Green public financing for Philly public schools
I started this newsletter trying to figure out how to get public financing for Philadelphia public school infrastructure. We've got a massive problem here:...
The IRA's green bank
Everyone's aflutter about the Inflation Reduction Act. Seemingly out of nowhere, yacht-owner and coal baron President Joe Manchin announced that he was, in...
Meet Virginia
Last week, a reporter from a National Public Radio station in Richmond, Virginia emailed me to talk about school buildings. She's writing a story about how...
Taxing schools, forcing birth
There's been a flood of analysis on the left about the Supreme Court's repulsive decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. I was listening to a three-part series on...
Cool organizing at Robeson High: An interview with Dan Reyes, Part 2
This is the second part of an interview I did with teacher and organizer Dan Reyes about the organizing he and others did at his high school in Philadelphia...
The heat at Robeson High: an interview with Dan Reyes, Part 1
Over the next few weeks, I’ll publish an edited interview with the amazing teacher and organizer Dan Reyes. I met Dan through work with the Philadelphia...
How inflation screws schools
Readers! I'm going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area for three weeks starting 7/12. If you're in the area and want to get together to chat school,...
Intermediate Units
I studied philosophy of math in college. One idea that always stuck with me is that there are many different kinds of infinity. The classic infinity happens...
To help the district, tax the rich
Something really interesting happened last week that’s going to have a big impact on school funding and education in the city generally. It had to do with a...
The Abbott Problem
Abbott Elementary is a great show. It's great for a number of reasons--it's hilarious, a solid portrait of urban education, it centers Philadelphia, it gives...
Schools, guns, and banks
(CW violence) I can't get the school shooting in Uvalde off my mind. Like everyone else, I've been hearing and reading and thinking about school shootings...
Corsi-Rosenthal politics
Frank Helleis had an idea. His wife was a teacher at a local elementary school in their hometown Mainz, Germany. It was early in the pandemic and educators...
Michael Karp
One of the most complicated things about researching school finance is the number of policies, entities, institutions, authorities, and apparatuses involved....
Spider in the web
I'm a member of the Education Justice Committee of Philadelphia DSA, a group of parents, teachers, former teachers, and policy nerds. We've been active...
The ambiguity of policy (a night in Lower Merion)
I recently got invited to be on a panel, the first ever Environmental Forum at Lower Merion High School. The organizer was a high school student there who is...
What Ukraine's 2017 education law tells us about the war
Since Russia invaded Ukraine I've been doomscrolling the war, trying to hash out what the socialist position is/should be, and hoping it doesn't go nuclear....
Interview with Raging Chicken
If you don't know about it, Raging Chicken Media is a great progressive source of Pennsylvania news and analysis. They asked me to come on for an interview...
Wolkness
Recently, a student in one of my classes did a great presentation on a court case in her school district: Lower Merion (LMSD). LMSD has a certain reputation...
What makes the green bond green
I talked to a superintendent the other day. I met him on twitter when I was trying to put together an illustration of how school bonds work and asking for...
Are you bidding me?
If you've ever seen the movie Bad Education, you know that shady stuff can happen in school districts. Some of it happens in procurement and bidding, which...