Past Event: A Bigger Piece of the Pie for Education
If you missed our recent April 4th online forum on school funding, you can view the slideshow with notes below. To get involved in the FCCPR Education Task Force, contact Doug at dougselwyn@aol.com.
Slide presentation that we used during the forum:
- School Funding 101 (Greenfield)
- Narrative to accompany the School Funding 101 Slideshow – This brief text may help to clarify some slides that would need clarifying without narration, which was the original design for the slide show. Since we aren’t there to narrate we are providing brief notes that might help viewers of the slide show make good sense of what’s there.
Links and Source Material for the Slide Show:
- Education Funding 2019 Where We Stand
- School Foundation budget State overview chapter-2023-whitepaper
- MASC Budget and Finance for School Committees presentation
- Mass budget – it’s chapter 70 as a line item for the last 20 years calculated with and without inflation
- Mass budget and policy center’s 2019 presentation “Education funding in Massachusetts: where we stand”
- 2019 state auditor report on education services for students in foster care
- FY24 governor’s budget message
Additional Resources:
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Tracy Novick, who presented at the education funding forum shares a more extended introduction to Chapter 70 funding in Massachusetts.
Please contact Doug Selwyn with any questions you might have: dougselwyn@aol.com
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About the FCCPR Education Task Force
Meets the second Thursday of every month at 7 pm, on zoom.
We are educators, former educators, public officials, and concerned activists dedicated to taking action to improve the educational experience of our children and our educators.
The current issues we are working on at the moment include:
Eliminating the MCAS as a graduation requirement. Massachusetts is now one of only eight states that has a graduation test requirement. There is no evidence that the MCAS actually improves the education students receive and much evidence to show that many are harmed by it. More than fifty two thousand students have gotten all the way through their k-12 classes only to not get their diplomas due to failing the MCAS. Many more have dropped out due to testing related issues.
Eliminating the MCAS for everyone and moving towards an assessment system that serves the teaching and learning of our children. It is bad assessment, is every expensive, reduces local control of education, and is biased against many of our learners.
Fully funding our schools. Many of our school districts, particularly districts in low income communities, are woefully underfunded. That is not right and it is up to the state to meet its responsibilities to fully fund all of our schools so that we can educate all of our children.
Making sure that the redistricting efforts of Greenfield Public Schools are based on what will lead to the best education possible for our children rather than choosing a compromise effort that will have a lasting negative impact throughout the district.
Actively recruiting and supporting candidates for school committee membership in Greenfield. We support candidates who will have supporting the educating of children above all else.
Get Involved
Please contact Doug Selwyn at dougselwyn@aol.com for more information, and to let us know if you would like to be added to our education task force list. I send out the zoom link a few days before each scheduled task force meeting.