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President's Bulletin Happy New Year! At the Massachusetts State House, 2010 began just as 2009 ended - in the final stages of efforts to enact legislation to create educational opportunities for all Massachusetts residents through new innovative classroom options, more tools for superintendents and educators to intervene in underperforming schools and expanding charter schools. The legislative strategy is being led by the Council and Boston Foundation via our Race to the Top Coalition. States and nations with whom Massachusetts competes are advancing innovations that better prepare their students for the jobs of the 21st Century. Meanwhile, we are seeing widening achievement gaps within Massachusetts and a rejection of proven innovations by an education establishment whose leadership is invested in the status quo. See the opinion editorial in today's Boston Globe by me and Boston Foundation CEO Paul Grogan on how, with this bill, Massachusetts can be a leader in innovative schools. A critical part of helping to assure a successful legislative strategy is through the Council's support of the charter ballot initiative headed for the 2010 statewide ballot. The Council is the only employer organization in Massachusetts to lead both the legislative strategy and the ballot question effort - a fact that has been instrumental in positively influencing the core elements of the legislation. The House is poised to vote on the education bill this week, and deadlines for states around the nation to apply for a share of the $4.3 billion in federal Race to the Top funding to support innovation are just weeks away. Ballot question update: The Secretary of the Commonwealth has officially certified nearly 73,000 signatures from our petition drive this fall, well above the 67,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. Thanks again to all of you who helped make this successful effort possible! The next step in the process is for the petition to be introduced in the Legislature as a bill, which will happen this week. Once that occurs, the Legislature has until the first week in May to act on it. If the Legislature fails to act, or passes a different version of the bill that is unacceptable to the ballot committee, then another round of signature gathering ensues. We would then need to collect an additional 11,000-plus valid signatures by July 2. Once those signatures are certified, the question will be officially placed on the November 2010 statewide ballot. Legislative update: The Council and Legislature have been working on an education bill, based on a proposal submitted by the Governor last summer, which has two key elements: First, it would double the number of allowable charter seats in the lowest performing districts. These new spaces would be reserved only for expanding or replicating charter schools that have already demonstrated their success with high-need students. When the Council's Board of Directors voted to support the ballot initiative in September, it was agreed that if meaningful legislation were to pass containing such an opportunity to expand charter schools, we would withdraw our support for the ballot question and urge the principal proponents to do the same. Second, the legislation would provide new tools to superintendents and the state's education commissioner to intervene in the worst-performing schools in the state by suspending collective bargaining and implementing an effective turnaround plan. The Senate took up the bill first and passed it just before Thanksgiving. In doing so, it added a variety of amendments that substantially weakened the Governor's original proposal, and placed new burdens on existing charter schools. Following the Senate's action, it was unclear whether the revised bill would lead to any appreciable charter growth. Throughout December, I've been joined by our partners in this effort in meetings with House Speaker DeLeo, House Ways and Means Chairman Murphy, House Education Chair Walz, and others in House leadership charged with working on the bill, which was introduced by the Ways and Means Committee last week. The House has streamlined the bill, removing many of the amendments that were introduced in the Senate and hewing more closely to the Governor's plan. Based on the review that has been done so far, the House bill appears to be free of the provisions that made the Senate bill problematic. The House bill appears to meet most of our objectives. Based on my conversations with House leaders, the threat of a charter school ballot initiative played a key role in getting a relatively clean bill out of the Ways and Means Committee. What does the House bill do?
The teachers unions are not happy, and when the bill gets to the House floor this week, many amendments will be offered - most of them damaging to our interests. The High Tech Council and our Race to the Top Coalition will be working in the trenches on Beacon Hill every day, joined by our allies at the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. You can help by contacting your state representative and asking her/him to oppose amendments to weaken the House education bill, H.4410. Once the House bill is adopted, it must then go to conference with the Senate version before it returns to both chambers for final passage. In order to be included in the Commonwealth's Race to the Top application for up to $250 million (or more) in federal grant money, the Legislature must pass a bill that the Governor is willing to sign by January 15. The bottom line is that even though this process will conclude in two weeks, we still have a long way to go before we can declare victory. As we have said all along, the ballot question is a backup plan if the Commonwealth fails to adopt meaningful reform during this session. Our hope is that the Legislature approves a strong piece of legislation that takes significant steps to assist some of our most vulnerable student populations, and in the process greatly enhances the Commonwealth's application for the Race to the Top funds. If those two goals are clearly achieved, the Council and proponents of the proposed ballot question have committed to suspending the campaign.
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