More than two decades after a landmark suit by a Brockton student triggered the Education Reform Act that changed funding and accountability in schools, city officials are again considering an “equity lawsuit” because they say the state has fallen back on its duty to fund urban schools.
While no one else is yet looking to the courts to once again shake up Beacon Hill, the examples of urban systems, especially those in the Gateway Cities, struggling to meet their mandated funding levels are sprouting up like low-pressure areas in the Caribbean in the fall. Individually, they are head-shaking illustrations of tight fiscal dollars as cities and towns – and the state – emerge from the devastation of the Great Recession and its effect on revenues, especially property tax dollars. Collectively, they portend for the type of radical change in the state funding formula that occurred in the wake of McDuffy v Secretary of Education.
In Fall River, the school department will begin the fiscal year with a $2.6 million deficit. In New Bedford, Mayor Jon Mitchell reduced the $126 million budget request from Superintendent Pia Durkin for the city’s embattled system by $7 million. Mitchell rejected a measure from the City Council that would have allowed them to increase proposed appropriations rather than being limited to only cutting.
Out west, the picture is no less bleak. The state has taken over the chronically underfunded and underperforming Holyoke system, an action that was codified as a significant part of the education reform law in 1993. But that’s not a solution that will work statewide.
In Westfield, another Gateway City, school officials are preparing to cut 42 positions from the payroll to deal with a needed $1.5 million cut to balance the budget. In Lynn, city officials have asked the state to allow them to credit spending on retired teachers’ health care to close the nearly $18 million gap between net school spending and the required foundation budget.
In fact, of the 22 school districts that spent below the foundation budget level in 2013, the most recent figures available, nine were Gateway Cities and at least four more were vocational schools that serve urban districts.
State officials and lawmakers have dodged the bullet to revisit McDuffy at least once in the past. In 2003, another Brockton student, Julie Hancock, challenged the state’s funding formula, claiming a lack of resources in her schools and overcrowding that didn’t exist in richer districts. The case, Hancock v Commissioner of Education, was joined by 19 other districts and, once again, found its way to the Supreme Judicial Court.
Then-Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford, who now sits on the SJC, issued a 300-page report saying while state officials had made near-heroic efforts in implementing the reforms triggered by McDuffy, there were still inequities that could not be cured by good intentions alone. A majority of justices, led by then-Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, praised Botsford’s findings but said it was up to the Legislature and administrators how best to implement standards and spending formulas.
Only Associate Justices Francis Spina and Robert Cordy, who sided with Marshall, remain on the bench from the Hancock decision and, with Botsford and her knowledge sitting alongside, any appeal that makes its way to Courtroom 1 in the John Adams Courthouse will have an engaged and educated bench.
Underpinning it all will be the dissent in the Hancock decision from then-Associate Justice John Greaney, now retired, who stated in unequivocal terms the state’s responsibility under both McDuffy and the state Constitution.
“The obligation stated in McDuffy is mandatory and not one which can later be recast as more or less aspirational,” he wrote.
Pay heed to the barometer and the pressure.
–JACK SULLIVAN
BEACON HILL
Tax debates are raging in Connecticut and Maine, but Massachusetts is taking a pass, says Jim Aloisi in CommonWealth.
Lawrence-area state lawmakers open an office in City Hall. (Eagle-Tribune)
State Rep. Alan Silva of Fall River, a former child abuse investigator, has filed a bill to criminalize so-called “revenge porn,” sexually explicit material posted on social media sites as retaliation against another person. (Herald News)
Yvonne Abraham says Boston mayor Marty Walsh is picking the wrong battle by saying he’ll help lead a fight against marijuana legalization. (Boston Globe) A Herald editorial, referencing recent remarks by Senate President Stan Rosenberg, says it is astonishing that anyone would talk of legalizing pot against the backdrop of the opiate addiction crisis.
A man chained himself to the door of a state Department of Transitional Assistance office in New Bedford after he was denied welfare benefits. (Standard-Times)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Boston Public Library president Amy Ryan resigns under pressure from the Walsh administration because of the controversy over missing artwork. (Boston Globe)
Quincy‘s police chief and schools superintendent told city councilors their departments will be stretched thin if the city continues to grow as it attracts new residents with a flurry of new housing units. (Patriot Ledger)
Dracut police and fire officials say their departments are woefully understaffed. (Lowell Sun)
Framingham automates trash pickups.
OLYMPICS
Boston 2024 continues to refuse to release key documents. (Boston Business Journal)
RELIGION
A state Appeals Court judge has given parishioners at a closed Scituate church a reprieve to remain at the church where they have held a vigil for more than 10 years pending a hearing next week. (Patriot Ledger)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
What’s the matter with Kansas? Not enough revenue from tax-cutting run amok, argues aWashington Post editorial.
ELECTIONS
Lincoln Chafee, who served as a Republican in the US Senate and was elected governor of Rhode Island as an independent, announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. (National Review)
Forget a presidential run, the Wall Street Journal editorial board says Sen. Elizabeth Warren is trying to run the country now.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry, whose 2012 campaign for president went from front-runner to disaster in the blink of an eye, announces he will run again for the Republican nomination. (New York Times)
In a remarkable display of poor judgment, Sen. Ted Cruz joked about Vice President Joe Biden at a Michigan dinner. His son Beau will be buried Saturday.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The American Red Cross raised $500 million for Haiti relief but used the money to build only six homes there. (ProPublica/NPR)
Walt Disney World laid off about 250 technology workers but not before they had to train their foreign replacements in what critics say is the latest example of abuse of the HB-1 visa program. The program is supposed to bring in skilled immigrants for jobs when Americans can’t be found to do the work. (New York Times)
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that real estate brokers can be considered independent contractors, not employees of the firms they’re affiliated with. (Boston Herald)
The North Shore United Way is merging with the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley. (Salem News)
Tension is in the air over whether Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace is losing its local flavor in favor of a focus on upscale big chains. (Boston Globe)
T-Mobile and Dish Network are reportedly in merger talks. (Time)
Montana outpaces Massachusetts in start-up activity.
EDUCATION
Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson donates $400 million to Harvard, eclipsing by $50 million what had been the largest gift to the world’s wealthiest university. (Boston Globe) Malcolm Gladwell unloads on the spectacle. (Vox)
Liam Kerr, of Democrats for Education Reform, says the Holyoke school receivership is sign of the lasting positive impact Deval Patrick had on the state’s education landscape. (CommonWealth)
UMass Dartmouth has banned smoking — both tobacco and e-cigarettes — anywhere on campus. (Standard-Times)
Paul Levy, a former hospital CEO with a wealth of health care knowledge, finds the $100 prescription nasal spray he uses has an over-the-counter alternative for one-fourth the cost. The alternative has been on the market for nearly two years — and no one told him about it. (Not Running a Hospital)
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
NOAA moves to take some humpback whale populations off the endangered species list.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
More details emerge in the case of the Roslindale man authorities say was planning to try to behead a law enforcement officer. (Boston Globe) Two Facebook pages linked to Usaama Rahim, the 26-year-old who was killed in an encounter with members of a joint anti-terrorism task force, show an embrace of radical Islamic beliefs. (Boston Globe) The Boston Police response, which involved community leaders to review available video, may become a national model. (Christian Science Monitor)
A Brockton man is suing the city over charges of police brutality after he claims a police dog bit him during an arrest has been indicted on first-degree murder charges in a separate incident. (The Enterprise)
Sean Ellis is released on bail in the 1993 case of the killing of Boston police officer. A new trial, writes Peter Gelzinis, would bring out a dark chapter in the city’s past involving rogue cops and withheld information.
A former Worcester police officer denies sexually assaulting a woman who he caught having sex in the back of her car. (Telegram & Gazette) T&G columnist Dianne Williamson gives the police credit for bringing charges against one of their own.
It’s also graduation time for the drug court in Dudley. (Telegram & Gazette)
MEDIA
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO,takes to her Facebook page to offer a poignant meditation on the death of her husband 30 days ago.