I am sending this message to members of several groups and loops I belong to, as well as to some individuals. I am sending it blind carbon copy to prevent members of one loop from responding to another loop they don't belong to.
On Tuesday, Audrey Hall, Pam Richardson, and Rep. Debby Blumer, Framingham residents and members of the charter group subcommittee of the Alliance for Educational Equity, testified before the state Board of Education about their concerns about how the state's formula for funding charter schools is putting untoward economic pressure on the communities with such schools. Reports from individuals from other communities, as well as in the press, indicate that, for the first time anyone can recall, many members of the Board of Education really sat up, listened, learned, and expressed doubt about the effect charter school funding is having on local communities, particularly during this downturn. On Wednesday, the statewide Alliance for Educational Equity, an outgrowth of the Framingham Alliance for Educational Equity, met in Sandwich. At that meeting, Roger Hatch, of the Department of Education, discussed a proposed new formula for Chapter 70 funding intended to bring a better distribution of funds to the 100 communities in Massachusetts, including Framingham, that do not now receive equitable funding. A year and half ago, when AEE first began pressing the issue, DOE officials were denying that there were any real funding inequities. There is no way of knowing whether this marks a change that will actually help Framingham, or whether this help is likely to do us good this year. But it is a start, and, really, the first hopeful signs we've had of change at the state level. Ironically, this calls to mind the warning of history teachers that the state curriculum frameworks for history must go beyond the facts to teaching students to use history for dealing with the present and planning for the future. On another cold winter, over 225 years ago, Henry Knox and his troops moved artillary captured at Fort Ticonderoga across the ice and snow from upstate New York towards General Washington's army in Cambridge, in order to attack Boston and force the British troops out. They reached eastern Massachusetts at the end of January, but were not prepared to attack then, nor did they wish the British to have notice of their advance. So they made the troops and artillary "disappear" by moving them off the Boston Post Road in Marlboro and "hiding" them in the fields and barns of Framingham until they were ready to attack in early March. By March 17, the British were driven from Boston. Even then, everybody knew that nobody running Boston ever paid the slightest attention to what was happening in Framingham. It is a lesson from history those in government in Boston now would be wise to consider.
