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Things That Irritate Me

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– Lack of Legislative transparency — Our Legislature seems to work extra hard to make things hard to understand. In some cases, it is turning around 300 page bills in less than 24 hours, meaning no one can read it with any level of care. In other cases, it’s the lack of available data about pending legislation, as detailed by State House News in a article yesterday (sub. req’d). I’d note that the Connecticut Legislature has a much more sophisticated site that allows you to track bills and sign up for email updates when anything happens related to your interests. – No 311 in Boston — Boston has an iPhone app for constituent complaints but you still have to “bumble […]

Pioneer Beats BRA

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Warning: Blatant Self-Promotion Ahead Yesterday’s paper had a sad tale of delay at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. A Deputy Director was hired five years ago to build a database of community benefits from development projects. She currently oversees three other staffers and the office has a yearly run rate of almost $300k in salary alone. She notes that ““[w]e’ve been developing an automated data system, but it’s still in draft form,” Colley said. “But you can’t do that overnight or in a year or two years or three years.” I note that Pioneer has three ‘automated data systems’ in the pipeline that will all be done in under two years. We released an online decision support tool that allowed municipal […]

Obstacles to Reform – Lowell Edition

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The Lowell School Superintendent tried to put out an RFP to determine if using a private vendor for school food services would save money. Other cities have done this and it is also standard practice at most colleges and universities (even the state-funded ones). So, what did this exploration of potential savings earn her? An expletive laced series of threats from school committee member Regina Faticanti. Read the whole thing here. Fun fact — Regina Faticanti is a member of the School Committee’s Discipline subcommitee.

Charters alive in Rhodey!

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The 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

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The 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 […]