To extend the line of yesterday’s post: This piece at Commonwealth by Fall River superintendent (and former Ed Secretary) Matthew Malone shows how badly our austerity-progressive legislature has failed a generation of kids. Read the whole thing — it calls out Massachusetts’ ballyhooed leadership in education as so much fine, fine clothing:
In the decade since the Hancock decision [requiring equitable school funding], Beacon Hill’s commitment has continued to falter, year after year, as places such as Fall River and other Gateway Cities continue to experience school budget reductions at the same time as the complicated needs of educating students gets more and more expensive. State education funding has fluctuated wildly and remains below 2001 levels, even as the needs of our students have grown.
The fact is, in the 25 years since the court required a new era in school funding, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has abandoned its constitutional duty to ensure that all students receive a quality education. Our local public school districts are splintered between the haves and the have-nots. For students in far too many communities who attend schools that are woefully underfunded, our state’s proud history and national reputation as a leader in public education is now just an empty story.
Do you see what I’m saying? Everyone knows that education is a great investment. Everyone knows, since it has been proven countless times, in research and in court, that MA school districts have wildly unequal funding — even more unequal when one considers the degree of need.
And yet our Governor has proposed about half of what’s needed, a shortchanging so egregious that at a hearing in March, Senator Jason Lewis had to ask him where he got his numbers.
Joint Education Committee Chairman Jason Lewis, D-Winchester, noted that Baker’s proposal of $1.1 billion includes state and municipal education and that the state’s contribution is actually $500 million. Lewis asked why he settled on that number when the 2015 report called for $1 billion to $2 billion of state funding.
Baker said additional increases in funding would mean the state government would face a higher burden to fund public schools. “If we go there, we really need to think hard about what the accountability measures would be,” he said.
I’m interested first and foremost in accountability for our leaders, to provide the necessary funds. Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, deposed chair of the Education Committee, proposed the PROMISE act, (S.238), which addresses funding shortfalls due to health insurance, special education, and English learners.
Austerity-progressivism is … not progressive; and stingy; and cruel; and short-sighted. It won’t get this thing done. Find the money and give kids a better future.
SomervilleTom says
Nope. Everyone does not know this.
There’s another principle at play that your otherwise marvelous thread-starter misses: “If it costs me even a tiny a tiny bit more, I oppose it.”
Too many self-described Democrats claim to support the values and priorities of the Democratic Party until it comes time to pay — even a little bit — for them. Then, suddenly, the excuses come raining down — “This is not the time”, or “First we have to “, or “I’m already paying enough”, etc.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s the recent equal pay legislation (“I oppose it because women will get raises before me”), or minimum wage (“I oppose it because I — at nearly twice the current minimum wage — will lose my holiday overtime”), or college funding (described on a piece just put up as “job shaming”), too many self-described Democrats oppose any proposal that costs them even a little bit more.
Principles like shared sacrifice, greatest common good, and so on, are discarded in favor of “What’s in it for me?”
While it’s true that Charlie Baker isn’t doing the right thing, neither did Deval Patrick. As you so accurately observe, this failure has been going on for 25 years, including the eight years of the Deval Patrick administration.
What IS constant for that 25 year period is allegedly Democratic dominance of the legislature. The “Democrats” in the legislature have refused to raise the tax revenue needed to fund these programs. Even after Proposition 2 1/2 decimated the ability of cities and towns to cover their own school costs (as regressive as that is), the legislature flatly refused to raise needed taxes. Deval Patrick tried to raise taxes on the wealthy, and Mr. DeLeo and the House handed him his head on a platter. Is it any wonder that Mr. Baker chooses to sidestep the question?
If the self-described Democrats of Massachusetts actually walked the walk, then we would compel our legislators to do the right and necessary thing. That means sucking it up and admitting that we should pay higher gas taxes. Those of us with higher incomes should pay higher income taxes. Those of us with more valuable property should pay higher property taxes. Those of us with very high capital gains should pay higher capital gains taxes. And so on. And yes, it means that those of us who have benefited from workplace discrimination for so many generations need to suck it up and let those who’ve suffered the most be first in line for new benefits.
Our governor is not charged with managing the pocketbook of the state — that duty falls to the House (“All money bills shall originate in the house of representatives; but the senate may propose or concur with amendments, as on other bills.”, Chapter I, Section III, Article VII). The failure here is with the allegedly Democratic Massachusetts House.
I enthusiastically agree with your conclusion.
johntmay says
Education is a great investment if you are working class. It will help you compete with those in the working class for higher wages.
However, as we have seen with the recent news headlines of the wealthy class bribing others to get their children into prestigious schools, for them, education is a wasted investment but achieving social status and entry into the wealthy class is the better investment.,
We’ll continue to compete for the crumbs of the master’s table…..
I wholeheartedly agree with your post.
Trickle up says
Can Charlie name some names? I have no idea what “progressives” fit this description.
Charley on the MTA says
At great length, I am including all progressives who enable the DeLeo speakership, thereby his austerity agenda — which is nearly all of them, including our Arlington reps Garballey and Rogers.
I am certainly including Kate Hogan who’ is so proud of her record as a “practical progressive” or whatever, which to me means someone satisfied with the crumbs thrown to them by DeLeo. I surely mean Wellesley’s Alice Peisch, chair of the ed committee who has yet to co-sponsor H.586, the companion piece to Chang-Diaz’s PROMISE act for equitable funding.
*None* get the benefit of the doubt anymore — except Jon Hecht and maybe Russell Holmes, the only ones to take the consequences for not knuckling under.
SomervilleTom says
Denise Provost has a long and substantial history of not knuckling under.
For example, Ms. Provost is a co-sponsor for S.1305 (mentioned in the first link in your comment). Kate Hogan is not. Alice Peisch is not. Ms. Provost is similarly a co-sponsor of H.586.
I first met Ms. Provost while we were walking a picket line together outside a Davis Square restaurant that was refusing to pay its workers.
She was literally walking the walk. She is the real deal.
Charley on the MTA says
She’s sometimes willing to speak up … kinda. More like public chafing.
petr says
I’ll see your ‘a great investment’ and raise you ‘the only investment’: Indeed, what other investment is there? The reply to that is, oft, ‘raise wages’ but that’s secondary: you’re essentially asking for a subsidy of the least educated by the more educated. (I’m perfectly fine with that, just so long as you recognize that education remains at the core of it…)
There is a certain strain of hopefulness — neither entirely unmerited nor historically unsuccessful — to the progressive ego that places a great deal of faith and power in the ideas and the ideals: of course
the idea of (choose one: education, health care, fighting global warming, public transport) is important and if you just suggest it the legislature will fall all over themselves in their rush to vote for it en masse, and happily. Isn’t it all too obvious?
But power lies in the process of moving from the ideas/ideals to reality. This is something progressives sometimes elide… and those who may have control of the process but don’t, for whatever reason, find sympathy with the ideas or ideals, will win. So the problem is not one of ‘why won’t you vote for my neat-o idea?’ but rather becomes one of wresting the process from the grip of those who, for whatever reason, don’t see the neat-o in the idea.