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Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA
Ed Policy Roundup October 5, 2016
US
DOE Audit: Chester Charter CEO wrote checks to himself totaling $11 million
without board approval
Registered
to vote? Did you know you can do it online? Last day is 10/11/16. Don't wait! http://votesPA.com
While the audit did not name the school,
there is only one charter in the city of Chester - Chester Community Charter
School. The school, which has more than
3,000 K-8 students, is the largest brick-and-mortar charter in the state. The
most recent annual report from the state Department of Education shows that the
school had total revenues of $45.1 million in the fiscal year 2013. Vahan H. Gureghian, a lawyer and enterpreneur
who has been active in Republican politics, is the founder and CEO of CSMI
Education Management, which manages Chester Community.”
Federal audit spotlights
charter school financial practicesUpdated: OCTOBER 5, 2016 — 1:07 AM EDT Inquirer by Martha Woodall, STAFF WRITER
A national audit of charter
school management companies by the U.S. Department of Education has spotlighted
an unnamed Chester city school where auditors say the CEO wrote checks to
himself totaling $11 million without board approval. The report by the Office of Inspector General
at the Department of Education did not accuse the CEO of wrongdoing, but
offered its finding as an example of a conflict of interest and lack of
financial controls that could make the schools vulnerable to fraud. The report cited similar issues at four
unnamed Philadelphia charter schools. In the instance of the Chester
school, federal auditors reported that the CEO of the management organization
wrote checks to himself in 2008-09. According
to the federal report, the school's lawyer reported that the charter had
changed its policy to address the weakness in fiscal controls, including
requiring the board to approve such payments. However, the audit said, the
school "could not provide written procedures to support the change."
According
to data is from the Pennsylvania Campaign Finance website, Vahan Gureghian made
political contributions in 2008 totaling $267,205.93 and in 2009 totaling $330,302.76. The dates, amounts and recipients of those
contributions are detailed in this June 2011 KEYSEC posting. BTW, from 2007 through 2011, the Chester
Community Charter manager made contributions totaling $1,320,653.69
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/06/follow-money-contributions-by-vahan.html
Commentary: Charters not really a good
choice for parents and kids
Philly Daily News Commentary
by Lisa Haver Updated: OCTOBER
3, 2016 — 3:01 AM EDTLisa Haver is a retired Philadelphia teacher and co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.
SCHOOL CHOICE is one of many
issues that illustrate the stark difference between the two major candidates
for president. While Hillary Clinton, supported by teachers' unions, has
expressed support for charters within a robust public system, Donald Trump promises
to use the power of the presidency to promote school choice policies and
replace "the failed tenure system" with merit pay for teachers. Trump
recently proposed a massive voucher system in which over $20 billion in federal
funds would be distributed to states so that parents could choose among
"public, private, charter or magnet" schools. While the promise of "choice" -
placing education in an unregulated free-market system of winners and losers -
has been sold by reformers as the answer to the underfunding of public schools
for over a decade, the power of those in struggling districts to make decisions
about their public schools has been stripped from them as a result of
"interventions" imposed by governors and legislatures across the country.
An analysis by News21 found that lawmakers in at least 20 states have either
eliminated locally-elected school boards or stripped them of their power.
African Americans make up 43 percent, and Hispanics 20 percent, of those
disenfranchised by these takeovers. Philadelphia lost control of its school
district when Harrisburg imposed the appointed and unaccountable School Reform
Commission on the city in 2001.
“And in its decision last week, the
Nevada Supreme Court found the program’s funding, not the program itself, unconstitutional.
By denying the program’s funding, however, the supreme court’s decision will
effectively end the program. The Education Law Center, part of the pro-bono legal team
in this case, commented on the significance of the Nevada
Supreme Court’s decision: “The Court’s ruling makes clear that the Nevada
Legislature violated a constitutional prohibition against the use of public
education funding for any purpose other than the operation of the public
schools. The ESA voucher program would have diverted funds from the public
schools for private education expenditures. This decision strikes at the heart
of the ESA voucher program, which was designed to remove significant amounts of
funding from public school budgets to pay for private school tuition and other
expenses, even for the wealthy. The court’s sweeping ruling permanently
blocks the program from being implemented in the future.”
Nevada Education Savings Account Vouchers
Ruled Unconstitutional by Nevada’s Supreme Court
Jan Resseger’s Blog Posted
on October 4, 2016 by janressegerIn a short brief, the National Education Association concisely defines Education Savings Accounts—the kind of school voucher program that was found unconstitutional by the Nevada Supreme Court last week:
“Education Savings Accounts (ESA)
are the latest trend in publicly subsidized private school education… (T)he
common factor is that these programs pay parents all or a large portion of the
money the state would otherwise have spent to educate their children in
exchange for an agreement to forego their right to a public education. Funds
deposited into such accounts may be used for any number of expenses, including
private school tuition, fees, textbooks; tutoring and test prep; homeschooling
curriculum and supplemental materials; special instruction and therapeutic
services; transportation; and management fees. These programs also permit
parents to roll over unused funds for use in subsequent years and to invest a
portion of the funds into college savings plans.” Education Savings Accounts are advocated by
the American Federation
for Children (Betsy DeVos’s organization) and the Friedman
Foundation. The American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a model Education Savings Account bill ready
to be introduced in any state legislature. (If you are unfamiliar with ALEC,
check out this
post.) As of 2015, NEA reported that five states—Arizona, Florida, Nevada,
Mississippi and Tennessee—had passed legislation to establish Education Savings
Accounts.
Audit: How Charter School Management
Groups Pose Risks to Federal Funds
Education Week Charters and
Choice Blog By Arianna Prothero on October 4, 2016 4:15 PM
A federal audit warns that cozy
relationships between charter schools and the organizations that run some of
them could put federal funding at risk. Charter
management organizations, or CMOs, are groups that run critical functions like
finances, fundraising, communications, and curriculum for multiple charter
schools. Not all charter schools are run
by a CMO—the majority of charter schools in the country are actually
single-campus operations. The level of
independence between the school and the CMO varies on a case-by-case basis, and
the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General, which conducted
the audit, is basically saying that in some instances there is so little
independence between the school and the management group that it could lead—and
has led—to trouble. The OIG audit
examined 33 schools in six states and found several examples of conflicts of
interest, related-party transactions, and insufficient segregation of
duties—all controls designed to prevent fraud.
The lack of proper guard rails in these relationships between charter
management organizations and their schools, the audit concludes, significantly
increases the risk that federal programs are not being implemented correctly
and are wasting public money.
Former U.S. education secretary rips the
nation's teacher preparation programs
Inquirer by Susan
Snyder, Staff Writer @ssnyderinq Updated: OCTOBER 4, 2016 10:49
AM EDT
Former U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan in an open letter to the country's college presidents and
education school deans takes a firm, hard swing at teacher preparation
programs. The system, he wrote, “lacks
rigor, is out of step with the times, and is given to extreme grade inflation
that leaves teachers unprepared and their future students at risk.” His letter
went live at 9 a.m. Tuesday on the web site of the Brookings Institution, a
Washington D.C.-based think tank, where he is a nonresident senior fellow. Duncan, said a Brookings’ spokeswoman, hopes
to spark a conversation about teacher preparation programs, something he also
tried to do when he led the education department.
Quick Mentions of Desegregation, K-12
Funding in V.P. Debate
Education Week Politics K12 Blog By Alyson Klein on October
4, 2016 11:00 PM
Vice-presidential nominees Tim
Kaine and Mike Pence have long records on education. But neither of them
talked very much about them in their first and only debate, at Longwood
University in Farmville, Va., Tuesday.
If you blinked you might have missed them, but there were a couple of
quick mentions of K-12 education. Kaine, for instance, kicked off the debate by
talking about school integration. He likened his running mate, Hillary
Clinton, a Democrat, to Barbara Johns, a high school student in Farmville who
lead a walkout at Moton High School in 1951 to protest segregation. "She believed our nation was stronger
together," Kaine said, invoking Clinton's campaign slogan. "And that
walkout led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision
that moved us down the path toward equality." School desegregation is also a key part of
the personal story that Kaine has been telling on the campaign trail. His
father-in-law, Linwood Holton, lead the effort to desegregate Virginia's
schools back in the 1970's. Holton sent his own children—including Kaine's future
wife, Anne Holton—to newly integrated schools. (Anne Holton later served as
Virginia's education secretary. Check out our interview with her here.) For his part, Pence repeated a
claim he's made several times on the trail that he was able to make
"record investments" in education in his state, while finishing
with a surplus.
Education Bloggers Daily Highlights
10/5/2016
Testing
Resistance & Reform News: September 28 - October 4, 2016
Submitted by fairtest on
October 4, 2016 - 1:38pm
The wide range of stories in this
week's news clips show the growing breadth and depth of the grassroots testing
resistance and reform movement. Parents, students, educators and community
leaders are all pushing for fewer standardized exams, an end to high-stakes
testing, and better assessments based on classroom performance.
Want to help strengthen public education
in the commonwealth? Join with EdPAC, a political action committee that
supports the election of pro-public education leaders to the General Assembly.
Partner with EdPAC!
Want to help strengthen public education in the commonwealth? Join with EdPAC, a political action committee that supports the election of pro-public education leaders to the General Assembly. EdPAC will hold a fundraising reception Friday, Oct. 14 from 5-6 p.m. at the 2016 PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference. Visit the website to register online and learn more.
Want to help strengthen public education in the commonwealth? Join with EdPAC, a political action committee that supports the election of pro-public education leaders to the General Assembly. EdPAC will hold a fundraising reception Friday, Oct. 14 from 5-6 p.m. at the 2016 PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference. Visit the website to register online and learn more.
Basic Education Funding workshops coming
to your area
PA now has a permanent Basic Education Funding formula. Learn more about how it works, what it measures and why it's important. Workshops sponsored by PASA, PSBA, PAIU, PARSS, PA Principals Association and PASBO are coming to an area near you.
PA now has a permanent Basic Education Funding formula. Learn more about how it works, what it measures and why it's important. Workshops sponsored by PASA, PSBA, PAIU, PARSS, PA Principals Association and PASBO are coming to an area near you.
Register and see more details and dates here.
The Public Interest Law Center invites you
to its 2016 Annual Event: “Of the People, By the People, For the People.” Thursday,
Oct 6, 2016 at 6:00 PM
FringeArts 140 N. Columbus Blvd.,
Philadelphia, PA
Honoring: Soil
Generation, Nicholas Chimicles, and Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP
http://www.pubintlaw.org/2016event/Coffee and Networking - 9:30 a.m. Program - 10:00 a.m. to Noon
Technical College High School
(Brandywine Campus) - 443 Boot Rd., Downingtown, PA 19335
RSVP by clicking here. There is no fee, but a RSVP is
required. Please feel free to share this invitation with your staff and
network. SPEAKERS:
An Overview of the EPLC Report on High School CTE will be presented by:
Ron Cowell, President, The
Education Policy and Leadership Center
Statewide and
Regional Perspectives Will Be Provided By: Dr. Lee Burket, Director, Bureau of Career & Technical Education, PA Department of Education
Jackie Cullen, Executive Director, PA Association of Career & Technical Administrators
Dan Fogarty, Director of Workforce Development & COO, Berks County Workforce Development Board
Kirk Williard, Ed.D., Director of Career, Technical & Customized Education, Chester County Intermediate Unit
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 2016 Arts and Education Symposium will be held on October 27 at the Radisson Hotel Harrisburg Convention Center. Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Arts Education network and EPLC, the Symposium is a Unique Networking and Learning Opportunity for:
·
Arts Educators
·
School Leaders
·
Artists
·
Arts and Culture Community Leaders
·
Arts-related Business Leaders
·
Arts Education Faculty and Administrators in Higher Education
·
Advocates
·
State and Local Policy Leaders
Act 48 Credit is
available.Program and registration information are available here.
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
SAVE THE DATE LWVPA Convention 2017 June
1-4, 2017
Join the
League of Women Voters of PA for our 2017 Biennial Convention at the beautiful
Inn at Pocono Manor!
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