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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for December
9, 2014:
Upcoming PA Basic Education Funding Commission Public
Hearing
Wednesday, December 10, 2014, 10 AM - 12:00 PM Lancaster; McCaskey East H.S.
1051
Leigh Avenue , Lancaster , PA
* meeting times and locations subject to change
* meeting times and locations subject to change
Parties argue for inclusion
in York City
Several groups say they would be affected by
appointment of a receiver
York Daily Record By
Angie Mason amason@ydr.com @angiemason1 on Twitter 12/08/2014
04:28:00 PM EST
A York County judge will hear evidence this week on whether York City
School District
Schedule of
PA House Session Days Announced for First Half of 2015
tweet from @PAHouseGOP
Schedule of #PAHouse session days announced for first
half of 2015.
Analysts predict Wolf to
compromise on priorities as Pennsylvania
Trib Live By Brad Bumsted State
Capitol Reporter Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014, 10:30 p.m.
HARRISBURG —
Eliminate a multibillion-dollar deficit while increasing funding for public
education. Levy a tax on natural gas drillers. Enact a gift ban in the
aftermath of a scandal.
Those are the priorities analysts and officeholders see
Gov.-elect Tom Wolf pursuing in his first months in office. Wolf's public support — and his influence to
get things done at the Capitol — will be at their peak in the months after he
is sworn into office on Jan. 20, experts said.
“He'll have his most political capital in his first year,” said
Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia
public relations consultant. But Wolf's double-digit victory in November over
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett was tempered by the GOP's increasing its majority,
Ceisler said.
It's also a more conservative Senate and House, observers note.
Wolf “is a realist. He realizes he has to compromise to meet
his goals,” said Jerry Shuster, a professor of political rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh
“Without compromise, we won't see anything done,” said
Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College
Panel: Wolf can be effective,
even without legislature
By Michael Sanserino / Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette December 9, 2014 12:30 AM
Mr. Wolf can make an impact in Harrisburg through executive appointments and
executive actions that do not require a lot of legislative involvement, the
panel said. He can achieve energy and environmental goals by picking candidates
for his cabinet, signing executive orders, imposing regulations and updating
certain state codes.
awmakers and Gov.-elect Tom Wolf will head into next year’s
budget process with lots of new obligations to fulfill and little excess
revenue with which to do it. State-level
contributions to Pennsylvania ’s
two public pension plans will have to climb by an estimated $466 million in the
next budget, after an increase of about $520 million this year. Next year could
be considered the mid-point of a decade-long “pension spike” that sees
retirement costs consuming larger and larger shares of the state’s spending
each year. Budget Secretary Charles
Zogby of Gov. Tom Corbett’s outgoing administration outlined the bad news this
week in an annual mid-year update on the state’s fiscal situation.
Let's see how Gov.-elect Tom
Wolf handles his budget deficit: Charles Zogby
PennLive Op-Ed By Charles Zogby on December 08, 2014 at
8:00 AM, updated December 08, 2014 at 8:15 AM
Charles Zogby is the
outgoing Pennsylvania
No amount of feigned astonishment at a pending $1.9 billion
budget deficit will erase the fact that this situation has existed for years
and will only worsen without needed reforms.
When Gov. Tom Corbett took office, he faced a $4.2 billion deficit —
largely based on the use of one-time federal stimulus money to fund operational
expenses. This was one-time money and
yet it had been plugged into programs such as the education budget as if it
would always be there.
Rather than go back to the people of Pennsylvania through increased taxes in
order to close that gap, the governor made the hard choices the voters
entrusted to him.
Audit resister: The Education
Dept. should turn over the records
The auditor general shouldn't have to sue to make
public records public
Post Gazette By the Editorial Board December 9, 2014 12:00 AM
Gov. Tom Corbett’s Education Department is running true to form
right to the end.
The governor leaves office on Jan. 20, and one of his largest
departments still has its heels dug in, rebuffing legitimate requests for
information, according to state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. Reporters know how he feels. The Post-Gazette
had to file Right to Know requests under state law to find out what one of the
governor’s special assistants, former education secretary Rom Tomalis, was
doing in exchange for a salary of nearly $140,000. Public records provided this
answer: not much.
Fox Chapel Area teacher named
Pennsylvania's 2015 Teacher of the Year
Trib Live By Tawnya Panizzi Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, 11:33 a.m.
Fox Chapel Area High School senior Eli Ziff gazed over a crowd of Pennsylvania's best educators Monday in Hershey and told them his music teacher, Mairi Cooper, won the wrong award.
Fox Chapel Area High School senior Eli Ziff gazed over a crowd of Pennsylvania's best educators Monday in Hershey and told them his music teacher, Mairi Cooper, won the wrong award.
“She is not my Teacher of the Year; she is my teacher of a
lifetime,” said Ziff, an orchestra student who introduced Cooper as his “role
model.” Cooper was selected as the 2015
Teacher of the Year from among 13 finalists during the Pennsylvania Department
of Education's Keystone Awards of Excellence.
Sen. Casey visits Easton
By Laura Olson, Morning Call Washington Bureau December 8, 2014
When U.S. Sen. Bob Casey stopped by an Easton Area
High School
Long-awaited hearings on new
Philly charter school hopefuls begin
WHYY Newsworks BY KEVIN
MCCORRY DECEMBER 8, 2014
For the first time since 2007, the Philadelphia School
District
Philly charter operators
pitch the schools they would open
MARTHA WOODALL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, December 9, 2014,
1:08 AM POSTED: Monday, December 8, 2014, 6:25 PM
For the first time in seven years, the Philadelphia School
Reform Commission opened hearings Monday to consider proposals for new charter
schools. The wish list for the first of
four days of hearings included a community-based school in Germantown for students in grades six through
12, and three K-12 charter schools in neighborhoods across the city, operated
by the nonprofit String Theory Schools, that would combine science and the
arts.
Philly charter school
advocates make their pitch at hearing
SOLOMON LEACH, DAILY
NEWS STAFF WRITER LEACHS@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-854-5903 POSTED: Tuesday,
December 9, 2014, 3:01 AM
FIVE charter-school applicants did their best yesterday to impress
Philadelphia School District
Embattled Cheltenham
superintendent to get "monitor"
KATHY BOCCELLA, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, December 9,
2014, 1:08 AM POSTED: Monday, December 8, 2014, 4:21 PM
Citing serious concerns over Superintendent Natalie Thomas'
"leadership, trustworthiness, and lack of transparency," the Cheltenham school board said Monday it plans to hire a
former school chief to "monitor" her activities. The possibly unprecedented move would be a
serious blow to the tenure of Thomas, who since arriving 18 months ago has
clashed with the teachers' union and administrators over numerous staff changes
and departures. Under a resolution
expected to be adopted at Tuesday night's school board meeting, effective
immediately former Superintendent William Kiefer would be hired as a
"superintendent monitor" to investigate and assess Thomas'
performance and "determine the degree to which board policies are being
met under Dr. Thomas' leadership."
With tax increase, Scranton
Even if the Scranton School Board raises city property taxes to
the maximum allowed, directors will have to find ways to eliminate a projected
$6.5 million budget deficit for 2015. Without a tax increase, the deficit
stands at $8.7 million. With only two
weeks before directors are scheduled to vote on the spending plan, how the
deficit will be eliminated is not yet known. During a special meeting Monday,
directors took what could be one of the first steps in reducing the deficit —
restructuring up to $25 million in debt.
'Mystery parents' test
charters' responses to special ed and ELL students
The notebook By Arianna Prothero for Education Week on Dec
8, 2014 01:40 PM
Fielding phone calls from parents asking about enrollment is
part of everyday business for schools, but for some charter schools, the person
on the other end of the line may only beposing as a parent. Modeled after “mystery shopper” or “secret
shopper” services used in retail, authorizers in the District
of Columbia and Massachusetts
are using a similar tactic to make sure the charter schools they oversee are
not turning away students with more specialized needs, such as children with
disabilities or who are still learning English.
This issue has long dogged the charter sector, which nationally, some
studies show, enrolls a lower percentage of students with disabilities compared
to regular public schools. The discrepancy, some charter critics say, comes
from the publicly funded but independently run schools turning away such
students in order to improve test scores.
“We started this because there was a huge perception among the public
that charters counseled out students with disabilities,” said Naomi R. DeVeaux,
the deputy director for the District of
Columbia’s public charter school board. “We wanted to know if this
was true.”
http://thenotebook.org/blog/148016/mystery-parents-test-charters-enrollment-spec-ed-and-ell-students
Here's a Plan to Turn Around U.S.
Forbes by Randall Lane 12/01/2014
@ 10:24AM
This story appears in the December 15, 2014 issue of Forbes.
Break down any political discussion of education policy and
you’ll get the kind of rhetoric typical of a wealth manager. The need to invest
in our kids. The untapped resource of our young minds. Children as our greatest
asset. There’s a reason, of course. When
you look at massive public spending areas, defense keeps us safe and health
care keeps us alive, but it’s education alone that has the promise of a numeric
return on a collective investment. What’s missing from all the blathering,
however, are actual numbers. As in, exactly what should we be investing in? And
if we did, how much specifically would society gain from it?
E-Sports at College, With
Stars and Scholarships
New York Times By NICK WINGFIELD DEC.
8, 2014
Loc Tran is a big man on campus at San
Jose State University in Northern
California .
“A lot of people stop me when I’m walking,” said Mr. Tran, a
19-year-old sophomore, who speaks in quick and confident bursts. “They
congratulate me.” But Mr. Tran is not a
star on the football team, or a leader in student government. He is a top
player on the school’s competitive video game team, helping San Jose State
claw its way to victory in June over California
State University ,
Fullerton , in a
tournament watched online by nearly 90,000 people. When the new school year
started this fall, classmates’ heads swiveled toward him when professors said
his name during roll call.
27 Books Parents Should Read
To Their Kids Before They Grow Up
Get ready to read down memory lane.
By Candace Lowry BuzzFeed Staff posted on Aug. 29, 2014, at 1:58
p.m.
Panel: Philly Charter
Schools: Who’s Minding The Store?
How Can We Achieve Effective Academic, Financial and
Governance Accountability?
Tues. Dec 9, 7:00PM - 9:00PM
1501 ARCH STREET PHILADELPHIA
Panelists:
·
Commissioner Farah Jimenez, School Reform
Commission, Chair of the SRC’s Charter Committee
·
Jurate Krokys, Regional Council Co-Chair of
Schools That Can Philadelphia, founding Principal of Independence Charter
School
·
Kyle Serette, Center for Popular Democracy &
author of “Fraud and Financial Mismanagement in PA’s Charter Schools”
·
Barbara Dowdall, retired English Department Head
at A. Philip Randolph Career and Technical
School and former ADA board member
Moderated by: Solomon Leach, Philadelphia Daily News, Education Reporter
Sponsored by: Americans for Democratic Action
Co-sponsors: ACTION United, Education Voters PA, PCCY
Info and registration: http://www.pccy.org/event/philly-charter-schools-whos-minding-store/
Discipline, Disabilities,
School to Prison, Disproportionality
Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia
Saturday, December 13, 2014 from 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM
United Way Building 1709 Benjamin Franklin Parkway,
Philadelphia, 19103
Presenters include Sonja Kerr; Howard Jordan, ACLU; Dr.
Karolyn Tyson; Michael Raffaele, Frankel & Kershenbaum, LLC
This session is designed to assist participants to
understand the specifics of the federal IDEA disciplinary protections, 20
U.S.C. §1415(k) as they apply to children with disabilities. Topics will
include functional behavioral assessment, development of positive behavioral
support programs for children with disabilities, manifestation reviews and
avoiding juvenile court involvement.
Questions? Email cbenton@pilcop.org or call
267.546.1317.
Info and Registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/discipline-disabilities-school-to-prison-disproportionality-tickets-12930883621
January 23rd–25th, 2015 at The Science Leadership
Academy , Philadelphia
EduCon is both a conversation and a conference.
It is an innovation conference where we can come together, both
in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will
be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the
big dreams.
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