For Massachusetts’ voters, 2016 will offer more than a choice of whom to install in the White House.
In order to capitalize on the high-turnout presidential year, proponents of two high profile, high-conflict, single-issue campaigns aim to place referendum questions on the state ballot.
If the political winds maintain their prevailing course, it looks as if raising restrictions on the number of charter schools and making pot an issue for regulators rather than law enforcement will be hot button issues.
Charter school activists Tuesday rolled out their biggest weapon, Governor Charlie Baker.
The coalition known as “Great Schools Massachusetts” aims to lift the cap in one of two ways -- by convincing the legislature to pass a bill for Baker to sign, or by appealing directly to voters on the 2016 ballot. The new group isn’t the official backer of the possible ballot measure, but they hope to bring all pro-charter parties together to get one of the two done.
Nikki Barnes from Kipp Academy Boston worked a crowd of over a hundred charter students, parents, teachers and alumni.
The governor made it clear he’s indifferent to methodology, he wants results.
“My view on this is really simple. I don’t really care how the cap gets lifted, I just want it lifted,” Baker said at the rally in the State House’s Grand Staircase area.
Baker campaigned for office by arguing that the cap should be lifted.
“For a state that prides itself on being an originator of great public education, for a state that prides itself on its history and it’s tradition as a forefront player in education and inequity, the fact that way have 37,000 kids on a waiting list to get into the school of their dreams here in the Commonwealth is a disgrace,” Baker said.
Opponents of charter expansion say they divert resources from traditional public schools and don’t have to serve all potential students.
“This is particularly harmful in communities where the number of children living in poverty is high. Most school systems do not have sufficient resources right now, but in systems with high levels of poverty, the lack of the sufficient resources is particularly acute,” American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts chapter President Tom Gosnell recently wrote on the union’s website.
A ballot initiative means that organizers will need to collect thousands of signatures between now and June; getting a bill through the legislature will be no picnic either -- a similar measure died in the Senate last year.
One of the two groups looking to legalize and regulate marijuana also kicked off their effort to go electoral.
The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol seeks to do exactly that: establish state regulations treating weed as if it were alcohol.
The group says it’s time to end the prohibition on marijuana for adults over the age of 21. The campaign is trying to get voters to see marijuana legalization as a public safety issue, hoping that such a view would take drug trade out of the hands of criminals, thus will improving safety and decreasing the prison population.
Leaders of the effort were outside the State House to kick off their next round of signature gathering.
Both the charter school and marijuana efforts have until June 22 to get over 75,000 citizens to sign each respective petition.
Opponents of legalizing marijuana, most notably Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, see the drug as a gateway to other, more addictive substances.
There’s also a more radical potential marijuana ballot question in the signature gathering stage, which would
end almost all restrictions on the drug.
And the two ballot issues weren’t even the biggest thing going on at the State House Tuesday, as Baker welcomed Cabo Verde Prime Minister José Maria Neves for a formal visit and a few hundred food activists gathered for a hearing on labeling genetically modified food.
