Announcement: I’ll be addressing a group of university and organizing groups in the Philadelphia area on 3/26, talking about my book, school finance, etc. It’ll be online at 12pm EST. You should come! Register here.

Derek Gottlieb is a philosopher of education with a golden voice: he has a number of podcasts, some of which are super successful, but what I really like about his audio work is that it’s part of his larger philosophical project in education.

One of his podcasts is unlike any other I’ve come across.

It’s called The Referenda.

The podcast is looking at one school district in Wisconsin and it’s budget situation.

I was recently on it with Celina Su, who published a book recently called Budget Justice that I highly recommend.

I’m sending along the podcast episode this week. One idea that I’ve been thinking about since I did the pod, which I talk about at the end of the dual interview, is a contrast between how trial verdicts are rendered in courts, particularly viz. juries, versus public budgets.

What we don’t do with trials, for instance, is have a small group of technical legal experts spend months reviewing the evidence and hearing testimony, drafting a document that’s several hundred pages long and hard to read, then present that document, with the verdict recommendation to juries of community members, asking for a yes or no vote. That’d be so unfair, right?

Well that’s how we make our budgets, which end up being a kind of verdict against communities.

There should be a process for putting together expenditure plans given resources that mimics the jury selection process!