Episode 227: The MBTA’s crash course

9/1/22-- This week on The Horse Race there is just too much news! A report released this week by the Federal Transit Administration highlighted the failures of the MBTA when it comes to safety, staffing and system needs.

We're less than a week away from primary day and candidates have been pushing to garner support. The team discusses the departure of Quentin Palfrey from the race for AG and what his endorsement of Andrea Campbell means. Then we dig into the controversy around DA hopeful Ricardo Arroyo.

Later, The Horse Race goes back to school. Michael Jonas of Commonwealth Magazine drops by the pod to talk about recently raised MCAS testing requirements for high school graduation in the state.

Full episode transcript:

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:00:26] This week on The Horse Race. It's the final countdown to next week's primaries. Can't believe we're here already, but we are. Then we're talking about the school year ahead in Massachusetts as students head back to the classrooms. It's Thursday, September 1st. [00:00:39][13.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:00:50] Welcome back to The Horse Race. A weekly look at politics, policy, elections and malfunctioning trains in Massachusetts. I'm Steve Koczela here with Jennifer Smith and Lisa Kashinsky. And we are here just a mere hours after the FDA issued a report on the MBTA safety situation, which is quite lengthy. We have skimmed it. We've read the news coverage. We've even written some of the news coverage. Jenn, I know because I know you well that you have already read the entire report. Cover to cover. So give us the highlights. [00:01:15][25.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:16] Oh, God, cover to cover. It's been such a morning. I would say that the highlights here are basically saying a lot of the things that we already knew were existing problems with the T that have either been simmering under the surface or have been kind of front and center over at least the last three years, but also over the course of the Baker administration, have really just not been addressed. I think the best way to start out is by reading what might be an extremely concise and yet damning paragraph from the start of this report. So bear with me here. The FDA found the combination of overworked staff and aging assets has resulted in the organization, the organization being the MBTA being overwhelmed. Chronic fatigue for key positions in the agency. Lack of resources for training and supervision and leadership priorities that emphasize meeting capital project demands above passenger operations, preventative maintenance and even safety. So they really came down pretty hard on a few different elements here. One of them being that where the team has been putting its money is wildly out of step with where the actual needs of the system are. It's been a lot of money that's been shifted into capital projects, as opposed to making sure that staffing needs were being met and making sure that the trains were being operated safely. And then on the other side of it, you also have this kind of awkward note that the dpu, which should be in charge of maintaining the safety levels and the operations of the MBTA, has really not been doing the work that it has been authorized for and supposed to be on top of. So on top of saying, hey, we saw a lot of recommendations back in 2019 saying you should be focusing on adjusting and addressing these known problems with the system. We haven't actually seen that much progress. So if it seems a little bit like deja vu, but worse as you're reading through this report and you've been watching MBTA operations over the past three years, it's not just you. The federal government is coming down hard on them, too. [00:03:15][119.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:03:17] And Jenn, to go back to what you said about this emphasis on the capital projects. That was really something that was driven by a governor, Charlie Baker, something he repeatedly highlights both in person in his book. Right. [00:03:30][13.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:31] Yes. So when you think about the way that the Baker administration has approached that he over the course of his time as governor here, it really has meant making funding cuts specifically to the operations and maintenance budget. So the idea there is prioritizing kind of long term projects and capital projects. And the governor in his book and also kind of publicly has defended and supported this approach toward the metro. So what you've seen is in response to comments around, say, the 2019 safety report is actually a shift from operating budgets to capital budget. Notably at the time they transferred $500 million toward those long term capital projects. But the report itself has said there's been a real problem with focus on day to day operations. And that's not just looking at, you know, is the train running where kind of existing safety maintenance issues, but also how those are being reported. The report also looked at the way that you were getting feedback. They were saying that the MBTA was looking at these chunks of raw on analyze safety data that made it really difficult to pinpoint where the actual structural problems were being located and also that it was over relying on a hotline rather than being in close contact with its frontline workers. So what you're looking at here might not be surprising, but it is identifying a massive communications problems, structural issues, funding priorities, and day to day management that the T has been trying to address. And they've said in response to this report that they're working on staffing up right now, that they're taking the recommendations of the report seriously. But as you know, Lisa, it is a pretty direct kind of finger in the eye of the way that the Baker administration has been framing its approach to the T as something that prioritizes the long term safety, but also kind of a thriving MBTA system that the rest of the region can rely on. [00:05:29][118.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:05:30] It also calls back to a very common set of news articles and discussions that have been taking place for the last number of years. And that's the question about whether the T actually has enough money for operations. So you might recall that there have been headlines over the years about how there's a deficit at the MBTA. And that's pretty much always when you dig under the surface the way that the Baker administration is framing it and what's actually been happening as they take this slug of money that the legislature gives the MTA for operations and they say this money, instead of being for operations, is going to go over to capital. And, you know, many people have noted it, myself included, many people have criticized that, as you know, how can you say you have a deficit when you're just choosing not to spend your operations money on operations? It was also used as justification for the large fare increases. We saw it a few years back now that there's this deficit, but you see the impact of that now. You see the impact of basically taking that operations money and using it on capital instead. It sounds dry, it sounds boring, but what you end up with is orange line trains on fire and people leaping off bridges. Like that's when you know all of this, you know, dry accounting, boring talk becomes visible and the impacts of it become visible. [00:06:40][69.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:06:41] Yeah, one pretty, you know, notable issue that ended up kicking off this round of of criticism and findings was a man whose arm got stuck in a red line train door that prompted an entire new wave of things. And to that Money Point, Steve to the Globe did report that Governor Baker, in response to the FDA, is finding is going to ask the legislature for another $200 million for the T. So if what you're watching is where the money's coming from and where it's going, we get to keep watching it. We love that. We love that for us and for all of you. [00:07:14][33.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:07:14] We love that journey for all of us. But for now, we are all stuck at home. I myself, because I literally can't ride the orange line to work for the reasons we just discussed. But that brings us to the very important and as yet unanswered question, which is what are we doing here today? [00:07:27][13.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:07:28] Well, aside from talking about the fact that I might never get on a train again, we're going to tackle this week's late breaking developments in a few races just before primary day. And then we at the horse race are going back to school yet again. I hear it's an annual thing. We're talking about recent changes to mass testing, graduation requirements and how that could affect students across the state as well as recent polls from ye olde MassINC Polling Group. [00:07:51][22.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:07:52] Shall we party in the saddle? [00:07:54][1.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:08:01] With less than a week to the primaries, campaigns for statewide office are making a final push to gain supporters. And there's been a decent amount of changes down the ballot, even down into the district races that we're going to get into. Our very own Lisa Kashinsky is here to walk us through what we need to know leading up to the primary next week, including things that we've, I don't know, spent the last 2 hours learning about for the first time. So, Lisa, let's start really easy up at the top of the ticket here. Governor's race, we do have a primary on the Republican side, but Maura Healey is a one woman show. [00:08:36][34.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:08:37] Yeah, I mean, shockingly not the focus of attention this year, even though it's an open seat, governors races has been well-documented at this point. So basically what we're going to see next week is the Republican identity crisis playing out across the country, coming to Massachusetts, and then the next week actually throughout other states and New England. So you have, as we've been through, you know, the Trump endorsed candidate versus the non-Trump endorsed candidate. You know, there's plenty of mudslinging going on in that race. Last minute accusations, the possibility of a split ticket, maybe, you know, because both of them have running mates. Definitely something to watch there for anyone who is looking to see what the future of the Republican Party is in Massachusetts, which I know has been the question that everyone's been trying to figure out for at least a few years now. And then, of course, on the Democratic side, as you said, no real primary for Maura Healey, which has been freeing her up to spend her time campaigning for the myriad of candidates that she's endorsed down the ballot, but particularly for Andrea Campbell in the attorney general's race. [00:09:45][68.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:09:47] Now, the question on the Republican side is really kind of how close it is. We've seen in other races around the country very Trump oriented Republicans winning by pretty wide margins. You know, we think of Liz Cheaney, I think most notably who lost by a very wide margin after winning her primary with 70% of the vote just a couple of years ago. So, you know, if Geoff Diehl wins by, you know, 20 or 30 points, that would be very notable and say a lot about kind of where the Republican Party is at this point. You know, Charlie Baker has been very popular statewide, but is more popular among Democrats at this point, which he has been for quite a while. So, you know, to what extent does the fact that he is a Republican say anything about the party as a whole? But moving on that down the ballot, there have been a lot of developments in the attorney general's race. We had a poll out last week showing Shannon Liz Riordon's support has grown very significantly. Lisa, you've also noted some very significant endorsements that have happened and who's kind of lining up on which side. So walk us through what's going on there. [00:10:43][55.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:10:44] Well, the biggest and most recent one is the fact that Quentin Palfrey is out and he has endorsed Andrea Campbell, the person that he spent his entire campaign railing against, from stark policy differences over charter schools, safe injection sites, Medicare for all to hammering her for her refusal to disavow super PAC spending or, you know, outside spending in in this race as part of his larger issues with campaign finance, you know, kind of across the board in Democratic races, you know, seeing his path to victory closing in these variables that you mentioned, and especially after these big endorsements came down for Shannon, was written over the weekend, which were kind of spurred by those very polls that showed her closing the gap after flooding the airwaves with over $5 million in ads. Most of it she's funded herself at this point with her own personal wealth. So you had Elizabeth Warren, Michelle Wu and Kim Janey come out for Shannon Liss-Riordan, some of her biggest nonunion endorsements, hitting them directly against Maura Healey and Ayanna Pressley, who have endorsed Campbell, dividing the state's top progressives. And then a few days later, you see Quentin saying, I don't have a path to victory anymore. I'm dropping out. I'm backing on trail. [00:12:02][78.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:12:04] And one thing that has been interesting, sad, confusing to watch over the past week or so has been the scramble inside progressive circles to basically figure out how to respond to this here, where we've talked before about these races, about the different lanes that candidates have been trying to carve out for themselves. So for a while, it very much looked like Quentin and Shannon were essentially the choices for the Progressive Mass Group. Of course, the endorsement because of their process was just endorsing Quentin Palfrey. But so now you're seeing this awkward situation where some pretty high profile endorsers are not pleased that he went and endorsed Andre and are asking for their names to be removed from the website itself. Jonathan Cohn, who's obviously a very active progressive activist in Massachusetts and Boston in particular, was on Twitter basically saying that it doesn't do a lot for people's opinion of candidates when they spend so much of the race criticizing another candidate and then turn around and endorse them. It can give voters whiplash. And then you add in the question of, well, what about people who have already sent in their ballots were in the early voting period? Right now, it really kind of can be a head spinning time for a lot of people who are saying the reason that I rely on endorsements is because it hopefully gives me a good sense of who these candidates are and what they stand for. And so the kind of weird whiplash that a lot of them are experiencing right now has been kind of interesting to watch. [00:13:43][98.9]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:13:44] And we in the media asked Quentin on Wednesday how his supporters are supposed to reconcile his endorsement of Andrea with all of those differences that we just talked about. And he said, look, there are always going to be policy differences in this case, some pretty major ones. But he said that he was really drawn to Andrea and wants people to endorse her for what he called her values, her experience and her character. And he said and these are his words, that that's really much more important than some of the policy differences that have defined this race. Whether his supporters and Democratic primary voters are very policy driven, we've seen that in several election cycles now. So that still might be a little hard to swallow for some of them. [00:14:32][47.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:14:33] It's also an interesting kind of proxy war in some ways. I mean, one of the issues that was kind of at the heart of a lot of the things Quentin Palfrey was talking about and his differences with Andrea Campbell is charter schools and her support in the past for organizations that promote charter schools and charter schools themselves. And this is an issue which I think even a lot of Democrats don't realize that the Democratic Party is divided about people of color, particularly in our polling. Going back many, many years are much more likely to be supportive of charter schools, whereas white progressives are among the most opposed to charter schools. And that's kind of what you see going on here. If you want to be given the kind of progressive mantle by mostly very well-educated white progressives being anti charter school and therefore pro-union, which is usually kind of goes goes together, is a requirement. And, you know, Andrea Campbell has in the past. But on the other side of that question and that, you know, that's some of what this whole kind of shadowy organizations and corporate funders and education, privatization and all this language you hear during the course of this campaign is actually about. But moving on that down the ballot, there's a lot going on. And the Suffolk County district attorney's race, we even have things going on right now. So we're keeping one eye on the script and one eye on Twitter just to see. Be sure we're not out of date, at least as of when we're recording this. [00:15:51][78.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:15:52] So last week, while we were recording, The Globe dropped an article talking about years old allegations against City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who is currently running for Suffolk District Attorney against appointed District Attorney Kevin Hayden. So we didn't talk about this last week. It's been a really wild seven days. The initial allegations said that around, you know, 15 ish years ago, Arroyo was twice investigated for sexual assault while he was a teenager, but he was not charged. There were investigations. And Arroyo, when asked about this, recently said that he was never contacted or informed that these allegations or investigations took place. And so the Globe and other places have basically followed up on that over the past week or so. And there seem to be a few different sticking points here. One is the validity of the accusations themselves, where Arroyo's legal team had read a statement from one of the alleged women involved who said that he did not assault her. And then today, the Globe came out with a comment from the other one involved who said, yes, he did. And the other issue is his claim not to know that these investigations or allegations existed at all, which is in conflict with these reported BPD filings, which say that they did talk to Arroyo and his lawyer. So that's about what's happened over the last week. Lisa, I am going to throw the absolute bomb at you. What's happened in the last 2 hours? [00:17:27][94.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:17:28] What's happened in the last 2 hours is that Arroyo's endorsers who had stuck by him or had just not weighed in on this yet, have now been rescinding their endorsements, and they are not endorsing his rival, to be clear. Kevin Hayden. But they say that they can no longer support Arroyo or can no longer make a choice or recommend the candidate in this race is the way that the mayor has put it. So we had seen a few endorsers, you know, kind of pull away from Arroyo immediately when after the Globe's first story dropped. And that included former Congressman Joe Kennedy, the third ironworkers local seven in Boston City Council President Ed Flynn. But, you know, as I had kind of alluded to, others had held back until now and then. So Wednesday morning you saw Boston, where Michelle Wu started off with rescinding her endorsement, followed by State Representative John Santiago, then Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and then State Senator Sandy Dominico, Gigi Coletta, who's on the Boston City Council, just kind of this tidal wave of endorsers now moving away from Ricardo Arroyo. [00:18:37][69.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:18:39] This is another and very different example of the kind of weird bind that progressives are in right now when it comes to local elections. Because as you noted, Lisa, the endorsers who are pulling away from Arroyo are not pivoting over to endorse Kevin Hayden. They say there's a reason they didn't endorse him in the first place. So there have been a number of good articles and reports from from a number of different outlets, basically saying voters are kind of confused. Endorsers are kind of confused. It seems like if you feel uncomfortable with these allegations in the way they've been responded to and you also feel uncomfortable about Kevin Hayden, you don't really have a good option on the ballot in the Suffolk DA's office right now. The thing that we're watching at the moment is Arroyo's civil lawsuit against the city of Boston to get access to these initial files. So there may still be developments in the next few days or so with a bit more information. But this is probably going to end up being a really messy, nail biting situation right up till primary day. [00:19:47][68.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:19:48] And it'll be interesting to see to how many people at this point just blank their ballots and what that does to who wins and by what margin. You know, when voters at this point, you know, if they don't like either candidate, they don't have much of another choice. [00:20:04][15.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:20:05] Absolutely. So I think that is about our roundup of all of the news fit to consume in the last 2 hours of a Wednesday morning. I think our last note, as we're thinking about heading toward primary day, is it is in fact, also a federal year, your reps that you may be paying attention to. A few of them are going to have challengers in the general. There aren't very many primaries. There are no Democratic primaries on the federal bench, but there are a few Republican ones. So you may, depending on where you're living and voting, see Robert Burke and Hamilton Rodriguez running against Stephen Lynch and also Jesse Brown and Dan Sullivan against Bill Keating. So mostly if you're keeping your eyes on the federal round of our representatives, you're not going to see anything till November. But you might see some Republicans on your ballot. [00:20:56][51.5]

Steve Koczela: [00:21:00] School is back in session in some districts and coming back in the next week and others. One change for the school year. The State Board of Education voted to raise the graduation requirement en masse, the state standardized test. Here to talk about what this means, we're joined by a true Massachusetts education expert. That's Michael Jonas of Commonwealth magazine. Thanks for joining us, Michael. [00:21:19][19.5]

Michael Jonas: [00:21:20] Good to be here. [00:21:20][0.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:21:22] So as a school parent, we all hear about it. We hear about it all the time starting pretty early and a child's education. What did the state board do this week and what are the impacts of that? [00:21:32][10.3]

Michael Jonas: [00:21:33] So what they did is they took a vote to increase the cut score or the minimum score required on the 10th grade MCAS in order to graduate from high school in Massachusetts. We talk a lot about high stakes testing. It's really only the 10th grade test that is truly the one that has high stakes attached to it for students because they have to clear the test in English, math and science in order to receive a high school diploma in Massachusetts and the state board, after a lot of deliberation and some research that contributed to their thinking, voted to increase the score for students who are entering ninth grade this year. So it will apply to the actually as the graduating class of 2026 and going forward. [00:22:21][48.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:22:21] And so why was that exactly? What's the goal of this higher bar? [00:22:25][3.4]

Michael Jonas: [00:22:26] So the goal is to, I would say, sort of, you know, provide an incentive, I guess they would say, for students to reach for and also for school districts to to reach for in in their instruction and curriculum. The research that sort of undergirds this came from studies that looked at MCAS scores over a long span of time. And because of the availability now of long term data actually on on higher ed attainment as well as wages that you can do through through these big databases, they were able to link MCAS test scores with earnings at age 30. And they showed that students who were just getting over the bar, so they were passing the MCAS, but not by much. They were doing really poorly in the labor market. They were not really earning what, according to some MIT calculation, would even be considered sort of a living wage in the Boston area. And there was also really poor outcomes in higher education. So if the two goals you think of some ways of high school are to prepare people for college or career, the evidence was showing that just getting over that passing score on masse was not really doing either of those very well. And so that was the rationale for for for raising the score. [00:23:44][77.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:23:45] Of course, standardized tests have been a point of contention, particularly with teachers unions going back for pretty much as long as there's been standardized tests. So how is that shaped up in this particular vote? Have the unions come out against it or what have they said? [00:24:00][14.4]

Michael Jonas: [00:24:01] Well, I think to say they came out against it would be an understatement. Folks may have read a little bit already about this. The president of the Mass Teachers Association, which is the largest union in the in the state, Max Page, appeared before the board at the meeting where they took this vote and just offered a blistering critique of not just really testing, but the whole kind of the whole really education establishment. But, you know, the main point of consideration at that meeting was raising the score. So if the unions are foursquare against this, they would really like to eliminate any kind of high stakes graduation test for high school students here. But they certainly opposed raising the score. And frankly, it went beyond just them. There are others who even may feel okay about a high stakes test who question the timing of it, since we're sort of still contending with, you know, the fallout from the pandemic and a lot of questions raised about whether this is the time to kind of ratchet up expectations and standards for kids. [00:25:02][60.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:25:02] Well, exactly. To that point, it's something like 100 legislators, maybe more than that, who did not support these changes. And they were specifically highlighting equity concerns here, saying we're coming out of a pandemic that already disproportionately impacted black and Latino students in terms of learning loss. And now these kind of changes to the scores might also have a kind of ripple effect impact there. So how did the state respond to that? Did educators say that was a valid reason for kind of keeping the scores where they were? Or are there other ways to address those disparities? [00:25:41][38.4]

Michael Jonas: [00:25:43] Well, the board, you know, sort of said they heard the critique and they, you know, essentially said we're going ahead with our with our with our proposal. You know, there were some who said that these disparities and the learning loss is sort of, you know, you know, is sort of all the more reason to raise them. Now, I think opponents would find that kind of a perverse argument that, you know, that we're going to sort of pound into these kids the need to to sort of increase their skills or their scores even more. But one thing that I think is important to point out that gets a little bit lost in the really charged debate is that the state actually has kind of two standards that that kids can pass to get across the finish line. And kids who don't pass the kind of conventional caste bar which is being raised now have there's a there's a bar beneath that that as long as they get over that bar, which is which is, you know, quite a bit lower, they can still have a pathway to graduation through something called to get into the weeds, an educational proficiency plan, which is basically kind of a plan of the course load that they will take over over their last couple of years in high school. If they successfully complete that program, they will get a diploma. So I think part of what the board saying is we're not really likely to see huge numbers of kids denied a diploma. There may be a big increase in the number of kids who don't get a diploma by clearing that kind of higher bar where you just pass the test and you're good. They may have to go into this kind of alternative pathway. And the state also has set up some new sort of guideposts for for how districts need to. Seed with that alternative plan, because there have been a lot of questions about about how well and how consistently school districts were following that course. [00:27:33][109.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:27:34] And this school year, of course, is already getting under way. Does this impact this school year or when does this actually go into effect? [00:27:40][5.7]

Michael Jonas: [00:27:41] So it goes into effect for students who are entering ninth grade this year. So it's the incoming high school freshman. It will apply, you know, when they take the 10th grade math test next school year. And so and then to sort of, you know, move the calendar even further along, they are kids that are in the class of 2026. So they'll take the test next year, but then it's still another couple of years before they're due to graduate. And there are kind of multiple options during that intervening time for them to for for kids to retest if they if they don't pass it the first time around. [00:28:15][34.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:28:16] So all of this comes in a moment where across the state there is a bit of change up when it comes to leadership priorities and kind of addressing sort of long term, but also pretty recently dire backslide in quality of education across the state right now. You wrote about the search for a new higher education commissioner. How is the interview process going right now and what is the next commissioner going to be dealing with when they enter the post? [00:28:44][28.2]

Michael Jonas: [00:28:45] Well, the process has proceeded over the last week or so with public interviews, and the board voted yesterday to offer the job to the former education secretary in Pennsylvania. So that part of it has been completed. The challenge going forward for the new commissioner and for the whole sort of public higher ed system as a whole is going to be the fact that we're in a period of lower enrollment, in higher ed in general, birth rates for the cohort of kids coming into college age now are lower. And there's also been sort of compounding that during the pandemic. There's been this really pronounced falloff in college enrollment, and it has been particularly apparent among black and Latino kids. And a really a troubling development at that. So there's there's going to be a lot on the plate of the of the new commissioner in terms of of how the state public system approaches these kind of enrollment challenges and then sort of the ongoing challenges of raising completion and graduation rates among students, you know, particularly in community colleges, where where there's been, you know, sort of a real struggle to get kids over the line and, you know, into, you know, sort of finishing with degrees. [00:30:05][79.9]

Steve Koczela: [00:30:07] One other thing we wanted to ask you about while we have you here, Michael, is you had a very interesting episode of the podcast, which of course is our sister podcast here at MassINC and about the diminishing population of school children in Boston. I definitely recommend everybody go listen to that. How does that fit into what this year ahead is going to bring in what the new superintendent in Boston is going to face? [00:30:27][20.3]

Michael Jonas: [00:30:28] Well, it's it's really just kind of one more layer on top of all the challenges that that the Boston schools have been facing. And the Mary Skipper, the incoming superintendent will face, I think has folks know it's been a very turbulent time, to say the least, in the Boston schools. We saw the exit, you know, kind of abrupt exit of a superintendent in the middle of her contract. And at the same time, the city and the state were engaged in this very high profile and acrimonious at times, negotiation as a state review had had painted a picture of a really troubled district, you know, entrenched dysfunction and terms like that were thrown around in the state reports. The upshot of that has been sort of a broad improvement plan that the school district is on with the state monitoring how well the district does in meeting certain benchmarks by certain deadlines. But on top of all that, as you say, we've been seeing this kind of steady erosion of of enrollment in the Boston schools. And I was speaking to Will Austin, who runs a local nonprofit in Boston, and he's written about this. And and it it has a lot of implications for the district, not least of which is that, you know, funding for schools is really comes on a on a per pupil basis. So the Boston schools are going to be facing on top of all the other challenges this this enrollment contraction, which is going to put further pressure on a system where, you know, that's filled with aging school buildings where there's probably a need to consolidate through school closures, you know, their expenses. And so there's there's really just kind of no shortage of of, I guess you'd say fires to put out and and other challenges in front of Mary skipper as she takes over. [00:32:14][106.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:32:16] All right. Well, a lot of head on all of that for sure. So we'll have to have you back regularly throughout this this which will be her first year. But for now, Michael Jonas of Commonwealth magazine, thank you so much for coming by The Horse Race. [00:32:26][10.2]

Michael Jonas: [00:32:27] Thank you. [00:32:27][0.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:32:34] And that brings us to our final segment, which this week and this week only is a special horse race arts and crafts section. It's a challenge. There are 10,000 Horse Race trivia points at stake. So, Jenn, what are the rules? [00:32:46][11.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:46] Well, first off, we're going to be sued for our point system. But the request that we have of all of you, our beloved listeners, is if you are like us, you probably have more political primary mailers than you know what to do with. And we would like to see what the most creative thing you can do with those is. We are taking suggestions via just creative like, hey, we did this great decoupage of Shannon Liss-Riordan face from all of the Shannon Liss-Riordan mailers. Or if you feel like offering a brave solution like we've seen before around insulating your home with all of these mailers, we are welcoming all suggestions. But also, if you would like to send a horse race themed mailer project to horse race global media headquarters, we honestly it would be a lie to say that we would accept that, but we will hopefully see plenty of options out there on Twitter. Please do not send us a bunch of mailers. We have enough already. [00:33:42][55.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:33:43] We do indeed. But that is all the time we have for today. I'm Steve Koczela, signing off with Jenn Smith and Lisa Kashinsky, our producer, as always, is Elena Eberwein. Please don't forget to give The Horse Race or review wherever you're listening to us now, subscribe to the Massachusetts political playbook and reach out to us here at the MassINC Polling Group if you need more time. For now, thank you all for listening and we will see you next week. [00:33:43][0.0]