Happy Birthday, John Adams!

Born this day in 1735

As tonight, the municipal contribution study group is taking public testimony here in Worcester, perhaps we can offer this from a Worcester school teacher: 

The Whole People must take upon themselvs the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expences of it. There should not be a district of one Mile Square without a school in it, not founded by a Charitable individual but maintained at the expence of the People themselvs they must be taught to reverence themselvs instead of adoreing their servants their Generals Admirals Bishops and Statesmen.

from a letter to John Jebb, September 10, 1785

on good governance

I remember reading that part of what was so exhausting about the Trump administration--besides the ongoing "what fresh horror is this?" of the whole administration--was that so many of us had to be so ongoingly conscious of the presidency. This wasn't the attention of an active denizen in a democracy; this was the hyperawareness of someone who is watching for the next chance of being hit. 

"The Awakening" at National Harbor, Maryland

We don't have direct democracy in this country at any level save town meeting, and even there, a selectboard is put into place to conduct much of the business of the town over the course of the year. We hire, in essence, school committees and city councils and selectboards, as well as board of health and library boards and many other groups to conduct the week to week business of running our democracy and the parts it oversees. 

There is a lot of that work that isn't very dramatic (when done right): ensuring that roads are repaired and plowed, that school buses run on time, that the water you drink is clean and is there when you turn on the tap, that trash gets picked up and disposed of some way we won't later regret, that the next generation is getting what it needs to keep the work running for decades to come. 

And even the work that oversees that--the setting vision and direction, the setting the budget--doesn't, often look very dramatic. It's working to agree to what comes next for all of us as a community and how one gets there. It's knowing what the job of the governance board actually is and doing it.

One thing that I have seen written a bit about on school committees of late is how the very boringness of school boards has changed since the pandemic. Starting with school building status and moving quickly through masking and critical race theory and LGBTQ rights and book banning, the country has had a wave of fearmongering be very loud at our school committee meetings. The budgetary oversight, the policy work, the direction and oversight that is the charge of the school board in the U.S. has often gotten pushed out by this very loud fear of a small group of people.

That move away from the responsibility of the work, though, doesn't always come from either that space or those sentiments. There are other spaces and directions that flatten the attention of governance boards, such that their work of actual governance remains undone. To be consumed entirely by any single matter--to show no inclination or opening towards steps forward if they don't accomplish all wished for--to not come to the table prepared to do anything other than speak--that is to neglect the duty owed. 

I bought myself a pin four years ago when I rejoined the Worcester School Committee, adopting as my own unofficial motto Emmeline Pankhurst's "Deeds not Words" as a reminder to myself as much as anyone that, while making a speech on a Thursday night may be satisfying, it doesn't, alone, change anything.

And change, of course, we have, over the past four years. We have a new superintendent, after a thorough, professional national search. That superintendent is, alongside an administration reconstituted to provide the support denied schools, doing the hard work of shaping our schools to work for all of our students. We brought, over the objections of the prior superintendent, district transportation in house, demonstrating not only that it could be done, but that it could improve performance and our relationship with our drivers and monitors, while saving the district money. We fought for and won increased funding for facilities, gaining reimbursement for Doherty's inflation, seeing reinstatement of the accelerated repair program, and securing increased funding per square foot for new buildings, putting us in good stead for a new Burncoat. We set forward, and will adopt by year's end, an updated strategic plan. We updated our own rules, ensuring we are focused on the work which is our own. We redrafted the dress code; we adopted a new elementary literacy program; we saw the new health curriculum implemented; we added guidance counselors, climate and culture specialists, mental health professionals, nurses, more funding for student supplies, and many teachers. 

And that's just what this weary brain can conjure the night before the election. 

But note that much of the above wasn't glamorous. It wasn't the result of speeches. It was deliberation in open session. Some of it was the result of compromises. 

None of it was the work of any one person. 

Many of us will cast ballots in the next few hours. If I have a hope this evening, not only as a candidate for public office but one who simply lives here, it is that we elect people who are in it to do the actual, non-glamorous, non-rhetorical work of governance.

Deeds. Not words.

Comments on the local contribution study

 As you may remember, one of the several studies required by the Student Opportunity Act is one on local contributions. Comments for that study are due this week. Here is what I submitted; please do note the opening paragraph.

Let me begin by noting that my comments here reflect solely my own perspective as a single member of the Worcester School Committee, albeit one that spends a significant time on school finance. These comments do not reflect my employer, the Mass Association of School Committees, nor necessarily those of the rest of the Worcester School Committee.

I think it's of utmost importance to stress that the underlying principle of the local contribution for Massachusetts public schools—that communities that have less local wealth contribute less—is sound. This is the philosophy of the commonwealth, that the wealth the state is held in the common good, interpreted through the McDuffy case, requiring that the state's people as a greater body provide for all the children in the state through its public schooling, even when, or especially when, the local community cannot. At least philosophically, Massachusetts holds that zip code should not determine one's education. 

What we owe each other

Inspired this weekend by the various observances of justice, of proclamations of good news, and also by this 2012 piece from Charlie Pierce, which includes the following:

It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and enobled by the effort... A basic philosophy of selfishness is being inculcated into our politics. It will render us incapable of reacting when our democratic patrimony is swindled out from under us. There are thieves abroad in the land, making off with the blessings of the political commonwealth, and their most basic alibi is that it never existed in the first place. Once we accept that as our true history, the future is pretty much lost.

I was at an event last weekend about education policy and the question came, as it often does: how are we to fund what is needed in education in Massachusetts?

Part of the answer is that we already do. We just don't do it everywhere.

There's been a lot of talk online (publicly and otherwise) around fairness and a lot of sharp elbows around keeping what is perceived to be "mine" this spring. What I'm not seeing nearly enough of is concern for first recognizing and then meeting greatest needs.
This may mean recognizing where there are not the same needs.

Among the various workbooks posted by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for our perusal, as usual, is one that gives town-by-town calculations:

If you head right, over in column L, we find a column that is of great interest:

"CEY % found" is what the header says, which is "Combined Effort Yield as a percentage of foundation."

What's that?
The combined effort yield is the calculation, based on property taxes and income taxes, of what each town and city could afford (by a uniform calculation that applies to every town and city across the state) to contribute to their local district's budget. Bluntly, it's a measure of community wealth.

The "% foundation" calculates what percentage of the local foundation budget is covered by the local municipality's combined effort yield. How much of that local "adequate" (scare quotes intentional) school budget could be funded by local property wealth if that was all that was being used?

Important note: Massachusetts has districts that are funky outliers in many ways! Before we go any further with this, it is crucial to remember that we have, for example, whole towns in which single digit numbers of kids are going to school. Apply that sort of foundation budget against ANY town's community wealth, and it's going to be overwhelming in the ability of the town to fund. Those are not the ones to latch on to.

Keeping that in mind, if you sort by column L (largest to smallest), you get a list for which the first 25 is this: 

We start right off with two outliers: Mount Washington and Gosnold, which come close to framing the state's southern border, as Mount Washington (population 167 at the 2010 census) is the community that is the southwest corner of the state, and Gosnold (population 75 at the 2010 census) is the town of the Elizabeth Islands that trail off the southern end of Falmouth, so only Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket are farther southeast. Check those foundation budgets! It appears that Mount Washington has a single (middle school?) student and Gosnold has two elementary and one middle school students. Yes, those districts have significantly more ability to fund than that. 

You'll see then that, not surprisingly, we bounce back and forth a bit between the Berkshires and the Cape, both regions with, often, significant property wealth and small (and shrinking) school enrollments. Outside of Alford (part of Southern Berkshire Regional), however, the foundation budgets aren't necessarily outliers. This does, though, give perspective on why the Cape and the Berkshires fought to get income (something which many of those towns don't have as much of) included in the revamped calculation of combined effort yield, rather than straight property wealth.

As we skim down, we start to get into more of what are (if you're using the more facile sites) considered "good schools": Weston, Cambridge, Lincoln, Wellesley. And look at how much of the foundation budget those local districts can cover of their foundation budgets by the combined effort yield: 

• Weston at 340.6% 
• Cambridge at 278.5%
• Lincoln at 249.8%
• Wellesley at 228.1%. 

They can, in other words, afford to pay two or three times the foundation budget of their schools!

Off the bottom of what I've clipped above, we also get: 

• Newton at 188.9%
• Brookline at 180.3%
• Concord at 174.6%
• Watertown at 159.7%
• Wayland at 159.4%
• Carlisle at 147.3%
• Somerville at 143.7%

...you'll note that we're dropping pretty rapidly here, though, even if you keep in mind I'm dropping the Cape and Berkshire towns. I could continue here, but remember that the statewide average last year was 130%! 

I note this first because the above towns are actually funding their schools at levels that otherwise elude us. In FY18: 

• Weston funded their schools at 221.3% of foundation
• Cambridge at 234.6%
• Lincoln at 206%
• Wellesley at 177.7%
• Newton at 169.8%
• Brookline at 182.2%
• Concord at 219.3%
• Watertown at 181.8%
• Wayland at 179.5%
• Carlisle at 215.4%
• Somerville at 132.2%

These are towns that are, at the very least, covering their foundation gaps in health insurance and special education, ensuring that underfunding doesn't impact other parts of the budget.

I also point this out because one of the choices the state legislature is making, even as it chooses not to move ahead with the funding needed in the foundation budget for kids who are learning English and kids who have low income, is to continue to fund 17.5% of the foundation budgets of districts like those above; moreover, the Legislature continues to increase the state aid of these districts at $30/pupil, again. This is done, one presumes, from some notion of "equality."

Here's what the other end of column L looks like, however: 

• Worcester CEY 27.9% of foundation
• Orange CEY 27.8% of foundation
• Lowell CEY 26.2% of foundation
• Southbridge CEY 26% of foundation
• Fitchburg CEY 25.2% of foundation
• Lynn CEY 23.8% of foundation
• Fall River CEY 23.3% of foundation
• Brockton CEY 22.5% of foundation
• Chelsea CEY 21.8% of foundation
• New Bedford CEY 20.9% of foundation
• Holyoke CEY 19.9% of foundation
• Springfield CEY 15.9% of foundation
• Lawrence CEY 14.1% of foundation

The state notion of "equality" pushing those increases per pupil doesn't extend so far as to ensure that all, including those above lacking local resources, districts are funding at the levels above foundation the top districts are. It doesn't extend so far as to ensure that all districts don't have the health insurance and special education gaps hit the classroom. 

There has been a notion advanced this spring that somehow the latter districts don't "deserve" to have local representation; that because they are poor, and thus majority state-funded, their districts should be state controlled. This is predicated on the false premise that the wealth within a municipality--a municipality made of particular kinds of historical decisions about whom could live there and whom could not, among other things--belongs solely to that municipality. This is of course an extension of the dispute over to what degree what we as individuals earn belongs to us an individuals.

The Constitution of Commonwealth, however--and, reaching even farther back, the history of Massachusetts even as a colony--states straightforwardly that the distinctions of family or town wealth are not what is to determine the type of education a child receives in Massachusetts "for the preservation of their rights and liberties." To use such determinants is simply unconstitutional. We as individuals, children as individuals, are not "left to struggle on our own" as Pierce states above; we are a commonwealth. 

We should act, and budget, as one. 

Funding urban education at the whim of private enterprise

Lastly, the framers' decision to place the provisions concerning education in "The Frame of Government" -- rather than in the "Declaration of Rights" -- demonstrates that the framers conceived of education as fundamentally related to the very existence of government.                                                 McDuffy v. Secretary, 1993

Front page article in the T&G today on something we all knew was happening: "Urban districts lean on private support as public funds dwindle."

Let's talk for a minute about how problematic this is.

The biggest problem is what I've posted above from McDuffy v: education is a public endeavor, which is to be done for the public good, and thus is done with public funds. Allowing private enterprise to determine what is funded not only runs us right into this careerism focus which is plaguing education now, anyway; it sends us into territory in which private enterprise determines what public education is to be. While this is in keeping with much of what is happening in government now, we should fight to keep it away from public education. Public education isn't to give companies their next round of workers; it's to make sure we continue having a democracy.

The more immediate danger, of course, is that pointed to by Tom Scott:

any acceptance in Massachusetts that businesses and individuals can replace what taxes should be paying for is a "dangerous path to go down."

Contrary to what he says, though, I'd say we're already there. When the superintendent of the Worcester Public Schools estimates that she's spending 20% of her time wooing businesses, when there's a 25,000 student public system that's needing leadership; when the Governor thinks that a fundamental reform of how we fund public education in the Commonwealth isn't among the most pressing issues on his plate; and when we have private companies talking of training their employees in issues of education to assist, we're already there.

We need funding reform, and we need it yesterday.

Jackpot?

With the ongoing community chatter regarding the siting of a possible slots parlor in Worcester, I started to wonder what one could figure out about the changes such a facility might make on the public schools. As the first thing that keeps being argued is what a great community benefit the financing would be, I thought I should look at that first.

And, sure enough, there's quite a bit to find: specifically, there's quite a bit about the impact that the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh--owned by the same group proposing a slots parlor in Worcester--has had on their school system's finances.

Most specifically, it lead me to this settlement in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The Rivers Casino, owned by Rush Street Gaming, has appealed their property assessment every single year that they have been open.The casino opened in August of 2009; they have appealed their property taxes in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
As pointed out by a local columnist, it's difficult to feel much sympathy for a facility that has brought in $1 billion in revenue since it opened. The facility has repeatedly claimed that parts of their mitigation agreement should be counted towards their tax assessment. As schools in Pennsylvania are largely dependent on property taxes, the appeals hit the school budget directly.
While the court settled the past years, for 2013, the casino is appealing their tax assessment again.This again puts their school budget in jeopardy. It also means that the city and schools must spend more time--and money--to try to get what was touted as being a boost to local tax revenue to pay their assessment.

Now, this gets even more interesting when you apply the school finance system in Massachusetts. Should any such facility open in Worcester and make any money, it would increase what the state uses to calculate community wealth.
As Worcester would, to the state's perception, be wealthier, the state would lower our Chapter 70 aid.
The expectation would be that the city would be able to pay for more of the school budget out of the tax levy.
That only works, of course, if your taxpayers pay their taxes. If they instead take the city to court, then the city would be on the hook for the increased proportion of the school budget and would not have the funds to pay for it, as the facility wasn't paying taxes owed.
If you think we have a net school spending gap now, agree to sign a deal with Rush Street Gaming.
THEN you'll really see a gap!

Multi-episode comic on ed reform

This just today came across my desk: Truthout has been publishing a series of carefully constructed comics dealing with the ed reform message. Episode 1 covers "Disaster Capitalism" and episode 2 focuses specifically on what's happened in New Orleans since hurricane Katrina.
If you've got friends and family who need a quick but complete overview, this is a great place to start. And the authors promise more to come!

outsourcing education

The latest missive in the Ravitch/Meier conversation is in:

While K-12 education was made universal because it seemed important that every single potential citizen be well-educated if democracy was to flourish, we have substituted the idea of democracy with the idea of the "marketplace." The less regulated, the better—ditto for charters. "Good" charter states are those considered by their allies to be those that are least regulated. Does it sound familiar?