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policymakers – school directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and
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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for June
25, 2014:
PSERS:"And the increases
just keep coming: Lancaster
"The biggest change is in education funding, which
receives less than one third of the non-pension related increase proposed by
Governor Corbett in February:
·
$251 million in proposed new education funding through the
Ready to Learn Block grant and Hybrid learning (computer/classroom education)
was eliminated.
·
$70 million was added to the basic education line and $10
million of additional funding for school construction (PlanCon) was also added.
Total basic education is proposed at $5.596 billion.
·
$20 million in new special education funding was preserved,
bringing that appropriation to $1.047 billion.
·
The Governor’s proposed $10 million increase to Pre-K Counts
is reduced to $8.7 million, a $1.3 million reduction.
·
Head Start Supplemental Assistance is funded as earlier
proposed.
·
Family literacy programs get a modest increase from the
Governor’s budget and Career and Technical Education Equipment Grants are
restored for $3 million."
House Budget Update 1
Posted by PA Budget and Policy Center
The General Assembly finally began work on the budget this
week. The budget bill, HB 2328 (PN 3836) came out of the appropriations
committee on Tuesday, and is positioned for a vote on the floor. An amendment
to HB 2188 that would suspend most state tax credit programs for two years
passed the House, but just barely, on Monday night. With these actions we get a better sense of
the spending plan and the strategy. Still there is a great deal that we don’t
know, as House leaders didn’t tip their hand on the revenue plan that is
necessary to support the budget at this reduced spending level. We provide
updates as more information comes in, on our website, and on Facebook and
Twitter.
Here’s what we do know:
Adolph, GOP back
no-tax-hike $29B budget plan in House panel vote
Delco Times By PETER
JACKSON, Associated Press POSTED: 06/24/14, 3:21 PM EDT
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans on the Pennsylvania House
Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a spending blueprint that would
hold the line on taxes, but would scale back increases for education and human
services proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett while relying heavily on the unlikely
sell-off of the state’s wine and liquor operations. The next stop for the $29.1 billion budget
plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 is the floor of the
Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House of Representatives, even though
changes loom in the Senate. The 21-14
party-line vote culminated more than two hours of partisan debate over the
proposal, which relies partly on a plan to privatize the state liquor stores
whose passage is far from assured, in the final week of a tumultuous fiscal
year.
"The budget proposal was approved by the House
Appropriations Committee earlier today. The
proposal includes a $323 million increase to K-12 education, including an
additional $70 million more for basic education and another $20 million for
special education. It also allocates an extra $8.7 to the Pre-K
Counts program, which will serve another 1,453 children."
Adolph unveils amended
GOP budget proposal
Keystone Kopp Blog by John Kopp June 24, 2014
State Rep. William Adolph, the chair of the House
Appropriations Committee, unveiled an amended budget proposal today in Harrisburg . The $29.1 billion spending plan, proposed as
an amendment to House Bill 2328, includes a 1.9 percent spending increase from
last year’s budget. It assumes 3.2 percent revenue growth – the same growth as
projected by the Independent Fiscal Office, said Adolph, R-165, of Springfield .
The budget will be balanced using a “series of transfers,
lapses and other revenue options,” Adolph said when he unveiled the plan.
"Public schools would see an extra $100 million,
including $70 million for instruction and operations, $20 million for special
education and $10 million for school construction projects. But the new,
$340 million "Ready to Learn" block grant program proposed by Corbett
in his February budget plan was jettisoned."
By on
June 24, 2014 at 10:27 PM, updated June 25, 2014 at 2:01 AM
The House Republican
majority has laid its cards on the table in Pennsylvania's budget
debate.
And their opening bid
is a $29.1 billion budget that pares some of the proposed spending boost for
public schools proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett in favor of keeping the state on
track with its scheduled pension system payments. For a line-by-line summary of the House
Republican's plan, click
here. It is a starting point,
Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Adolph, R-Delaware County
The Tribune-Review By The Associated Press Published: Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 7:39 p.m.
HARRISBURG — Republicans on the Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a spending blueprint that would hold the line on taxes but would scale back increases for education and human services proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett while relying heavily on the unlikely sell-off of the state's wine and liquor operations. The next stop for the $29.1 billion budget plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 is the floor of the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives. The 21-14 party-line vote culminated more than two hours of partisan debate over the proposal — which relies partly on a plan to privatize the state liquor stores whose passage is far from assured — in the final week of a tumultuous fiscal year.
HARRISBURG — Republicans on the Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a spending blueprint that would hold the line on taxes but would scale back increases for education and human services proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett while relying heavily on the unlikely sell-off of the state's wine and liquor operations. The next stop for the $29.1 billion budget plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 is the floor of the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives. The 21-14 party-line vote culminated more than two hours of partisan debate over the proposal — which relies partly on a plan to privatize the state liquor stores whose passage is far from assured — in the final week of a tumultuous fiscal year.
"So, it was with a characteristic grin that
Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Adolph said Tuesday that the proposal
does not reflect an agreement between the House and Senate. "The Senate can always amend this bill
if they have the revenue sources other than this," he said. Some are expecting heavy revisions from the
Senate – such as a tax on the extraction of natural gas or other levies."
WHYY Newsworks BY MARY
WILSON JUNE 24, 2014
With about a week left before Pennsylvania 's budget deadline, House
lawmakers have advanced an actual spending plan. A key panel has voted to send a proposal to
the full chamber, but it's likely to undergo some big changes before heading to
the governor. One of the big
eyebrow-raisers in the proposed $29.1 billion spending plan is an assumption
that the state will start making millions of dollars by phasing out its state
liquor stores.
Debate continues as Pa.
AMY WORDEN, INQUIRER
HARRISBURG
BUREAU LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 1:08 AM
POSTED: Monday, June 23, 2014, 6:58 PM
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20140624_Debate_continues_as_Pa__budget_deadline_nears.html#ztufStrCp2sAmqSr.99
PSERS:"And the increases just keep
coming: Lancaster
Pension costs skyrocket in
school districts
WITF Written by Ben
Allen, General Assignment Reporter | Jun 24, 2014 4:10 AM
Whether the district is Lampeter Strasburg or Lancaster or York
Suburban, required contributions to the Public School Employees' Retirement System
have skyrocketed, and are still climbing.
In 2009-2010, Camp Hill in Cumberland County put about $183,043
into what's known as PSERS. In the
fiscal year ending this month, it's up to $748,049, an increase of about 300
percent.
High Quality Pre-K: A Wise Investment
World Class Philadelphia
June 23, 2014
Contributing writer John
Miller explores why both local and national business leaders support investing
in high-quality early learning. This is the final installment in a
two-part series focused on early childhood education (for part one, click here).
As the Roaring Twenties careened to a close, a small group of Philadelphia businessmen
launched the Industrial and Power Securities Company, a mutual fund
with a conservative investment philosophy. It may have been the worst possible
moment in history to launch an investment vehicle; just a few months later, the
stock market would crash, plunging America into the Great Depression. But, sometimes being bold is what’s needed to
survive impending ruin. The concept behind the new fund turned out to be a
smart philosophy at a trying time.
That small fund grew and grew, eventually becoming the
international investment giant Vanguard. Today, Vanguard is a vital driver of
the regional economy – a global company headquartered in Valley
Forge , with more than 14,000 employees around the world, 10,000 of
them in Greater Philadelphia.
"These are not just budget cuts. This
is not about belt-tightening. The unjust funding of Philadelphia
On brink of further collapse,
Philadelphia
MSNBC By 06/20/14
02:05 PM—UPDATED 06/20/14
04:48 PM
The beleaguered Philadelphia School District
By Vince Sullivan, Delaware County Daily
Chester Upland School
District Receiver speaks during Tuesday’s press conference inside the
Chester-Upland School District Administration building. (Times staff / ERIC
HARTLINE)
"The
framers of Pennsylvania Lancaster
County
Coming this week: A special
report on Columbia
Lancaster Online By JEFF HAWKES | Staff
Writer Posted: Tuesday, June 24, 2014 12:30 pm |Updated: 12:46
pm, Tue Jun 24, 2014.
By Margie Peterson, Special to The Morning Call June 25, 2014
The assessed value of Parkland School District Parkland a leg up as it faces the same
large cost increases other area districts face, such as state-mandated
contributions for staff pensions and health care coverage. "We had an extremely nice increase in
our assessed valuation in the last year," Director of Business
Administration John Vignone told the school board Tuesday. That higher assessed
valuation means that each mill brings in more tax dollars than last year.
By on
June 24, 2014 at 9:26 PM, updated June 24, 2014 at 9:27 PM
Saucon
Valley School District taxpayers
won't see a change in their school property tax bills for the sixth year in a
row. The school
board unanimously approved the $41.5 million spending plan, which does
not increase taxes. The district plans to use about $87,000 from its $13
million savings account to balance the budget. Earlier this spring, several school board
members acknowledged they were putting off inevitable tax increases down the
line after reviewing
a bleak five-year financial projection.
By on
June 24, 2014 at 8:58 PM
Calling an environmental
science textbook's global warming chapter propaganda,Saucon
Valley School Director Bryan
Eichfeld pushed the board
tonight to supplement the book with "true science." "Your science," Director Sandra
Miller replied. Eichfeld's
motion failed to garner any support tonight from his fellow directors, who
objected to interfering in curriculum decisions. Eichfeld broached the topic tonight because
the board was voting to approve an honors environmental science book
titled "Environmental Science," which is published by Houghton,
Mifflin, Harcourt. The board approved the book with only Eichfeld objecting.
Pediatric group promotes
reading aloud to children
By Campbell North / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
June 24, 2014 11:19 PM
Although it has been standard for years in some families for
parents to read aloud to their children from birth, not all families do it, so
the American Academy of Pediatrics for the first time Tuesday recommended early
literacy education. “The importance and
value of reading is something we have known for a long time,” said Diego
Chaves-Gnecco, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
On average, 48 percent of parents nationwide reported reading
to their children every day, according to the 2011-12 National Survey of
Children’s Health. Among families living below the poverty line, only 34
percent read to their children daily. Higher-income families, who earned at
least 400 percent of the federal poverty threshold, did somewhat better: Sixty
percent read daily to their youngsters.
Obama alums join anti
teachers union case
Politico Pro By STEPHANIE SIMON |
6/24/14 1:32 PM EDT Updated: 6/24/14 8:14 PM EDT
Teachers unions are girding for a tough fight to defend tenure
laws against a coming blitz of lawsuits — and an all-out public relations
campaign led by former aides to President Barack Obama. The Incite Agency,
founded by former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama
campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, will lead a national public relations drive to
support a series of lawsuits aimed at challenging tenure, seniority and other
job protections that teachers unions have defended ferociously. LaBolt and
another former Obama aide, Jon Jones — the first digital strategist of the 2008
campaign — will take the lead in the public relations initiative. The involvement of such high-profile Obama
alumni highlights the sharp schism within the Democratic Party over
education reform.
School boards call for more
sensible school nutrition rules
NSBA School Board News Today by Joetta Sack-Min|June 24th, 2014
NSBA is calling on Congress and USDA to allow schools
flexibility to meet new mandates
As school districts are bearing higher costs and more rigid
requirements for school meals, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is calling on
Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow schools
flexibility to meet new mandates.
New regulations for the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act that take
effect July 1, 2014 will further restrict school districts’ abilities to offer
a variety of palatable foods for their students. In a press teleconference
yesterday, NSBA Executive Director Thomas J. Gentzel noted that the layers of
new federal regulations were hampering the goals of the federal school
nutrition programs.
http://schoolboardnews.nsba.org/2014/06/school-boards-call-for-more-sensible-school-nutrition-rules/
Weapons of Mass Instruction
Wag
the Dog Blog Posted on June 24, 2014
One of the underlying
premises of the Common Core is that students who cannot independently read and
write on an advanced college level are destined to be unsuccessful in
life. Do proponents of CCSS really
believe that the 15 to 20% (NICHD) of our population with language-based
disabilities are doomed to failure in life?
Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Erin
Brockovich, Pablo Picasso, Magic Johnson, Anderson Cooper, Albert Einstein,
John Lennon, Steve Jobs and other dyslexics were fortunate CCSS wasn’t around
when they were in school as they might still be serving time in AIS class
trying to pass a tier two vocabulary word quiz rather than testing a new
theory, creating a new work of art, or discovering new principles that actually
generated brand new vocabulary words.
These individuals and
many others like them did not allow limited reading and literacy skills
or a low score on a standardized test to define them and curtail their goals
and achievements in life.
Join the Notebook!
Become a Member!
The Notebook invites all of our readers
to join
us now, as members by signing up on our "Donate"
page. Our reporting depends on the continued generous support and
contributions from our growing Notebook membership. In
2013, we reached more than 500 memberships! Thanks to all of our
supporters. Don't forget to renew or join for this calendar year. Help us
reach 600+ members in 2014! We're
excited about this program as a way to recognize your support, give you some
extra perks, and support our work and sustainability. Learn more about our work here.
Membership starts at $40 for the 2014 calendar year. Learn
more about the membership
levels here. You can also give the gift of Notebook membership.
Come to Harrisburg to Speak
Up for Public Education Monday, June 30
Education Voters PA
Governor Corbett’s “election-year” budget is falling apart.
Revenue projections are down and Corbett and state legislators are looking to
make more than $1.2 billion in cuts to his proposed 2014-2015
budget. Lobbyists will be swarming the
Capitol in the month of June and we need to be there, too. Join Pennsylvanians from throughout the
commonwealth as we send a loud and clear message that after three years of
balancing the state budget on the backs of Pennsylvania’s public school
children, it is time for our state government to do what is right and pass a
fair budget that will provide students with the opportunities they need to meet
state standards and be successful after they graduate.
Details: http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6041/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=7059
PA Basic Ed. Funding
Campaign: Building capacity to advocate for adequate, equitable school funding
PSBA website 6/10/2014
The Pennsylvania Basic Education Funding Campaign seeks up to
ten (10) regional "circuit riders" statewide to work with and support
school system leaders to build capacity and advocate for an adequate and
equitable school funding system.
Regional Circuit Riders Contract Employment Announcement
The Pennsylvania Basic Education Funding Campaign seeks up to
ten (10) regional "circuit riders" statewide to work with and support
school system leaders to build capacity and advocate for an adequate and
equitable school funding system. Circuit riders will support school system
leaders by providing education and training about past and current school
funding systems, principles and models of good school funding systems and
effective advocacy strategies using information and materials provided by the
Campaign. School system leaders include school directors, Intermediate Unit
executive directors, district superintendents, business managers and other key school
district leaders. Building capacity
among Pennsylvania school system leaders to advocate for an adequate and
equitable school funding system is one component of a broader multi-year effort
that involves more than 25 organizations across Pennsylvania. This component is
a collaborative effort of the PA Association of School Business Officials
(PASBO), PA Association of School Administrators (PASA), PA School Boards
Association (PSBA), PA Association of Rural and Small Schools (PARSS) and PA
Association of Intermediate Units (PAIU). PASBO serves as the fiscal agent for
the collaborative.
- See more at: http://www.psba.org/news-publications/headlines/details.asp?id=7943#sthash.rYZzUteD.dpuf
EPLC Education Issues
Workshop for Legislative Candidates, Campaign Staff, and Interested Voters -
Harrisburg July 31
Register Now! EPLC will again be hosting
an Education Issues Workshop for Legislative Candidates, Campaign Staff,
and Interested Voters. This nonpartisan, one-day program will take place
on Thursday, July 31 in Harrisburg. Space is limited. Click here to learn more about workshop and
to register.
PSBA opens nominations for
the Timothy M. Allwein Advocacy Award
The nomination process is now open for the Timothy M. Allwein Advocacy Award. This award may be presented annually to the individual school director or entire school board to recognize outstanding leadership in legislative advocacy efforts on behalf of public education and students that are consistent with the positions in PSBA’s Legislative Platform. Applications will be accepted until July 16, 2014. The July 16 date was picked in honor of Timothy M. Allwein's birthday. The award will be presented during the PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference in October. More details and application are available on PSBA's website.
The nomination process is now open for the Timothy M. Allwein Advocacy Award. This award may be presented annually to the individual school director or entire school board to recognize outstanding leadership in legislative advocacy efforts on behalf of public education and students that are consistent with the positions in PSBA’s Legislative Platform. Applications will be accepted until July 16, 2014. The July 16 date was picked in honor of Timothy M. Allwein's birthday. The award will be presented during the PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference in October. More details and application are available on PSBA's website.
Education
Policy and Leadership Center
Click
here to read more about EPLC’s Education Policy Fellowship Program, including:
2014-15 Schedule 2014-15 Application Past Speakers Program Alumni And More
Information
2014 PA Gubernatorial Candidate Plans for Education
and Arts/Culture in PA
Education Policy and Leadership Center
Below is an alphabetical list of the 2014
Gubernatorial Candidates and links to information about their plans, if
elected, for education and arts/culture in Pennsylvania. This list will be updated, as more
information becomes available.
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