Thread by @TracyNovick

Okay, I just stuck the House foundation budget bill in my Dropbox here: dropbox.com/s/9keifw8ws54q…

thread following

#FBRC said in-district to 3.75% for regular; 4.75% for voke
House bill says in-district to 4%; 5% for voke

That's your sugar to help the medicine go down, because there is no other good news here.

Health insurance change DOES add retirees and ties to three years of GIC, so...sure.

Then there's a really long section (longer than the funding portion of the bill, I've already heard noted) on the data advisory requirement, showing where those writing the bill think the attention ought to be.

And yes, that comes BEFORE any mention of ELL and low income kids at all, lest you were curious about priorities.

Once we've sorted through the data commission's charge, the make up of the data commission, and the annual requirement for reporting, then we're on to Section 7, where we finally get to low income and ELL.

The Commissioner "shall conduct a study on the low-income increment and English learner component of the foundation budget calculation
for the purpose of making recommendations to the legislature on ways to best serve low-income
students and English learner populations. "

(DESE, BTW, is going to wonder "with what money? You still haven't funded the history assessment you wanted.")

"The commissioner shall hire an independent research consultant with proven experience
in education data and public policy research to assist in the study."

(I can't even find the joke here.)

THEN

...this is amazing...

The section LITERALLY REDOES THE #FBRC ON LOW INCOME.

If you were on the Commission, or you gave testimony, or if you participated at all, well, it's not good enough; the House bill STARTS ALL OVER.

Define low income.
Define the increments.
Options for groupings.
Better align data (something that DESE and districts have been actively working on for the past three years)
Options for holding harmless
Options for making it a increment over the base.
Effective interventions

OR you could start reading at page 10 here: doe.mass.edu/finance/chapte…

(It's been around for three years, so I would think we've had time?)

The deadline for this report is December 31, 2018, which makes it late enough that the Governor will claim he can't put it in the FY20 budget.

THEN BACK to the data thing (I am not making this up), with this:
"Subject to appropriation, (the commissioner)...shall hire an independent research consultant with proven experience in results-driven, education data analysis and public policy research in order to assist"

oh, and the sped and health insurance parts don't kick in until next July.
That's the bill, folks.

Here's the deal:

This bill doesn't need 'no' votes at this point in July; it needs AMENDMENTS.

Tell your reps they HAVE a study (you can even send it to them!); they need to implement.

#mapoli #MAEdu #FBRC

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