They always lead with the big number to get the clicks, and then follow up with anecdotes to feed narratives. It’s understandable, but we would be better off looking at who is leaving from a demographic perspective. Is it mostly older retirees who’s plans to move were accelerated due to pandemic shifts? Is it families? And if so what income levels, millionaires or low income? Do these emigrants from mass different from historical trend in ways other than volume?

Shoot we are really talking about net population change, it could be mass (and other states) regularly ‘lose’ thousands of people of year but inflow Keeps the total population the same. It could be really what we are experiencing is a reduction in people coming to the state anew, but we won’t know because the Globe just cared about the top line number.

To your second bullet, I don’t think it’s accurate to say all market rate housing is luxury housing. New housing that is built tends to be tagged as luxury house for a few reasons 1) it actually is luxury 2) it’s not, but needs to be branded/market as luxury because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to get the rents needed to make a project financially viable. Both of these stem from housing construction costs in Massachusetts being incredibly high, making them more difficult or non-viable with high rent.

The legislature wanted to try and retroactively change the law so that they would they could determine the amounts, as opposed to what the law currently allows for. There was pretty substantial disagreement in the legislature about how they would actually do it, let alone if Baker would sign what they sent him. All this would’ve done was delay and likely reduce the payments people would’ve got.

Keep trying to fuck over kids you don’t give a shit about. You just want to strike to be vindictive , which is fine the district administration can be a load of ass holes, but it’s entirely wrong to say it’s in the interests of the students and the legislature should disregard those students and allow teachers to strike legally.

I didn’t say non-unionized private schools were good/better because of their non-unionization. I’m saying your logic that because those teachers can strike, it is the root cause for why they don’t strike is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and provide what I believe is the alternative mechanism for why they don’t experience strikes.

There are absolutely folks questioning the utility of the winter and spring breaks in mass, as well as the summer gap, and if our agricultural society based education calendar is still appropriate today.

If you are dealing with district wide learning time loss, you absolutely do have to aggregate it together. Is each student going to ‘suffer’ the exact same? Not at all, some will have it hit them more than others. But you can’t just hand waive it all away. Those examples you present are individual kids and situation as determined by the parents. If school district decided to close a school for a month because of utility issues and just sent the kids home you’re sure as shit there would be an inquiry. If a parent took their kids out of school for a month? Sure as shit CPS and the school are going to have questions.

Strikes aren’t the only tool possible to protect teachers. They are just your preferred tool.

Private schools don’t face these same issues not because those teachers have a right to strike, but because they tend to be better off financially than public schools because they have more affluent families in their student community, and are able to provide higher/different comp. Not because they are unionized (the vast majority are not). Those teachers contracts actually are individual not collectively bargained.

Look, if you are good ignoring thousands of hours of learning loss, idk what to tell you. It’s a bad in if of itself, regardless of what causes it. It’s a significant price to pay by those who have the least control of the situation (the students).

You are specifically arguing for strikes to become a regular tool available to unions in negotiations. If you can’t see that strikes will become more prevalent regardless of circumstances if they are legalized you are just naive.

The canary in a coal mine is a shit metaphor. You cannot separate teachers and the union from thr situation, they are not some neutral signal like the canary is, they make up the system collectively, with the district/local govt. they are not some neutral signal.

I’m saying I want the legislature to give teachers unions alternative tools, and coerce districts in alternative ways, to get to an agreement, without forcing kids out of the class room.

It would the strike in the summer would still be partially effective, it would still escalate the still, still withhold labor as you are calling for, and it’s better than during the school year because feelers kids would have their schooling disrupted.

Sure- rules may need to be changed and updated, like every other single rule and law ever created by humanity. That’s not a good counter argument for why we shouldn’t create them in the first place.

Strikes aren’t just a foreshadowing of the collapse of public education, I’m saying they are the first stage of the collapse of public education. If strikes are legalized, they will become common and public schools will become wholly unreliable for parents and they will look towards other options. It’s already happening with enrollment numbers dropping and interest in private education jumping.

I don’t see how you can take students missing school so flippantly, hand waive it way with them being fine. It’s tens of thousands of hours of school a year, kids not only are behind but they actually regressed because of the pandemic. If you can see that a terrible thing in and of itself, idk what there is for you.

I’m saying the legislature needs to be the entity to place the check on the school districts. I’m not saying teachers should have no leverage, I’m saying the harm caused to kids and public education at large is to great to make it permitted. Has the illegality of strikes prevented them? Nope! We’ve had 3 in the past 2 years. They’ll be a hell of a lot more than that if they become legalized.

There are more options for teachers than your a)b)c), and the legislature can create a hell of a lot more as well as other bats to bear districts with that don’t fuck over students and families like a district/teachers union caused work stoppage does.

Actually no, the kids are at home because their teachers walked out and the district screwed them.

Teachers work over the summer, obviously not as much as during the normal school year, but there is summer school, PD and other activities.

Yes! The government should’ve done way way more, I blame local districts way more than teachers unions. But at the same time it’s typically 10-20 morons in district/gov doing it. I’m saying the legislation needs to weaken their ability to be that moronic and set up more stringent rules for them to follow in negotiations to prevent work stoppages from that end.

The parents are only part of a voting populace! What about people without kids? Or whose kids are fully grown or two young? Never mind the fact the don’t directly vote for teacher pay but rather school committee members and even then that’s only ever 2 years. Yes- those elected officials may get voted out, but they are insulated until their next election.

This isn’t one kid out for a week. It’s an entire district. We just saw what happened when learned is disrupted, students academic performance and learned regressed massively over the pandemic. We saw how important it was to keep kids in school, and students are still clawing out of it. Any loss of learning is a significant loss and I’m saying state government needs to take action to prevent that from happening while protecting and strengthening teachers. Sure, the most recent strike in Woburn MA, was 1 week, but no one knew how long it would be day 1.

I’m not saying teachers need to be ground to the dirt. I’m saying the state legislature should take this nuclear option off the table and instead tie the hands of districts to negotiate in good faith.

You’ve never had a minimum of 3 PD days before school started? Never heard of summer school? Never been expected to prep for your year over the summer?

A solid portion of teachers work in the summer in mass, be it summer school, PD, prepping for the upcoming year, that’s all labor they can withhold then that’s critical to the district. Idk where you’re from that teachers don’t work during the summer. I meant “non-teaching” as not with the whole student body in front of them.

Once teachers and districts let things get to a point where students don’t have class because of the dispute, the kids already involved. Idk how you can’t see that.

I quite literally proposed an alternative way to bring about contract agreement.

Sure- but teachers aren’t trying to negotiate their individual contracts, but their CBAs. That, combined with that this labor action is across the union, not just those teachers without professionals status, means those YoY contracts aren’t really material to that.

So teachers unions are pushing for a law/policy (striking rights) that they don’t actually want? They’re negotiating in bad faith! (/s kinda)

I think you and I agree that state government should take specific action so that unions have more leverage in negotiation. You would be okay with permitting strikes, it’s what this specific law would permit. It’s fine to say you could compromise from that, but you can’t say you don’t what what the law would give you. I personally think striking would cause far more harm than good to public education in this state broadly and that law makers need to take that into account when giving teachers unions the greater leverage they should have.

These are literally teachers, the children aren’t made up. They are the students.

You realize in mass teacher contracts go for multiple years and automatically extend if no new contract is ratified, so there isn’t a period when teachers aren’t cover by a contract right? Districts meet various federal and state requirement for grants, PD, and other items during the summer. A summer strike still causes pain for the district, admittedly not as much as during the school year.

Yes- I fully see how strikes are intend to get districts to the table to negotiate, specifically by inconveniencing them. I’m saying that the entity that inflicts that inconvenience and the nature of that convenience should not be a closure of schools, but rather other mechanisms as caused by the state law/reg I’m advocating be out in place.

One example could be an arbitration process. No new contract by x date? Forced arbitration run by the state. To extend the example, look how baseball handles their arbitration, each party (player and team) puts in what they think the pay should be for the next season. The arbitrator, using formulae decided by CBA (in this case it would be state law), determines what the number should be, and picks which ever is closer the player or the teams number. No splitting the difference so no incentive for one side to cook their number, and it frequently incentivizes teams/players to come to agreement before arbitration.

While I’m sure other districts pay teachers like this, not every single one does and many give individual teachers options (out of a set) on how they want to be paid.

Many other jobs/employers also have claw back provisions on compensation so teachers wouldn’t be unique in this regard.

I’ll get downloaded to all hell for this, but teachers striking during the school year causes incredible educational disruption and harm to students, not to mention their families. It can directly create unsafe environments for children and our communities.

If government is going to change the law to permit teachers to strike, it should only be during the summer or other, ‘non-teaching’ working days (e.g. professional development).

Most importantly, the government should change the laws to force school districts and local governments to come to the table during negotiations in good faith. The legislature should outline what ‘good faith’ negotiations entail, and put in place direct penalties for district that do not follow those guidelines. These regs must be highly responsive given the cost of even one day of bad negations out of contract.

Public schools have understandably had their reliability questioned given many districts response to the pandemic, remote/digital school adaptation. A lot of families are questioning if they can be relied upon to be there for the kids and their families. I’m not saying it’s the teachers fault, but allowing strikes could further weaken people’s faith in their reliability. The legislature should reform the other side of the negotiation table (districts) to fix this issue. Law makers can do it in conjunction with their constituents and unions to come up with a law that would satisfy them (without the right to strike).

I’m also a fan of London Tailor, took care of my, my nana, and others in my family for decades. Very reasonable, skilled, and efficient. I’d recommend them.

Came here to give Eliu’s the love it deserves. That place is fantastic, best spot of its kind in the city.

Half of your posts are about traffic in NH. Go move to your perfect utopia there if you think someone should move and if you hate the idea of more people moving into your neighborhood, practice what you preach and leave.

When you buy your house you get no covenants, no promises that your neighbors will change, that their houses wont change. It’s rights to that one property, it’s not rights to influence what your neighbors do and make demands of them.

Safe neighbors, walkability, outdoor space, arent contra more housing, they aren’t contra apartment buildings.

Quite literally people do want to live in these ‘congested’ areas. That’s why there is demand for housing in them. Hell 20-30 years ago and before dorchester was considered a congested area compared to the suburbs. There is a damn mass transit station across the street.

NIMBY is ‘not in my back yard’ its someone who thinks their property, their yard, extends to their neighbors, and down their street. It’s someone who thinks they have a right to dictate to others what they can do with their own property simply by having been in the general area first. By preventing these condos/apts they are preventing families from safe shelter, people from moving out in their own for the first time, from downsizing in old age to housing they can manage.

Depends- very broadly speaking the census consider the Boston metro area from Boston out to Worcester alllll the way up to Manchester NH. It’s stupidly massive. However, anyone around here wouldn’t consider Lawrence part of Boston but rather it’s own area, or larger the Merrimac Valley.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to look at energy providers in electricity to see how particular regulation/utility status can hinder innovation. MA opened up its electricity markets in the 90s which cause more generators to enter the market, and then further liberalized generator regs to allow for wind, solar, and attempt at hydro. The variety of alternative sources wasn’t available until a variety of measures were introduced to allow more players in the market. IMO another issue with them being ‘natural monopolies’ is the products are able to be differentiated, somewhat technically but also business services (contract length, bundling, etc). Could you put regs in place that would limit those options and thus push them toward NM? Sure but I don’t think it would be popular. Personally, I switch from xfinity to Verizon recently and it’s made a world of difference.

It would be very difficult for the state to pass regulations that don’t end up superseded by FCC or other federal regulation, muni ownership is the only real way around that, which is why I jumped there. Your original prompt didn’t raise that prospect just some other commenters so my bad.

I don’t think your argument that if it was state owned, prices would be stabilized. There are broadly to paths, municipal level, or federal. At the municipal level you’d be relying on individual municipalities to set up and maintain the broadband system. You’d get widely varying quality, procedures, and prices, just based how those locales manage this ish. At the state or federal level, you’d have fewer fiefdoms of policy, but then the prices and costs would vary widely because of political pork barreling. Some places would get economic boondoggle projects because their Congressperson is stellar, while others place few burdens and both end up paying the same? That’s not really right.

Yes the major broadband provides should be more heavily regulated but it should be in a way that forces them to compete more directly with each other and introduce other competitors into the market.

Another issue is technical choice, what if in 10 years satellite internet becomes the default Choice for access? Without competition or choice those determinations aren’t made and we end up locking into legacy tech hindering development. This akin to telephone access in the ‘developing’ world. Many of these countries don’t have land line infrastructure because they skipped straight to cellular.

Massachusetts passed a law a few years ago, that recently came into effect, that all eggs (and egg whites) have to be from cage-free producers.

The vast majority of other states do not have these requirements, and thus producers do not shift their production methods to sell eggs in MA. We are just way way too small of a market to do so.

This, combined with avian flu, drastically reduced the available egg supply under MA law and prices have gone up as a result.