Upside-down middle finger

January 13, 2025

Dearest readers, Over the last four years, I’ve only missed one or two weeks when I don’t send out something substantial for you. I’m writing this week to...

r/schoolbudgetbs

January 6, 2025

I’ve been doing tiktok videos where I take requests to look at specific school district budget crises. I research the district using audited financial...

The philosophy of education finance

December 30, 2024

This week I’m sending along a podcast interview I did with Thinking in the Midst, hosted by Derek Gottlieb and Cara Furman. The episode is all about how and...

Three recommendations I've been giving

December 23, 2024

I recently found out about the Advancement Project’s campaign against school closures. It was so exciting to come across their well-designed and helpful...

Pasadena's path through the crisis

December 16, 2024

Written with Alan Gao There are school closures being threatened all over the country, and even more budget crises. At this writing, besides some general...

Deep discount

December 9, 2024

A few weeks ago I mentioned a book called Discounting the Future by Liliana Doganova. I was chatting with a friend who’s a historian of engineering (he’s...

Notes for a critical history of Philly's school buildings

December 2, 2024

Every year, Philly schools have to close when it’s hot. That’s because they don’t have proper air conditioning. But for some reason, this year, when the...

Messing with the books in Newberg-Dundee

November 25, 2024

This post was written with the amazing help of Alan Gao, a long-time reader of the newsletter who answered my call to help put together critical workups of...

Blocked

November 18, 2024

Last week I wrote about a bunch of conservative education policy proposals. I thought I’d do a follow up post, since over the last few days, the idea that...

MAGAed?

November 11, 2024

It’s hard to believe that Donald Trump will be president again. Even though I’m having all the feelings associated with Kamala Harris’s loss, and I’m sifting...

Public education in the US today

November 4, 2024

It’s election day tomorrow and the vibes are tense and sweeping. But I’m not going to write about the election. I’m going to do something else instead. I...

Why're you hitting yourself? (Capping in Seattle, part 2)

October 28, 2024

I recently found out that the paid subscription link for this newsletter wasn’t working, but the fine people at Buttondown have addressed the issue. If you’d...

Capping in Seattle, or: b(ii) brute?

October 21, 2024

I’ve gotten a number of messages from separate people in Seattle about the budget crisis there. After chatting with them and doing some digging, I learned...

The despair of $3.7 million

October 14, 2024

I talked with a school district official from Beloit, Wisconsin recently and in preparation for our call I put together some notes. I found an enraging...

How to do a critical workup on a school district

October 7, 2024

A number of readers have offered to pay me for this newsletter and I’ve decided to open up paid subscriptions as an option (mostly to throw some revenue...

MEABF culpa

October 1, 2024

I’ve been thinking about the situation in Chicago, and it’s a great opportunity to meditate on how we can use this unstable moment to create structural...

MEAPF culpa

September 30, 2024

I’ve been thinking about the situation in Chicago, and it’s a great opportunity to meditate on how we can use this unstable moment to create structural...

Not wrong to be wrong

September 23, 2024

I got something wrong recently in my research, and in this week’s post I want to lay out some corrections I’m making to the findings and thinking behind that...

Good news in Springfield, Ohio?

September 16, 2024

Given all the fashy hubbub about Springfield, Ohio recently, I got interested in the extent to which Springfield City School District might be benefiting...

Municipal finance and divestment

September 9, 2024

Since I last wrote about university anti-genocide organizers’ disclose and divestment demands, the New School agreed to some of those demands and will vote...

Organizing for green schools on the ground

September 2, 2024

An old friend who’s been doing work at the intersection of organizing, school finance, and climate change recently sent me a panel that they’d organized with...

Get your fix at Roosevelt 66

August 26, 2024

I’ve been taking requests to look at school district budget crises recently, making short videos on tiktok and writing posts here about what I find. Every...

Stewards of students and capital

August 19, 2024

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I’d appear on the education podcast Have You Heard. The episode came out last Wednesday and you can listen to it here....

Carrots for progressives

August 12, 2024

I went to a book event recently and asked a question during the Q&A that I’ve been wanting to write about. The event was a dual book launch for Zone Books’...

MSPERS of War

August 5, 2024

I’m appearing on the amazing Have You Heard podcast later this week. The hosts asked me to look into a specific school district’s budget crisis. This time,...

Space and debt capacity near Cape Fear

July 29, 2024

Another tiktok request, this time in New Hanover County School District (NHCSD), near the Cape Fear River, around Wilmington, North Carolina. The request I...

New research: Toxic Finance--Underinvestment in Philly's School Buildings, 1993-2021

July 22, 2024

I'm so excited to announce that this paper with Dr. Camika Royal is out in the world as part of a special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration...

Cliffs and crises: How to understand and fight post-Covid school district budget struggles

July 15, 2024

I’ve been doing more and more organizing with the Debt Collective. One of the big initiatives I’m working on right now is creating spaces and resources for...

On Chevron deference: nothing is guaranteed and chaos is a ladder

July 8, 2024

The Supreme Court of the United States and its super-conservative majority are at it again. There was a slurry of decisions that ‘came down’ last week that...

Don't be mean, Bloomfield Hills!

July 1, 2024

I’ve been getting a lot of awesome feedback and comments on my work looking into district budget crises by request on tiktok. This week I’m looking at...

New research published: Critical School Finance

June 24, 2024

I’m really excited to share a paper I co-authored with the historian of education Esther Cyna called “Critical School Finance.” It’s the result of several...

Race, class, and high school volleyball

June 17, 2024

We've been spending the year in Brooklyn and while I knew that our neighbor Mike was a high school teacher and a volleyball coach, I only found out recently...

The art of closing

June 10, 2024

Imagine waking up one day to an email saying that your 130 year-old college is closing in a week. That’s what happened recently with the University of the...

OPEB in Braintree

June 3, 2024

A couple weeks ago I looked at a budget crisis request I got on tiktok from Hingham, MA, and learned a lot about the Massachusetts terrain. I got another...

District dialectics in Olympia

May 27, 2024

The tiktok requests are coming in fast these days. This time, someone asked me to look at Olympia, Washington. What I found is a great example of the...

Debt Collective: a very brief youtube history

May 20, 2024

On Wednesday this week, the Debt Collective is organizing a national action in Washington, DC called FUND EDUCATION NOT GENOCIDE. I’ll be headed there on the...

Notes on disclosure and divestment

May 13, 2024

As the student movement against genocide in Palestine continues around the world, one of the key demands made by activists and their coalitions has been...

As Public As Possible: the book!

May 6, 2024

I have some exciting news: I wrote a book using the material from this newsletter, and it has a cover with a web page, release date, and everything. You can...

Patricia Ann Conway

April 29, 2024

[Content warning: this post is about self-immolation and protest] I taught a class this semester on power and privilege in higher education. One of the...

MOU money MOU problems in Hingham

April 22, 2024

This is my second school budget crisis request from TikTok. It’s from Hingham, MA. Apparently, as of March, the size of their budget deficit issue is at most...

Educational erosion in Long Beach

April 15, 2024

I got a request on TikTok to look into a budget crisis situation in Long Beach City School District in Nassau County, Long Island. Apparently the budget vote...

Critical theory and K-12 capex

April 8, 2024

Announcement: The American Educational Research Association (AERA) organizes the biggest education research conference I know. Within the conference are many...

Students over bondholders!

April 1, 2024

There's an interesting situation with the University of California's bonds going down that I wanted to pass along. Basically: bondholders are having a...

A question I don't know how to answer

March 25, 2024

I've always picked books up off the street when people are giving them away. It's one of the many small joys of life. In college one time I picked up a book...

Higher education finance?

March 18, 2024

I work in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). It's a network of old normal schools and land grant colleges peppered throughout...

Just say no to performance-based budgeting

March 11, 2024

A bunch of colleagues and I published an op-ed today in the Bucks County Beacon about Governor Shapiro's vision for public higher education in Pennsylvania,...

The money-changers at Temple

March 4, 2024

Organizers at Temple University got in touch with me recently to ask what I thought of their campus's supposed 'budget crisis'. I did a little digging around...

Two public school solar financing policies: public and private

February 26, 2024

The other day policy researchers from the Center for Public Enterprise (CPE) got in touch with me. I'd met one of them on twitter and at that time he told me...

On being well-endowed

February 19, 2024

As a preface to this post, for higher education finance resources and organizing help you should check out Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education,...

No austerity for Minneapolis!

February 12, 2024

A labor organizer reached out recently to talk through something. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) is in the midst of a contract negotiation with...