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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for July 28, 2015:
51 yrs after LBJ declared "war on poverty",
51% of public school students live in poverty
Wednesday, July 29 is Call to Action
for Public Education Day
Interested in letting our elected leadership know your thoughts on
education funding, a severance tax, property taxes and the budget?
Governor Tom Wolf, (717) 787-2500
Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Turzai, (717) 772-9943
House Majority Leader Rep. Dave Reed, (717) 705-7173
Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Joe Scarnati, (717) 787-7084
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jake Corman, (717) 787-1377
House Majority Leader Rep. Dave Reed, (717) 705-7173
Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Joe Scarnati, (717) 787-7084
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jake Corman, (717) 787-1377
"No talks are scheduled
this week and several key players are expected to be on vacation next week."
Progress slows in Pa.
ANGELA COULOUMBIS AND JESSICA PARKS, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, July 28,
2015, 1:07 AM
Dashing hopes of a
thaw in the frozen state budget talks, Pennsylvania's House speaker said Monday
that he would not support taxes "of any kind" without a concession on
liquor privatization, and raised the prospect of overriding Gov. Wolf's veto of
a Republican spending plan. Rep. Mike
Turzai (R., Allegheny) assailed the Democratic governor's proposal to tax
natural gas drilling, and insisted Wolf consider his party's plan to raise
money by privatizing the state-run wine and liquor stores, which the governor
has opposed. "The governor has to
be more realistic: He has to understand the people of Pennsylvania are not for his massive tax
increase," Turzai said.
His comments came
after two negotiating sessions last week that suggested progress on a budget,
which was supposed to be passed by July 1. Turzai said there had been "constructive
dialogue" but only "around the edges."
As budget standstill
continues, Pa.
BY MARY WILSON JULY 27, 2015
The top House
Republican says he'll try to override the governor's budget veto if
negotiations don't starting yielding consensus.
"We have to look at overriding if we're not going to have a
substantive discussion," said House Speaker Mike Turzai, during his
appearance at the Harrisburg Press Club luncheon Monday. Turzai said an override should be the
"goal" of the GOP-controlled Legislature, though he's not sure if
such a move would have the votes to pass. "I haven't even
asked anybody in terms of a count," said Turzai. "I ask, what's their
perspective on the governor's budget proposal, and what was their perspective
on our proposal?" It is rare for
the Legislature to successfully trump a governor's veto. An override requires a
two-thirds majority vote, so both the House and Senate would need to pick up
Democratic support.
"Reacting to the
possibility of a veto override, House Democratic Caucus spokesperson Bill
Patton told The PLS Reporter that
the votes won’t be there from House Democrats to get to a veto override. "The Speaker has raised the idea in a
few conversations but the votes aren’t there, nor will they be. An attempt to
override the veto would be fruitless and counterproductive," he said in an
email. "Other Republican leaders know that and they have reached out to
the governor and Democratic leaders for more substantive budget talks."
… The Wolf administration also
had tough words for the Speaker in response to his remarks. “Speaker Turzai continues to stand with oil
and gas companies instead of our children and our schools by opposing a
commonsense severance tax. The speaker and his Republican colleagues passed a
budget that only included $8 million for our schools, which is less than two
percent of the funding needed to restore their cuts," said Gov. Wolf's
press secretary Jeff Sheridan.
"This type of
irresponsible budgeting has led to struggling schools, soaring property taxes,
multiple credit downgrades and a multi-billion dollar deficit. Pennsylvania has tried it the Speaker’s way and now it’s
time to put the middle class first and rebuild Pennsylvania
Budget veto override still
a possibility, Speaker Turzai says
The PLS Reporter Author: Jason Gottesman/Monday, July 27,
2015
Speaking to the
Pennsylvania Press Club Monday, House Speaker Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) said
the General Assembly may try to push an override of Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget-bill
veto. “[Our goal] is to
actually get the governor to recognize that he does not have the votes for what
he has put on the table and he does not have the support of the citizens of Pennsylvania for what he
has put on the table and he has not backed off of it at all,” he said. “We have
to look at overriding if we aren’t going to have a substantive discussion.” He said the House voted down the governor’s
tax package 193-0. “You don’t get to
negotiate from a figure that has almost zero support,” he said. “That’s not how
negotiations work.” While he said there
is no specific timeline for a veto override to be considered; if there is no
productive movement, he will seek the support of conservative Democrats who he
believes do not support the governor’s revenue package to override the veto of
House Bill 1192. “The governor does not
understand he does not have the support for his spend number,” he told
reporters following the luncheon. “I’m hoping he’ll be more realistic as we
move forward.”
"House Republicans would
need 16 to 18 Democrat votes to roll back the governor's rejection of their
$30.2 billion spending plan, depending on whether they can win back two
defectors from their own caucus."
Key Pennsylvania
Penn Live By Charles Thompson |
cthompson@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on July 27,
2015 at 5:53 PM
A leader of the
conservative wing of the state House Democratic Caucus said Monday House
Republicans will have trouble finding the votes needed to override Gov. Tom
Wolf's June 30 budget veto.Rep. Nick Kotik's comments came in response toremarks earlier in the
day from House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny County, suggesting
an override push may be necessary if Wolf doesn't start negotiating more
realistically to reach a delayed state budget.
"Turzai went a bit
further Monday, stressing that he also remains virulently opposed to a new shale gas tax –
the symbolic centerpiece of Wolf's tax plan.
… Pennsylvania, at present, is the only state that doesn't place some
form of tax on gas produced through new hydro-fracturing technologies."
Penn Live By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com Email
the author | Follow on Twitter on
July 27, 2015 at 4:42 PM, updated July 27, 2015 at 7:51 PM
Pennsylvania House
Speaker Mike Turzai said talks on the delayed state budget aren't moving
forward yet in large part because Gov. Tom Wolf hasn't accepted the reality
that his positions lack serious support in the General Assembly. That's also why Turzai, a Republican from Allegheny County
This year's state budget
stalemate in Pennsylvania
Penn Live By Charles Thompson |
cthompson@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on July 27,
2015 at 8:30 AM, updated July 27, 2015 at 9:24 AM
Call this the year
of the budget campaign. Everywhere you look
in Pennsylvania ,
someone is trying to move the needle measuring public attitudes toward who's
right, and who should give in the protracted state budget debates. And this year, in
what seems to be a first, well-financed interests are bringing their
broad themes right into your family room (television ads) or if
you're really lucky, your kitchen table (mailers about specific lawmakers' stance). It's not clear yet if either side has gained
a big public relations advantage: no new statewide surveys have been taken on
attitudes about the Harrisburg
stand-off since the state passed its fiscal year deadline on July 1. But it's very clear now that neither side is
willing to unilaterally disarm in the battle of the airwaves.
Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf
makes the case for his budget at Willow Hill Elementary School
Pottstown Mercury By Dan Clark, dclark@timesherald.com, @Danclark08 on Twitter POSTED: 07/27/15, 5:03 PM EDT
ABINGTON >>
Gov. Tom Wolf stood with local officials outside of Willow Hill Elementary
School on Monday to stress the importance of making changes to the
way public education is funded and why he’s holding out for it during the
budget impasse. Monday marked the
27th day without a budget in Pennsylvania
and Wolf made a brief speech reiterating the need for the state to play a
larger role in funding education. “The
budget I got on June 30 did not have what I think we need to have the future we
deserve as Pennsylvanians,” he said. In
his speech, he said a budget could have been passed on time, but called the
Republican budget a “smoke and mirrors budget full of one time fixes” that is
similar to budgets passed under former Gov. Tom Corbett. “That has taken us
to schools that are not funded. It has taken us to a property tax system that
is really unfair to seniors and working families who are trying to pay property
taxes and has actually created an antagonism on their part to education that
doesn’t do any of us any good,” Wolf said.
School district assessment
appeals vital to tax fairness | Guest column
Express-Times guest columnist By John E. Freund III and Jonathan M. Huerta
on July 27, 2015 at 2:11 PM, updated July 27, 2015 at 3:38 PM
John E. Freund
III is a partner with King, Spry, Herman, Freund & Faul and chair of the
firm's Education Law Practice Group. The firm represents school districts and
municipalities throughout Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
homeowners are facing a $2 billion tax increase over
the next decade — the shocking estimated loss in property tax revenue predicted
by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association if special
interests and their political action committees, such as the Pennsylvania
Apartment Owners Association PAC, have their way with lawmakers in
Harrisburg. They have targeted legislators seeking to change an 80-year-old law
that permits taxing authorities, including school districts, to file assessment
appeals on large, highly profitable commercial properties that are severely
undertaxed. When properties such as large shopping centers, apartment buildings
and casinos are significantly underassessed, local residents are forced to
subsidize those property owners in the form of unnecessary property tax
increases or painful cuts to school staff and educational programs, police and
fire protection, senior programs or other important services. In his recent guest column on
lehighvalleylive.com, Paul Small of the Altman Management
Group claims the 30 percent of Lehigh Valley
Broaden education policy
beyond standardized tests
THE ISSUE: After many failed attempts, federal lawmakers appear poised to
rewrite No Child Left
Behind, an education law that has embittered teachers by mandating
high-stakes standardized testing. The House and Senate have passed separate education bills that would
reduce the federal government’s reach into American classrooms, and members of
Congress are negotiating to reconcile those bills. No
Child Left Behind, the law directing federal education funds for K-12 education
since enactment in 2002, has disappointed just about everyone — parents
teachers and lawmakers included. Tying
school ratings to standardized testing was supposed to incentivize teachers and
improve student outcomes across the board, but that hasn’t happened. Instead,
the threat of federal and state punishment for underperforming schools has
forced teachers into stressful, do-or-die test-prep regimens that cannibalize
time and resources.
Testing mandates have
narrowed our children’s learning
Mara Creswell
McGrann is a city resident and parent of three children in the School District of Lancaster Millersville
University graduate and her husband
are small-business owners in Lancaster
My three children
have never known anything but No Child Left Behind — the
2002 legislation that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
of 1965. NCLB was supposed to expose
where schools were failing traditionally underserved groups and ensure that all
children would score proficient or advanced on math and reading tests by the
year 2014. NCLB relied heavily on standardized test results, threatening
schools with being closed, taken over, suffering financial sanctions for low scores,
or some combination. This led to the narrowing of school curriculums —
especially in our nation’s poorest districts — primarily to only two subjects:
math and reading. After pressure from
citizens clamoring for a new approach, each chamber of Congress passed its own
version and both are improvements over NCLB’s “test and punish” design. Both
would continue mandated annual federal testing in kindergarten through eighth
grade, but without federal sanctions for low scores. Under the Senate bill, states
would have the responsibility to decide what to do about schools deemed to be
failing. As a School District
of Lancaster
Learn more about
Wednesday's Saucon
Valley
By Sara K. Satullo | For
lehighvalleylive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on July 28, 2015 at 6:15 AM,
updated July 28, 2015 at 6:16 AM
It's been a quiet
summer in the Saucon Valley School District ahead
of a nonbinding arbitration hearing. On
Wednesday, the school board and teachers
return to the bargaining table for a hearing before neutral arbitrator Timothy
Brown, a labor attorney. Saucon Valley Education Association members
have been working under an expired contract since July 2012. Contentious
negotiations have led to a contract stalemate.
The hearing will allow the two sides to prevent their evidence, school
board labor attorney Jeffrey Sultanik explained.
"According to the
Southern Education Foundation (SEF), 51 percent of the students attending the
nation’s public schools now come from low-income households."
Poverty and Education: From a War on Poverty to the
Majority of Public School Students Living in Poverty A Report on the Spring
2015 ASCD Whole Child Symposium
Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development Report, Spring 2015
The United States’ longstanding narrative around poverty,
especially its damaging effects on children and their ability to succeed
academically, has often been depicted as a problem confined to specific regions
or localities, such as inner-city neighborhoods, and occurring mostly within
specific ethnic or minority populations. Recent research helps debunk myths
such as these and forces our nation to confront a harsh new reality: For the
first time in recent history, the majority of U.S. public school students now live
in poverty. According to the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), 51 percent of
the students attending the nation’s public schools now come from low-income
households.
Critical Education Policy Studies
Group Swarthmore
College
CEPS director, Edwin
Mayorga, is preparing to teach Ed Policy Fall 2015 (follow us at #CritEdPol).
One of the central topics of study will be the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA). We are gathering readings regarding ESEA’s history and
the current discussions and debates regarding its re-authorization on Capitol
Hill. Shout outs to Wayne Au, Jeremy Benson, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Michael
Dumas, Maria Hantzopoulos, Alexandra Miletta, Carly Huelsenbeck, Terri Wilson,
Jodie Barnhart, Kyla Torre, Alisa Algava, Lois Weiner & Cynthia Liu (and
the K12 News Network) for contributing to this list. If you have others to add
feel free to add it through the comments box below.
"Happy moments like
these occur every day in U.S. Reading America
These Kids Are Just Pawns':
The Rising Toll of Inequitable School Funding
Most lawmakers agree that low-
income students, like all children, deserve a great public school— until it’s
time to pay for it.
NEA Today — JULY 20,
2015 • BY AMANDA
LITVINOV —
This article is
the first in a NEA Today series that explores obstacles to education that
create an opportunity gap for disadvantaged students. With the number of
children living in low-income families reaching record highs, these issues are
affecting more communities across America
In a kindergarten
classroom at Riverside Elementary School in Reading , Pa. Marion
Elementary School
Education Week
Charters and Choice Blog By Arianna Prothero on July 23, 2015
5:23 PM
North Carolina's
highest court has ruled that the state's school voucher program is
constitutional, according to The Charlotte Observer. The North Carolina Association of Educators
and the North Carolina School Boards Association filed the original lawsuit
against the Opportunity Scholarship Program at the end of 2013, shortly after
it was created by the legislature. The
program gives publicly funded scholarships of up to $4,200 to low-income
students to use at private schools.
Diane Ravitch's Blog
By dianeravitch July
24, 2015 //
Even those who like
the idea of using public funds to send students to private and religious
schools, as well as to pay for home-schooling, may have trouble stomaching this
bizarre decision. Sharon McCloskey
writes in NC Policy Watch just how bad this decision is, how it will set back
the education of large numbers of children by using public money for home
schooling and for schools that have no accredited teachers, no curriculum, no
standards. This cannot be the way to prepare for the 21st century. It sounds
instead like a headlong rush back to the nineteenth century.
WSJ: Tar Heel School
A scholarship program for poor
kids survives a union legal assault.
Wall Street Journal July
26, 2015 6:25 p.m. ET
School vouchers may
be the most effective anti-poverty program around, yet they’re fought tooth and
hammer by the teachers unions. Late last week the North Carolina Supreme Court
awarded a victory to poor kids by protecting vouchers from another union
attack.
Call In Day July 29th - Urgent: Budget stalemate
hurting schools. Contact your legislators.
On Wednesday, July 29, the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, in
collaboration with the Campaign for Fair Education Funding and Education
Voters-PA, will be participating in a statewide call-in day to contact our
legislators. Pennsylvania students will begin going back to school in
just a month and state lawmakers still have not passed a budget. Please set aside 10 minutes on Wednesday, July 29 to call your
state legislators to tell them that we need them to go back to Harrisburg and put Pennsylvania 's children
first by passing a budget that begins to solve the school funding
crisis. To find your legislators, follow this link.
We know that just 10
calls in a day to one legislator can make a difference in what he or she
does. Please make two phone calls
and make a difference for children this year!
Nominations for PSBA's
Allwein Advocacy Award now open
PSBA July 7, 2015
PSBA July 7, 2015
The Timothy M.
Allwein Advocacy Award was established in 2011 by the Pennsylvania School
Boards Association and 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. The 2015 Allwein Award nomination process
will close on Aug. 28, 2015. The 2015 Allwein Award Nomination Form is available online. More details on the
award and nominations process can be found online.
Save the Date for PASA-PSBA School
Save the date for the
professional development event of the year. Be inspired at more than four
exciting venues and invest in professional development for top administrators
and school board members. Online registration will be live soon!
Register Now – PAESSP
State Conference – Oct. 18-20 – State College, PA
Registration is now
open for PAESSP's State Conference to be held October 18-20 at The
Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel in State College, PA! This year's
theme is @EVERYLEADER and features three nationally-known keynote
speakers (Dr. James Stronge, Justin Baeder and Dr. Mike Schmoker), professional
breakout sessions, a legal update, exhibits, Tech Learning Labs and many
opportunities to network with your colleagues (Monday evening event with Jay
Paterno). Once again, in conjunction
with its conference, PAESSP will offer two 30-hour Act 45 PIL-approved
programs, Linking Student Learning to Teacher Supervision and Evaluation
(pre-conference offering on 10/17/15); and Improving Student Learning
Through Research-Based Practices: The Power of an Effective Principal (held
during the conference, 10/18/15 -10/20/15). Register for either or both PIL
programs when you register for the Full Conference!
REGISTER TODAY for
the Conference and Act 45 PIL program/s at:
Apply
now for EPLC’s 2015-2016 PA Education Policy Fellowship Program
Applications are
available now for the 2015-2016 Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP). The Education Policy Fellowship Program is sponsored in
Pennsylvania by The Education Policy and Leadership Center (EPLC). With more than 400 graduates in its
first sixteen years, this Program is a premier professional development
opportunity for educators, state and local policymakers, advocates, and
community leaders. State Board of Accountancy (SBA) credits are available
to certified public accountants. Past
participants include state policymakers, district superintendents and
principals, charter school leaders, school business officers, school board
members, education deans/chairs, statewide association leaders, parent leaders,
education advocates, and other education and community leaders. Fellows
are typically sponsored by their employer or another organization. The Fellowship Program begins with a two-day
retreat on September 17-18, 2015 and continues to graduation in June
2016.
Click here to read about
the Education Policy Fellowship Program.
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