On the Chapter 70 study committee: what they are, or at least SHOULD, talk about

Sorry, I know the first of these public sessions already happened this week. This fall is somehow feeling particularly slammed for me...remember, they also will take electronic submission of testimony at C70PublicComment@mass.gov.
Also, yes, again, this is me posting as me and not in any other capacity.

When I last wrote on this for you, I shared what isn't going to come up in the study commission because it isn't things with which they are charged. 

Note that those are all things about which we should be talking, too! We really cannot ignore how harsh not having SOA increases is going to be on the districts that have been using them to ensure they can maintain services, because inflation isn't keeping up with costs, much as so many other districts have been pushing local increases for the same reason.

In other words: 

INFLATION INFLATION INFLATION

However, again, this study is specifically to study the "municipality's target local contribution and required local contribution" so it's looking at what I think of as the SECOND part of the question: once we have decided what a "minimum adequate per pupil budget" is, where does the money come from? 

Here are some things that I expect to come up, some of which are written right into the study language itself:

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. 

Spring break reading

I've caught my breath enough to catch up a bit some of the more national publications. These are some things I'm reading, and I'll add reflections as I have them.

• Washington Post has an interesting piece of what it looks like to live not viewing your (white) child as the exception with the escape hatch in Washington, D.C.

“I want my kids to know they are no better than any other kids from any other background and to pull them out of their feeder school because it’s predominantly black school, that sends the wrong message,” Clapp said. 

• Ed Build has released an interactive update on efforts across the country of predominately white, weathlier districts to secede from their predominately students of color and/or poorer school districts. There is coverage by Vox on this here.You might also read this piece in Hechinger Report by Emmanuel Felton (writing a book on METCO!), which works out where this is happening (not just the South!) and some of the reasons why.
  If you're in Massachusetts, please recall that this isn't happening here only because we have never had regionalized districts for the purposes of integration at all; it can't fall apart because they never came together. I'll also note that Felton uses Newton, MA, as an example of the sort of wealth disparities associated with school funding, as it brings in more taxes than the entire city of Detroit. 

• I haven't read this yet, but the Learning Policy Institute has evaluated ESSA plans around equity. They focus on: 
• suspension rates;
• school climate;
• chronic absenteeism;
• extended-year graduation rate; and
• access to a college- and career-ready curriculum.

Three of these Massachusetts included in the ESSA current plan.

Two things to read today

• EdWeek notes that the push to opt-out of standardized testing has, post-ESSA, gone rather quiet. 
• This piece from EdBuild on the stranding of low income districts in states in which schools are largely dependant on property taxes is important. It also has implications in Massachusetts, as our districts become increasingly dependant on property taxes. 

A rabbit hole I fell down today on Massachusetts property taxes and school funding

In order:

• 1620: Mayflower passengers arrive in Plymouth (start of the Plymouth Colony)
• 1630: Massachusetts Bay Company starts in Boston
• 1634: Taxation of every man's assets and products of his abilities passed by Mass Bay Colony
• 1635: Boston Latin School founded
• 1636: Harvard founded
• 1646: Taxation of "visible estate" (a property tax) 
• 1647: "Old Deluder Satan" law requires a school for every settlement of fifty families and a grammar school of every settlement of a hundred paid either by parents and masters OR by the settlement as a whole

This of course both leaves a lot out and oversimplifies, BUT I thought the interaction of taxation and education in Massachusetts interesting.

If you're coming to the MASS/MASC Conference next week, this is background research I was doing for the "70 on 70" session at 12:30 on Wednesday. 

McDuffy redux? (or Legal Action? What Legal Action?)

In response to this section of last night's joint meeting in Worcester--

King: potential legal action...any action as yet?
Foley: "districts across the state that are asking the same questions" #FBRC

— Tracy Novick (@TracyNovick) April 25, 2016

--I got some questions today on just what was meant by "legal action."

Note that I am going to elide a whole lot of history here to get to the basic outlines.

Historically, schools in Massachusetts have largely been funded (as schools across the US) by local property taxes. Thus the taxes on property within a town were the source of revenue for schools within that town. That has the result, of course, of towns that have more property wealth having more money available to them to spend on schools, and of schools in different (and sometimes adjoining) towns having schools that look very different.
As a result, there were a series of cases* filed by districts against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts over the 1970's and 80's. These gained some urgency once Proposition 2 1/2, which limited the growth of local taxation to no more than 2 1/2% per year without an override, passed in the state, as that limited the amount that towns could increase their funding of schools (among other services) every year.
Why sue the state?
John Adams!
Yes, (the perpetually quoted by me) Chapter V, Section II of the Massachusetts Constitution explicitly makes education the "duty of legislatures and magistrates" in the state. Magistrates are the town officials; the legislatures meet, as they always have, on Beacon Hill. And Beacon Hill wasn't doing as much as they could to ensure that kids across Massachusetts were getting a good education.
The cases were consolidated into McDuffy v. the Secretary of the Executive Office of Education, and the Supreme Judicial Court decision was handed down in June 1993. Essentially, the districts won: the state was told to make sure that kids across the state were getting an appropriate education:

...the provisions of Part II, c. 5, Section 2, of the Massachusetts Constitution impose an enforceable duty on the magistrates and Legislatures of this Commonwealth to provide education in the public schools for the children there enrolled, whether they be rich or poor and without regard to the fiscal capacity of the community or district in which such children live. It shall be declared also that the constitutional duty is not being currently fulfilled by the Commonwealth. 

The decision is dated June 15; on June 18, the 1993 Education Reform Act was signed into law. While most know it for it (ultimately) being the reason we have the MCAS exam, it also set parameters for the creation of statewide standards of education, and it created the foundation formula that funds K-12 education in Massachusetts.
The foundation formula is progressive in two ways: it allows higher amounts of funding for greater student need, and it requires the state to provide for greater amounts of the funding needed in less wealthy districts.
The state implemented the foundation formula on a seven year rollout, but a number of districts felt that progress wasn't being made quickly enough and that the results weren't bearing out what was required, so another round of lawsuits were filed, which resulted in Hancock v. the Commissioner of Education in 2005. The results of this case were much more mixed, as the SJC found:

The Governor, the Legislature, and the department are well aware that the process of education reform can and must be improved...The amply supported findings of the judge reflect much that remains to be corrected before all children in our Commonwealth are educated. The Legislature may well choose to rely on these findings as it continues to consider efforts to improve public education. Her findings are also a testament to the many educators, teachers, parents, business and community leaders who insist that, until that goal is reached, they will continue to demand improvement and will seek the help of our elected officials to ensure that meaningful reform is ongoing.

"The presumption exists that the Commonwealth will honor its obligations." Bromfield v. Treasurer & Receiver Gen., 390 Mass. 665 , 669 (1983). I am confident that the Commonwealth's commitment to educating its children remains strong, and that the Governor and the Legislature will continue to work expeditiously "to provide a high quality public education to every child." G. L. c. 69, s 1.

The Hancock decision did, however, leave the door open for the districts to come back if, as time went along, the state was not keeping up its end of the bargain.
And that brings us rather neatly to the Foundation Budget Review Commission, which found precisely that. That's why, as I've heard him say multiple times now, Mr. Allen told the joint committee last night:

"we're cutting from a benchmark that's already inadequate" #FBRC #MAEdu @worcesterpublic

— Tracy Novick (@TracyNovick) April 25, 2016

...and the FY16 benchmark is, for Worcester, over $90 million underfunded by the standards of the Foundation Budget Review Commission.
Thus, if the state doesn't come through on action, there is an argument for re-opening Hancock...a McDuffy redux.
And the state handed us the strongest evidence themselves last November, when they issued the Foundation Budget Review Commission's report.


*including Jordan Levy and others v. the Governor, filed by Worcester's mayor Jordan Levy

Comments regarding the proposed slots parlor

I was asked by several members of the community to post my testimony before the City Council on Tuesday. It here follows.

My name is Tracy O'Connell Novick and I serve on the Worcester School Committee. It is in that capacity that I am before you tonight.
The petition I have placed before you tonight mirrors an item placed on the School Committee agenda for Thursday. It is my grave concern over an apparent rush to negotiate that I placed the item here as well.
I would further call your attention to the fact that I represent a constituency unable to vote.
Mr. Chair, you and this Council know me--I do not appear before you without doing research. When I learned that Rush Street Gaming was proposing a slots parlor for Worcester, I naturally looked at slots parlors and at Rush Street Gaming.
Regarding slots parlors--
Teenagers have an addiction to gambling at 2 to 4 times the rate of adults. Due to their still developing pre-frontal cortex, teenagers are uniquely in danger of developing an addiction to gambling, as they are to other addictive behaviors. It is ironic, Mr. Chair, that at a time this city is considering the creation of a high school for those in recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol, we would be considering a facility that will allow for the creation of new addicts--gamblers. As addiction to gambling correlates with other addictive behaviors...let's just say, Mr. Chair, that if we open a slots parlor, we're going to need that high school.
Of course, teenagers are not allowed in a slots parlor. Rush Street Gaming has a history, however, of allowing underaged gamblers into their facilities. In multiple facilities in mulitple states, they have been fined, repeatedly, for underaged gamblers.
They don't, Mr. Chair, respect the law
I've been asked--wouldn't you like to see the tax base increase? I would--and this won't do it. Every slot machine removes the equivalent of a job from the local economy, with the discretionary (and non-discretionary) money it vacuums up and sends out of state. For this proposed facility, that's 1250 jobs per year that Worcester will be losing.
Moreover, an increase in the tax base assumes that Rush Street Gaming pays their taxes as assessed. But, Mr. Chair, they don't do that anywhere else--why do we think Worcester would be any different?In every single city in which they operate, Rush Street Gaming has appealed their tax assessment. In Pittsburgh, the casino had barely opened their doors when Rush Street filed for an appeal. They have done so in every subsequent year as well.
These cities have to go to court, time and again, against Rush Street's well-funded lawyers to collect their taxes.
This has a particular danger in Massachusetts. Should a slots parlor open here, its assessment will be added to the aggregate wealth of the community.
That means our Chapter 70 aid will be cut.
...which would be fine, except that our aggregate wealth won't be higher.
The city will be on the hook for the difference, but won't have the money to pay the school budget because we have made a deal with someone who does not pay his assessed taxes.
The same is true, Mr. Chair, unrestricted lottery aid. It has already fallen for FY14; it will, we know, fall further with a slots parlor. To tie our local tax base to a bad dealer is folly.
This is just a glimpse, Mr. Chair, of the economic instability and detrimental impacts of a slots parlor. It has been said by those who study them that there is nothing so destabilizing to the local economy as a slots parlor. Mitigation is not possible--it is too destructive.
I ask, Mr. Chair, for myself and for my constituents--who cannot vote--do not enter into these negotiations.

And for you ed funding geeks

...if you aren't just reading Bruce Baker all of the time, at least catch this post on the use of property taxes in ed funding.
If someone could please, please get the Massachusetts Legislature to read this, so they could knock off the nonsense with the $40/pupil increase as some sort of "equity," I'd appreciate it greatly.