In the last month, seemingly every Massachusetts political establishment leader has made a statement against racism. The MA House has just passed a bill making Juneteenth a state holiday. Good for us, let’s pat ourselves on the back.
Just last year, the state passed the Student Opportunity Act, new education funding formula theoretically backed by $1.5 billion targeted at the particular challenges of low-income and “gateway” communities. This was actually a meaningful, anti-racist bill.
But structural racism is ever a system of last-in, first out. The funding piece of the SOA was always merely a promise, albeit one enshrined in law. Now, in the midst of genuine uncertainty, our leaders seem primed to put off its investment in the SOA, and are getting encouragement to do so from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association, among others.
”Prior to COVID-19, education finance reform was on track to be the centerpiece of the fiscal 2021 budget,” MTF President Eileen McAnneny wrote in a letter to lawmakers. She added, “After the fiscal impact of COVID-19, however, policymakers may need to modify the implementation schedule for this new law. For example, lawmakers may postpone the start of implementation until fiscal 2022, presumably after the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has abated.
(More from MassLive: Massachusetts lawmakers, uncertain of coronavirus’ economic toll, brace for tough decisions on education, taxes for fiscal 2021 budget – masslive.com)
Schools in lower-income areas were unacceptably short of funds already — and now we’re talking about compounding the problem with “flat-lining” funding. (Inflation is a thing; “flat-lining” is a cut.)
Austerity is still the default premise among many of our legislators:
Part of the frustration, said Roberto Jiménez-Rivera, a Chelsea School Committee member, is that local officials keep getting mixed messages about school funding for next year.
“It seems like some legislators are more concerned we will go down in funding,” he said in an interview. “The best scenario we are hearing is level funding. But no one is saying more money next year.”
One can acknowledge a tremendous amount of uncertainty about the resources that will be available to us. How big is the state’s revenue shortfall? Will MA get a substantial federal bailout to the states?*
As for things under our control in Massachusetts: Will we raise revenue to actually fund the SOA; not to mention the special challenges to schools posed by re-opening under COVID-19 guidelines?
If we don’t fund SOA, we’ll be perpetuating and compounding a racist system. Sorry children of color, immigrants and refugees: It’s last-in, first-out. You’re left out again. Try again next generation.
If we say we’re against racism, our school budgets have to reflect that. A new holiday won’t get you off the hook, legislators and Governor Baker. Find the money.
Must-read article, along these themes of social investment vs. racism, in the Globe. Newly-woke white people, put your money where your mouth is.
*Will Mitch McConnell feel enough heat to allow that to happen? Interestingly, the results from Tuesday’s Senate primary in Kentucky might have a profound effect on our state finances. Charles Booker is a vastly better, tougher candidate than Amy McGrath; he’ll receive a lot of money and will bring more pressure against McConnell than McGrath would. I’d have to imagine that state assistance would be a big part of that campaign.
Thank you Charley for amplifying this. As a teacher in a majority minority school in a Title I urban district, I’ll add that we already had budgeted for a lot of new opportunities for our students. More history teachers, more STEM teachers, restoring dramatic arts at the high school, adding a STEM center to compliment our writing and college career center. Funding for great extra curricular opportunities like trips abroad. Massive investment in closing the ESL/native speaker achievement gaps. All of these things are not considered extras in white majority suburban districts, but essentials. They should be essential for our students too.
I am bitterly disappointed that my super, our municipal officials, and our state delegation immediately went on the defensive that cuts will he avoided rather than fighting for this funding. They immediately adopted an austerity framework rather than tax the 12 billionaires in this state at higher rates, many of whom have made record profits while others suffer.
On top of that remote learning and districts paying for PPE will be more unfunded mandates barring a temporary tax increase and a permanent progressive tax code. I’m glad my union and the AFT are fighting to save this funding, I’m bitterly disappointed all the politicians who took credit for passing it are assuming it can’t happen without even putting up a fight.
You know that at least the prevailing interpretation is that you cannot in MA constitutionally tax the 12 billionaires at a higher rate, right?
You know Democrats have a veto proof supermajority, right?
Actually, it only takes a quarter of the legislature to send it to the ballot for people to vote on as an amendment. I’m not saying don’t do it, but it’s a bit of a process that takes a bit longer to implement than a routine budget.
To me this is an example of calling something racist, when I’m sure sticking it to children of color was hardly on anyone’s mind, dilutes the meaning of the term. By all means oppose underfunding, or even objectively point out that the outcome is racially disparate, but don’t accuse without evidence attitudes of racial superiority.
This is textbook definition of separate and unequal schooling.
Doesn’t the formula for state funding apply equitably across the state? It would be nice if some districts had more money and didn’t have to rely on property taxes, but ultimately municipalities run the schools so if schools are equal within the district they meet that requirement.
Round and round and we go.
You wrote earlier that you’ve been forced to admit that systemic racism is indeed an issue. Surely you see the compelling evidence all around us of both the pervasiveness and also the intensity of this problem.
Yet here you are still running the same tired and ragged flag up the flagpole — a flag that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Stars And Bars.
This is has been settled law for generations. As James has observed, this is the canonical definition of a “separate and unequal” school funding policy. It IS racist. This is the issue polarized Massachusetts in the 1970s — and made us a national laughing-stock. It will do that in spades today.
To recall the title of a movie from a few years ago — there will be blood.
To use this argument today, after all that has happened in the last few weeks and after what is continuing to unfold today, is beyond stubborn.
The stark disparity in public school funding that so clearly follows racial boundaries is, in fact, the very definition of racism — whether or not you admit that.
I believe there is such a thing as systemic racism, particularly in the criminal justice system. I do not believe that every racially disparate outcome is evidence of that. The thought experiment question is this: Do you believe that if the student bodies in the impacted communities were whiter this funding would not be cut, and if so what leads you to that conclusion?
The refusal by McConnell and other Republicans in the U.S. Senate to consider granting needed financial assistance to the states during the pandemic means that the states will not have the funds they anticipated prior to the pandemic. We all get that. So, what do our legislators do? They cut legally authorized funding designed to rectify decades of past discrimination, leaving cities and towns with the highest number of minorities grossly underfunded, just as they have been for so many years. The Student Opportunity Act may have been the last major financial reform to pass, but it was one of the most important and most needed. Choosing not to fund this particular Act is a form of racism, whether individual legislators recognize it or not. They could have reduced funding across the board, including the Student Opportunity Act, or better yet, in areas where less funding would do less harm. But, no, they specifically chose the Student Opportunity Act, knowing that it would perpetuate discrimination. Their excuse that it is logical to just choose not to fund the most recent law, rings hollow.
“Doesn’t the formula for state funding apply equitably across the state?”
No, that is in fact the entire point of the SOA. The old formula drastically underfunded places like Revere and overfunded places like Cambridge which have undergone profound demographic transformation in the last twenty five years since Ed Reform was passed.
So while everyone patted themselves on the back for redressing this injustice in near unanimous bipartisan fashion back in November, the same actors are now saying this “extra” funding may be delayed or scrapped due to the recent economic downturn . It ain’t extra, it’s equity at last now once again put on the back burner.
There is no excuse, there is only racism. A profound difference between the racism I grew up with in a MD suburb of Washington DC in the 1950s and 1960s and the racism I encountered in Massachusetts in the 1970s is that the racists of my childhood at least admitted to and even proclaimed their opinion.
George Wallace made no secret of his belief in segregation. The Southern Baptist preachers favored by my family of origin (my mother and her family were from LA) were explicit in their assertion about the “evil of miscegenation” — they were not talking about Christians marrying Jews.
The racists I encountered in Massachusetts in 1974 denied their own racism. Louise Day Hicks was a poster child of the Massachusetts politicians who turned rhetorical handsprings to hide their racism behind a facade of excuses and the hordes of racist voters who they pandered to.
The racism I encountered in Massachusetts has seldom been explicit or intentional. That makes it all the more, not less, destructive.
It is sad that nearly fifty years later the political landscape of Massachusetts is apparently unchanged. The racism here remains palpable — in no small part because so many Massachusetts residents so vigorously deny their own role in the pervasive social disease.