Get a message to your senators now on ed funding bill
The Student Opportunity Act, which is based on the Promise Act, will be before the Senate on Thursday. Your activism to inject $1.5 billion into public education has brought us this far! But the bill as written contains accountability measures that give too much authority to the Commissioner of Education over each district’s school spending plan — undermining local control and educators’ expertise and autonomy.
Worse yet, Sen. Viriato deMacedo (R-Plymouth) has submitted a punitive amendment that allows the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to designate certain districts as “chronically underperforming” solely on the basis of the commissioner of education disagreeing with the plan. In addition, the amendment would allow the commissioner to further meddle in local control and withhold access to additional grant funding from certain low-income districts that have already been chronically underfunded for many years.
We will not tolerate any of these poison pills!
We have until 5 p.m. on Wednesday to blitz the Senate, which will go into session on Thursday. Call or email to let your senator know to:
+ SUPPORT the funding provisions in the bill.
+ SUPPORT amendments backed by the MTA and the rest of the Fund Our Future coalition to eliminate “accountability” provisions that undercut local spending priorities.
X OPPOSE the deMacedo amendment that would make those provisions even worse.
If your local holds a “call-in” or “walk-in” event, please participate. If you are available either during the day or after school on Thursday, Oct. 3, please put on a red T-shirt and join us for a Red for Ed Thursday at the State House to let senators know that you support the Fund Our Future position on this bill.
Once the bill is through the Senate, it has to go to the House. We expect even more challenges in the House than in the Senate, so please keep those T-shirts handy.