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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup December 2, 2015:
#PABudget: "The devil is in the details…and we
haven't gotten details."
School Funding Lawsuit: Parents, school districts urge
courts to intervene in school funding crisis
Press Release December
1, 2015
Contact: Barb
Grimaldi, Public Interest Law
Center
Ian Gavigan,
Education Law Center-PA, 267-825-7713, igavigan@elc-pa.org
"The clinic is part of
Reach Out and Read -- a national nonprofit that partners with medical providers
to give free books at doctor's visits and promote school readiness, with a
special emphasis on children from low-income communities."
Following doctor's orders:
Take a few books and read regularly
WHYY Newsworks BY SARA HOOVER DECEMBER 1, 2015
Pediatricians
prescribe many things, but a prescription for books may surprise parents. Research shows many parents don't read enough
to their children, and literacy gaps can emerge in kids as young as 18 months. In response, doctor's orders are to read
bedtime stories, sing and talk to keep infants and toddlers from falling
behind. Dr. Elena Huang was examining
17-month-old Keith Patrick recently at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Karabots Pediatric Care Center in West Philadelphia . Like every child from 6 months to 5 years
old, he gets a new book at every checkup.
"So you remember we've given him books before," she tells
Keith's dad, Larry. "And now we try to pick one that might be some of the
things he's doing, like learning his body parts."
She turns to the
toddler and coos, "Like, where's your nose? Where's your mouth?"
ABOUT REACH OUT AND READ
Partnering with medical providers to ensure
success in school for all of America
Reach Out and Read
is a nonprofit organization of medical providers who promote early literacy and
school readiness in pediatric exam rooms nationwide by integrating children's
books and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud into
well-child visits. The Reach Out
and Read evidence-based program builds on the unique relationship between
parents and medical providers to develop critical early reading skills in
children, beginning in infancy. As recommended by the American Academy
PASBO: State of
the State Budget
PA Association of School
Business Officials YouTube Video Published on Dec 1, 2015
PASBO State of the State Budget
Dec. 2015 Video Runtime 2:37
State budget update: 'We
have a lot of tough decisions to make over the next week,' Reed says
Penn Live By Jan Murphy and Charles Thompson on December 01, 2015 at 7:26 PM,
updated December 01, 2015 at 9:30 PM
It appears the state
House is ready to start the process of ending the five-month-old
state budget impasse that has interrupted money from flowing to school
districts, human service agencies and other vendors who do business with the
commonwealth. Following a three-hour
closed-door discussion with his caucus on Monday, House Majority Leader Dave
Reed, R-Indiana, emerged to share his cautiously optimistic view that a budget
package could land on Gov. Tom Wolf's desk awaiting his signature over the next
week. "We have a lot of tough
decisions to make over the next week and we're going to work together with our
Senate colleagues and the House Democrats as well as the administration to get
this done," Reed said. "It's December 1. It's time to bring this
budget to an end."
More Republicans cancel PA
Society plans as House member caucus on detail-less budget framework outline
The PLS Reporter Author: Jason Gottesman/Tuesday, December
1, 2015
Tuesday, both
caucuses of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives met to discuss the
five-party budget framework legislative leaders and Gov. Tom Wolf agreed to
just a week ago. While the broad strokes
of the plan remain the same—increased education spending, some sort of liquor
reform, and pension reform—the details as to how those priorities would be
achieved and how the money will be raised to fund them remained giant question
marks. “There’s still some details that
need to be worked out with the administration and the Senate, particularly as
it relates to education funding distribution models and that sort of stuff,”
said House Majority Leader Dave Reed (R-Indiana) after a three-hour,
post-session Republican caucus meeting. “This
was the first step in the process of getting action on all these items within
the next week,” he added.
Few details as Pa.
GOP leader says House considering broader use of sales
tax
Morning Call by MARK SCOLFORO December 1, 2015 8:44 pm
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)
— The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House said Tuesday budget
negotiators were considering whether to apply the state's sales tax to more
goods or services in a bid to end a 5-month-old stalemate. Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, told reporters after an hourslong
Republican caucus that budget talks remain fluid. "There are still some details that need
to be worked out with the administration and the Senate, particularly related to education funding and
distribution models, that sort of stuff," Reed said. The House will be in session until a budget
package passes, including during the coming weekend, he said. "We have a lot of tough decisions to
make over the next week," Reed said.
There are numerous goods and services that are exempt from the Pennsylvania sales tax, which is 6 percent in most of the
state, 7 percent in Allegheny County and 8 percent in Philadelphia .
High-stakes tests are
being reconsidered
At
every level, policymakers are warming up to advocates’ calls to make the exams
less intrusive and more effective.
the notebook By Bill Hangley Jr. on
Dec 1, 2015 12:20 PM
School Reform
Commissioner Bill Green says the pendulum has probably “swung too far in favor
of standardized tests.” But he supports frequent assessments for student data
collection. When it comes to
standardized testing, Helen Gym and Bill Green may not exactly be on the same
page, but they’ve both been reading the same book. “It’s like any pendulum – has it swung too
far in favor of standardized tests? Probably,” said Green, the reform-minded
School Reform Commission member and champion of data-driven decisions. “We want to be looking at quantitative
measures, not just qualitative measures. But we’ve definitely gone too far to
the extreme,” said Gym, a self-described populist, who won a City Council seat
on a platform of protecting public education.
Gym and Green are just two of a growing number of policymakers and
advocates who believe that the time has come to re-assess what schools assess
and how they do it. Even as testing
embeds itself ever deeper in school district practices nationwide, growing
evidence suggests that high-stakes tests can detract from quality instruction
while unfairly punishing underfunded districts and struggling schools. Parents,
students, teachers, and local leaders are growing increasingly vocal about
their concerns, and decision-makers at every level – local, state and federal –
now say they want to find ways to make tests more effective and less intrusive.
Can you solve these
6th-grade math questions?
By the
Notebook on Dec 1, 2015 01:45 PM
The following
multiple-choice questions are from a selection of sample
test items provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for
the 6th-grade PSSA exam in math. Calculator use is permitted. The exam also
includes open-ended questions where students are expected to explain their
answers.
Four charter organizations
apply to convert three Philly elementary schools
WHYY Newsworks BY KEVIN MCCORRY DECEMBER 1, 2015
Four charter
management organizations have applied to take over operations at three district
elementary schools and run them as neighborhood-based charters, the School District of Philadelphia
Cooke: Responding to a request for qualifications to
manage Cooke, located in Logan ,
the district received one letter of interest, from the Great Oaks Foundation. Great Oaks – which runs four schools in
Newark, New Jersey; New York City; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Wilmington,
Delaware – makes "high-dosage tutoring" a centerpiece of its model. In addition to a full-time staff, Great Oaks
says it would hire AmeriCorps volunteers to act as full-time tutors, providing
them housing and a small stipend.
Four firms apply to take
over three struggling Phila. schools
by Kristen A. Graham, Inquirer Staff
Writer Updated on DECEMBER
2, 2015 1:08 AM EST
Who wants to run
three struggling schools that the Philadelphia
School District West Philadelphia
charter school, and two outside companies that run charters elsewhere - raised
their hands, submitting proposals to manage city schools, officials announced
Tuesday. Mastery Charter Schools, which
runs 13 schools in Philadelphia and five in Camden , wants to manage Wister Elementary in Germantown . The Great Oaks Foundation, a New York-based
company that runs charter schools there as well as in Newark ,
N.J. , Bridgeport ,
Conn. , and Wilmington ,
wants to take over Cooke Elementary in Logan . And two outfits will vie to run Huey
Elementary in West Philadelphia . One, Global Leadership
Academy Charter
School , runs a stand-alone charter
school in West Philadelphia . The other, SABIS
Educational Systems, has its U.S.
headquarters in Minnesota
and runs 12 charter schools throughout the country. It has roots in Lebanon , and
administers public and private schools around the world.
From a newlywed and new
homeowner: Don't turn Huey into a charter
An open letter to Superintendent Hite
the notebook letter By Cecily Harwitt on Dec
1, 2015 02:29 PM
Dear Dr. Hite, In my
role as statewide campaign director for POWER Interfaith, I’ve sat across the
table from you more times than I can count. For the last three years, I’ve been
fighting for a full and fair education funding formula at the state level that
would help all Philadelphia
children get the incredible education that they deserve. I write this letter in
that spirit, but in a different capacity – as a newlywed and new homeowner. After living in and building community in
West Philly, my husband and I were thrilled to plant roots here for the long
haul. We were excited to be so close to beautiful Malcolm X Park and directly
across the street from Huey
School Philadelphia schools, was struggling, but we
were ready to roll up our sleeves and see what we could do to support the
school’s improvement.
But 12 days after we
moved in, you made your announcement about turning Huey, along with Cooke and
Wister, into Renaissance charter schools. As members of the school community,
my husband and I have attended every community meeting your staff has held.
Having spent a fair amount of time supporting the District, (he as a veteran
teacher in both charter and traditional public schools; I as an education
organizer) neither of us was prepared for the disenfranchisement and lack of
agency we feel as stakeholders in this process.
"The latest attempt by
the republican controlled legislature didn’t even have an “independent”
analysis of how much their proposed tax shifting changes would net. What kind
of company or household makes a budget plan without knowing if their flow of
income would meet the needs of the budget?"
Tame the animal called
property taxes - wisely!
"When the latest
proposal in the Pennsylvania Senate would have eliminated school property
taxes, (but not County, township, borough property taxes and not school
property taxes for bond indebtedness), and replaced them with increased sales
and income taxes, it was voted down by one vote from the lieutenant governor on
November 23. Reasons cited by legislators who voted against included the loss
of control by local school boards over their own budgets, the expansiveness of
goods and services that would be subject to sales tax, and the shifting of tax
burden from businesses and commercial to individuals since business properties
would also benefit from the elimination of school taxes. One point not
emphasized is the unprecedented amount of control Harrisburg
Colliton: Shouldn’t we be
done with Pa.
Daily Local Letter by By Janet Colliton POSTED: 11/30/15, 4:17 PM EST
If you want to know
how long Pennsylvania
has gone without adopting a State budget you can check the website for the
Pennsylvania School Boards Association. It clocks the days, hours, minutes and
seconds. When last I checked it was 152 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes and 11
seconds. While Pennsylvania does not often make the list of
top ten’s in the country, usually falling somewhere in the middle, we have a
distinction here. There are only two states in the U.S.
that have not yet adopted their annual budgets – Illinois
and Pennsylvania .
If we delay much longer Pennsylvania
could bear the distinction of being the last of 50 states. A vote is being
predicted for this week. We will have to see whether that materializes.
If adopting a budget
had no practical significance, this would just be a matter of a long wait but,
as with so many other things, there are consequences. Vendors, including but
not limited to social service agencies and nonprofits, are not paid meaning
that many have needed and will need to borrow to meet expenses including
payroll even if the budget is resolved now. Other organizations such as school
boards do not know what will be the source or amount of their funding which
makes it problematic at best for them to budget. If State governments were like
private individuals this would be like deciding not to pay your bills until you
figured what account you preferred to use. Obviously private individuals could
not make that decision.
PA School Performance Profile
scores for 2012, 2013 and 2014; PDE considers 70 to be a passing score
Option for beleaguered
cyber charter's students
by Martha Woodall, Inquirer Staff Writer Updated on DECEMBER 2, 2015 —
1:08 AM EST
A cyber school based
in Allegheny County
is offering a special enrollment window for families displaced by the
foundering Education
Plus Academy
Cyber Charter
School
Online schools are losing
support, creating divisions in the national charter school movement
By Patrick O'Donnell,
The Cleveland Plain Dealer Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
November 30, 2015 at 9:23 AM, updated November 30, 2015 at 10:15 AM
How schools would be judged under ‘Every Student
Succeeds,’ the new No Child Left Behind
Federal
lawmakers on Monday released the final
text of a compromise bill to rewrite No Child Left Behind, including
closely watched language outlining how the nation’s K-12 schools
would be judged — and how struggling schools would be improved — if the legislation
passes. The bill, dubbed the Every
Student Succeeds Act, would largely shift authority from the federal
government to states and districts, giving local officials far more power to
define what it means for a school to be successful and to decide how and when
to intervene in schools that persistently fail to live up to expectations. It attempts to thread the needle between
conservatives who want to shrink the federal government’s footprint in
education and civil rights advocates who worry that some states, left to their
own devices, will obfuscate or ignore the poor performance of schools
serving low-income and minority students.
Specifically, under the Every Student Succeeds Act:
Kenney holding five town
halls to get feedback from Philly residents
WHYY Newsworks BY KATIE COLANERI NOVEMBER 30, 2015
Got a question or
concern for Philadelphia Mayor-Elect Jim Kenney? You could have your chance to
tell him in person this week. Starting
tonight, Kenney will hold a series of five town hall style meetings in the
north, south, west and northeast sections of Philadelphia . During a press conference earlier this month,
he said the ideas and issues that come out of these meetings will be passed
along to members of his
large transition team, which will put out a final report in January laying
out the Kenney administration's priorities.
"I think it's always important that not only are we inclusive of
every community and every neighborhood in the city, but that we listen to what
people have to say," Kenney said. "They pay taxes, they live and work
in our city and they have something to say and we want to make sure that
they're included." All members of
the public are invited, but are encouraged to RSVP online atKenneyForPhiladelphia.com. Those
who can't make the meetings in-person can give their input at the same
website.
Here's the schedule:
Central High
School, 1700 W. Olney Avenue
Monday, Nov. 30, 2015, 6:00pm - 7:00pm
Monday, Nov. 30, 2015, 6:00pm - 7:00pm
South
Philadelphia High School, 2101 S. Broad Street
Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
School of the
Future, 40th & Parkside Avenue
Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Mayfair Community
Center, 2990 Saint Vincent Street
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Strawberry
Mansion High School, 3133 Ridge Avenue
Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, 6:30pm - 7:30pm
PSBA New School Director
Training
School boards who will welcome new directors after the election should
plan to attend PSBA training to help everyone feel more confident right from
the start. This one-day event is targeted to help members learn the basics of
their new roles and responsibilities. Meet the friendly, knowledgeable PSBA
team and bring everyone on your “team of 10” to get on the same page fast.
- $150 per
registrant (No charge if your district has a LEARN Pass. Note: All-Access
members also have LEARN Pass.)
- One-hour lunch
on your own — bring your lunch, go to lunch, or we’ll bring a box lunch to
you; coffee/tea provided all day
- Course
materials available online or we’ll bring a printed copy to you for an
additional $25
- Registrants
receive one month of 100-level online courses for each registrant, after
the live class
Nine locations
for your convenience:
- Philadelphia
area — Nov. 21 William Tennent HS, Warminster (note: location changed from
IU23 Norristown)
- Pittsburgh
area — Dec. 5 Allegheny IU3, Homestead
- South Central
PA and Erie areas (joint program)— Dec. 12 Northwest Tri-County IU5,
Edinboro and PSBA, Mechanicsburg
- Butler area —
Jan. 9 Midwestern IU 4, Grove City (note: location changed from Penn State
New Kensington)
- Allentown area
— Jan. 16 Lehigh Career & Technical Institute, Schnecksville
- Central PA —
Jan. 30 Nittany Lion Inn, State College
- Scranton area
— Feb. 6 Abington Heights SD, Clarks Summit
- North Central
area —Feb. 13 Mansfield University, Mansfield
Register here: https://www.psba.org/2015/09/new-school-director-training/
NSBA Advocacy
Institute 2016; January 24 - 26 in Washington ,
D.C.
Housing and meeting registration is open for Advocacy Institute 2016. The theme, “Election Year Politics & Public Schools,” celebrates the exciting year ahead for school board advocacy. Strong legislative programming will be paramount at this year’s conference in January. Visit www.nsba.org/advocacyinstitute for more information.
Housing and meeting registration is open for Advocacy Institute 2016. The theme, “Election Year Politics & Public Schools,” celebrates the exciting year ahead for school board advocacy. Strong legislative programming will be paramount at this year’s conference in January. Visit www.nsba.org/advocacyinstitute for more information.
PASBO 61st Annual
Conference and Exhibits March 8 - 11, 2016
Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania
Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania
The Network for Public Education 3rd
Annual National Conference April 16-17, 2016 Raleigh , North Carolina
The
Network for Public Education is thrilled to announce the location for our 3rd
Annual National Conference. On April 16 and 17, 2016 public education advocates
from across the country will gather in Raleigh, North Carolina. We chose Raleigh to highlight the tremendous
activist movement that is flourishing in North Carolina. No one exemplifies
that movement better than the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, who will be the
conference keynote speaker. Rev. Barber is the current president of
the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the National NAACP chair of
the Legislative Political Action Committee, and the founder of Moral Mondays.
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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