Daily postings from the Keystone State
Education Coalition now reach more than 3250 Pennsylvania education
policymakers – school directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and
congressional staffers, Governor's staff, current/former PA Secretaries of
Education, PTO/PTA officers, parent advocates, teacher leaders, education
professors, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 regulatory agencies,
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PA Ed Policy Roundup for July
7, 2014:
PA lawmakers miss opportunity
to address school funding crisis
“We cannot continue to rely, year after
year, on political horse-trading and last-minute budgeting contortions that,
ultimately, leave our schools lacking basic resources and leave our communities
struggling to make up the difference with local revenues,” said Brownstein.
“Our public schools require, and deserve, a thorough and efficient system — an
actual system — of education funding as mandated by our state’s constitution"
ELC Statement on State
Budget: Lawmakers miss opportunity to address school funding crisis
The current state budget proposal approved by the General
Assembly and awaiting Governor Corbett’s signature does little to address Pennsylvania ’s systemic
public education funding crisis.
“This budget was a missed opportunity for the legislature and a
loss for public school students,” said Rhonda Brownstein, Executive Director of
the Education Law Center
“I think pensions are the
single largest driver of property tax increases,” Himes said. “Our (districts'
pension) costs will go up at least $250 million next year (2014-15), possibly
as high as $300 million.”
Districts look for pension solution
Districts look for pension solution
TribLive By Tom
Yerace Sunday, July 6, 2014, 12:06 a.m.
Last year at this time, nine of the Alle-Kiski Valley
It stands for Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System,
the umbrella under which all school employees are covered by pensions. But the umbrella has some serious financial
holes, 36.2 percent of it, in fact. That's how much state officials say it is
underfunded. Patching those holes and getting it back to 100 percent is the
task faced mainly by the school districts. It is something they are required to
do by law, and it could result in more tax increases over the next 10 years.
"What this budget does is it fails to
deal with what is the No. 1 cost-driver that we have that's undermining our
budget, that is undermining local school district budgets and, frankly, is
undermining household budgets," Zogby said. "It's very difficult to
get the budget under control and on a sustainable basis if you continue to
ignore the pension crisis."
Is Tom Corbett going to sign
the Pennsylvania
By The Associated
Press on July 05, 2014 at 12:17 PM, updated July 06, 2014 at
12:29 AM
With lawmakers' rocky spring session bleeding deeper into
summer, nobody knows what Gov. Tom Corbett will do with the
no-new-taxes budget plan sitting on his desk.
He is being asked by his fellow Republicans to sign the bill
they wrote and passed. Declare victory, they say. Your top-priority legislation
to curb public pension benefits and costs can pass in the fall, they say.
PA braces for credit
downgrade after budget & pensions soufflé
WITF State House Sound Bites Written by Mary
Wilson, Capitol Bureau Chief Jul 4, 2014
While the state budget still awaits the governor's signature,
state lawmakers have largely wrapped up their work without addressing the major
problems that stand to threaten the commonwealth's borrowing capability. This spring, the three big credit rating
agencies gave Pennsylvania
fair warning to reduce its $50-billion-and-growing pension debt, rein in
long-term pension costs, and stop using one-time moves to balance your budget. But all those problems remain, even after the
frenzy of legislative activity that marks every June at the state Capitol.
By Charles Thompson |
cthompson@pennlive.com on July 06, 2014 at 8:00 AM
State revenue collections in June did perk up a little bit,
exceeding monthly projections for the first time since November. But it wasn't nearly enough to prevent Pennsylvania from
experiencing its third year-over-year revenue decline in the past six in the
just-completed 2013-14 fiscal year, which closed June 30.
"Ron Cowell, president of the
Education Policy and Leadership Center, said while it's encouraging to see the
increase in special education funding after six years of flat funding, it's
important to note that special education costs to districts have risen more
than $400 million during that time."
Proposed budget has few increases for education in Pennsylvania
Proposed budget has few increases for education in Pennsylvania
By Mary Niederberger and Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette July 5, 2014 9:21 PM
Modest increases in special education and block grant funding
in the state budget that the Legislature approved will not be enough to
overcome the challenge of flat funding in the $5.526 billion basic education
subsidy for school districts, according to school officials.
"Anything more than you anticipate is good, but it's still
basically flat-funded. It really doesn't make a big impact on your entire
budget," said Dennis Cmar, business manager of the West Mifflin Area
School District
The $29 billion budget passed by the state General Assembly
delivers some good news and some bad news to area schools. But mostly it delivers the same uncertainty
that always comes from a budget built by politicians rolling the dice in back
rooms.
The budget process in Pennsylvania
is misguided at its very core, creating hardship for local schools which gets
passed on as hardship to local taxpayers. The lack of a fair funding formula in
Pennsylvania
means that schools cannot predict the state support that will be coming their
way. The lack of a formula also means that school funding is based on the whims
of legislators instead of on the basic educational needs of students. A system based on a formula provides
stability and predictability in school funding. Instead, the current system
forces school districts to guess at the level of funding they will get from the
state. The local guessing game has to be resolved by mid-June for a fiscal year
that starts July 1. But the state, which plays by its own rules, typically
waits until the last few days of the fiscal year to craft its budget. Schools
are in the dark as to how much they’re getting, thus finalizing budgets with
guesstimates on the state share.
The winners and losers
in Pa.
ANGELA COULOUMBIS AND AMY WORDEN, INQUIRER HARRISBURG
BUREAU LAST UPDATED: Sunday, July 6, 2014, 1:09 AM
"In fairness, we don't know exactly
what the governor means by putting the students of Philadelphia school
district of Philadelphia
To make up for the loss of state aid, the
district has had to shed 5,000 jobs, close more than two dozen schools,
eliminate school libraries, cut back on counselors and in-school staff and
slash spending from the central office down to the smallest elementary-school
classroom. Is that what Corbett means by putting students first?"
DN Editorial: Smoke and
Mirrors
Philly Daily News
Editorial POSTED: Monday, July 7,
2014, 3:01 AM
AFTER THE Legislature passed a bill last week giving
Philadelphia the right to impose a $2-a-pack cigarette tax to raise money for
the city's schools, Gov. Corbett took a moment to congratulate himself. "We have worked for over a year, above
the partisan politics, to put the students of Philadelphia first," Corbett told
reporters.
We don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
In fairness, we don't know exactly what the governor means by
putting the students of Philadelphia
first. We do know they were first in line when it came to reductions in state
aid to public education. In the last
year of the Rendell administration, the school district of Philadelphia
To make up for the loss
of state aid, the district has had to shed 5,000 jobs, close more than two
dozen schools, eliminate school libraries, cut back on counselors and in-school
staff and slash spending from the central office down to the smallest
elementary-school classroom. Is that what Corbett means by putting students
first?
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20140707_DN_Editorial__DN_Editorial_.html#RyBVFxY7RLxPv8I5.99
Inquirer
Editorial: Passes for progress
POSTED: Sunday, July 6, 2014, 1:09 AM
During another great education
debate, George W. Bush blamed the "soft bigotry of low expectations"
for the underachievement of many of the nation's students. Given the low
expectations with which Pennsylvanians are forced to regard their government,
lawmakers' vote last week to fund Philadelphia
schools with a new cigarette tax, along with a tentative move toward pension
reform, qualifies as a victory.
Taking place two days into the
new fiscal year with no budget in place, the breakthrough didn't come at the
11th hour so much as the 59th. The state House approved a city-only, $2-a-pack
cigarette tax advocated by local officials that is expected to produce about
$80 million a year for schools. Meanwhile, thanks to a compromise among
Republicans, legislation to move new public employees toward 401(k)-style
retirement benefits was positioned for a vote in the fall.
These measures address a pair of
serious policy problems - unsustainable pensions and underfunded schools - as
far as they go, which is not far enough. The tobacco tax would cover only half
of the Philadelphia
School District
Schools wait on millions in
Medicaid funding from state
Earlier this year, Sherry Zubeck vowed to visit all 22 school districts
in Lancaster and Lebanon counties. She was on a
crusade. Zubeck, early childhood and
special education services director for Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13,
wanted to talk about kids with disabilities — students and preschoolers who
need physical or speech therapy or similar services. The services are
expensive; often a family’s insurance company picks up the tab, but if the
family is eligible for Medical Assistance — Medicaid — government money pays
the bill.
The problem, Zubeck told school officials, is that there’s been
a lot less money to go around.
Due to new federal regulations and snafus at the state level,
as much as $28 million is owed to school districts, private and charter schools
and intermediate units. Some local school districts are out six-figure sums;
the IU itself is out nearly $1 million over the past few years.
Not your typical valedictorian speech
YouTube video Published on Jul 2, 2014 runtime 5:32
Alexander Yurcaba Valedictorian Speech at Temple
University , Liacouras Center
Some schools slow in
making superintendent performance standards public
BEN FINLEY AND KATHY BOCCELLA, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS LAST UPDATED: Sunday, July 6, 2014,
1:09 AM
When David Weitzel became the Central Bucks
School District
The same is true in Chester Upland, Interboro, Garnet Valley ,
and Radnor, all Delaware County school districts with new superintendents in
the last 18 months, as well as in Morrisville in Bucks and Coatesville in Chester County
The law covers new assistant superintendents as well. And in Philadelphia , performance
goals and reviews for people recently hired in those positions are missing from
the district's website.
Officials would
negotiate with outside operators for certain services
York Daily Record By
Angie Mason amason@ydr.com @angiemason1 on Twitter UPDATED: 07/06/2014 06:58:23 AM EDT0
COMMENTS
If the York City
School District
Local school districts
pay charter schools for each district student that attends. The high number of
students who have left York City's district schools for charter schools in
recent years, along with the state formula for paying those schools, has often
been cited as one of the causes of the district's financial problems. But district officials say that by
negotiating with charter operators on items like building rent and other
services, they'll be able to pay charter operators to run district schools
based on the money the district has available.
Delco TImes
POSTED: 07/06/14, 10:42 PM EDT |
CHESTER — A special
meeting of the Chester Upland School District Receiver with the public is
scheduled for Monday evening to approve the district’s 2014-2015 fiscal year
budget, according to a district spokesperson.
The meeting will convene at 6 p.m. in the district administration
building and Receiver Joe Watkins is expected to approve a final budget for the
fiscal year, which began on June 30. The preliminary budget approved by Watkins
in May called for $123 million in spending, necessitating a 3.4 percent tax
increase in the three municipalities served by the Chester Upland
School District
Moon schools eager to talk
merger with Cornell
By Mary Niederberger / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette July 6, 2014 9:19 PM
When the Moon Area School board voted recently to reach out to its much
smaller neighbor, the Cornell
School District
A former Easton Area High School student is interning this summer for a U.S. senator
with Valley connections. Nina Boscia is
an intern for U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey,
R-Pennsylvania. Toomey lives in Upper Milford Township
in Lehigh County
and Boscia is from Forks
Township. The rising senior at the Schreyer Honors
College at Penn State University
"Parents also are increasingly aware
of what has happened in Detroit and New Orleans and even parts of Washington
D.C.: Once the local public schools are gone, there is no way to get them
back. Consequently, the children who do not conform to the "no
excuses" charter models end up with no
place to turn."
Education Weel Living in
Dialogue Blog By on July 5, 2014 9:27 PM Guest
post by Julia Sass Rubin.
Last week, while many of us were busy making plans for the
summer, something much more sinister was happening in the halls of the State
Capital in Trenton ,
N. J..
At 11 p.m., on Tuesday, June 24th, legislation was discussed
and voted on by the New Jersey Senate and Assembly Budget Committees, without
all the legislators understanding what they were approving. "We
didn't have the bills in advance," complained one of the Senators, "I didn't
know what the hell the bills were." This legislation was then quickly
pushed through the full New Jersey Senate and Assembly. The legislation revised a 2012 law known as Urban Hope
in order to enable two charter chains - Mastery and Uncommon Schools - to claim
a large share of Camden's public education dollars. The charters' efforts
had been imperiled by the grassroots group Save Our Schools NJ, which had sent
a series of letters in May to New Jersey Education
Commissioner David Hespe. The letters detailed how the two charter chains
and the Camden state-appointed Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard were violating
various aspects of the Urban Hope law in their efforts to open new renaissance
charter schools in Camden next fall. The violations included using
temporary facilities instead of building new schools; failing to provide key
information required by the application; and not giving Camden residents the opportunity to review
and comment on their applications.
A watershed moment for
technology in education
It is more than likely that many of you don’t know much, if
anything, about the “E-Rate,” which is formally the Schools and Libraries
Program of the Universal Service Fund administered under the auspices of
the Federal Communications Commission. The E-Rate offers discounts
for schools and libraries to get Internet access and telecommunications. This
week, the FCC will vote on modernizing the E-Rate in a move that would first
redirect a few billion dollars in E-Rate funds to the benefit of millions of
students this year alone. In this post, Julius Genachowski and Jim Coulter
explain why they think the FCC should approve the modernization. Genachowski is
managing director of The Carlyle Group and former chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission. Jim Coulter is a commissioner of the bi-partisan
Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission, and co-founder and
chief executive officer of TPG Holdings.
"The “boomerang kids” are not poorly educated, but
miseducated. They were prepared to look for jobs, but not to create jobs. They
were prepared to solve problems, but not to identify problems or ask questions.
They were prepared to follow instructions, but machines can follow instructions
more precisely and more important, with less cost."
College Ready vs. Out-of-Basement
Ready: Shifting the Education Paradigm
Yong Zhao's Blog 2 JULY 2014 3,398 5 COMMENTS
Last year when my son graduated from college, I asked the
question “can you stay out of my basement?” as I believe an important outcome
of education is the ability to live out of one’s parent’s basement, that is,
the ability to be an independent and contributing member of a society.
The Common Core and most education reforms around the world
define the outcome of schooling as readiness for college and career readiness.
But as recent statistics suggest, college-readiness, even
college-graduation-readiness, does not lead to out-basement-readiness. Over 50% of recent college graduates in the US are unemployed
or underemployed. The numbers are not much better in other parts of the
world.
They are the “boomerang kids,” writes a New York Times magazine article last week. These were
good students. They were ready for college. They paid for college (many with
borrowed money). They completed all college requirements. They did not drop
out. And they graduated from college. But they are back in their parents’
basement for there is no career for them, ready or not.
Arne Duncan Unveils 50-State
Teacher-Equity Strategy
Education Week Politics
K-12 Blog By on July
7, 2014 6:00 AM
The U.S. Department of Education Monday detailed its
long-awaited "50-state"
strategy for putting some
teeth into a requirement of the 12-year-old No Child Left Behind Act that
has gone largely unenforced up until now: ensuring that poor and minority
students get access to as many great teachers as their more advantaged
peers. States will be required to
submit new plans to address teacher distribution by April of 2015, or just a
few months before the department likely will begin to consider states' requests
to renew their waivers from the NCLB law.
This isn't the first time that the feds have asked states to
outline their plans on teacher distribution, but the results so far haven't exactly
been a stunning success.
Pre-K for PA has supporters
all over the greater Philadelphia
We need your help -- join an upcoming phone bank. Join
a fun gathering of like minds in Philadelphia
and Conshohocken on Wednesday evenings throughout the summer. We are
calling fellow Pre-K for PA supporters to build local volunteer teams.
Call a Pre-K Friend in Philly:
UnitedWay Building 1709 Ben Franklin Parkway
Wed July 9, 5-7 PM
Wed July 30, 5-7 PM
United
Wed July 9, 5-7 PM
Wed July 30, 5-7 PM
Call a Pre-K Friend in Mont Co:
Anne's House242 Barren
Hill Road
Wed July 16, 5-7pm
Wed July 30, 5-7pm
Anne's House
Wed July 16, 5-7pm
Wed July 30, 5-7pm
RSVP: http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/51084/c/10476/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=9390
EPLC Education Issues
Workshop for Legislative Candidates, Campaign Staff, and Interested Voters - Harrisburg
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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