Incorruptible Mass

21. Education: Our state fails to fund education despite already voting in favor

October 03, 2021 Anna Callahan Season 4 Episode 21
Incorruptible Mass
21. Education: Our state fails to fund education despite already voting in favor
Show Notes Transcript

Vatsady Sivongxay from Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance joins us to talk about education.  MEJA fought for years to pass the Student Opportunity Act, to ensure that every kid has access to a good education.  But even after the bill was passed, the State House has not fully funded it, essentially overturning that decision.

Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 4 episode 21. The video version is available here.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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Anna Callahan  0:00  
Hey everybody, this is Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our mission is to help you understand state politics. So we talk about why it is so broken, what we could have in our lives if we fixed it, and how you can get involved. So today we are joined by Vatsady Sivongxay, who is with the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance. And before I introduce her, I'm going to go ahead and introduce our regulars, Jonathan Cohn

Jonathan Cohn  0:29  
Hey, Jonathan Cohn, he/him/his, I'm an activist based out of Boston. I've been active on progressive and electoral issue campaigns here for a number of years. And happy to be here. 

Anna Callahan  0:44  
And Jordan Berg Powers.

Jordan Berg Powers  0:46  
My name is Jordan Berg Powers. I use he/him. I've been a progressive activist for a number of years. I live in Worcester and work around the state.

Anna Callahan  0:54  
Anna Callahan, she/her, living in Medford and super interested in state politics and in fixing it. So Vatsady, we would love to hear a little bit about your story, and a little more about the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance.

Vatsady Sivongxay  1:11  
Thanks Anna, for having me on your podcast. I'm Vatsady Sivongxay and excited to be here with Jonathan and Jordan, as well. I'm the executive director at MEJA which you mentioned is the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance. I'm currently working on many of the initiatives that our mission strives to do, which is protect public education, because we truly believe public education is the foundation of our democracy, and really to get to high quality education, that our anti-racism work is at the center of every work that we do for our students and for our schools. We're a statewide coalition, we bring together students, youth, parents, educators and community members to fight for public education, whether that's funding or resources, or ensuring that parents and students and educators have a voice in the decisions that impact their lives in the schools.

Anna Callahan  2:22  
Amazing!

most,

Vatsady Sivongxay  2:24  
Yeah, a lot of work. But very exciting. Constantly, especially now, with the Student Opportunity Act passed in 2019, which I hope we can dive into. And the politics around COVID, the federal funds that are coming in right now. So there's much to do as far as ensuring that we hold our decision makers accountable for the promise that they had made in 2019 through the Student Opportunity Act. 

Anna Callahan  2:53  
Yep. Great. So just before we go dive in on the student Opportunity Act, and what it means, you know, we have this crazy system in America, where the education that you get the funding that your school gets, is dependent upon property taxes. And so wealthy people get well funded schools, and people without resources get terrible schools. They get educations that are not well funded, they don't have the resources they need, the buildings are not kept up, the teachers are not paid well. You know, in every facet, we continue, generationally, the same issues, that lack of education creates for people as as both children and adults. So the work that you're doing is incredibly important. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about the student Opportunity Act, really what it encompasses and broadly what it means for our children here in Massachusetts.

Vatsady Sivongxay  3:54  
Yeah, so it's important, as you noted, to really think about the generations of underfunding of our public schools. Our decision makers at the state level, local level, and the federal level have always underfunded our public schools and that has really impacted 1000s of families and their future. And as you mentioned families really should have equitable access to high quality education. It shouldn't matter if they're poor or rich or what district they live in, they should have good schools with buildings that have excellent ventilation systems and smaller classes. Students with a disability and English language learners all should have support systems and folks who are experiencing trauma through their everyday lives and and now during the pandemic should have health and mental support. And underfunding has been an issue. 1993 was the last time that the formula for determining how much money goes to each school via the state was updated. So when the Student Opportunity Act passed in 2019 it updated that formula. So over two decades of underfunding schools, based on an old formula really caused more issues and challenges for the schools and students and teachers. And I think it was very important. Even the state fund commission realized that for years before 2019, there was this huge underfunding of at least $1 billion a year, that we needed, and we needed to catch up. And a lot of it was the charter school reimbursement, that wasn't accountable. The money was going to charter schools, but our public schools were not receiving the reimbursement amount that they needed to ensure that we had librarians and counselors and social workers and libraries in our schools, right, and recess teachers, so kids can actually take a break. But it also meant that we were looking at school construction funding, and transportation all at the same time. So the Student Opportunity Act said the legislators here in the state, made a promise to our students and our schools that they would infuse $1.5 billion over seven years. And it was very disappointing, when in 2020, when it was supposed to be implemented, it was delayed, they said because of COVID, right. But we all know that 2020 was an extremely difficult year for so many students and families, and the implementation of the Student Opportunity Act would have given us an opportunity to catch up and to bring in resources that we desperately needed for our students. So I'll pause there, because I think that's a lot to digest. But that's really what the Student Opportunity Act was meant to be was to help catch up over so many years of underfunding, and so many generations impacted.

Anna Callahan  7:29  
One very quick story. Just to talk a little bit about how this really impacts families. Some of the Student Opportunity Act money is to ensure that there's equal funding, right? So to fill in where property taxes are not funding the schools. And you know, when when I was in high school, my mom and my sister and I lived in the the tiniest dinkiest apartment in this very good school district. And my mom spent 70% of her income on rent, because she wanted us to go to a good school. And so that was a sacrifice that she made, and that we all made, because education was really important to her. But why are parents being asked to make that kind of decision about their household and about where their money, their hard earned money, is going to. We could have lived in a place where the house was better and you had more room and we had a yard and other things. But that wasn't the choice. That was the choice that she had to make. So you know, I would love to hear, Jordan, you look like you've, you've got something to say about the situation.

Jordan Berg Powers  8:41  
Well, it's just one of the things I always joke about is how little laws are enforced and how selective we are as a society about laws that are enforced. And one of the reasons that the Student Opportunity Act was so was needed was because the legislature failed to live up to its own laws. It was supposed to be reviewing the funding formula every two years. And it never did it. Just never did it. It was supposed to be funding at a certain level. It just never did that. It just decided it didn't want to do it. And again, we're reminded with the student Opportunities Act now that you know, it's an important promise to our children to do what I think is the bare minimum. What we're asking for is to is to have our schools have the resources to do the things that we want them to do, right? Not even to dream big, and be full dream factories, just like basic maintenance. If you've been in a school, they're too old. Teachers are trying to push things together. COVID has made clear how little ventilation there is, it gets too hot, it gets too cold, right? There's all these things and SOA is a way to try to even some of that out just a bare minimum, and they still haven't fully funded that. And so I just think every two years, your state rep and state senator will promise you that they care about education, and then they'll go back to the State House and prove the opposite is true. So I think it's just a really important piece. But you know, without MEJA, obviously this wouldn't have even happened at all, we'd still be in the same cycle of just hoping for them to do the things they promised in 1993 and that they weren't doing.

Jonathan Cohn  10:27  
Just to quickly tag in there in terms of what we see in terms of legislative inertia, it just reminded me of the Foundation Budget Review Commission, which in 2015 was one of the Blue Ribbon Commission's analyzing how are we underfunding our schools. And it took four years after they had a commission release a report saying we're underfunding our schools here is how to fix it, for them to say, 'okay, we'll actually listen to our commission and do this.' And it's a testament to organizations like MEJA and  teacher, parent and youth groups  that we got the legislature to actually listen to itself. And it's just such a wild dynamic that we need to do that to get them to listen to their own recommendations.

Anna Callahan  11:17  
Yeah. And if and if we can talk a little bit about the impact that the charter school cap in 2016 had on MEJA and on your ability to organize that would be really helpful, I think, for folks listening.

Vatsady Sivongxay  11:37  
Yeah, so MEJA was brought together with many activists earlier than the ballot question. It was in 2012, that folks came together to really talk about 'how do we actually win for our students and families and schools?' We have a lot of barriers, both politically at all different levels, pushing for more support on charter schools, and at the same time, we see our our schools and their students really needing our funding support and resources. And when No on Two or the ballot question came, MEJA was still being put together, and the activists had to quickly meet this version challenge of ensuring that our public schools were protected. So No on Two was saying don't lift the cap on charter schools, right? The level of funding has not been accountable, as Jordan had said, you know, the money was going into these charter schools, but not supporting the public schools in order for public schools to support our students. So there was a huge concern, and probably anger about the system trying to further this underfunding problem. And I think that a lot of folks just clearly knew that the right thing to do was to focus on No on Two.

Anna Callahan  13:19  
The cap on charter schools is that there's a limited number of charter schools that we can have in Massachusetts, that's a cap. And so there was this proposal. The question was, do we allow more charter schools when we already are not properly funding our public schools, and funding would be used in first charter schools instead of funding public schools?

Vatsady Sivongxay  13:43  
Right. Yeah. At that time, I think, Jordan, there was an amount that wasn't coming back to the public schools, right? The formula said that for the first, I believe, two years that a student, because the money follows a student, for the first few years if a student left the public school system to go into a charter school, that the money in the public schools would remain there so that the public school can continue its programming. And that money was not ever fully 100%. But the charter schools received their money, right? And that is extremely unfair. And as you know, if you just do simple accounting, you realize that, yeah, one type of school was receiving money and the others were being harmed. So that was the the level of accountability that Jordan had mentioned earlier. And if you're infuriated so are a lot of students and families.

Jordan Berg Powers  14:52  
Yeah, to clarify that for folks because I think some people don't quite understand. Why is it important to reimburse a public school if a student leaves? So there's a certain amount of money attached to their backpack when they leave. But when they leave that school, the school still has to keep the lights on, it still pays that teacher if there's, you know, 32 kids or 31 kids in that classroom, it still has support staff, it has all these things as a pay for, and it doesn't stop having to pay for those things, because one or two kids leave. So you've created a system where those dollars leave, but they don't come back. And then the other thing that was happening is that a lot of charter schools, what they do is they they'll bring in kids, but they don't want those kids who aren't going to test well to stay. So they were pushing them back into the public schools. But that money didn't come back into the public schools after the kid got kicked out of the charter school. It stays at the charter school, because October 1st is the date that you count. So wherever you are October 1st, that's where the money goes. And in fairness, I mean, it'd be difficult, to send money back and forth. That's not realistic, right? So there has to be a date. But you know, that's the problem with that system. So, you know, the reimbursement isn't just, oh, poor public schools have to give them money. It's an understanding that there needs to be some money, the solidified numbers that you can figure out if you're planning your school. Like if you're hiring and firing teachers, you can't just simply if a student leaves change everything, right? Like that's not how the how the world works. And so not funding that reimbursement was crippling our public schools, because they were then just trying to figure it out with less money. And that was happening over the hundreds of millions of dollars across the state.

Anna Callahan  16:46  
And speaking of money. You were saying that this Yes On Two the pro charter school group spent more money on question two than any other valid question.

Vatsady Sivongxay  17:02  
Yeah, I think to date it is still the most expensive ballot question here in Massachusetts, Jonathan? 

Jonathan Cohn  17:09  
So question one did exceed that back in 2018, from the hospital spending.

Jordan Berg Powers  17:20  
I think definitely one of the tops at the very least. 

Jonathan Cohn  17:22  
Yeah, it's definitely up there.

Anna Callahan  17:25  
There's a lot of money made in charter schools. Right. So this is a question of the for profit motive, versus the motive of actually ensuring everyone equal education, equal opportunity to have a good education. Jonathan, you had mentioned that there was this argument, and I don't want to spend too long on on question two in 2016. But that there was this argument that only wealthy white people were against lifting the cap on charter schools, and were pro fully funding public schools. When in reality...

Jonathan Cohn  18:03  
Yeqh that was one of the major arguments being pushed by the Yes On Two advocates saying that the only opponents are kind of white liberals who don't care about the poor students of color. And that's why they are opposing expanding charter schools, because charter schools are the silver bullet to help Black and Brown students. And the ultimate result, like the parents of those Black and Brown students voted against lifting the cap. And the richest and whitest parts of the state were some of the only ones that ended up that actually did vote yes on question two, kind of inverting that. The other thing I just wanted to tag in, Jordan was saying before about funding, that it's a really important thing, to kind of think about how many of the expenditures in a school aren't per student. Look, textbooks are a person cost. If you have 25 kids versus 30 kids, you need fewer textbooks. You don't suddenly not need a teacher and whether it's 25 versus 30 heating the classroom counts the same. Things like your water bill is not going to be that meaningfully different from running the school. You don't suddenly not need a cafeteria lady if you've lost that or librarian, so so many of them are fixed costs. And I'm thinking even like household analogies aren't always good. If you're an empty nester parent, your kid goes away that doesn't change the amount of money that you need to spend on your house. Your cable bill doesn't change. Even though your food bill obviously will change, once the kid goes away, many of your expenditures aren't changing.

Anna Callahan  19:48  
,And again, speaking of money, Vatsady do you want to talk a little bit about funding for the Student Opportunity Act and the 1.5 billion and where that can come from?

Vatsady Sivongxay  20:00  
Just to provide a quick, quick summary. So the Student opportunity Act is being implemented for the first time this school year,. So 2021 to 2022. One year later. We want to really note the October 1 deadline. The legislature decided earlier this year that they would revisit the amount of money going into the schools, because the governor believes that there'll be less students coming back to school this year. And that is about 30,000 students. So our current infusion for this year is still underfunded by 30,000 students. And to Jonathan's point, there are certain expenditures and spending that is not, you know, per student so count8ng doesn't change and make it cheaper. So our schools this year, are underfunded. There's still opportunity to bring in funding and one of the biggest ones is the American Rescue Plan Act that is coming from the federal government to really fill in the gap during this pandemic time. And that can be used for anything that's COVID related. So you know, HVAC systems, getting counselors, school nurses to ensure that our students in schools are supported. 80% of that money can be spent on it. But in addition to that  we're looking at the long term spending, and where the money comes from. It's really important to support the Fair Share Amendment, because that's going to support the 1.5 billion that our schools really need over the next seven years.

Anna Callahan  22:02  
Jonathan, you want to chime in on the Fair Share amendment a little bit, just tell us to remind people exactly what it is.

Jonathan Cohn  22:06  
Yeah just to give the background of that. I don't know if any of our listeners had helped collect signatures all the way back in 2015. That's a question that we had been hoping would have been on the ballot in 2018. But then corporate lobbyists in the state were able to successfully get it kicked off the ballot because of a rule that a citizen driven petition, can only ask people one question. And the Supreme Court ruled that asking people to raise the money and allocate the money were two questions, too complicated for people and you can't do it. But thankfully, legislative allies filed it because legislators don't have those restrictions for something they put on the ballot. And we were able to get this required, the two votes of constitutional conventions should have both happened. And now kind of on track about next year, it'll be a big fight. People should get involved because there's going to be a lot of money put against it, I'll put in a plug for the Online Edition of raiseupma.us/pm it's Progressive Masses' digital pledge card. There'll be opportunities in the coming months for people to plug in, and especially just educating friends and neighbors about this ballot question next year. So before they start hearing misinformation about it is key.

Anna Callahan  23:26  
Yep. And go ahead Jordan.

Jordan Berg Powers  23:29  
I just wanted to say that the other things that it can go towards, besides roads and sort of infrastructure is higher education, which is something that we haven't talked about, but MEJA also works on. So we tend to think of education as K through 12. But actually, every one of us knows that education is now K through 16. You know, it's a requirement if you really want to have you know, sort of have a future in our modern society. You know, for better or worse, right? There was a time where that was middle school, right? Where you went from k to 8. And high school was something that not everybody did. I have an uncle who's never gone to high school, because he started working. And it just, you know, just wasn't something that was important. And as we've grown our society, we require more time learning, which is good that people have that opportunity. And so I think we need to restructure how we think of these things, as a movement to be K through 16. And certainly MEJA thinks about education as K through 16, if not longer, right, lifelong learning. And our schools should be those places of lifelong learning, and we should fund it thinking about it, but our state has continued to divest from higher education, even as it's made this promise to public education that it hasn't fully funded. It's still divesting from higher education. And so the money from the raise up tax, as well as some of the other things have to go towards higher education because it's becoming less and less attainable for people as it's more and more and more needed for people, right? Like the people who are going to college are more and more skewing towards wealth every year, it's just getting worse, as it's becoming more important that people access it. So we just have to turn on or we have to turn back on that as well.

Anna Callahan  25:21  
And I'm just gonna throw in little basics on the Fair Share Amendment. It taxes only people who earn over a million dollars per year, so 4% tax on that income over a million dollars. Because in Massachusetts, unlike most other states, it is, according to the Constitution, illegal to have progressive taxation. It's a whole nother thing that we talked about that a little bit, we'll have a whole episode on the fair share amendment. So I'm excited to talk about that. Any words on the state house's roll specifically in the Student Opportunity Act? You know, how long it took, the underfunding of it and all of those?

Vatsady Sivongxay  26:06  
Yeah, I mean, I think that we had hoped that after the passing of 2019, after many years of pushing and showing the needs of our students in our communities, that the legislators would take it seriously and hold themselves accountable to actually implement it in a year that our families and our communities needed it during the pandemic, right. But instead of doing that, again, it was very disappointing, which we shouldn't have been disappointed, because the history of legislative actions on education should have told us that this was going to happen anyway, that they would have delayed, ensuring resources for our public schools, right. But we were feeling that we were disappointed that it didn't happen when they promised. And I think that we have to continue this push to ensure that every year when they revisit the Student Opportunity Act, that they keep that promise, right. And every year that they're keeping that promise of the Student Opportunity Act and thinking about higher ed, thinking about making sure our families once the students are done with [INAUDIBLE] that they have a chance to go and pursue college if they would like to. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And I think that at times, it can be frustrating, because it seems like we're talking to the same types of folks and repeating things over and over again. And there's physical evidence, buildings, students who need trauma support, better programming in their schools to ensure that their their histories are reflected that the teachers reflect our communities like all of that we see it. But yet, I think I think a lot of times, especially parents and youth, and community leaders feel they continue to be ignored.

Anna Callahan  28:20  
Well, the work that you are doing is truly amazing, really changing the landscape in education and making sure that our public schools are funded. Is there a way, Vatsady, for people to get involved?

Vatsady Sivongxay  28:37  
Yeah, there's a few campaigns are going on. And I think that I just want to highlight the campaigns and you can always email info at mass@justice.org for us to connect you with the different activist groups that are working together. But we have, again, continuing to hold legislators accountable for the Student Opportunity Act, the CHERISH act and the debt free, which is includes the higher ed. But then we also know that standardized testing is a perpetual oppression of our students in our schools. So that's, we're also working with statewide activists on ensuring that we end this very controversial and on unaccountable standardized testing called MCAS. And then there's the federal funds initiatives, the ARPA, which is the American Rescue Plan, ensuring that that those funds are spent on student needs. Then there's the fair share amendment. So a lot to do and we welcome anyone's support on pushing this through and we know that collectively, just as we did on No on Two and the Student Opportunity Act that we can make our community voices heard in the time that is urgently needed.

Anna Callahan  30:02  
Amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for coming on and being with us and also for the work that you're doing.

Vatsady Sivongxay  30:10  
Thank you. It's fun, nice seeing you Anna, nice seeing you Jonathan and Jordan.

Anna Callahan  30:15  
We'll see everybody next time. Bye bye

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