement mechanisms,” Patel said.

The order asks the assistant to the president for domestic policy to bring together state attorneys general to “identify best practices” in enforcing the ban.

The assistant is also responsible for bringing together “representatives of major athletic organizations and governing bodies” to promote such policies regarding trans athletes’ participation in women’s sports. 

Elana Redfield, a lawyer and federal policy director at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, which focuses on laws and policies affecting LGBTQ+ people, pointed out that the executive order “contains kind of broad language, including addressing locker rooms.”

“So, it suggests that any kind of space … for example, PE classes or locker rooms for use in elementary and high school, middle schools as well — those kinds of spaces would be affected,” she said. 

Kelli Rodriguez, assistant dean for academic affairs at Seattle University School of Law, said it’s going to be “really confusing for a while” and “a lot of waiting and seeing.”

Rodriguez, who is also the director of sports law at Seattle University School of Law, said “the one thing that’s different is that the executive order calls for, potentially, ramifications or punitive actions if institutions don’t comply.”

“I don’t know what that means yet, I think that’s one of the things that’s kind of outstanding — we’ll see what that means from an enforcement standpoint,” she said, noting that she thinks many schools right now are “very anxious” for what exactly those punitive actions would look like when it comes to federal funding.

Rodriguez also said she expects to see state attorneys general, individual athletes, parents of athletes and institutions challenge the executive order.

On schools and immigration

January prayer intentions of Pope Francis
From the Sunday, January 26, 2025 bulletin of the Cathedral of St. Paul, Worcester

 This past April, an early morning trip to Logan put me headed back home in time to stop by Lexington for the re-enactment of the Patriots Day battle on Lexington Green. I'd been as a child once, where my main memories (sorry, Mom!) were of it being cold and very early.

As an adult who now works in public policy, this time, the thing that struck me was that those who stood on Lexington Green were just the local small town local people. The names you know--both John Hancock and Samuel Adams had been in the town overnight, and of course Paul Revere had gone back and forth--were gone by the time the British regulars marched onto the town common, and most of us probably can't name anyone from those who stood there*.

And when the men in fancy uniforms, representing the might of the British Empire, marched onto the Green and ordered those there to disperse, the local people didn't do it. Just because someone in a uniform who had an official position told them to do something, they knew that wasn't enough to make it the right, or even legally required, thing to do.

I was thinking a lot about this over the week, in reading comments from many of my fellow citizens who appear to be under the impression that just because people in uniforms show up and start ordering people to do things, that we are required to do them.

Deferring to those in uniform simply because of their uniform or their position not only isn't legally required; it's fundamentally unAmerican. 

_______________________________
*noted exception: the people of Lexington, who named an elementary school after one: Jonathan Harrington, Jr.

This is why you have a bureaucracy

 I hope that you didn't miss this weekend the news that Elon Musk and those working for/with him have gained access to the U.S. Treasury payment system. 

From CNN: 

Before Trump’s inauguration, members of his transition landing team wanted to know granular details about the bureau’s proprietary computer systems, including “each step in the disbursement process.” They also wanted to visit field offices where government workers, in Philadelphia or Kansas, work on computers that disburse payments.

The requests puzzled many career officials initially. The transition operation hadn’t requested substantive briefings on any of Treasury’s other critical areas of operation, multiple people familiar with the matter said. Veterans of past transition efforts, representing presidents of both parties, couldn’t recall precedent for the Trump team’s entreaty.

That group wanted to know how to stop particular payments, and were told, by then-Acting Secretary of the Treasury David Lebryk "we don't do that." 

And let's stop for a moment and acknowledge that THIS is what is needed here. Thanks to Mr. Lebryk, as well as the officials described below at USAID, for doing so. 

With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sworn in this week, he granted Musk and his crew such access. Lebryk was placed on leave and then retired; he had been with the Treasury for three decades. 

The NY Intelligencer gathers a lot of reporting here, wins on the grabber headline: 

and sums this up as: 

So now Musk and DOGE have access to and potentially power over what is basically America’s checkbook, weeks before another debt ceiling crisis looms, at a time when Musk is vowing to somehow cut a hysterically large amount of federal spending, and during a chaotic period in which he and other officials in the Trump administration are running roughshod across the federal government like they have unchecked power.

And here's a gift link to the Wall Street Journal, which also covers a standoff at USAID

The thing that I am struggling to wrap my head around is this: so-called "DOGE" is only a federal entity by executive order. These are not federal employees, it appears with paychecks who have filled out requisite tax forms; they do not have background checks or clearances for such access. Musk, for sure, has a massive conflict of interest in doing anything anywhere near the federal government.

If what, per Wired, was happening this week at the Technology Transformation Services (part of the General Services Administration) is anything to go by, they may not have government worker I.D.s  or email addresses. 

I would have thought that it would have taken a number of steps--not just the yes or no of the top official--for anyone to be cleared to have access to the actual payment system of the United States government. 

Your average Massachusetts public school employee goes through more than this, by a lot. Having lots of steps to go through with more than one person involved is how we do things like keep public spending ethically.

Concerned about tariffs and schools?

 This K-12 Dive piece from December tackles that topic. Construction gets hit both by a tariff on goods from Canada and by a crackdown on immigration. 

If your vegetable drawer looks like mine, you may have wondered about school nutrition; note: 

When it comes to the food served in cafeterias, K-12 food services are required by law to buy “to the maximum extent practicable, domestic commodities or products,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Not mentioned? Fuel.  

Not mentioned, of course, is that if budgets OVERALL tighten, money for schools ALSO will get tighter (and, for example, I'd suspect overrides get a little more tricky).  

Note, also: the tariffs aren't popular.

Sharing a good resource on the education-related executive orders

 As I noted last week, something that is really important about this administration in general, but specifically the executive orders, is not to assume that just because something is said on a piece of paper above Donald Trump's signature, it's so.*

I get updates from Education Counsel in D.C., and they sent out an update late last week on the three education related executive orders, which I have posted in full here (as it isn't yet on their website). 

I wanted particularly call attention to these two things, which are in the "racial ideology in schools" section, but matters across many things in education:

The use of the phrases “applicable law,” “illegal,” “unlawful,” “discriminatory” and other qualifiers throughout the EO is key since it is a reminder that EOs do not supersede existing laws and that calling something “illegal or “unlawful” via an EO does not in fact make it illegal or unlawful. Depending on how the Administration approaches implementation, these other federal laws may stand in their way

And:

Multiple applicable federal statutes prohibit the federal government from interfering with state and local authority to make decisions about K-12 curriculum and instructional materials.

That starts, of course, with the tenth amendment to the Constitution, but lives other places, too. As Education Counsel says in a linked blog post on this subject: 

Congress has clearly and repeatedly outlawed federal intrusion into state and local curricular decisions. Although it only takes a single law to make something illegal, the collective weight of this list highlights just how clear a line the President must toe to remain “consistent with applicable law” when implementing his new order. Indeed, the multiple instances of this four-word phrase throughout the order suggest the Administration may also recognize the significant legal obstacles to exerting federal control over state and local decisions about teaching and learning. By remembering these legal limitations, we all — especially our education leaders — can also avoid overreacting to the order’s rhetoric.

For education, that last line is about our, collectively, holding the federal government only to what it actually is able to do. Education authorities largely do not belong to the federal government.  

_________________
*And if you're one of those going around snarking 'who's going to stop him?' you're not helping. Particularly where it comes to education, the answer is WE ALL WILL. Stop. 

and incidentally

 ...this Boston Globe piece on inflation is surprisingly good. 

From Massachusetts Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler

 posted Friday on Twitter, with this note:

The Healey-Driscoll Administration issued the following statement today in response to the U.S. Department of Education's announcement that they will be enforcing the Trump Administration’s 2020 Title IX Rule.