OPEB in Braintree
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
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
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
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!
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
[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
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
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
Announcement: The American Educational Research Association (AERA) organizes the biggest education research conference I know. Within the conference are many...
Students over bondholders!
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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!
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...
Conn men?
Announcement: I'm giving a lecture at Teachers College, Columbia University this Thursday at 5:30pm titled "Education Finance, Statistics, and Philosophy."...
What to do in Denver when in debt
While researching a seemingly never-ending paper on the Philadelphia School District's relationship with the municipal bond market between 1993-2021 and its...
The politics of reserves
One thing I've learned to do in trying to understand school finance is watch out for big pools of capital. Wherever there are pools of capital, there are...