Knew we could count on them

Somerville, Easthampton, and all the rest have indeed updated their lawsuit in light of the moving of powers of the U.S. Department of Education out of that office. From the New York Times coverage:

The education coalition argues in its lawsuit that the annual appropriations law approved by Congress requires the Education Department to carry out its programs and that Ms. McMahon lacks the authority to shift these functions to other federal agencies.

“The information and actions coming out of the Department have been unpredictable, chaotic, and unprofessional,” the education coalition said in the lawsuit. “This experience is unprecedented in administration changes.”

The press release from Democracy Forward can be found here.

Massachusetts, we're going to need to be more accurate in how we discuss this

 Something I want to flag, arising from this article in last week's Boston Globe flagging--rightly!--the drop in immigrant students enrolling in our schools¹is a persistent miscommunication in the piece (from those quoted) about what happens to state aid to a school district if enrollment drops:

STATE AID IS NOT LOST.

Massachusetts has a "hold harmless" provision in the calculation of chapter 70 funding. That provides that every district gets at least as much aid as they got the year before.

If, once the full chapter 70 aid calculation is completed, a districts would get less aid than they would have received the year before, the hold harmless provision kicks in, and the district gets the same amount of aid they got the year before. To this then is added a minimum per pupil increase in aid, which by state law is $30/student but last year was $150/student.

While many of the districts discussed in the article are not districts that are usually in hold harmless--they're districts that not only are growing, but they have growing levels of need, both of which are provided for through the state calculation of school funding--they would nonetheless NOT LOSE state aid if their enrollment fell.

Their aid may well not grow by the levels to which they are accustomed, nor grow at a level to keep up with expenses, but it would not be "lost."

Let's not mess this one up.

____________________________________________________
¹And huzzah again to new Boston Globe reporter Marcela Rodrigues who is keeping focused on this. It matters! And she gets the stories across well!

Outsourcing the Department of Education

It was another of those news rounds where if, like me, you were offline for an hour, you missed a major thing and had to play catch-up.

On Tuesday of this week, the U.S. Department of Education signed a series of agreements with other federal departments. Those agreements move functions of U.S. Ed to those other Departments, as EdWeek charts out here. Most of it is going to the Department of Labor—demonstrating truncated view of the function of the public education system—though several go to the Interior, and one to HHS. As yet, there is no move of IDEA which covers special education to HHS, as has been floated a number of times.

It's worth noting that this isn't the first of such moves: career and technical education grants were moved to the Department of Labor earlier this year. Those who have been paying attention say it has not gone well.

Secretary McMahon was quick to say that funding would continue to flow to states and from there to schools. As Matt Barnum wrote in Chalkbeat, it's quite possible that schools will see little change, so long as those other departments actually pick up the ball. The AP, though, captured the concern that I've had all week: 

Instead of being housed in a single agency, much of the Education Department’s work now will be spread across four other federal departments...The plan increases bureaucracy fivefold, Washington state’s education chief said, “undoubtedly creating confusion and duplicity” for educators and families. His counterpart in California said the plan is “clearly less efficient” and invites disruption. Maryland’s superintendent raised concerns about “the challenges of coordinating efforts with multiple federal agencies.”

It is state education agencies that coordinate with the federal level, and it is those state agencies that now have to chase funding down across multiple federal departments--departments not set up to interface on those programs--in order to get the funding to states and then to districts. Those state agencies, if they're anything like our own (and I'll bet they are) are understaffed already.

It's also worth noting that objections have not all fallen along party lines, as covered in the same article:

Yet some conservatives pushed back against the dismantling. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said on social media that moving programs to agencies without policy expertise could hurt young people. And Margaret Spellings, a former education secretary to Republican President George W. Bush, called it a distraction to a national education crisis.

“Moving programs from one department to another does not actually eliminate the federal bureaucracy, and it may make the system harder for students, teachers and families to navigate and get the support they need,” Spellings said in a statement.

Those who work in the Department have also noted that this makes no sense.
This is doing it for the sake of doing it. As I noted elsewhere earlier in the week, this feels a lot like the phase some kids go through where they have to push every rule and will come back with "TECHNICALLY..." when they are called on it.

TECHNICALLY, they haven't closed the Department of Education. I suspect that isn't going to be good enough for the judges that have already told them to knock it off.  

and it isn't even 'everybody wants to be a school committee member' season

 Some of us have often referred to Worcester's election year as "everybody wants to be a school committee member" season, as very frequently in past years, city councilors show a sudden interest in creating policy1 for the Worcester Public Schools in a fashion that is WAY out of their purview.

They seem to have been late with their rounds this year, as observed by Mike Benedetti in his write up of tonight's City Council meeting:

Schools: There are a few items, both from the Public Works Committee and Councilor Ojeda, having to do with school cafeterias, food waste, and students providing meals to poll workers, possibly all of which are outside the purview of the City Council. I note these here because a few years back the Council frequently had items on the agenda that only the School Committee had authority over, but it’s been awhile since that’s happened.

If you check the agenda², these items include: 

FROM THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS - Request

City Manager request Chief Sustainability Officer work with

the School Department to facilitate a food waste study in the

schools cafeterias. Said study should quantify the

percentage of food waste created compared to the amount

of food distributed from the cafeterias.

14b. Request City Manager provide City Council with an outline

of a two (2) year plan to appropriate funding to work with

the Worcester Public Schools (WPS), supermarkets, and

local organizations to utilize food waste to help combat food

insecurity. (Ojeda)

14c. Request City Clerk work with the Superintendent of Public

Schools to determine the feasibility of Worcester Public

Schools students providing poll workers with meals during

each Election Day. (Ojeda)

While the inquiry--and let's be clear that it is no more than that--of the last item is under Council purview, as elections are (to a certain extent), now that the schools are closed for students on election days in Worcester, this seems a rather expensive (to put it mildly) undertaking. As most polling places are not in schools, I don't know why this would be the schools' problem to solve. 

But food waste studies of the Worcester Public Schools cafeterias and a two year plan on food waste in school cafeterias? Those are both totally not under the Council purview (nor on their committee on Public Works).

Further, the school nutrition program of the Worcester Public Schools is entirely funded through federal USDA funding. There isn't even any budgetary interest possible here. 

I'd suggest the City Council interest itself in things that are actually under its purview, and leave the oversight of the public schools' nutrition programs to the district. 

________________________________
¹Somehow this never seems to extend to the very much under their purview matter of funding the schools below the legal requirement. That would require their requiring something of their actual employee, the city manager, as opposed to making speeches about children on matters over which they have no control. Yet here we are.

²And cheers to whomever started posting it as a PDF that actually just OPENS on the city site, so we don't have to DOWNLOAD it to open it!

Board of Ed for November: staff attendance data

 the memo is here

and this is Rob Curtin
released for the first time district and school staff attendance data

Board of Ed for November: proposed amendments to educator licensure

 strikethrough of proposal is here
memo is here

alternative licensure pathway
revised subject matter knowledge requirements
updates in various sections

Board of Ed for November: budget priorities

 There is a printed memo here which is NOT ONLINE which is annoying. 

Commissioner describe the budget process
"highly structured timeline"
he should have a nice little flowchart like some of us do when we explain this

Board of Ed for November: opening comments

 The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education meets today at 9 AM. The agenda is here. The livestream will appear over here.

The meeting is being chaired by Vice Chair Matt Hills, as Chair Katherine Craven is remote today.

The Pope on cinema

Tangentially related to most of what I post here: I recommend reading Pope Leo's short address on cinema: 

The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable.  Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is above all an invocation...Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it. Without being didactic, authentically artistic forms of cinema possess the capacity to educate the audience’s gaze.

A few notes on federal grants

I've been in a couple of sessions recently on federal grants (most recently DESE did one this morning), so providing a few highlights:

• Always remember that federal education grants are almost all what's called 'forward funded' meaning that we have the current fiscal year's funding already. 
• Thus discussions of the FY26 federal budget--which is what the shutdown happened around--are funding that are/will largely impact our NEXT fiscal year at the state and district level, FY27, and thus NEXT school year.
• There are BIG differences among White House/House/Senate's bills, with the Senate being the one that essentially level funds and has the least changes. As the Senate can only act on a bipartisan basis, there's some thinking that the Senate's option is the one that will win out.
• The Senate bill also included language that required that funding to states go out as soon as it was available--none of this wanting to recheck stuff that hung up grants this fall!--but it's anybody's guess as to if that stays in.
• The continuing resolution to fund the government expires January 30, 2026, so expect us to get countdown clocks again soon.
  
•  The CR passed reverses the reductions in force RIFs initiated just after the shutdown began and prohibits the Administration from initiating any new RIFs through January 30, 2026, when the CR expires.
• One piece of good news: Because the CR funds full year appropriations for, among others, USDA, the continuing resolution that passed fully funds school nutrition through September 30, 2026, so that isn't iffy around government shutdowns.

We as a country still don't have enough school bus drivers

 ...but it is getting better, per the Economic Policy Institute: 

In the last year, school bus driver employment has grown modestly by around 2,300 jobs.1 This small increase (1.1%) is a step in the right direction, but the trend of the last few years remains mostly flat. 

Don't miss that that piece also includes charts that matter: 

 Statesline also covered this here.

Some education highlights from Tuesday's election

 We're entering THE CONFERENCE ZONE at work, so I haven't had time to take a breath, but I don't want to miss some amazing things that happened Tuesday. This HuffPost post on victories you haven't heard of is also a good start. Several of these are of the "you might remember this headline" type; I'll add more as I find them!

• You might remember West Ada School District in Idaho, where a teacher was ordered to remove an "Everyone is welcome here" poster which had multiracial hands from the walls of her classroom. Of the two seats that were up for election on Tuesday, challenger Meghan Brown beat incumbent Angie Redford with more than 61% of the vote; Brown is a teacher. The board chair Lori Frasure did win re-election over challenger Dara Ezzell-Pebworth, a social worker, but with only 54% of those voting. The challengers ran on an explicitly inclusive platform that also opposed private school tax credits. 
  
  
• As Peter Greene covers well in Forbes, Central Bucks County School Board, which got all sorts of national attention several years ago and had flipped majorities in 2023, further moved to a 9-0 Democratically-held majority on Tuesday.
  This was part of a larger blue wave across suburban Philadelphia.
  
  
• Denver, which had been a hotbed of charter expansion and other things called 'ed reform' saw a pushback on that in the past six years, with this election a test of if that majority pushing back would hold on. They did, with those candidates taking the four of the seats open.
  
  
• In Cy-Fair Independent School District outside of Houston, Tuesday saw a backlash to the conservative policies that district's board had implemented, as three members lost their seats to non-partisan newcomers, including the board chair and vice-chair. Cy-Fair is the third largest school district in Texas, educating over 100,000 students. 

• School bonds did pretty well Tuesday as well, with Des Moines voters favoring theirs; a majority of them carrying in Michigan; 18 of 43 passing in Iowa.
  
  
• And don't miss that in Colorado, voters passed two measures that tax the wealthy to fund free universal school lunch!

AI and violating student civil rights

 Remember how one of the last things done by the Office of Civil Rights under the Biden administration was to send out guidance on the dangers of AI use around protecting student civil rights?

And remember how I noted that we seemed to be barreling right along in that direction back at the beginning of the school year?

A recently-released brief reports at 61% of special education teachers report using AI to write IEPs or 504s last year. You'll note that this was specifically warned against in the OCR guidance above. Among the issues this can create, in addition to massive student privacy rights issues:

IDEA requires each IEP to be unique and tailored to each students’ disabilities, goals and process for achieving their goals. An AI tool that develops IEPs based on little student-specific information and that is not significantly reviewed and edited by a teacher likely would not meet these IDEA requirements, said the CDT paper.

What should districts do? 

I'm going to argue with the article here and say MAKE THIS SOMETHING THAT IS BARRED.  

On the eve of Worcester's municipal election

On this eve of Worcester's municipal election, I offer the following thoughts, while looking back to what I wrote almost two years ago about the Worcester School Committee, though this is as much about Worcester City Council as it is about the Committee.

Please enjoy this fun "winter is coming" view
of Cannon Mountain last weekend.