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...
A socialist uses the Bloomberg terminal, part 1
When I got interested in school bonds, a friend and comrade who had done some research work for climate groups told me to look at a Bloomberg terminal. I was...
Testimony to Philadelphia City Council in Favor of a Public Finance Authority
A couple weeks ago I testified to the Philadelphia City Council in favor of legislation that would take a step closer towards creating a public bank for the...
Choosing a school in neoliberal times
The first iteration of this newsletter was a series of posts on my blog, but they weren't about socialism and school finance. Before the pandemic started, as...
$chool choice and freeloading
There's a lot that's dangerous about the rightwing campaign against critical race theory in schools. One of the less obvious dangers is how it advances of...
A bond knot in Rochester
I'm working on a research project looking at racial discrimination in school bond issuance (with the amazing Eleni Schirmer). Part of this project requires...
Super-expropriation, elementary schools, and UPenn
Sometimes K-12 & higher education look disconnected, particularly when it comes to money. But in Philly, the University of Pennsylvania has done and is doing...
What socialists say about school shootings
Oxford Area High School in Michigan recently re-opened for the first time after a devastating school shooting last year. It got me thinking about school...
The problem of daycare
I've been working with and around schools for a long time. I taught in high schools while in college, taught full time high school for five years after I...
Cryptobonds!
A Trump tweet inspired blockchain-based mini muni bonds. This sentence isn't something I ever thought I'd find myself writing, but here we are. Apparently,...
Twitter, school finance ideology, and racial capitalism
Twitter is an interesting place. There's a lot that toxic about it, but when it comes to intellectual debates and the life of ideas there's nothing like it....
Open dystopia
As I'm writing this post, there's a stormy debate about whether keep schools open in the omicron surge. By the time this post goes out, there may have been...
Unearned and uncollected
Libertarians can be funny sometimes. A piece from the Commonwealth Foundation, a Koch-funded think tank focusing on Pennsylvania policy, opens with a riff on...
Ode to Saule
It sounded like a 1950s red scare moment, but it happened in November 2021. Republican Senator John Kennedy, in a southern twang, told a Biden nominee during...
Extended Testimony to the Children and Youth and Finance Committees
On 12/15, I testified before the Children and Youth and Finance Committees in Philadelphia's City Council. The hearing, focusing on how to fund a school...
Land of the fee
In 2011, the city of West Haven, Connecticut issued a school bond for $45 million. At the time, a couple years out from the great financial crisis, the...
The dialectic of school board elections
Organizers in Philadelphia have been exploring if/how to make the city's Board of Education an elected body. Right now, the BOE members are appointed by the...
A Green Freedom Budget for Schools
When Nikil Saval ran for state senate in Pennsylvania, I was part of an amazing team of researchers working on the campaign's platform. It was fun and...
How to privatize public school buildings
In response to a previous post about the socialist position on school bonds, reader Jennifer Kates made an interesting comment. I've been critiquing...
Fast 4 Interest Rates
In May 2004, 50 education activists including students, teachers, and parents marched 70 miles from San Pablo, CA to Sacramento. They wanted justice for...