and speaking of children and ICE

 Don't miss this piece from ProPublica on the children in the detention center in Dilley Texas. 

When I asked the kids to tell me about the things they missed most from their lives outside Dilley, they almost always talked about their teachers and friends at school. Then they’d get to things like missing a beloved dog, McDonald’s Happy Meals, their favorite stuffed animal or a pair of new UGGs that had been waiting for them under the Christmas tree.

They told me they feared what might happen to them if they returned to their home countries and what might happen to them if they remained here. Thirteen-year-old Gustavo Santiago said he didn’t want to go back to Tamaulipas, Mexico. “I have friends, school, and family here in the United States,” he said of his home in San Antonio, Texas. “To this day, I don’t know what we did wrong to be detained.” He ended with a plea, “I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.”

ProPublica features their letters here.  

Don't miss their art, as well as their words. 

ICE kept kids out of school in Maine

 The Portland Press Herald this weekend took a look at the attendance in Maine due to ICE activities: 

More than half of all multilingual students in South Portland, and nearly half in Portland, were absent on some of the most affected days. Between Jan. 20 and 28, Black and Hispanic students in Portland missed school at a rate 30 percentage points higher than their white peers.

Absence rates varied on a school-by-school basis: In Portland, one elementary school was missing as many as 34% of students some days, while others were missing less than 10%. At Biddeford’s PreK-2 school, 23% of all students — and 58% of multilingual students — missed school one especially stark day during the second week of the operation.

They do a nice job with graphing.  

point five, Worcester

 When I posted about the Worcester School Committee taking up the FY27 budget projections for the first time, we didn't yet have the FY25 net school spending compliance report. The summary file of that is now available, and now we can see what impact the $3.8M the City Council transferred from free cash, as highlighted in yellow in Ms. Consalvo's presentation here: 

Note that part of the reason that the city had as much ground to make up as it did is that in FY25, the city underfunded the schools by $1.9M (99.6% of required). That gets carried over into the next year.

That puts Worcester at a projected point five percent over required net school spending for the current fiscal year (FY26). 

Statewide average (projected) for FY26 is 26.3% over required

of note from San Francisco on AI

 San Francisco Unified signed a contract with OpenAI before putting it before their school board, where it appears on their consent agenda. 

As the San Francisco Public Press notes in their coverage: 

Even if students do not have direct access, data such as school work, academic records, behavioral information and digital interactions can be especially sensitive, since minors have special legal protections. Once shared with vendors, student information can be stored, analyzed or reused beyond public view.

Artificial intelligence chatbots can present privacy problems for schools, said Lee Tien, legislative director at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which scrutinizes how many public institutions, including schools, use technology and collect private data.

The timing and handling of the agreement raised questions about how San Francisco school administrators evaluate and approve technology tools, and whether meaningful oversight occurs, Tien said. When procurement decisions come in advance of review by accountable leadership, public discussions about surveillance and transparency can be shortchanged. “It’s simply rubber-stamping decisions that were being made, and you don’t know why they were being made,” Tien said.

Such a procurement decision, unless it exceeded five years, wouldn't even need to come to the school committee in Massachusetts at all.  

on the attractiveness of school buildings

 The days on which I agree with the American Enterprise Institute are few, but this opinion piece by Robert Pondiscio, entitled "Why are school buildings so ugly?" struck a chord: 

A century ago, we built schools that looked like cathedrals: soaring, columned, sunlit. Even in modest communities and small towns—especially there—they were grand civic statements, rooted in the idea that public education was a serious and noble undertaking. Just as courthouses and libraries once signaled dignity and permanence, so too did public schools. You were meant to feel small walking in, but in the best way: awed, inspired, aware that something larger than yourself was happening here. And once you were old enough to set foot inside, you were part of it.

I will gladly concede that my opinion might be Philistinism; I don’t know enough about architecture to fill a thimble. Perhaps my tastes are outdated and anachronistic. But to my untrained eye, too many schools built from the post-war decades to today resemble garages, warehouses, even prisons. Instead of announcing themselves with architectural pride, they disappear into the landscape. At worst, they actively depress it. That transformation isn’t just aesthetic. It’s moral, cultural, and political; I cannot shake the nagging sense that uninspiring school buildings reflect our shrinking vision of education itself—from temples of intellectual and moral formation to utilitarian spaces built for the drab instrumentalism of “college and career readiness.”

but is there bad AI news this week?

 I'm so glad you asked: there is indeed!

Recent research published by Judy Hanwen Shen and Alex Tamkin at Cornell University has found that "[n]ovice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition in the process." From the coverage in Ed Tech Innovation Hub: 

The findings have implications beyond software development, particularly for education systems and professional learning environments increasingly adopting AI tools. The researchers argue that AI-enhanced productivity should not be assumed to translate into long-term competence, especially in settings where individuals are expected to supervise, verify, or correct AI-generated work.

The study also raises concerns about overreliance on AI in safety-critical or high-stakes domains, where human oversight depends on strong foundational skills. Without intentional learning design, AI use may reduce the very expertise needed to manage automated systems effectively.

The authors emphasize that AI can support learning when used intentionally, but caution that widespread adoption without structured pedagogical approaches could weaken skill development over time. They conclude that organizations and educators should focus not only on what AI enables people to produce, but on how it shapes the process of learning itself.

(emphasis added)

These are conversations that are badly, badly needed in education. They are absolutely not being had, in the mad rush to ensure it is adopted in classrooms. 

since I see tech and AI use is in the news here locally

 I thought this, from The Harvard Crimson's reporting on the Cambridge School Committee, was of interest: 

The School Committee also addressed growing concern over technology usage in schools, an issue raised repeatedly during public comment. The discussion followed a policy order last year asking the district to assess students’ screen time and set a formal policy on AI usage.

Murphy said the district’s responsibility is to ensure the benefits of using technology in the classroom are not “outweighed by the types of risks and potential detriments that are also associated with technology being as ubiquitous as it is.”

He recommended the discussion on AI use be moved to the School Committee’s curriculum subcommittee to “provide a forum” for parents, educators, and students to voice their concerns. The district also announced plans to conduct focus groups to gather feedback from educators across different grade levels.

“Trying to strike that balance and understand that nuance — that we want to capitalize on what's available to us, while not falling into, or falling prey to some of the pitfalls,” he said, “I think that's a really difficult conversation.”

A few things of note here: 

1. The "growing concern" is recognized a valid and one, that warrants real engagement.
2. The superintendent recognizes that there is an actual cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done. 
3. Engagement with both families and with educators across grade levels is formally being planned.

I will of course note again that a single "AI policy" is not a thing that can responsibly be done, due to the significant number of areas that AI impacts.