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