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from the Keystone State Education Coalition now reach more than 1000
Pennsylvania education policymakers – school directors, administrators,
legislators and members of the press via emails, website, Facebook and Twitter.
Follow us
on Twitter at @lfeinberg
PA House Education
Committee to hold informational meeting on cyber charter school funding and
operating issues
Thursday, January 26, 2012 10:00 AM , Room 60 East Wing
Charter and Cyber Funding and Accountability Recap
Collection of previous KEYSEC
postings on this topic
Auditor General Jack Wagner Says
State Leadership Must Step Up, Fix Flawed Charter School
Piccola says “no other
alternative” than to increase education spending because school reform failed
WITF.org Written by Mary Wilson Tuesday, 24 January 2012 18:36
At one point during Tuesday’s Senate Education
Committee meeting, Dauphin County Republican Sen. Jeff Piccola quoted the movie
Cool Hand Luke: what we have here is a failure to communicate. Piccola, a Senate GOP leader on the issue of
school reform, hammered away at state Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis and
the Corbett administration for not getting more aggressive about education
measures that failed last year.
“We’ve
got to move on these reforms,” said Piccola, who is not running for reelection
at the end of his term this year. Moreover,
he said he doesn't see any option but to pony up emergency funding for the
school districts facing insolvency.
Video and testimony from
Senate Education Committee’s Public Hearing of January 24, 2012 regarding Fiscally
Distressed School Districts
Video and written testimony from the hearing are
posted on Chairman Senator Piccola’s website:
PA House Democratic Caucus Website
As districts consider their
preliminary budgets and we await the Governor’s February 7th budget
announcement, the PA House Democratic Caucus has begun daily tracking of press
coverage on school district budgets statewide:
With unreachable No Child Left Behind deadlines
looming in 2014, the state Secretary of Education requests a two-year recess on
PSSA exam progress targets
By Mary Niederberger, Pittsburgh January 26, 2012
When the federal No Child Left Behind
legislation was signed into law in 2002, it called for all students in public
schools that receive federal funding to test proficient in math and reading by
2014. But a decade later, education
officials realize that goal is unlikely, if not impossible.
Teachers' salary freeze
part of early contract agreement in Parkland
The tentative agreement calls for a freeze in
the first year and a flat $1,250 increase for full-time teachers in the second
year of the two-year contract.
By Marion Callahan, Of The Morning Call, 1:19
p.m. EST, January
24, 2012
A freeze in teachers' salaries for next year and
a higher contribution by teachers to healthcare coverage are part of an early
agreement reached by the Parkland Teachers Association and the Parkland School District
By Charles Malinchak, Special to The Morning
Call, 12:52 p.m. EST, January 25, 2012
Although the budget is still under construction
and won't be finalized until June, school Director Bryan Eichfeld said, "I
am happy to say there is a zero tax increase.''
Agreement would tie raises to the financial
health of the district.
By Melinda Rizzo, Special to The Morning Call,
12:50 p.m. EST, January
25, 2012
Southern Lehigh School District reached an early
bird contract with its teachers that both sides agree could signal the dawn of
a new era in negotiations — one of mutual understanding over the district's
financial health.
The four-year pact begins Sept. 1 and runs
through Aug. 31,
2016 .
Under its terms, pay raises would be based on
three factors: the district's revenues, its retirement contribution to the
Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS), real operational costs.
"This is a completely new model, because
what it says is we both share the risk. If the district does well, we will too.
If times are tough, we share in that," said Bonnie Organski, a high school
business education and technology teacher and president of the Southern Lehigh
Education Association.
Teachers Offer the Wealthy an Escape from
Poverty
Follow me on Twitter
at @AnthonyCody
Last night in President Obama's State of the Union address, he repeated a
familiar refrain about the importance of teachers. A great teacher can offer an escape from
poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.
But it seems that it is those in power who are
actually using teachers to escape from the realities of poverty these days.
It’s great that efforts are underway for healthier meals but this
is still another underfunded federal mandate:
“The federal government
will give schools an additional 6 cents a lunch to meet the standards. When
fully implemented, the cost of preparing a healthier lunch that meets the new
rules is estimated to rise by about 11 cents, and the cost of preparing a
breakfast is estimated to increase by 28 cents, according the USDA says. The agency estimates that the increased cost of
producing meals that meet the standard will be $3.2 billion over five years……Schools
are required to meet the standards to get federal reimbursements for meals”
Government requires more
fruits, veggies for school lunches
By Nanci
Hellmich , USA January 25,
2012
Students: Get ready for pizza with whole-grain
crust and bigger portions of fruits and vegetables on your school lunch tray.
You're still going to get French fries, but they'll probably be baked and
sprinkled with less salt. Today the
government is releasing new nutrition standards for school meals that spell out
dramatic changes, including slashing the sodium, limiting calories and offering
students a wider variety and larger portions of fruits and vegetables. These
changes will raise the nutrition standards for meals for the first time in more
than 15 years.
USDA Unveils Historic Improvements to Meals
Served in America
New Standards Will Improve the
Health and Wellbeing of 32 Million Kids Nationwide
USDA Press Release FAIRFAX , Va.
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