Joint Committee on Ways and Means hearing on FY25: local and education aid

 

Greenfield Community College atrium

I was just asked why I sit where I do, and the answer is "next to the outlet when there is one!"

Joint Committee on Ways and Means FY21 hearing on FY21

coming you today from the Malden Senior Center, just down the street from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in downtown Malden, where the Joint Committee on Ways and Means is having their FY21 hearing on local aid and education. These "on the road" hearings are frequently chaired by the nearest rep and senator, so today we have Rep. Christine Barber and Senator Jason Lewis, as Barber reps Melrose and Somerville, and Lewis reps Malden. This hearing, like several of the others, are a bit of a set piece; they aren't open to anyone to testify. That hearing is at the State House on March 24 at 11 am. 
And this decidedly will NOT start on time; I'll start updating once it does. 

The House deliberates the Student Opportunity Act

Coming to you live from the House gallery which has not been renovated and thus has not as much access to electricity, alas. I like their carpeting, though. No photos allowed.Or snacks. Or liquids other than water.

awaiting the opening of the gallery

You can watch the session here. The bill (H.4137) is here. 
I will warn you that I cannot identify most House members by sight or voice. Sorry. 
posting as we go

"The art of the trade/ How the sausage gets made"*

Cheers to Yawu Miller for covering the discussion at Boston Foundation last week where a group of Latino organizations had invited Rep. Andy Vargas, Senator Jason Lewis, and Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz to speak about the proposed changes to education funding in Massachusetts. Notably, this got into tying up the money, which you might recall was discussed and defeated at the Foundation Budget Review Commission:

Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, a member of the Greater Boston Latino Network, asked Chang-Diaz what accountability measures she would support. Diaz pushed back, reiterating the importance of sufficient funding.
“We know money isn’t everything,” Chang-Diaz said. “But if you give a district $50 to do a $100 job, they can have the best teachers in the world and they’re still going to struggle.”
Shana Varón, who heads the Boston Collegiate Charter School and sits on the board of the Massachusetts Association of Public Charter Schools, said she would like to see more accountability measures and said she is concerned that many in Massachusetts are advocating against the state’s standardized testing regime.
Sen. Jason Lewis of Winchester noted that accountability measures are already in place, implemented as part of the 1993 Education Reform Act.
“We put very strong accountability measures in place in 1993,” said Lewis, who is Senate chair of the Joint Committee on Education. “We backed that up with tests. What we haven’t done is deliver the funds for schools to do their work.” Chang-Diaz noted that the accountability measures put in place in 1993 were enhanced in 2010.
“We have a system for more rapid intervention when we don’t see progress on the achievement gap or school performance,” she said. “The state can step in and take over a district.”
Other than the governor’s call for withholding funds and enhanced interventions, Chang-Diaz said, she hasn’t heard calls for specific additional accountability measures.
“Show me your version of what accountability is,” she said in her response to Calderón-Rosado. “Maybe we’ll agree.”
But with the clock running down on the state budget deliberations, Chang-Diaz said, legislators would have to agree on such measures on an accelerated timeline.
“I don’t want us to go another school year while we dither and talk about accountability,” she said. “Bring your proposal forward.”

I, too, am weary of vague calls for "accountability" which never appear to amount to anything more than more calls for privatization or otherwise channeling funding away from schools that actually serve all kids.
Chang-Díaz of course is entirely correct: the state got another round of accountability on the Fed's dime when the state passed the Act Relative to the Achievement Gap in order to qualify for Race to the Top funds in 2011. That law has not been revoked, even as the federal funding which was the reason for it is long gone.
Moreover, the original foundation budget was to be reviewed and updated periodically, which it was not. The state thus owes the districts this funding from the 1993 law, over and above the 2011 changes.
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*shamelessly borrowed from Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Room Where It Happens"