MORE ARTICLES
Becket Fund’s Eric Rassbach on Loffman v. CA DOE, Religious Liberty, & SchoolingNovember 27, 2024 - 10:30 am
Pioneer Institute Statement on Vocational-Technical School AdmissionsNovember 26, 2024 - 8:00 am
FY2026 Consensus Revenue Hearing – Forecasting of Revenues is Tricky BusinessNovember 25, 2024 - 8:00 am
CUNY’s Carl Rollyson on William Faulkner & Southern LiteratureNovember 20, 2024 - 10:36 am
Pioneer Institute Study Finds Massachusetts Saw Four-Fold Loss of Income to Net OutmigrationNovember 19, 2024 - 11:25 am
Massachusetts Job Market Bears WatchingNovember 18, 2024 - 2:10 pm
NH Gov. Chris Sununu on School ChoiceNovember 13, 2024 - 2:02 pm
Five Reasons Why Project Labor Agreements Are Bad Public PolicyNovember 12, 2024 - 9:27 am
Statement of Pioneer Institute on MCAS Ballot Failure and State of Education in MassachusettsNovember 6, 2024 - 2:01 pm
Dr. Helen Baxendale on Great Hearts Classical Liberal Arts Charter SchoolsNovember 6, 2024 - 12:08 pm
Charters alive in Rhodey!
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byThe mayor of my hometown, Cumberland (RI), Dan McKee has gained recognition among charter folks nationwide for a new concept, Rhode Island Mayoral Academies, which he is proposing along with a number of Ocean State mayors. These would be in essence regional charter schools driven by mayors tired of the continued failure within the school districts. It is great to see local leaders in RI standing up, much like Mayors Fenty (DC), Bloomberg (NY), and many others across the nation. (Editor’s note: Boston may get there, it seems, this election.) Last week, the Rhode Island House Finance Committee turned its nose at the new schools, cutting $1.5 million in proposed aid for two new charter schools. Yesterday, after U.S Education […]
Layoff Confusion
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe fluid nature of the budget process and the semantics around layoffs and hiring freezes has left me confused. The “final” BPS budget called for laying off 100+ teachers. Twenty-five teachers received “layoff notices” in May and a 105 provisional teachers were told they would not be invited to return. (I’m using quotes because it seems as if it is standard practice to give these notices to some number of school staff who are then rehired before the start of the school year.) Then, the BTU objected to the Teach for America program, believing it displaces “hundreds of good surplus” teachers. Yet, the BPS website has hundreds of open positions (not all teaching, to be sure) and BPS is actively […]
Parsing the Budget Vote
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /by29 Democrats voted against the budget last week and I’d like to know why. (Tip of the pen to BlueMassGroup for the roll call document.) They are Arciero, Benson, Bowles, Callahan, Costello, Creedon, Dempsey, Driscoll, Fagan, Fallon, Fresolo, Garry, Golden, Greene, Gregoire, Kujawski, McMurtry, Miceli, Murphy (K.J.), Nangle, Puppolo, Rogers, Rush, Scaccia, Smith, Spiliotis, Stanley (T.M.), St. Fleur, and Torrisi. Part of that group is probably the fiscal conservatives — I’d note Arciero and Rogers as part of that group. There’s also a number of reps from border (or close to border) districts — Arciero, Bowles, Costello, Dempsey, Garry, Torrisi among them. And lastly, there’s a curious group who voted for the sales tax increase but against the budget — […]
Ralph White, Fiscal Conservative
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /by[CORRECTION ADDED BELOW] I attended another meeting of the Special Commission on Pension Reform this week and was entertained, as always. – The representative from the Auditor’s office had his delicate sensitivities hurt by the chair’s statement that if anyone wanted to defend termination pensions, they should be prepared to do so at the meeting. – PERAC Commissioner Joe Connarton crudely mocked the Vice Chair of the Commission Peter Diamond (a professor at MIT with some experience in the topic). The irony of the situation was that Diamond was trying to make room in the discussion for a proposal from one of the state’s labor unions. – The Chair of the Commission Alicia Munnell repeatedly referred to Kyle Cheney, a […]
A Few Nuggets from the Conference Budget
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe Conference Budget came out late last night and its being voted on today, all 263 pages of it, which each and every legislator has doubtless read. – Our unique-in-the-nation restrictions on contracting with the private sector remain largely intact. The Senate attempted to raise the cap on projects subject to the law to $2 million (see section 7D), while the Conference budget (in section 7) only raises it to $500k (from $200k). Given the hundreds of million in additional taxes in this budget, its hard to feel good about such a small rise. – Sections 129 and 130 generate extra money for the budget from two of the murkier sources of funds. 129 continues the current year’s practice of […]