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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup December 8, 2015:
.@PAHouseGOP
#PAbudget reportedly: $215M less for basic ed; $25M less for pre-k; $5M less
for Head Start; $20 million less for special ed
Campaign for Fair Education Funding: PA Lawmakers need to deliver a
#PABudget that meets the needs of every child. Ask them to at:
Today might be a very good day to reach out to your House
members. Phone numbers are here:
“This is a budget that the
Senate can pass and the governor can sign,” Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman
said on the Senate floor.
House and Senate advance competing budget proposals
The Senate voted 43-7, with
seven Republicans in opposition, to send the House a $30.8 billion spending
plan that would add $365 million to the main K-12 education funding line, along
with other increases.
By Karen Langley &
Kate Giammarise Post-Gazette Harrisburg
Bureau December 8, 2015 12:09 AM
HARRISBURG — The
House and Senate on Monday advanced competing proposals to end the state budget
impasse, with the Senate approving legislation supported by Gov. Tom Wolf while
House Republicans signed off at the committee level on a lower-spending plan.
The Senate voted
43-7, with seven Republicans in opposition, to send the House a $30.8 billion
spending plan that would add $365 million to the main K-12 education funding
line, along with other increases. The chamber did not address the corresponding
question of how to pay for the increase in spending, with Senate Majority
Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, saying a revenue agreement could be made public
in the coming days. Speaking on the
Senate floor, Mr. Corman acknowledged the House had not agreed to the spending
plan. But he said that what the House has proposed does not have the support to
be made into law. “This is a budget that
the Senate can pass and the governor can sign,” he said. Soon after, House Republicans voted through
the Appropriations Committee a $30.3 billion spending plan, which Chairman Bill
Adolph, R-Delaware, described as “the art of the possible.” Mr. Adolph said
there is not support to pay for the plan that passed the Senate. “The truth is there’s going to be a big tax
package to pay for the spending framework,” he said. “I have not heard from any
of the caucuses yet that they have the tax votes to pass their spending plan.”
Dueling budget bills now
moving through the General Assembly
The PLS Reporter Author: Jason Gottesman/Monday, December
7, 2015
Adding fresh fuel to
Pennsylvania ’s
160-day budget impasse, the Senate Monday sent the House a $30.8 billion budget
that reflects the budget framework agreement all sides seemed to be moving to
just a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the
House Appropriations Committee moved along a $30.2 billion spending plan that
was said to reflect “the art of the possible” in that chamber. Starting in the
Senate, Senate Bill 1073 passed with relatively little debate by a 43-7 vote. The bill was
acknowledged on both sides as being an imperfect compromise. “I think this budget does the best we can
under the circumstances to have reasonable growth in our spending, but at the
same time we still have challenges,” said Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman
(R-Centre) on the Senate floor Monday afternoon. Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa
(D-Allegheny) added voting for the consensus proposal is the best way to ensure
money starts flowing to provide for addition investments in public education
and address issues with social services funding. “We can make a
choice, and that choice is to make investment,” he said. Most importantly, Sen. Corman said to members
of the House, the bill moving through the Senate is the one that can get the
votes in the Senate and the governor’s signature.
"I can live with this
budget. It's not a budget I would have written, but it's not bad," said
State Rep. Kate Harper (R-Montgomery). Harper
emphasized that the tentative sales-tax agreement does not affect child care,
nursing homes, home health care, or legal and accounting services. "I would not be happy if the exemptions
that we were taking away included food and other necessities, but they aren't,
and I think people can handle a six percent tax on a hair cut. I just do,"
she said."
After another tentative
agreement falters, uncertainty returns to long-overdue Pa.
WHYY Newsworks BY KEVIN MCCORRY DECEMBER 8, 2015
For the second time
in a month, a tentative deal to end Pennsylvania 's
five month-long budget impasse has fallen apart. Gov. Tom Wolf and legislative leaders on both
sides of the aisle came to an agreement late last week that would provide an
historic $400 million boost to K-12 education funding by broadening the amount
of items eligible for sales tax. Also
key to the deal: leaders agreed to allow wine to be sold in supermarkets, and
came up with a pension reform compromise that would call on new employees
covered by the state pension system — including teachers — to share some of the
market risk in their retirement plans. They would enter a hybrid plan
that incorporates aspects of 401k style plans.
The tentative deal, though, came off its wheels over the weekend, when
it became clear that House leaders couldn't sell rank-and-file members on the
finer details of the blueprint.
"Either scenario means
the budget fight could push into the new year.
"The bill that came out
of the House Appropriations Committee is not what the governor agreed to,"
said Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan."
Senate's OK of $30.8 billion budget does not end
impasse
Steve
Esack Contact Reporter Morning Call Harrisburg Bureau
December 7, 2015
Tax increases part of Senate's
and Gov. Tom Wolf's $30.8 billion budget House opposes
Penn Live By Charles Thompson |
cthompson@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
December 07, 2015 at 8:43 PM, updated December 07, 2015 at 9:15 PM
The state Senate
passed a public pension reform plan Monday that, Republican supporters say,
provides a big win for taxpayers by reducing the risk of fresh cost spikes
going forward. But the 38-12 vote also carried significant Democratic support, as
independent analysts hailed what they saw as preservation of retirement
security for the future public sector employees who would have to live by the
new bill's terms. Twenty-nine
Republicans voted for the bill, along with nine Democrats. Ten Democrats voted
'no,' joined by two Republicans.
The five Tweets that
explain the mess that is the #PaBudget: Monday Morning Coffee
Penn Live By John L. Micek |
jmicek@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
December 07, 2015 at 8:18 AM
Good Monday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
If you were otherwise preoccupied by friends, family, college football, self-improvement or all the other things that make life worth living, and not tuned into the endless debate over the state budget (and who could blame you?), it's something of a gigantic honking mess right now. In short, the state House pulled the plug on its Sunday session after torpedoing the month-old budget "framework"; the Senate is set to start voting on the framework as early as today; the current version of pension reform could make it optional for sitting lawmakers (nice, right?) and there's zero consensus on booze reform.
If you were otherwise preoccupied by friends, family, college football, self-improvement or all the other things that make life worth living, and not tuned into the endless debate over the state budget (and who could blame you?), it's something of a gigantic honking mess right now. In short, the state House pulled the plug on its Sunday session after torpedoing the month-old budget "framework"; the Senate is set to start voting on the framework as early as today; the current version of pension reform could make it optional for sitting lawmakers (nice, right?) and there's zero consensus on booze reform.
As key #PaBudget pieces
start to move, will Wolf, lawmakers wring out a holiday miracle?: Analysis
Penn Live By John L. Micek |
jmicek@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
December 07, 2015 at 1:24 PM, updated December 07, 2015 at 3:11 PM
There was a choir in
the Capitol Rotunda on Monday morning singing a beatific version of "Silent
Night," which was appropriate, because if there's a building in
need of a little divine intervention right now, it's this one. Keep in mind, the last 48 hours saw majority
House Republicans dynamite a carefully crafted budget framework,
even as Senate Republicans made a separate peace with the Democratic Wolf administration to try to run
down the curtain on the state's six-month-old budget farce. "We're still moving forward with what we
agreed to [with the Senate GOP] administration spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan said Monday
morning. "We have no idea what the House Republicans are doing."
Senators to lobby House
members for budget framework agreement
The PLS Reporter Author: Jason Gottesman/Monday, December
7, 2015
With the Senate
having sent a budget bill to the House comprising of an agreement that the
governor will sign, some in Senate leadership told The PLS
Reporter Monday that they will be engaging House colleagues to try to
persuade them to support the budget framework.
“We’d certainly be disappointed if the House doesn’t take up the GA bill
and pension proposal,” said Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny). “We
all stood together, all five parties stood together and said we have a budget
framework. We’re honoring that structural budget framework and our hope is that
the House will do the same.” He said he
is going to openly encourage House colleagues to support the framework,
including the budget bill, pension bill, and “other bills to come.” “We all have to make tough choices,” he
added. “I do think we’re going to call upon our colleagues to support the
overall comprehensive approach to what we’re going to do.”
by Chris Palmer, Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau. Updated on DECEMBER 8, 2015 —
1:08 AM EST
"The Senate budget,
which passed that chamber by a 43-7 vote, included historic spending increases for
education that Gov. Tom Wolf indicated he could support.
It includes $365 million
increase for basic education, a $50 million increase for special education and
a $22.5 million increase for higher education.
The House GOP plan – which
increases spending by $1.1 billion over last year's $29.2 billion budget –
proposes $100 million more for basic education, $30 million for special
education, and $79 million for higher education."
Dueling state budget plans
set the stage for a showdown
Penn Live By Jan Murphy |
jmurphy@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
December 07, 2015 at 7:32 PM, updated December 07, 2015 at 8:28 PM
wo different budget
plans saw action in Pennsylvania 's
GOP-controlled General Assembly on Monday, moving forward on separate but
parallel tracks. Just hours after
the Senate passed a $30.8 billion state spending plan, the
House Appropriations Committee approved a leaner $30.3 billion budget on a
party-line21-15 vote. vote by the full House is expected to occur on
Tuesday, setting the stage for more budget negotiations to resolve differences
between the two proposals. Monday's progress came more than five months
into a
stalemate that has left schools and nonprofits struggling to get by
without state dollars. Still, House
Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Adolph, R-Delaware, was confident the
House GOP-crafted plan could garner the 102 votes needed to pass that chamber
to send over to the Senate. "We are
entering the second week of December," Adolph said. "The people of Pennsylvania want us to
get a budget done."
Now It’s House Republicans Blocking a Pa.
It’s time for everybody to accept a partial
victory and go home.
Phillymag BY JOEL MATHIS | DECEMBER
7, 2015 AT 11:55 AM
Maybe I was wrong.
As the months
dragged on without a state budget, I had increasingly come to believe
that Gov. Tom Wolf was
being too stubborn. After all, there were reports that Republicans had offered
a substantial increase in ed funding as part of a budget deal; given that
schools were foundering without a state budget to send money their way, I
believed the governor should take that half a loaf, declare victory, and move
on to the next battle. The fact that he hadn’t done so, I suggested, raised
questions about his ability to govern. (He
disagreed, by the way.) In the last couple
of weeks, though, Wolf has done exactly what I’d hoped he’d do: He took the
half-a-loaf — a big increase in ed funding — and prepared to end the budget
battle. He didn’t get the tax he wanted on the Marcellus Shale. In fact, the
budget agreement pays for the increase in spending by expanding sales taxes,
which fall most heavily on the poor. But that’s politics in a divided state: To
get a little you have to give a little. One
problem, though: A budget framework was announced before Thanksgiving. That fell
apart, and a new, similar deal was
announced Friday. It now appears to be falling apart. What’s up with
that?
It’s House
Republicans, it turns out, who can’t get their (ahem) house in order.
Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/12/07/house-republicans-pennsylvania-budget-deal/#02s4McfVIi9HMg7O.99
PA-BGT: Mutiny in the
Legislature
PoliticsPA Written by Jason Addy, Contributing Writer December 7, 2015
House GOP members
went against their leadership this weekend, casting serious doubt on the
previously announced budget “agreement.”
Rank-and-file Republicans held a closed-doors meeting on Saturday, after
which they told reporters they would
not be supporting the plan negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Jake
Corman, House Majority Leader Dave Reed and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. That
plan includes $30.7 billion in spending, including $350 million
in additional education funding. After
their meeting, House Republicans signaled their intent to seek a smaller budget
plan: $30.3 billion in spending, with only $150 million for education, Charles
Thompson of the Patriot News reports. The plan proposes no changes
to the state’s sales or income taxes.
“We’re trying to deliver a budget that we think we can get the votes to
pass,” Rep. Kerry Benninghoff said.
Guest Column: Pa.
Delco Times By Deborah Gordon Klehr and Karen C. Buck , Times Guest
Columnists POSTED: 12/07/15,
10:30 PM EST
Deborah Gordon Klehr is executive director of
Education Law Center, based in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Philadelphia
If budgets reflect
our collective priorities, then this year’s impasse sends a loud and clear
message that public schools and services for seniors aren’t currently at the
top of that list. For hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, from our
youngest to our oldest citizens, and everyone in between, the six month-long
budget impasse has been a disaster. School
districts that rely on state funding have had to take out millions of dollars
in loans just to keep the doors open. Senior centers across the state have
closed and in Philadelphia
alone, no aging service provider has been paid since the summer, including
those that serve the daily needs of elders, protect victims of elder abuse and
violence, and prevent senior homelessness. Some school and senior services
staff are being asked to work without pay to serve the most vulnerable people
in our state. It is precisely these Pennsylvanians who are most impacted by our
lawmakers’ failure to adequately and promptly fund these necessary services.
Study: Philly
comprehensive high schools in trouble
by Kristen A. Graham, Inquirer Staff
Writer. Updated on DECEMBER
7, 2015 — 12:00 PM EST
High school choices
have expanded dramatically in Philadelphia
over the past decade, at a steep price: the large comprehensive schools are
"hanging on by a thread," a new study by a local child-advocacy
organization has found. Though more
options are available through new
Philadelphia School District
PPG Editorial: Keep searching: City schools need
expert help to find a new chief
Post Gazette By the
Editorial Board December 8, 2015 12:00 AM
The Pittsburgh
Public Schools board demonstrated stupefying naivete in its decision to hire an
inexperienced consultant that two of its members met at an education
conference.
Even if they had
just needed help redecorating the administration building, it would have been
wrong to engage an out-of-state consulting firm with little relevant experience
without even checking references. But it’s worse than that: The consultant, who
will be paid up to $100,000 for his services, was chosen to help find Pittsburgh ’s new
superintendent. The board voted
last month to hire Perkins Consulting Group to recommend a successor to Linda Lane , who
will retire June 30. Board president Thomas Sumpter and director Regina Holley
recommended the firm after meeting Brian K. Perkins at a meeting of the Council
of Urban Boards of Education. Mr. Sumpter was so
dazzled by Mr. Perkins “unique skill set” that he did not even check his
references before he was hired on a 5-4 vote. This is astonishing. Even parents
who volunteer to read to kindergartners must undergo a background check.
In Setback for Hurting
Districts, Pa.
Education Week
StateEdWatch By Daarel Burnette II on December
7, 2015 1:41 PM
Pennsylvania House
Republican leaders said this past weekend that they no longer support a plan
many hoped would end a five-month budget stalemate that's forced
the state's districts to take out millions of dollars in loans and
cut longstanding after school programs to make up for the state revenue held up
at the capitol. The state's
legislature has been at odds with its governor since June over how to pay
down a ballooning pension plan and hand millions more to its school
system. Without a 2015-16 spending plan, the state is holding up millions of state
tax revenue from local districts across the state. In the latest move, according to the
Associated Press, House Republicans yesterday said they no longer support a plan earlier
negotiated between the Democratic governor and Senate leaders that would
spend $30.7 billion total and provide $350 million more to the state's
public schools. (Here's a good explainer on Pennsylvania's school spending.) They
instead support a much smaller spending plan and tax increase.
ESEA Reauthorization: Four
Ways a New Law Would Differ From NCLB Waivers
Education Week
Politics K-12 Blog By Alyson Klein on December
7, 2015 3:27 PM
The No Child Left
Behind Act is about to get a much-delayed facelift. The bill to replace the
pretty-much-universally despised NCLB law—the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA—already sailed through the House and
is expected to coast through the Senate. President Barack Obama is expected to
sign it (maybe even as soon as this week).
But for the 42 states and the District
of Columbia with waivers from many of the law's
mandates, NCLB has already been a thing of the past for a while, at least in
some important ways. So ESSA would replace not NCLB Classic, but waivers. So what would change for waiver states? Here
are some biggies:
No more
federally-mandated teacher evaluation through test scores. This is huge. Teacher evaluations that took
student outcomes into account were the hardest part of waivers to implement.
In fact, Washington
state lost its waiver because it didn't include state scores in its
evaluations.
The successor to No Child Left Behind has, it turns
out, big problems of its own
Finally, the No
Child Left Behind era — which in fact left many children behind — will be over,
and its successor is being hailed by some in the worlds of education, business,
and public policy as a big step toward increasing educational opportunities for
the nation’s students. But anybody
expecting the Every Student Succeeds Act to be a fix-all will be disappointed. There are major problems with this
legislation; anybody who thinks federal dictates have disappeared are in for a
surprise, and anybody who would like to see the federal government exercise its
power to fix systemic school funding problems and seriously broaden the scope
of reform are in for a letdown, too. Among
the concerns that have been raised:
- Use of federal funds for “Pay for
Success” programs allow wealthy investors to make profits from education
investments, an issue that has concerned some special education advocates.
- States will be required to fund
“equitable services” for children in private and religious schools who are
deemed eligible, and they must appoint an “ombudsman” to make sure the
schools get their money.
- Provisions in the legislation for the
establishment of teacher preparation academies are written to primarily
support non-traditional, non-university programs such as those funded by
venture philanthropists, and they lower standards for teacher education
programs that prepare teachers for high-poverty schools.
- The federal government still will have a
say in some areas, such as mandating standardized tests and requiring
states to intercede in schools where student test scores are in the lowest
5 percent and then approving the state plans for academic progress.
“Two decades of trying to
make separate but equal work have been frustrating to a lot of school
leaders, and so they’re looking for new approaches, and socioeconomic integration
is one of the most powerful interventions available,” Kahlenberg said. “This
study suggests that if we’re looking at academic achievement, socioeconomic
integration is the more powerful lever, as opposed to racial integration.”
One way to boost achievement among poor kids? Make
sure they have classmates who aren’t poor.
Race-based
school integration plans helped boost black students’ achievement after Brown
v. Board of Education, but those plans fell out of favor in recent
decades as districts persuaded courts that they had moved beyond their
separate-but-equal past.
The result in many
places? A system of resegregated schools.
But in a small
number of school districts, officials are trying a different approach,
assigning children to school based in part on their family’s income.
And when poor kids mix with richer kids in class, they tend to do better
academically, especially in math, according to a new study of
large North Carolina
school districts that was published in the journal Urban Education.
"Perhaps the strongest
case for a household full of print books came from a 2014 study
published in the sociology journal Social Forces. Researchers measured
the impact of the size of home libraries on the reading level of 15-year-old
students across 42 nations, controlling for wealth, parents’ education and
occupations, gender and the country’s gross national product. After G.N.P., the quantity of books in one’s
home was the
most important predictorof reading performance. The greatest effect was
seen in libraries of about 100
books, which resulted in approximately 1.5 extra years of grade-level
reading performance. (Diminishing returns kick in at about 500 books, which is
the equivalent of about 2.2 extra years of education.)"
Our (Bare) Shelves, Our Selves
New York Times By TEDDY WAYNE
DECEMBER 5, 2015
When I was 13, in
the early 1990s, I dug through my parents’ cache of vinyl records from the ’60s
and ’70s. We still had a phonograph, so I played some of them, concentrating on
the Beatles. Their bigger hits were inescapably familiar, but a number of their
songs were new to me. Were I a teenager in
2015, I may not have found “Lovely Rita” or acquired an early taste at all for
the Liverpudlian lads. The albums stacked up next to the record player, in
plain sight for years, would be invisible MP3s on a computer or phone that I
didn’t own. Their proximal existence could have been altogether unknown to me. S. Craig Watkins, a professor who studies the
digital media behavior of young people in the department of Radio-Television-Film
at the University of Texas at Austin ,
said that he and his family almost exclusively stream music now in their home
and that he and his wife stored their old CDs in a seldom-used cabinet. To his
teenage daughter, “those CDs are, at best, background matter,” he said.
Education Bloggers Daily
Highlights 12-8-15
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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