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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for September 16, 2015:
More districts considering delaying PSERS and charter
payments as PA budget impasse continues
PSBA Education Action Day scheduled for Sept. 21 in Harrisburg
"We don't feel the
General Assembly intended the Charter School Law to exempt charters from
bearing a share of the fiscal impacts the current budget impasse is causing
traditional public schools, or force school districts to hand over hypothetical
subsidies that we are currently not receiving," board President Roberta M.
Marcus said.
Without money from state, Parkland
won't pay tuition for charter students
By Kevin Duffy Special
to The Morning Call September 15, 2015
With state lawmakers
now well past the deadline to pass a budget, Parkland School District Parkland
paid the equivalent of approximately $2.4 million, or $200,000 per month, to
cover the tuition of 126 students at brick-and-mortar charter schools and 100
who are home-schooled through cybercharters.
That amount does not account for transportation costs associated with
busing students to charter school campuses within a 10-mile radius of Parkland's
district boundaries — Lincoln Leadership Academy and Roberto Clemente Charter
School, both in Allentown. School districts are
required to make 12 monthly payments equal to the amount owed per year for a
resident student attending a charter school. If districts opt not to pay, that
amount is deducted from their state subsidy.
"We're just saying deduct it from our subsidy," Superintendent
Richard T. Sniscak said. With the
pipeline of state aid having run dry, Parkland
has decided to pull the plug on paying into the charter system.
"In the third item, the
board decided to pay 30 percent of the charter school tuition otherwise owed
that represents the proportion of total budgeted revenue received from the
Commonwealth until a state budget is in place and subsidies begin to arrive.
Seventy percent of the payments are to be delayed. All three measures passed on 8-0 votes."
Smethport school district
taking measures during state budget impasse
SMETHPORT — The lack
of a state budget influenced the Smethport Area School Board's action on three
financial measures Monday. First, the
directors authorized the administration to make transfers from the Designated
Pennsylvania School Employees' Retirement System Fund Balance, as necessary,
until the state has a new budget in place. According to business manager Sue
Jordan, "This transfer will come from the money the district has set aside
to cover increased contributions to PSERS, with the obligation to return the
funds once the state has approved a state budget." In the second case, the board approved
delaying the full amount of the employer contribution to PSERS until the
receipt of the state reimbursement following the OK of a new state budget. The
board could have delayed paying the entire or the net amount.
"As for charter school
payments, Superintendent Alan Fegley said he would be speaking to various
superintendents across the county to see how they would be making payments, and
would inform the board of those discussions at the next meeting this Thursday."
By Eric Devlin,
The Mercury POSTED: 09/15/15,
6:09 PM EDT | UPDATED: 2 HRS AGO
Phoenixville
>> Pennsylvania ’s budget impasse is
being felt in all corners of the state including in the Phoenixville Area
School District Pennsylvania pays us 50 percent of the obligation,
we pay the other 50 percent,” Johnson said of the PSERS system. “Within five
days of the receipt of funds from the state, we then put our money with the
state’s money and give that money to PSERS.”
However, now without the state’s 50 percent share, the question becomes
when does the district owe its share of the bill? “Lawyers have taken
the position that we don’t owe anything to PSERS until we receive the state’s
share,” Johnson said. “That is a big unknown at this point with no state
budget.” Most school
districts in Chester County that Johnson has spoken say they are planning to
pay their 50 percent share for PSERS on the normally scheduled due date “but
only the 50 percent. Not the full amount.” Phoenixville then will follow suit.
“We will not pay the
state’s share until we receive it from the state,” Johnson emphasized.
Budget impasse cash flow measures: PSBA guidance on
legality of delaying employer contributions to PSERS and non-local portion of
charter school tuition
PSBA website
Wolf, lawmakers need to
know that Pa. schools are in crisis without a budget: As We See It
By PennLive Op-Ed on September
15, 2015 at 1:00 PM
The authors of this piece are: Jim
Buckheit, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Association of School
Administrators; Nathan Mains, Executive Director, Pennsylvania School Boards
Association; Jay Himes, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Association of
School Business Officials; Paul Healey, Executive Director, Pennsylvania
Association of Elementary and Secondary School Principals, and Joseph
Bard, Executive Director, of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools.
A crisis is building
in communities throughout our state as each day passes without a budget. Like flood waters
rising, an increasing number of districts are making plans to take on more debt
to make payroll and pay bills as they continue to educate more than 1.8 million
children in their local public schools. School
districts have not received any funding from the state for the 2015-2016 fiscal
year. The number of school districts
negatively impacted surged at the end of August when more than $1 billion in
state education funding normally paid to schools was missing. By October, school
districts will be operating with a shortfall of more than $3 billion in state
funding.
What's the sound of two
sides negotiating? Whatever it is, it's not happening in budget talks: Analysis
Penn Live By John L. Micek | jmicek@pennlive.com Email
the author | Follow on Twitter on
September 15, 2015 at 3:53 PM
This is just getting
weird now.
In a Pittsburgh radio
interview on Tuesday, Gov. Tom
Wolf set down the "conditions" under which he'd consider
the stopgap budget plan currently being cooked up by majority Republicans in
the state Senate. It was just another
head-scratching moment in a season full of head-scratchers. Wolf told KDKA-AM on
Tuesday that he'd only sign a stop-gap plan if he has a general
budget agreement with the GOP; wouldn't consider a stop-gap as an alternative
to the budget; and would only consider a "reasonable" bill after he
sees what the GOP has thrown into it, The Associated Press reported. "If we get to a point where we have a
general agreement on what the budget looks like and it's going to take some
time to actually get the details in place," then "I'd be in favor a
stopgap then," Wolf told KDKA. "But only in that
case."
"I think what we need is
a budget, that's what I'm working for," Wolf said. "A real budget, a
budget that is balanced, a budget that has a severance tax, a budget that
invests in education, a budget that has property tax relief. That's what the
people of Pennsylvania
Wolf puts down markers for
signing short-term spending bill
Philly.com by MARC LEVY, THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS POSTED: Tuesday, September 15, 2015, 4:41 PM
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)
- Gov. Tom Wolf appeared to be in no mood on Tuesday to break Pennsylvania's 11-week-old
budget stalemate by signing onto a short-term spending plan that the
Legislature's big Republican majorities are preparing to advance. The first-term Democrat said during a regular
appearance on Pittsburgh
radio station KDKA-AM that he would sign a "reasonable" stopgap
spending plan. But he went on to say that he had no drop-dead date in mind for
signing a short-term plan to release funding to school districts and an array
of safety-net services, and that he would sign such a plan only if he already
had a general budget agreement with lawmakers.
HARRISBURG, Pa.
>> The Pennsylvania Senate is returning to Harrisburg for the first time
in two months as majority Republicans look to start advancing a short-term
spending package to break a budget stalemate.
The Senate’s Wednesday session was scheduled to include procedural votes
on the spending package. Republicans say
the package would release about $11 billion, or four months of money
retroactive to July 1, plus billions more in federal money that’s being held
up. However, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is
signaling that he won’t sign a stopgap spending plan unless he has a general
budget agreement with lawmakers and it would take some time to finish the
details. With the state’s spending
authority curtailed, Pennsylvania ’s
school districts, counties and nonprofit social services providers are
searching for ways to scrape by.
Stop-gap budget to be
modeled on GOP-agreed to/vetoed budget plan
The PLS Reporter Author: Jason Gottesman/Tuesday, September
15, 2015
The stop-gap budget
plan likely to be taken up by the Senate as soon as Wednesday will be modeled
on the previously passed and then vetoed GOP-agreed to budget plan encompassed
in House Bill 1192, according to Steve Miskin, spokesperson for the House
Republican Caucus. He said the proposal—which
has yet to be made public—will likely be one-third of the $30.2 billion in
state spending encompassed in the spending plan that was passed and vetoed on
June 30th. It will also allow pass-through federal funding to flow
to those organizations reliant on that money.
The proposal is expected to provide funding retroactive to when the
fiscal year began July 1 and provide funding at least through October. If the Senate passes the plan by week’s end,
the House—according to Miskin—is on track to get the measure to the governor by
next Friday.
Guest Column: Pa.
Delco Times Opinion By Joseph Batory, Times Guest Columnist 09/15/15, 10:13 PM EDT
Joseph Batory is a former
superintendent of schools in Upper Darby and
author of numerous articles on politics and education.
PA-BGT: Leach, Wagner
Engage in War of Words
PoliticsPA Written by Nick Field, Managing Editor September 15, 2015
Well, at least we
have a good debate going.
For months now,
we’ve been locked in a stalemate
over the budget. This impasse has not only been rather interminable
but also seemingly silent. There have been very little theatrics given the
important subject matter. Today,
however, State Sen. Scott Wagner sought to change the narrative by
issuing an
open letter to editorial writers throughout the commonwealth to
stop blaming the legislature. “It
appears that newspaper editorial departments across the state are offering
their opinion on the state budget,” Wagner wrote. “Let me set the record
straight — the legislature met its obligation to pass a balanced budget by the
constitutionally required deadline.” “Gov. Wolf chose to
veto a budget that was balanced, did not raise taxes, and provided increased
education funding.” State Sen. Daylin
Leach responded with a letter of his own.
“As we in government struggle to enact a budget, people are weighing in
with their opinion,” Leach began. “Recently, my colleague Senator Scott Wagner
sent a letter to media outlets across the state offering the Republican Party
line. In the interests of balance, I offer this competing view.”
“It is true that the
Republican majority in the legislature passed ‘a budget.’ But Governor Wolf did
not campaign for Governor promising to sign literally anything the legislature
passed, no matter how poor and inadequate it is.” When viewed together, Wagner’s and Leach’s
comments form an intriguing debate between two State Senators over the budget.
A debate that is helped by the fact that they are arguably the most
conservative and progressive Senators in the chamber and clearly the most
entertaining.
BASD feels budget impasse
pinch, limits non-essential spending
Bradford Era By COLIN DEPPEN Era Reporter c.deppen@bradfordera.com | 0 comments Posted: Tuesday, September 15, 2015
10:00 am
Three weeks into the
year and school officials in Bradford are reporting
a strong start, while continuing to closely monitor a state budget stalemate,
one with strong implications for public education, now in its third month. Monday’s meeting of the Bradford Area School
Board included mention of the state budget stalemate, one that has left shares
of state education funding up in the air.
Superintendent Katharine Pude said district efforts to curb spending on
non-essentials will continue absent a resolution between lawmakers and Gov. Tom
Wolf, with both sides at odds on everything from taxes to education
spending, and public pensions to liquor sales. “We have asked our
building administrators to curtail expenses and to order only items that are
immediately necessary so that we can weather the budget impasse,” Pude said, adding,
“hopefully some agreements will be reached in the near future.”
Early media reports
out of the capital on Monday reported no tangible progress.
Republican Stopgap Budget Worth About $11 Billion Out
Of $30.2 Billion Budget
PA Capitol Digest by
Crisci Associates September 16, 2015
The Senate
Appropriations Committee will meet today off the floor to consider Senate
Bill 1000 General Fund Stopgap Budget Bill and Senate
Bill 1001 Fiscal Code Stopgap Bill.
The stopgap budget is about $11 billion of the $30.2 billion General Fund budget passed by Republicans in June and included in the so-called "agreed-to" budget bill-- House Bill 1192. It will also allow the pass-through of federal funding to state agencies and organizations reliant on that money. The Fiscal Code bill has special project funding legislators put in the original Fiscal Code bill-- Senate Bill 655-- vetoed by Gov. Wolf in June.
The stopgap budget is about $11 billion of the $30.2 billion General Fund budget passed by Republicans in June and included in the so-called "agreed-to" budget bill-- House Bill 1192. It will also allow the pass-through of federal funding to state agencies and organizations reliant on that money. The Fiscal Code bill has special project funding legislators put in the original Fiscal Code bill-- Senate Bill 655-- vetoed by Gov. Wolf in June.
Charter schools have
'borrowed nearly $500m on taxpayers' dime,' report: Tuesday Morning Coffee
By John L. Micek | jmicek@pennlive.com Email
the author | Follow on Twitter on
September 15, 2015 at 8:33 AM
Good Tuesday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
If there's a flash point debate over education reform, the role of charter schools is surely one of the top contenders for the title. Just last week, the state of Washington's Supreme Court ruled that charters were not public schools under the state Constitution, and were thus not eligible for public funding. InPennsylvania , charter reform and how
to make sure school districts are properly compensated for the cost of charters has
been at the center of debate for several years.
This week, The Philadelphia
Inquirer reports on Philadelphia's "booming" charters,
revealing that schools have borrowed nearly $500 million to finance a rapid
expansion.
If there's a flash point debate over education reform, the role of charter schools is surely one of the top contenders for the title. Just last week, the state of Washington's Supreme Court ruled that charters were not public schools under the state Constitution, and were thus not eligible for public funding. In
But the "bond
financing behind the mountain of money gets little scrutiny on whether the debt
is a smart use of Pennsylvania
"Rivera has been working
“aggressively” with legislative leaders and others in Harrisburg
Pa. Secretary of Education: School ratings should be
'much more holistic'
If Pedro Rivera has
his way, Pennsylvania
schools not only will get a break from state ratings this year, but the
criteria for those ratings will change significantly moving forward. The state secretary of education and former
superintendent of Lancaster schools talked about
the work he’s doing to change School Performance Profiles during a visit to Columbia High School Columbia
would receive more funding under Gov. Tom Wolf — even as a two-and-half-month budget impasse has delayed state payments
to schools.
State files new Chester Upland recovery
plan
By Vince Sullivan,
Delaware County Daily
MEDIA COURTHOUSE
>> A new recovery plan for the Chester Upland School District has been
filed in Delaware County Court of Common Pleas seeking to eliminate the
district’s structural deficit and its negative fund balance. The amended plan, filed Tuesday, again seeks
to alter the charter school tuition reimbursement formula for special education
students, a proposal that was denied by President Judge Chad F. Kenney last
month. In this plan, the tuition changes are paired with yet another cash
infusion from the state. At a hearing
last week before Kenney, district business administrators and attorneys said
that without a new plan, Chester Upland will end the 2015-2016 school year with
a $50.9 million deficit, more than double the deficit at the end of the
previous school year. Kenney denied efforts to alter the charter school funding
formula, calling the measure inadequate to address the whole budget shortfall,
which district and state leaders say is caused by those tuition reimbursements.
Kenney did approve the hiring of a financial turnaround specialist and the
performance of a forensic audit for the last five years.
“Modifying the
special education charter school tuition rates, in conjunction with the
initiatives to eliminate the district’s negative fund balance, is wholly
adequate to restore the District to financial stability,” attorneys for the
district and the Pennsylvania Department of Education wrote in the court
filings Tuesday.
State expected to decide
this week on Washington
Township
Board should vote this week on petition to
move municipality to Northern schools
York Daily Record By Angie Mason amason@ydr.com @angiemason1
on Twitter UPDATED:
09/15/2015 10:47:14 AM EDT
A years-long fight
over moving Washington
Township Dover Area
School District to the Northern York County
School District Dover
district's closure of Kralltown Elementary, the only school in the township.
The coalition, which gathered the signatures of the majority of township
residents, has asked to move districts, citing better test scores in Northern,
better truancy and graduation rates, plus a lower tax rate. Plus, with
Kralltown closed, many residents live closer to Northern's schools. The potential move was opposed by a group
called KIDS, or Keep us in Dover Schools, made up of parents who want their
children to remain in the district, as well as by the school district and its
teachers union. Members of KIDS have maintained that the differences between
the districts are not significant and that petitioners just want the lower
taxes offered by Northern.
Protesting teachers, Main Line school to talk
KATHY BOCCELLA, INQUIRER
STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, September 15, 2015, 6:50 PM
The Radnor Township
School District Delaware County
On Tuesday,
administration officials assured students at a morning assembly that guidance
counselors were prepared to write the letters and that no deadlines would be
missed.
Q & A with
Superintendent Hite
His thoughts on
the new school year, the teachers contract, charter schools, and more.
the notebook By Dale
Mezzacappa on Sep 15, 2015 05:51 PM
Notebook
contributing editor Dale Mezzacappa interviewed Superintendent William
Hite for
an article in our Fall Guide the week before school opened. Here
are additional excerpts from the interview, which occurred before the problems
with outsourcing substitute service became evident. The interview was edited
for length.
Notebook: What do
you hope will be different this year and what are you most excited about?
Hite: So, I’m
excited about a couple of things. Number one, I’m excited that we’re talking
about opening schools without having to reduce something or eliminate
something, cut something, close something. I’m also very excited about the fact
that with all of the principals that we hired over the last several years, that
now there’s over 90 percent retention rate of those individuals who have taken
on the leadership roles of their schools.
The work this year that is most exciting to me [is] ensuring equity. As
I talk about equity, I’m thinking about defining equity as great schools close
to where children live. We have some children now who may have aptitudes for
the arts or may have AP potential, who don’t have access to those opportunities
simply because of where they live. We’re working so that zip code no longer
defines destiny for our children.
De
Blasio to Announce 10-Year Deadline to Offer Computer Science to All NYC Students
New York Times By KATE TAYLOR and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER SEPT. 15, 2015
To ensure that every
child can learn the skills required to work in New York City ’s fast-growing technology
sector, Mayor
Bill de Blasio will announce on Wednesday that within 10 years all of
the city’s public schools will be required to offer computer science to all
students.
Meeting that goal
will present major challenges, mostly in training enough teachers. There is no
state teacher certification in computer science, and no pipeline of computer
science teachers coming out of college. Fewer than 10 percent of city schools
currently offer any form of computer science education, and only 1 percent of
students receive it, according to estimates by the city’s Department
of Education. Computer science will
not become a graduation requirement, and middle and high schools may choose to
offer it only as an elective. But the goal is for all students, even those in
elementary school and those in the poorest neighborhoods, to have some exposure
to computer science, whether building robots or learning to use basic programming languages like Scratch, which was
devised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach young children
the rudiments of coding.
"Within five years,
Booker promised, they would emerge with a model for turning around any failing
urban school district - one that Zuckerberg could then "scale up"
through philanthropy in one city after the next, solving the education crisis
in urban America
In Newark
Philly.com by DALE RUSSAKOFF POSTED: Tuesday, September 15, 2015,
1:08 AM
Five years ago this
month, Mark Zuckerberg, Cory Booker, and Chris Christie announced on The
Oprah Winfrey Show that the young founder of Facebook was pledging
$100 million to transform the debilitated Newark
school system into "a symbol of educational excellence for the whole
nation." It was a spectacular
kickoff, with extravagant expectations. In his first act as a philanthropist,
the then-26-year-old Zuckerberg was setting out to revolutionize urban
education, much as he had reshaped global communication from his Harvard dorm
room. As Booker laid out the plan, the then-Newark mayor and New Jersey Gov.
Christie would use Zuckerberg's largesse to bring all the ideas of the national
education reform movement to Newark: vastly expand charter schools, close
failing district schools, replace the weakest teachers with top talent from
around the country, relax tenure protections, and build a state-of-the-art data
system through which to hold everyone accountable for student performance.
Watch Out, 1%! The
Students Are Taking Action!
Diane Ravitch's Blog
By dianeravitch September
15, 2015 //
I have often written
that high school students have the power to stop the bad policies that are
ruining their education. When they realize they are being cheated, when they
organize to fight for equitable funding and against the misuse of testing, it’s
game over for the corporate reformers.
Two high school students
in Texas have written a brief to demand adequate funding for their
schools, in a case now in the courts.
Valerie Strauss
writes: “Two Texas teenagers representing a group of students in the Houston
Independent School District have taken an unusual action: They wrote and
submitted to the Texas Supreme Court a 35-page brief siding with more than 600
school districts suing the state for underfunding public education in violation
of the Texas constitution.
Two
Texas teenagers representing a group of
students in the Houston Independent School District
have taken an unusual action: They wrote and submitted to the Texas Supreme
Court a
35-page brief siding with more than 600 school districts suing the
state for underfunding public education in violation of the Texas constitution. The court justices recently held a hearing
about the suit, which the state is seeking to have dropped. The school
districts — about two-thirds of the total in Texas — are arguing that state
authorities rely on an outdated funding mechanism that does not provide schools
with enough resources to meet the needs of the growing number of high-needs
students in the state and provide an adequate education as required by the
constitution. The suit was originally
filed in 2011 after the state legislature cut nearly $5.5 billion from public
education, and though most of it has since been restored, the districts still
say they are being underfunded. A year ago, a Texas district judge agreed and threw out
the state school funding system as unconstitutional.
State Impact Ohio BY KAREN
KASLER SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 | 1:15 PM
The Ohio Supreme
Court has ruled against 10 charter schools that sued their operator over school
property that was purchased with state funds.
The ruling said that schools are obliged to buy back computers, desks
and other equipment that their operator White Hat Management had bought with
money it received from the state. In the
majority opinion, Justice Judith Lanzinger noted the schools hadn’t performed
well under White Hat’s management, but that the contracts the schools had with
White Hat were entered into voluntarily and were enforceable.
Diane Ravitch's Blog
By dianeravitch September
15, 2015 //
The Ohio Supreme
Court ruled
that property purchased by the for-profit charter management
corporation White Hat using public funds belongs to White Hat, not the public. I’m no lawyer, but this decision says to me
that the schools’ stuff does not belong to the public, but to a private
entrepreneur. I take that to be an acknowledgement that White Hat privatized
the assets of the school. More evidence that charter schools are not public
schools. If they were, their stuff purchased with public funds would belong to
the public. White Hat was sued by the
boards of 10 of its charter schools, all of which have closed for poor
performance. “A charter school operator
– not the schools themselves – own the classroom desks, computers and other
equipment purchased with state-provided tax dollars, the Ohio Supreme Court
ruled today.
Why I Opted Out Of The TFA
Alumni Survey
Gary Rubenstein's
Blog Posted on September 15, 2015 by garyrubinstein
As a Teach For
America alum (Houston
1991), I am invited each year to participate in the annual TFA alumni survey.
This year I decided to ‘opt out’ of it since I don’t need them misusing
my information to help them gain any more money and power that they have
already undeservedly secured. For
example, just a few days ago TFA released a ‘research’ paper in which they
contradict everything we know about TFA attrition and claim that, what do ya
know?, TFA teachers don’t have low attrition at all. According to their
new analysis, about half of TFA alumni teach for more than 7 years!
(I’ll analyze this report in a future post. I’m first awaiting some
relevant data from TFA if they’re willing to share.) Perhaps the most ubiquitous statistic that
TFA infers from the annual alumni survey is the one that says that 2/3 of
all alumni are still in eduction.
Here it is quoted as far back as 2004. For the past ten years this
number hasn’t budged one way or another.
Testing Resistance & Reform News: September 9 -
15, 2015
FairTest Submitted
by fairtest on September 15, 2015 - 12:38pm
It's still very
early in the 2015-2016 school year, but the rapidly growing assessment reform
movement is already winning more victories, pressuring policymakers in a number
of states to cut back testing overkill and high-stakes consequences.
SCHOOL PLAY - It's a touchy subject
School Play explores
our attitudes toward public education using the real voices of Pennsylvanians
from across the Commonwealth
The performance will
be held next Wednesday, September 16th at 7:00 pm at the
Suzanne Roberts Theatre (480 S. Broad St., Philadelphia). Tickets are
free. People can go to this link to RSVP: http://www.pccy.org/event/school-play-performance/
Help fund the statewide
tour of a live documentary play about the struggle to save public education in
Pennsylvania.
After
standing-room-only shows at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center in
April, we’re taking this compelling play about the precarious state of public
education back to the people who lent us their voices and stories. This
October, we’re traveling across the state, putting on free performances to
spark conversations and engage citizens.
School Play is a work of grassroots theatre, woven from the
narratives of hundreds of Pennsylvanians affected by our state’s school funding
crisis. The play is entirely crowd-sourced; the script is derived from the
words of students, parents, educators and legislators, and is available online
for anyone to perform. Artists Arden
Kass, Seth Bauer and Edward Sobel created School Play out of
our personal concern for our kids and our communities. The result is a funny,
sad, straight-talking documentary theatre piece, told through the words of real
people. You can read more about School
Play here, here, here and here.
Register Now for the Fifth
Annual Arts and Education Symposium Oct. 29th Harrisburg
Thursday, October
29, 2015 Radisson Hotel Harrisburg Convention Center 8:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Act
48 Credit is available. The event will be a daylong convening of arts education
policy leaders and practitioners for lively discussions about important policy
issues and the latest news from the field. The symposium is hosted by EPLC and
the Pennsylvania Arts Education Network, and supported by a generous grant from
The Heinz Endowments.
The John Stoops Lecture
Series: Dr. Pasi Sahlberg "Education Around the World: Past, Present &
Future" Lehigh University October 8, 2015 6:00 p.m.
Baker Hall |Zoellner Arts
Center | 420 E. Packer Avenue | Bethlehem , PA 18015
Baker Hall |
Free and open to the
public! Ticketing is general admission -
no preseating will be assigned. Arrive early for the best seats. Please plan to stay post-lecture for an open
reception where you will have an opportunity to meet with students from all of
our programs to learn about the latest innovations in education and human
services.
Register now for the
2015 PASCD 65th Annual Conference, Leading and Achieving in an Interconnected World, to be
held November 15-17, 2015 at Pittsburgh Monroeville Convention
Center.
The Conference
will Feature Keynote Speakers: Meenoo Rami – Teacher and Author
“Thrive: 5 Ways to (Re)Invigorate Your Teaching,” Mr. Pedro Rivera,
Pennsylvania Secretary of Education, Heidi Hayes-Jacobs – Founder and President
of Curriculum Design, Inc. and David Griffith – ASCD Senior Director of Public
Policy. This annual conference features small group sessions focused on:
Curriculum and Supervision, Personalized and Individualized Learning,
Innovation, and Blended and Online Learning. The PASCD Conference is
a great opportunity to stay connected to the latest approaches for innovative
change in your school or district. Join us forPASCD 2015!
Online registration is available by visiting www.pascd.org <http://www.pascd.org/>
Slate of
candidates for PSBA offices now available online
PSBA website July 31, 2015
PSBA website July 31, 2015
The
slate of candidates for 2016 PSBA officer and at-large representatives is now
available online, including bios, photos and videos. According to
recent PSBA Bylaws changes, each member school entity casts one vote per
office. Voting will again take place online through a secure, third-party
website -- Simply Voting. Voting will
open Aug. 17 and closes Sept.
28. One person
from the school entity (usually the board secretary) is authorized to register
the vote on behalf of the member school entity and each board will need to put
on its agenda discussion and voting at one of its meetings in August or
September. Each person authorized to register the school entity's votes has
received an email on July 16 to verify the email address and confirm they are
the person to register the vote on behalf of their school entity.
Register Now for PASA-PSBA
School Leadership Conference Oct. 14-16, 2015 Hershey Lodge & Convention
Center
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 is live at:
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:
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
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