Political Action Updates: May 18, 2021

This week, the State Senate will begin discussing next year’s budget. While we are thrilled that their proposal gets us much closer to fully implementing the Student Opportunity Act than Governor Baker’s proposal, there are still areas for improvement. Please call your State Senator about the following amendments that the BTU is supporting (lead sponsor in parentheses)!

#194 (DiDomenico), #233 (Chang-Diaz), #904 (Gomez): Due to the pandemic, there was a statewide school enrollment decrease of 32,000 students, primarily in Pre-K and Kindergarten. Now that we are returning to full in-person teaching and younger kids can get vaccinated, we expect those children to return to school. These amendments would increase the amount allocated to fix this issue to be in line with our estimates, allow the funding to be released as early as October, and ensure that it targets those districts that were most impacted by the pandemic.

#150 (Chang-Diaz): This would increase the amount allocated for charter reimbursement, special education circuit breakers, and out-of-district transportation reimbursement to be in line with the timeline established in the Student Opportunity Act. These are of particular importance for Boston’s state education funding.

#170 (Jehlen): Increases the amount allocated for the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessments, to ensure that they have the necessary resources to continue developing and advocating for alternative assessment methods that don’t rely on standardized tests like the MCAS.