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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup December 27, 2015:
PA Legislature left town; Wolf's big decision: sign or
veto bill in 6-month impasse
"Now a bare-bones
spending plan that does none of the things Wolf envisioned is sitting on his
desk. He could sign it, let it become law after 10 days without his signature,
veto it or eliminate spending lines individually. So far the governor isn’t
saying what his plan – or what’s left of it – is. But across the state, many people are
talking, and the message is loud and clear.
Change is needed in Harrisburg
Editorial:
Change is needed in disgraceful Harrisburg
Delco
Times POSTED: 12/26/15, 7:57 PM EST | UPDATED: 2 HRS AGO
Now it’s
come down to this. The William Penn
School Board this week voted to borrow $9 million. It isn’t looking to make any
swank upgrades to its football field. It isn’t bankrolling a trip to some
pricey conference for executives. It’s just trying to keep the doors open. Welcome to Pennsylvania in December 2015. Just days before the arrival of 2016, the
state still does not have a budget in place. Yes, that very same spending plan
that state law mandates be approved by the Legislature back on July 1. The scope of Harrisburg ’s dysfunction is mind-boggling.
But this fiscal faceoff is having real effects on a lot of people in the state,
people who live and work in the real world, not the surreal, politicized world
of ineptness that passes for what happens in our state capital. Actually William Penn is in better shape than
some other hard-pressed school districts. Several in the western part of the
state have already indicated they will not open their doors after the winter
holiday break unless a new state budget is in place.
Editorial: Budget
solution: just leave town
In this
season of good will toward men (and women), we find it impossible to extend
even a smidgen of good will toward members of the state Legislature, who for
the past six months have given us a display of government ineptitude that
rivals anything we’ve seen in recent memory. The
Republican-dominated House and the GOP-controlled Senate have for months been
trying to come up with a state budget acceptable to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.
They talked and debated in the weeks leading up to the June 30 budget deadline,
then talked and debated some more as summer turned to fall and fall turned to
winter. Still no budget, but there was this: increasing animosity and rancor,
not between the Republicans and Wolf, but among the Republicans themselves. The Senate and the governor finally came
together on a so-called framework agreement. But the House balked over changes
to the state pension system and what new taxes would be enacted to fund Wolf’s
desire for higher education spending and a solution to Pennsylvania ’s debt. The House said it
wouldn’t act until the Senate and the governor say what the new tax structure
will be. (Many in the House say higher taxes aren’t necessary in any case.) In
return, the Senate leadership said it wouldn’t move until the House indicated
it would approve pension reform legislation, which conservatives in the House
claim doesn’t go far enough.
"The inadequate budget
just passed by the Pennsylvania
Release:
Education Law Center
Deborah
Gordon Klehr, Executive Director of the Education Law Center-PA, issued the
following statement concerning the current budget impasse:
“The
children of Pennsylvania
deserve a budget that invests in them and their future. We are disappointed
that the Pennsylvania House deserted the previously agreed to budget framework
that would have invested critical new dollars in schools across Pennsylvania . The inadequate
budget just passed by the Pennsylvania Senate walks away from our moral and
legal obligations to our children and doesn’t reflect our state’s values. It
reinforces unacceptable inequities in our schools and continues to shortchange
children. The Governor should veto it. Every student deserves access to a
nurse, a librarian, updated textbooks, and school counselors. This budget
doesn’t provide hundreds of thousands of children with even these basics. We
call on the House and Senate to return immediately to Harrisburg and pass a budget that restores
cuts to our schools and provides every child with the opportunity to learn and
reach their full potential. Children across our Commonwealth are waiting for
real solutions and must no longer be held hostage by gridlock in Harrisburg .”
- See
more at: http://www.elc-pa.org/2015/12/24/release-education-law-center-issues-statement-on-budget-impasse/#sthash.m0KB1P9A.dpuf
"As long as they still
get their paychecks, they clearly don't care about the rest of us. When will
they teach our children about compromise? About non-partisan politics? About
how to get along with your co-workers?
When on earth will we, the voters, finally say enough is enough?"
For Pa.
Penn
LIve Letters
to the Editor by HEATHER MAGRECKI, Mount Joy
What is
wrong with the state Legislature? It seems increasingly clear that their
agenda is this and only this – to prove that Republicans hate Democrats and
Democrats hate Republicans. What a wonderful lesson to teach my children about
politics these days. When will our
senators, congressmen/women, and governor choose to act like adults and take
into account the people who elected them? The people they have left holding the
bag. When will they acknowledge the
damage they are doing to the schools that have closed (or are about to) because
they are running out of funding? Or acknowledge the further financial burdens
placed upon us, the taxpayers, who will have to repay the loans taken out by
our school districts just to keep the doors open for our children.
In 2014, the 229 lawmakers
who came into or left the House charged taxpayers 5 percent more than they did
the year before, according to records The Morning Call obtained through the
Right to Know Law.
State lawmakers' expenses up — again
Steve Esack and Eugene Tauber Contact Reporter
Of The Morning Call December 26, 2015
How much tax money
did your local PA lawmaker spend for expenses in 2014? The Morning Call has the
answers
Wolf's big decision: to sign or veto bill in 6-month
impasse
AP State Wire By
MARC LEVY December 26, 2015
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - After butting heads with Pennsylvania's Republican-controlled Legislature, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf faces perhaps the biggest decision of his short tenure: sign a budget that falls short of everything's he sought, or risk more damage to the schools and social services he wants to help. Wolf's office said it did not expect a decision before Monday, and the governor has options. What he does could set the tone for how the Legislature deals with him for the three years left in his first term. He could sign the bill. He could let it become law without his signature. He could sign it while eliminating any number of the individual spending items in it. Or he could veto the whole thing and indefinitely extend the state government's six-month budget impasse.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - After butting heads with Pennsylvania's Republican-controlled Legislature, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf faces perhaps the biggest decision of his short tenure: sign a budget that falls short of everything's he sought, or risk more damage to the schools and social services he wants to help. Wolf's office said it did not expect a decision before Monday, and the governor has options. What he does could set the tone for how the Legislature deals with him for the three years left in his first term. He could sign the bill. He could let it become law without his signature. He could sign it while eliminating any number of the individual spending items in it. Or he could veto the whole thing and indefinitely extend the state government's six-month budget impasse.
Third state budget lands
on Gov. Wolf's desk, but will he sign it to end the 6-month impasse?
Penn Live By Christian
Alexandersen | calexandersen@pennlive.com Email the
author | Follow
on Twitter on December 24, 2015 at 10:42 AM, updated December 24,
2015 at 10:41 PM
As long as Gov. Tom
Wolf can accept defeat, the six-month
state budget impasse could soon be over. On Thursday, Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike
Turzai signed off on a $30.3 billion budget bill that was passed by the Senate
on Wednesday. It heads to the governor's desk, but it's not the budget he wants
to sign. After months of negotiating, a
budget framework was in place. It was agreed to by the governor, Republican and
Democratic Senate caucuses and the Democratic House caucus. But the Republican
House caucus could not sign off on it. House
GOP members were against raising taxes, which is what the $30.8 budget
framework would have had to do. The governor was convinced he had the votes for
the framework, but Turzai would not put it up for a vote. So, the Senate voted 33 to 17 in favor of the
Republican House budget. Democratic lawmakers were livid, and took to social
media to express their dismay. And now
the governor has the budget. But it seems unlikely that he will sign it.
Gov. Wolf has 4 budget
options
Gov. Tom Wolf has four options: Sign it, veto
it, partially veto it and do nothing
York Daily Record by Flint L.
McColgan, fmccolgan@ydr.com5:05
p.m. EST December 24, 2015
The summery
weather outside on Thursdaysuggested that Pennsylvania could have its
budget for fiscal year 2015-2016 on time — but it wasn't July 1, the start of
the fiscal year, it was Christmas Eve, and the budget remains uncertain. The Pennsylvania Senate passed a budget bill
Wednesday that it previously opposed when it was delivered by the state House
about two weeks earlier. It wasn't the "compromise bill" that Senate
leadership had negotiated with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf that was turned down by
the Republican-controlled House.
Delco Times By Nick Tricome, Times Correspondent POSTED: 12/25/15, 10:08 PM EST
LANSDOWNE >>
With state budget talks in Harrisburg falling apart again this past week, the
William Penn School Board voted to take out a loan in order to keep the school
district running. At its monthly business
meeting Monday night, the board approved a Tax and Revenue Anticipation Note
from Univest Bank and Trust Co. that is worth $9.2 million. A loan was put out
as an option to keep the doors open when the board authorized the ability for
district administration to look into offers from competing banks back at
October’s meeting. At November’s
meeting, the board reiterated its plan to pursue a loan should there have been
no state budget by December. Pennsylvania’s budget impasse is now closing in on
six months past its June 30 deadline, with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the
GOP-controlled state Legislature unable to agree on a tax and spending plan.
The school district has been trying to operate without the around $38 million
in funding it usually receives from the state in the time since the crisis
began.
Blogger note: some of the
low-income families receiving diverted tax dollars under these programs have
family incomes in excess of $80K… In
2013-2014 $100 million was appropriated for EITC/OSTC programs and therefore not
available in budget discussions for funding of state mandated public education.
Governor Wolf Gifts Some Hope to Low-Income Families;
Orders Release of EITC & OSTC Approval Letters
PA Family Council
website DECEMBER 25, 2015
Helping to make
Christmas this year a little brighter for children in low-income families,
Governor Wolf has just ordered the Department of Community and Economic
Development (DCED) to release the approval letters to all businesses for the
Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax
Credit (OSTC). These approval letters
notify a business will receive a tax credit on their donation into this
scholarship program. Every year, 40,000 scholarships are provided to low-income
families to allow their children to attend a private or Christian school; often
due to living in a low-performing public school district.
Bloomberg Business
by Elizabeth
Campbell and Brian
Chappatta December 23, 2015 — 11:09 AM EST Updated on December 24,
2015 — 9:40 AM EST
Pennsylvania broke
the record for the longest budget impasse in modern state history on
Thursday, now at 177 days, after lawmakers advanced a scaled-down spending
plan that Governor Tom Wolf is signaling he will veto. The longest budget standoff had previously
been in 2003, when lawmakers passed a spending plan on Dec. 23, said Mike
Stoll, a spokesman for the House appropriations committee. The current impasse
is dragging on as Wolf, a first-term Democrat, and the Republican-led
legislature can’t agree on a spending plan for the year that began in July. The
delay is threatening Pennsylvania’s credit rating and has investors demanding
higher yields on its debt. The
Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Tuesday put aside a stop-gap budget
that Wolf’s office has said he will veto and instead
advanced a complete spending plan that the state Senate passed this month, a
sign that a deal could be close. Yet the Senate didn’t send that budget to
Wolf, opting rather to seek approval for a smaller version that has less
funding for education than the governor wants.
Unless we're careful, the
new 'No Child' may still leave some behind: Deborah Gordon Klehr and Jackie
Perlow
PennLive
Op-Ed By Deborah Gordon Klehr and Jackie Perlow on December 24, 2015 at
12:00 PM, updated December 24, 2015 at 5:03 PM
Deborah Gordon Klehr is the Executive
Director of the Education Law Center. Jackie Perlow, Esq. is the Kaufman Legal
Fellow at the Education Law Center.
Earlier this
month President Barack Obama signed into law a comprehensive overhaul
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), previously known as
No Child Left Behind. First passed by
Lyndon Johnson in 1965, the mission of this federal law is "to ensure that
all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a
high-quality education." While past
iterations of ESEA have failed to fulfill this promise, this month's
reauthorization offers states like Pennsylvania an opportunity to reaffirm
ESEA's central mission to advance educational equity and protect the civil
rights of vulnerable students. In
several ways this reauthorization, known as the Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA), represents an improvement over existing legislation.
Letter to the Editor: Say
thanks to a school board member today
Delco Times Letter
by Maria Edelberg, Ed.D., Executive Director, Delaware County
To the Times:
January is School
Director Recognition Month, a recognition that honors members of local boards
of education for their commitment to provide quality public education for Pennsylvania ’s school
children. On behalf of the Delaware
County Intermediate Unit, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize
not only our board of directors, which is comprised of one elected board member
from each of our 15 school districts, but all school directors throughout Delaware County Pennsylvania . This is all done for
the benefit of the children and families they serve.
Turnaround: A Year Inside
a Strawberry Mansion Elementary School
WHYY Newsworks by
Kevin McCorry
In this three-part
series, NewsWorks/WHYY education reporter Kevin McCorry documents a year he
spent tracking the progress of the chronically low-performing James G. Blaine Elementary School
in the Strawberry Mansion section of North
Philadelphia . With dozens of interviews and many hours of
observation at the school, he grapples with a pivotal question: Can the school
district find a path to revitalize its neediest schools in the midst of an
ongoing budget crisis?
The Common Core of
Goodwill
Living in Dialogue By Michelle Gunderson. Posted onSaturday, December 26, 2015 7:50 am
One of the things
you learn as an elementary teacher in the Chicago Public Schools is to always
have materials available and an extra desk or space for new students. You learn
to expect the unexpected and that a child can show up on your doorstep at any
minute of any day. And usually it is
not an easy matter. Many times children who come to us after the first weeks of
school are displaced or have parents who are seeking a school that can help
their troubled child. These were the
thoughts on my mind when a little boy appeared at my classroom door in the second
week of school this fall, an hour after school had started, without an adult
accompanying him to the class. I took a deep breath and tried to talk myself
into a place of calm. There was so much on my teaching plate already, and I did
not know if I was going to be able to embrace one more Herculean task. And I was right. The child who was given into
my care needed me in countless ways.
As
Graduation Rates Rise, Experts Fear Diplomas Come Up Short
New York Times By MOTOKO RICH DEC. 26, 2015
These Charter Schools
Tried to Turn Public Education Into Big Business. They Failed.
Slate By Jessica HusemanDecember 17, 2015
More and more these
days, Americans think about schools using the language of business.
Superintendents are “CEOs.” Districts manage “portfolios” of schools. And
pundits talk obsessively about American schools’ “competitiveness.” But we don’t always like them to act like
businesses, particularly when it comes to having an overt profit motive. Partly
as a result, for-profit public charter schools—at least the
brick-and-mortar variety—are slowly dying in some states. Once touted as a
model that would reduce inefficiencies in public education and achieve
economies of scales by operating schools in multiple states, for-profit
charters have fallen out of fashion. Charter schools in general are
becoming more popular across the country, but since the early 2000s, for-profit
charter operators have lost ground to their nonprofit peers. And their failure,
in large part, has been the result of bad business plans—something the
companies themselves freely admit.
Edison Schools—once the biggest name in the for-profit charter industry—partnered
with 130 schools (some noncharter) in the early 2000s and fully managed 80. It
now manages only five. In 2000, Advantage Schools, another for-profit chain,
enrolled more than 10,000 children across the country. Today it enrolls zero. New Orleans hired several
for-profit companies to manage some new charter schools after Hurricane
Katrina. But by 2013 all
of them had disappeared, their schools taken over by nonprofit operators. In
recent years, lawmakers in Mississippi, Ohio, andTennessee have
all taken steps to curb the growth of for-profit charters or ban them outright.
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
Remaining
Locations:
- 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
- Delaware Co. IU 25
— Feb. 1
- 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.
Save
the Dates for These 2016 Annual EPLC Regional State Budget Education
Policy Forums
Sponsored
by The Education Policy and Leadership
Center
Thursday, February
11 - 8:30-11:00 a.m. - Harrisburg
Wednesday, February 17 - 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. -Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania )
Thursday, February 25 - 8:30-11:00 a.m. -Pittsburgh
Wednesday, February 17 - 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. -
Thursday, February 25 - 8:30-11:00 a.m. -
Invitation
and more details in January
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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