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Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA
Ed Policy Roundup August 23, 2016:
Erie
to launch community schools program
The Fair Funding Lawsuit is moving forward! Join us Sep. 13th at Philly City Hall. Info & RSVP: http://ow.ly/s6sg303hLDm
Tweet from Education Law Center @edlawcenterpa August 17, 2016
Blogger note:
Schools
scrap over costs, benefits of cyber
Observer-Reporter By David Singer
August 20, 2016
Washington High School was paying
close to a million dollars for cyberschool education in 2012. Principal Paul
Kostelnik pushed the district to host its own cyber program at an initial annual
savings of $258,000, leading to a four-year reduction of $1.4 million in costs. “Larger districts can eat up that money, but
districts like ours, that is lifeblood cash flow that can be used to – as we
did – hire a career coaching counselor and improve our media and fabrication
labs,” Kostelnik said. The district pays nearly $11,000 for an average cyber
charter student in high school – like most in the region – while it pays $1,000
for each in-house cyber student, according to Superintendent Roberta DiLorenzo. A report released Thursday by the
Pennsylvania School Boards Association found charter school tuition has
increased 139 percent since 2007, while enrollment increased 97 percent. On
average, districts spend 6 percent of total expenditures on administration,
while charters spend 13 percent. And cyber charters spend significantly more on
advertising than brick-and-mortar charters, with five cyber programs paying a
collective $3.7 million, compared to $591,000 by 129 brick-and-mortar charters. State Rep. Mike Reese, R-Somerset, has been
pushing House Bill 530 to reform public education, and reining in cyber charter
costs is among the proposed amendments to education laws passed in 1949. “The bill calls for a funding commission to
determine what the actual costs for cyber are in the commonwealth. … It would
establish a standardized funding formula. I support school choice … but
brick-and-mortar schools have costs and accountability that cyber charters
don’t have to deal with,” Reese said.
22 Aug 2016 — Erie
Times-News gerry.weiss@timesnews.com
Nearly 3,000 city children, all
living in low-income and high-poverty households, will soon be helped by a
pilot program launching in five Erie School District schools. The "community schools" model,
which brings social services directly into school buildings, will likely be in
place and operating by late September at Edison Elementary School, McKinley
Elementary School, Wayne School, Pfeiffer Burleigh School and Emerson-Gridley
Elementary School, said Daria Devlin, the district's coordinator of grants and
community relations. The Erie School
District and the United Way of Erie County are hosting a news conference about
the community schools and the initiative's corporate investment partners
Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Edison Elementary School, 1921 E. Lake Road. The United Way earlier this summer funded the
program with $60,000 to get it started here. Estimates have the program costing
about $100,000 per school per year. Following Tuesday's news
conference, project officials will begin the process of hiring a community
school director at each of the five schools. Interested candidates can find the
job posting online at www.eriesd.org/communityschools. The directors will not be employed by the
district, Devlin said, but by the social agencies, youth development groups,
higher education organizations and nonprofits working directly with students
from the five Erie schools.
Our
view: Erie's school-based safety net plan makes sense
August 21, 2016 02:01 AM
ERIE, Pa. -- Many
students in the Erie School District bring more to class than a need to learn. Some are hungry. Some are
homeless. A full 80 percent come from economically disadvantaged households. Children's stomachs pinched with hunger and
minds stressed by events at home or in chaotic neighborhoods can make it
difficult for teachers to perform their work to the best effect. Resources
exist in Erie to alleviate poverty, address mental health problems, and lift up
families through education and job training.
But finding the opportunity and time to secure those services, spread
throughout the city and county, is more than some families can manage. The United Way of Erie County has joined with
the school district to bring what could be life-altering help to students and
their families in one place — schools.
This fall the Erie district will introduce a pilot "community
schools" program at four schools serving many at-risk students:
Pfeiffer-Burleigh School, Wayne School, Edison Elementary School and McKinley
Elementary School.
State test scores rise but leave room for
more improvement
Penn Live By Jan Murphy |
jmurphy@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
August 22, 2016 at 4:32 PM, updated August 22, 2016 at 4:38 PM
More students scored at or above
grade level on state math and language arts exams administered in grades three
through eight this year than the year before when a new baseline score was set
due to some changes made to the tests, according to the
state Department of Education. But
the statewide, aggregate Pennsylvania System of School Assessment
scores released on Monday also shows there remains more work to do to get
the overwhelming majority of students, particularly in math, scoring at
"proficient" or "advanced" levels on the state exams.
PSSA math and English scores improve
slightly, but not science
Inquirer by Kathy Boccella, Staff Writer Updated: AUGUST 23, 2016 — 1:08
AM EDT
Elementary and middle school
students did slightly better on average than last year on the math and English
language portions of the 2016 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA),
but worse in science. This is the second
year for more rigorous exams that align with Pennsylvania Core Standards in
English and math. The science test is unchanged. Overall, 42.45 percent of students scored
proficient or advanced in math - a 2.5 percentage point increase over last
year, according to Casey Smith, a spokesperson for the state Department of
Education. About 60 percent were proficient or advanced in English, a figure
that Smith said represented a somewhat smaller improvement. Scores on the science test, given to fourth
and eighth graders, were slightly lower.
The PSSAs are administered in third through eighth grades every spring. School districts will receive
individual student scores in early September; the Education Department will
release school scores at the end of that month.
John Oliver takes on Pennsylvania charter
schools on ‘Last Week Tonight’
Philly Daily News by Nick
Vadala, Staff Writer @njvadala AUGUST 22, 2016 — 12:30 PM EDT
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver turned his attention to charter schools
and their shortcomings on Sunday night, using Pennsylvania laws and
Philadelphia schools as examples of why he believes the institutions are
something of gamble when it comes to education.
“Charter schools unite both sides of the aisle more quickly than when a
wedding DJ throws on ‘Hey Ya,’ ” Oliver said to kick off his piece, further
noting that the first charters emerged 25 years ago as a way to explore new
approaches to education. Now, about
6,700 such schools exist in the United States. But, as Oliver pointed out
Sunday, “around the country, there have been charter schools so flawed, they
don’t make it through the school year.” Here
in Pennsylvania, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale earlier this year
said the state has “the worst charter school law in the United States."
Oliver, for his part, agreed.
“That said, Pennsylvania was singled out
for good reason. Like some other states, it needs to get cracking on fixing its
outdated charter laws.”
Smith: A Few Thoughts About
John Oliver’s Bleak, Unrepresentative Sample of Public Charter SchoolsThe 74 by NELSON SMITH August 22, 2016
Nelson Smith is Senior Adviser to the National Association of
Charter School Authorizers and former CEO of the National Alliance for Public
Charter Schools.
I love John Oliver’s
epic rants. So that harrowing sound is my heart being wrenched, after watching
his very funny but off-kilter takedown of charter schools. What’s most painful is that I agree with a
lot of Oliver’s talking points: Charter schools aren’t pizza joints and
they should NEVER open so feebly as to shut down in the first month. No, it’s not OK when an administrator has her
hand in the till (and then cites Bible verses as an excuse!) And hell no, it’s
way not OK when somebody gets a charter by plagiarizing language from another
successful applicant. If this stuff were actually
typical of charter schools, I would have bailed out of the movement years ago.
But it’s not, and I haven’t.
Post Gazette By Tim Means August
22, 2016 9:49 PM
The Penn Hills school board
unanimously approved a contract that will provide basic maintenance,
landscaping, snow removal, custodial and food service support for 2016-17
school year to the Penn Hills Charter School of Entrepreneurship. The charter
school, operating out the former Washington Elementary school building will pay
the school district $140,000 annually for a period of one year. Renewal of the
contract in subsequent years will require separate approval. The shared
services contract provides for two food service workers and one custodian daily
with other services to be provided on an as needed basis. Employees providing
these services will be considered Penn Hills school district employees with
benefits and the school district will be responsible for the cost of benefits
and insurance.
PA
auditor general calls mailer blasting Liberty High School 'despicable,' calls
for investigations
Sarah
M. Wojcik and Jacqueline
Palochko Contact Reporters Of The Morning
Call August 22, 2016
CATASAUQUA — The furor over a
direct mailer that went out to Bethlehem Area School District parents over the
weekend has attracted the attention of the state's auditor general, fueled a
#BASDProud campaign on social media and left a Catasauqua charter school
scrambling to find out who sent the "appalling" flier. Leaders at the Innovative Arts Academy
Charter School on Monday said they were looking into what they can do to
legally to distance the school from the mailer, which uses the arrest of a
Liberty High School student on drug charges to entice parents to send students
to the school at 330 Howertown Road. State
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale — using the word "dirtball" to
describe the marketing tactic —said he is asking state and federal agencies to
investigate the mailer. He also plans to monitor the new charter school, which
opens on Sept. 6. Unfortunately we have
become accustomed to dirtball mailers and tactics like this in political
campaigns. But when it spills over into our education system and one public
school appears to have attacked another it becomes downright deplorable,"
DePasquale said in a statement issued Monday.
DePasquale, who has pressed state legislators to fix the charter school
oversight law, said he is referring the matter for investigation by the
Internal Revenue Service, which he said has strict guidelines for charter
school advertising.
“The state's auditor general said in a
statement Monday that his office has contacted the U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General to urge a full investigation into the origin and
content of the advertising. "I will
also refer this matter for investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, which
has strict guidelines for charter school advertising," said Auditor
General Eugene DePasquale. ..The
school's attorney, Dan Fennick, said the board is "appalled by the
mailer" and echoed sentiments that it wasn't authorized by the school.”
Charter denies sending mailer on drug bust
at public school
Inquirer by The
Associated Press Updated: AUGUST
22, 2016 — 1:13 PM EDT
BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) - A suburban
Philadelphia charter school has denied sending out promotional mailers
referencing a 2015 drug arrest at a nearby public high school. The postcard shows a stock image of a
student, head in hands, and a headline saying a teenager was caught by Liberty
High School officials with more than $3,000 of heroin and cocaine. The mailer
asks: "Why worry about this type of student at school? Come visit Arts
Academy Charter School. Now enrolling grades 6-12." The mailer also lists the Bethlehem school's
return address. Photos of the mailer have taken
off on social media. The school district
on Sunday said Liberty High School has been "a respected pillar" in
the Bethlehem community for nearly a century. "Liberty's long history of
accomplishments and deep traditions make it immune to scurrilous attacks,"
Superintendent Joseph Roy said.
#BASDProud: School community rallies after
negative mailer
By Sara K.
Satullo | For lehighvalleylive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
August 22, 2016 at 4:03 PM, updated August 22, 2016 at 4:32 PM
The Bethlehem
Area School District is heeding the old adage, "When life gives
you lemons, make lemonade." This
week, the district found itself dragged into a social media furor after
postcards promoting a new Catasauqua charter school started landing in Lehigh
Valley mailboxes. The mailer
paints Liberty High School students as drug users by pointing to the
September 2015 drug arrest of a student who had recently transferred into the
district. The charter school denies
sending or paying for the mailers and Auditor
General Eugene DePasquale is calling for an investigation. School board President Michael Faccinetto and
Superintendent Joseph Roy, both avid Twitter users, and other school officials
frequently employ the hashtag BASDProud on social media.
WITF Written by Radio Pennsylvania | Aug 21, 2016 8:28 AM
(Harrisburg) -- A newly formed legislative panel wants to ensure that what students learn while in school doesn't get lost once the bell rings. The bipartisan Legislative After School Caucus is made up of 31 House and Senate members, whose goal is boosting participation in the STEM fields-Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Caucus co-chair, Senator John Yudichak, says it's about the jobs of the future. "There's 75-thousand openings in STEM-related careers. We have to prepare children for the 21st Century jobs. They're going to be the entrepreneurs. They're the one's that will lead us to the future," he said.
Broader questions emerge in Lancaster
refugee lawsuit
Keystone
Crossroads/Newsworks BY EMILY
PREVITI, WITF AUGUST 18, 2016
The School District of
Lancaster's treatment of student refugees is on trial this week, but practices
affecting a wider population of students have come under scrutiny during court
proceedings. A lot of discussions centered on
the accelerated credit program at Phoenix Academy. Phoenix, run by district contractor Camelot
Education, was portrayed Wednesday as a diploma mill by attorneys representing
six teenaged refugees in the lawsuit. But
Lancaster school officials say they send students to Phoenix if they're at risk
for aging out, or not earning enough credits to graduate before they turn 21. The district's lawyer says block-scheduling
and limiting curriculum to the state's core let students get a diploma in less
time. In Pennsylvania, local districts
run their accelerated credit programs as they see fit without much state
oversight or guidance. But one student involved in this
lawsuit —18-year-old Congolese refugee Anyemou Dunia — finished high school in
16 months. Dunia's senior year spanned a week, despite English proficiency
limited enough to require a translator in court.
Lancaster's ESL teacher ratio on par with
state
Keystone Crossroads BY EMILY PREVITI, WITF AUGUST 22, 2016The School District of Lancaster's back in court this week for a lawsuit filed by a group of student refugees over translation, enrollment, and instruction policies. They claim the district rejects older limited English proficiency students who try to enroll or sends them to an accelerated program at Phoenix Academy, even though they'd be better off at the mainstream high school. Phoenix Academy bills itself as providing an intensive remedial program for students in grades six through eight and an accelerated graduation program for students in grades nine through 12. The district denies it.
Lancaster County schools reopening: Here's what's new at public schools
Lancaster Online by KARA NEWHOUSE | Staff
Writer August 22, 2016
When youngsters head back to
school this week, their experiences might be unrecognizable to older
generations. At some schools, students
will spend time in “maker spaces” designed for hands-on do-it-yourself
learning. Two districts are adding such spaces to their buildings this year. In classrooms, many Lancaster
County students will work on school-issued personal computers or tablets. Six
local districts are introducing or expanding one-to-one computer programs this
year. And districts continue to develop
science, technology, engineering and math opportunities for young people, like
the two-day STEM summit Hempfield is planning for ninth-graders. Here are other changes happening
at local public schools for the 2016-17 year. Changes for private schools will
be published next Sunday.
Commentary: Green's role as public
advocate is dubious
The SRC member has been showing
disdain for teachers and urging parents to see things his way.
The notebook Commentary by Lisa
Haver August 22, 2016 — 11:26am
Lisa Haver is a retired
Philadelphia teacher and co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public
Schools.
School Reform
Commissioner Bill Green has been making the rounds lately, along with fellow
Commissioner Sylvia Simms, at events sponsored by the Parent Congress and the
Education Opportunities for Families, presenting
himself as an advocate for poor and working-class Philadelphians, expressing
outrage and disdain at what he portrays as a lack of dedication and compassion
from teachers and other school professionals. His goal seems to be the sowing of divisions
between parents and teachers, and between different demographics of parents. He
recounts the old story, an urban legend at this point, of the new starry-eyed
teacher, whose love of teaching and children has not yet been beaten out of her
by the big bad union, who stays until 4 p.m. each day until
the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers rep knocks on her door one day at
3:15, demanding that she leave because “you’re making the rest of us look bad.”
That, he tells the parents, is “the culture of our school district.”
Bill Aims To Curtail PA Gerrymandering
WESA By KATIE MEYER • August
22, 2016
A proposed bill is looking to
change how Pennsylvania draws its legislative and congressional districts The bill’s sponsor, Monroe County Republican
David Parker said the measure would cut down on gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is prevalent in
Pennsylvania—it’s when legislative maps are drawn to benefit a political party. Parker said the ultimate results don’t
benefit constituents. “When these
districts become so large and kind of snake around and are odd shapes, it’s
difficult for them to truly represent everybody in the whole district,” he
said. House Bill 1835 would amend the
state’s constitution and seek to decrease party influence on districts. It would create an independent,
“citizens’ commission” to oversee drawing of legislative and congressional
boundaries.
“In the pushback against Citizens
United, 17 states and more than 680 local governments have appealed to Congress
for a constitutional amendment, either through a letter to Congress, referendums,
legislative resolutions, city council votes or collective letters from state
lawmakers. In the most prominent case, California’s 18 million registered
voters get to vote in November on whether to instruct their 55-member
congressional delegation to “use all of their constitutional authority” to
overturn Citizens United. Washington
State is holding a similar referendum.”
Can
the States Save American Democracy?
New
York Times By HEDRICK SMITH AUG. 20, 2016
WASHINGTON — In this tumultuous
election year, little attention has focused on the groundswell of support for
political reform across grass-roots America. Beyond Bernie Sanders’s call
for a political revolution, a broad array of state-level citizen movements are
pressing for reforms against Citizens United, gerrymandering and campaign
megadonors to give average voters more voice, make elections more competitive,
and ease gridlock in Congress. This
populist backlash is in reaction to two monumental developments in 2010: the
Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling authorizing unlimited corporate campaign
donations, and a Republican strategy to rig congressional districts. Together,
they have changed the dynamics of American politics. That January, Justice John Paul
Stevens warned in his dissent that Citizens United would “unleash the
floodgates” of corporate money into political campaigns, and so it has. The
overall funding flood this year is expected to surpass the record of $7 billion
spent in 2012. Later in 2010, the Republican
Party’s “Redmap” strategy won the party control of enough state governments to
gerrymander congressional districts across the nation the following year. One
result: In the 2014 elections, Republicans won 50.7 percent of the popular vote
and reaped a 59-seat majority.
Fewer college students opt to pursue
career as teachers
Washington Times By DEBRA
ERDLEY - Associated Press -
Saturday, August 20, 2016
PITTSBURGH (AP) - Abbie
Yasika is part of a rare breed of college students who want to be teachers. The 22-year-old from Greensburg discounted
comments from friends and classmates who warned she would never find a teaching
job. She graduated from college in May,
and this month she’s launching a career as a kindergarten teacher in the
Pittsburgh Public Schools. But she’s among a
rapidly shrinking pool of students opting to teach. The trend is apparent at local colleges where
enrollment in teacher prep programs has declined dramatically. And statistics from the state Department of
Education show a steep drop in the overall number of teaching certificates
issued: from a 15-year high of 18,590 in 2013 to 7,280 last year.Education Week By Andy Sher, Chattanooga Times/Free Press (Tenn.) August 18, 2016
Nashville - It's in charge of turning around Tennessee's failing schools, but the state's Achievement School District now has its own flunking grade from state Comptroller watchdogs. The just-released audit by the Division of State Audit provides a blistering critique into what auditors say is the agency's lack of internal financial controls over basic functions. So just how bad are things at the agency that directly manages five public schools and contracts with private charter groups to operate 24 other schools falling into the bottom five percent of schools statewide in terms of student performance? Even as Division of State Audit accountants' examination was still underway this spring, the state Department of Education, which had allowed the ASD to operate independently, informed the Comptroller's office in April that it had staged an intervention and seized control over the ASD's "fiscal and federal processes."
Education Week State Ed Watch By Daarel Burnette II August 19, 2016
Oklahoma City - Fueled by their fury over cuts to K-12 budgets, low pay, and an array of other grievances, a scrappy group of teachers is attempting to upend Oklahoma's political establishment this election season. After ousting the state's superintendent in a 2014 primary, the loosely organized group of educators from around the state successfully campaigned to scrap the state's teacher-evaluation system that was tied to students' test scores. They notched another victory when they lobbied to defeat a bill backed by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin that would've expanded the use of vouchers. So last spring, when someone suggested to their Facebook group that they start legislating themselves, more than 40 teachers filed to run for one of the 126 open seats in the state's Senate and House of Representatives.
Vergara v. California: California Supreme
Court decision leaves state’s teacher tenure law in place
Washington Post By Emma Brown August
22 at 4:21 PM
The
California Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case challenging the
state’s laws on teacher tenure, dismissal and layoffs, a decision that leaves
the laws in place and hands a major victory to teachers’ unions. The plaintiffs were nine schoolchildren
backed by the nonprofit advocacy group Student Matters, and they had argued
that job-protection statutes for teachers created illegal inequalities: They
said poor and minority children were more likely to be saddled with ineffective
teachers who were difficult to fire. It
was a new civil rights argument against teacher tenure laws, and at first it
seemed successful. After a 10-week trial in 2014, the trial court sided with
the plaintiffs, whose lawyers described the California case as the first in a
series of state-by-state legal challenges to tenure laws.
In
a major win for teachers unions, state Supreme Court lets teacher tenure ruling
stand
Los
Angeles Times by Howard Blume and Joy Resmovits August 22, 2016
Monday was the end of the line
for a landmark California case challenging tenure and other
traditional job protections for teachers — and the
teachers won. The outcome left some union opponents
looking for a different battlefield in the ongoing wars over public education,
while others said they should try the courts again. The case, Vergara vs. California, was closely
watched across the country as a test of whether courts would
invalidate employment rights of teachers on the argument that they
violate the rights of students. The
assault on these protections is part of a broader approach to
reforming education that would make schools more like the private sector,
which relies on competition, measurable results and performance incentives.
WSJ Editorial: Students Lose, Liberals
Elated
California denies a
constitutional challenge to failing schools.
Wall Street Journal
Editorial Aug. 22, 2016 6:56 p.m. ETRemember when progressives worked to break down the barriers to minority education? You know, Brown v. Board and all that. Well, nowadays good liberals rejoice when their judicial friends deny upward mobility to poor black and Hispanic children. That’s how the left reacted to Monday’s decision by the California Supreme Court not to hear an appeal of the Vergara v. California case charging that the Golden State has systematically denied minority kids trapped in failing schools their constitutional right to an education. The plaintiffs, backed by some public-spirited donors, had won in lower court but lost on appeal and now the state Supreme Court has doomed tens of thousands to lives of diminished possibility, if not poverty.
Letter: Teachers are not the problem,
poverty is
Regarding the Aug. 12
news article “Gates Foundation to ‘stay the course’ with
approach to education policy”: Melinda
Gates still thinks that teacher quality is the problem in American education.
Of course we should always be trying to improve teaching, but there is no
teacher quality crisis in the United States: When researchers control for the
effect of poverty, U.S. students score near the top of the world on
international tests. Our overall scores are unimpressive because of our
unacceptably high child-poverty rate, now about
21 percent. The problem is poverty, not teacher quality. Poverty means food deprivation, lack of
health care and lack of access to books. Each of these has a strong negative
influence on school performance. Let’s forget about developing new ways of
evaluating teachers, fancy databases and other ideas from Gates that have no
support in research or practice. Instead, let’s invest in making sure no child
is left unfed, no child lacks proper health care and all children have access
to quality libraries.
Support for Charter Schools Stays Steady,
But Drops for Vouchers, Poll Finds
Education Week Charters and
Choice Blog By Arianna Prothero on August 23, 2016 6:24 AM
Although public support for
charter schools has remained relatively steady over the past 10 years, support
for school vouchers has fallen, according to a new poll released today. Charter schools are more popular among
Republicans with 74 percent supporting the publicly funded schools that are run
independently from the traditional district system, compared to 58 percent of
Democrats—numbers that have changed little over the last decade, according to
Education Next, a journal published by Stanford University's Hoover
Institution. Meanwhile, overall support
for school vouchers for low-income students, which allow eligible students to
use public money to attend a private school, has dropped from 55 percent to 43
percent over the last four years among people of both political
parties, according to the poll. In 2007, the first year of the
survey, support for vouchers for low-income students was at 56 percent,
although the question in the survey was phrased differently at that time.
U.S.
judge blocks Obama transgender school bathroom policy
Reuters By Jon Herskovitz | AUSTIN,
TEXAS Mon Aug 22, 2016 8:56pm EDT
A U.S. judge blocked an Obama
administration policy that public schools should allow transgender students to
use the bathrooms of their choice, granting a nationwide injunction sought by
13 dissenting states just in time for the new school year.
While a setback for transgender
advocates, the ruling is only the latest salvo in a larger legal and cultural
battle over transgender rights that could be headed toward the U.S. Supreme
Court. Following milestone achievements
in gay rights including same-sex marriage becoming legal nationwide in 2015,
transgender rights have become an increasingly contentious issue in the United
States, with advocates saying the law should afford them the same rights
extended to racial and religious minorities.
Chron Updated 2:06 am, Saturday, August 20, 2016
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Their son is gone. Luke Beardemphl, a standout Tacoma soccer player during his years at Stadium High School, died last year at 24, following a seven-year battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma. But Luke's parents, Mike and Stephanie Beardemphl, now worry about the kids who will come after him, running, rolling and diving into the more than 11,000 artificial turf soccer fields around the country — including at more than a dozen schools in the Tacoma School District — just as their goalkeeper son did. Most of those synthetic turf fields are cushioned with a material called crumb rubber, made from ground-up used tires. The tiny pellets are loosely distributed as infill between artificial blades of grass woven into a carpet-like base. Modern turf fields are the successors to the original 1960s-era AstroTurf. Athletes who play on today's fields that use crumb rubber infill are familiar with the "little black dots" that are kicked up during a game or practice, reported The News Tribune(http://bit.ly/2aV2IjX). Families such as the Beardemphls have added their voices to a growing chorus of concern about whether the rubber specks that stick to skin, hair and clothing, and that get in players' eyes, mouths and open wounds, contain toxic substances that contribute to cancer in young athletes.
Stargazing for August 23, 2016
Venus and Jupiter Conjunction One of the year’s best celestial displays will
occur this week when Venus and Jupiter come together for a stunning close
encounter after sunset.
Post Gazette By Dan
Malerbo, Buhl Planetarium & Observatory August 23, 2016 12:00 AM
One of the year’s best celestial
displays will occur this week when Venus and Jupiter come together for a
stunning close encounter after sunset. This
Saturday, the brightest and second brightest planet will appear extremely close
to each other 20 minutes after sunset, just 5 degrees above the western
horizon. Distinctly brighter Venus will be shining at a dazzling –3.9
magnitude, while Jupiter will be sparkling at –1.6 magnitude. Jupiter will sit
within a fraction of a degree to the left of our sister planet. Our two bright “evening stars” are headed in
opposite directions this summer. After reigning in the evening sky since March,
Jupiter will drop below the western horizon in September and return to the
morning sky in October. Venus is just returning to the evening sky after being
a bright beacon in the morning since last autumn.
Start looking for Venus and
Jupiter tonight at 8:30 when the duo is only 4 degrees apart. Binoculars will
help you find Mercury closer to the horizon.
2016 National Anthem Sing-A-Long - September 9th
American Public Education Foundation Website
The Star-Spangled Banner will be sung by school children nationwide on Friday, September 9, 2016 at 10:00am PST and 1:00pm EST. Students will learn about the words and meaning of the flag and sing the first stanza. This will be the third annual simultaneous sing-a-long event created by the APEF-9/12 Generation Project. The project aims to bring students together – as the world came together – on September 12, 2001.
PA Supreme Court sets Sept. 13 argument
date for fair education funding lawsuit in Philly
Thorough
and Efficient Blog JUNE 16, 2016 BARBGRIMALDI LEAVE A COMMENT
Registration
for the PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference Oct. 13-15 is now open
The conference
is your opportunity to learn, network and be inspired by peers and
experts.
TO REGISTER: See https://www.psba.org/members-area/store-registration/ (you must be logged in to
the Members Area to register). You can read more on How to Register for
a PSBA Event here. CONFERENCE WEBSITE: For
all other program details, schedules, exhibits, etc., see the conference
website:www.paschoolleaders.org.
The Early Bird Discount Deadline has been Extended to Wednesday, August 31, 2016!
PA Principals Association website Tuesday, August 2, 2016 10:43 AM
To receive the Early Bird Discount, you must be registered by August 31, 2016:
Members: $300 Non-Members: $400
Featuring Three National Keynote Speakers: Eric Sheninger, Jill Jackson & Salome Thomas-EL
PSBA
Officer Elections Aug. 15-Oct. 3, 2016: Slate of Candidates
PSBA members seeking election to
office for the association were required to submit a nomination form no later
than April 30, 2016, to be considered. All candidates who properly completed
applications by the deadline are included on the slate of candidates below. In
addition, the Leadership Development Committee met on June 24 at PSBA
headquarters in Mechanicsburg to interview candidates. According to bylaws, the
Leadership Development Committee may determine candidates highly qualified for
the office they seek. This is noted next to each person’s name with an asterisk
(*). Each school entity will have one
vote for each officer. This will require boards of the various school entities
to come to a consensus on each candidate and cast their vote electronically
during the open voting period (Aug. 15-Oct. 3, 2016). Voting will be
accomplished through a secure third-party, web-based voting site that will
require a password login. One person from each member school entity will be
authorized as the official person to cast the vote on behalf of his or her
school entity. In the case of school districts, it will be the board secretary
who will cast votes on behalf of the school board.
Special note: Boards should be
sure to include discussion and voting on candidates to its agenda during one of
its meetings in September.
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