Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question Two

Question Two on the Massachusetts ballot concerns lifting the current limit on the number of charter schools that can be opened in Massachusetts in a given year.  According to the summary the cap would rise to twelve or a maximum of 1% of total student enrollment.  I'm voting no.

I spent four years as a member of the Leicester School Committee.  I have a number of reasons to oppose this question.

First, the current cap allows for the Department of Education to actually take time to review individual applications.  Everyone likes to complain that the government is horrible and can't do anything right, but we're expected to believe that in this case they can effectively review twelve or more applications per year and only approve the qualified ones.  I find that doubtful.  The Department of Education is going to be swarmed with applications and they won't have time to properly review them all and they'll be under political pressure  to approve new schools.  Quality is going to suffer.  Bad charters are going to get approved.  How many years will go by before these bad charters are then identified and closed?  How often are charters in Massachusetts closed?  If it was just a matter of  the fact that it takes time it wouldn't be so bad, but each year is a year of a child's education.  Children don't get those years back.  The current cap allows for the Board of Education to review a small number and approve only the best of those number.  Towns don't open new schools very often, sometimes they replace existing schools, but they don't open truly new schools often and when they do they staff them with teachers and administrators from other schools.  In this case a new charter is truly a new thing in Massachusetts.  We owe it to the kids to make sure each and everyone of those charters is fully vetted and reviewed prior to being approved.  I do not trust the Massachusetts Board of Education to make a truly professional and thorough review when they will be approving so many at one time.  They just can't do it.  Bad schools will get approved and kids will pay the price.

Then there's the funding.  In Massachusetts the state sets a minimum budget number that school districts need to be provided.  The minimum budget is basically broken into two parts. One part is the amount that the local community is expected to raise through local taxes to support the school.  The difference between the local funding requirement and the minimum required budget is given by the state in the form of Chapter 70 funding.  When a charter opens in a district and students from that district enroll the state deducts a portion from that district's Chapter 70 and gives it to the charter.  The state uses an average per student spending number.  The average doesn't differentiate between elementary students and high school students.  The fact is that high school students are more expensive to educate than elementary schools students, so a k-8 charter gets some very impressive funding and the sending district loses more per student than it would take to educate those k-8 students (the way it works is that since high school students are more expensive to educate and k-8 are cheaper it balances out at the district level).  So charters get preferential funding.  There is bridge funding that the state provides for a couple years, but it's less than the amount the district loses and goes away fast.  I've read some disingenuous articles suggesting that local communities could just raise taxes to make up the difference, but that because of Proposition 2 1/2 (the property tax cap law in Massachusetts which limits how much local property tax can increase in a given year without an override vote by the community) it is nearly impossible to get such an increase in local taxes.  The fact is that most district schools are dependent on Chapter 70 funding because the towns can't raise taxes and when they lose the Chapter 70 funding they lose they just can't make it up.

And local schools can't cut costs.  Because of the property tax cap the schools are already running tight budgets.  The towns keep a wary eye on school budgets because the Boards of Selectmen and City Councils have to balance school funding against municipal funding knowing that they have a tax increase limit to work against.  Towns in Massachusetts run tight budgets.  And lets be honest there's only so much overhead that can be cut when a kid leaves a school.  If you have a school with 500 kids and 50 leave you can't close the school.  You can save some money by not needing one or two teachers and then money on supplies.  You still need that building.  You still need maintenance staff.  You still need administrators. You still need heat.  You still need all the other teachers.  You still have 450 kids needing an education.  So thinking you can just cut costs to make up the loss is simple minded.  It's an argument made by someone who hasn't actually thought through what they are saying or who has thought it through and decided to lie about it.

Which brings me to the advertisements by the "yes crowd."  I've seen a lot of these and oh my word are they full of lies.  I won't even go into them.  Basically my previous two paragraphs rebut most of the points that I hear in the ads.  Look at the funding behind those ads and you'll find that most of it is coming from out of state sources.  The people backing this don't even live in this state.  Outsiders want to change education in a state in which their kids will never have to live.  I have an issue with that.

You'll notice I haven't mentioned in this my personal view on charters.  I won't.  Charters are part of Massachusetts life.  The question is currently should we lift the cap on the number.  I think the current cap and the current process works for Massachusetts.  Massachusetts has the best schools in the country and if Massachusetts were it's own nation it would rank high on the list of best countries.  Massachusetts has technology companies specifically opening in the state because we produce well educated kids.  I don't see threatening that because a group of people who don't live here want to see their agenda advanced.  What I want is to see that kids in Massachusetts receive a quality education.  Public schools in Massachusetts have been under pressure to improve test scores and graduation rates since the 1990s and have achieved remarkable success as evidenced by the number of technology companies filling the office buildings in the Eastern part of the state.  The charters that have been opened have gone through a rigorous process of review and only a few can open per year which means that only best make it through.  I consider this law a danger to what's already been accomplished and what has been shown to work and I can not in good conscience support a law that I consider reckless.

I'm voting no on question two and I would suggest that you vote no too.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question One

In past blogs I've typically written about how I'm planning to vote on the upcoming ballot questions.  I'll post each individually.

Question One on the Massachusetts ballot is about expanded slot machine gaming.  I'm voting no on this one.  

When the last gambling question came up I was in favor of it.  I have no particular issue with gambling.  I personally don't engage in it.  I've been to a casino a couple of times and don't find it of any particular interest.  My reason for voting in favor of gambling then was that people were leaving the state to engage in gambling in Connecticut and I didn't see why Massachusetts should forgo that tax revenue.  Yes, some people may engage in self destructive behavior with gambling, but I'm not a fan of telling adults what they can and can not do.  I'm very much in favor of personal liberty and letting people do what they want so long as they don't cause harm to others and if they do cause harm to others we have plenty of laws to deal with that.  

Why am I not voting in favor this time?  I have a problem with this particular referendum.  This was ywritten in such a way that only one location could possible be suitable for the new slot parlor.  I'm just not a fan of this type of targeted agenda in the referendum process.  It won't hurt me or pretty much anyone that I can think of it passes, but this type of referendum just doesn't fit what I consider to be a good purpose of the process.  It sets a standard that anyone with a personal agenda can push to get a law passed that fits their desires.  I just don't agree with that approach.