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Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA
Ed Policy Roundup April 3, 2017:
HB250:
Increasing EITC/OSTC vouchers hurts PA taxpayers
Note: We will be offline tomorrow; the
PA Ed Policy Roundup will be back on Wednesday morning
Learn
more about Gerrymandering the need to repair PA’s redistricting process
Fair Districts PA Event Calendar
FairDistrictsPA aims to end gerrymandering
By Chris Barber,
Daily Local News POSTED: 04/01/17,
7:48 PM EDT | UPDATED: 9 HRS AGO
LONDON GROVE >> At first
glance, a map showing the legislative districts in Pennsylvania looks like the
result of a pastry chef gone wild with his cookie cutters. There are no uniform
shapes, no uniformity in the content, and the edges don’t conform to any
geographical characteristic like rivers or mountain ranges. But in reality, the
pattern is actually a reflection of the partisan method that a majority party
in power uses to keep its strength and minimize the input of the minority
party. It’s called gerrymandering. Gerrymandering
is the manipulation of electoral districts for political gain, and it’s rampant
in Pennsylvania. To that end, a group
called FairDistrictsPA, an offshoot of the League of Women Voters, has emerged
to reform the system by establishing a new system for forming the method of
drawing lines of districts served by legislators. Last Tuesday, Lawrence Husick of
FairDistrictsPA addressed an audience of more than 150 at Avon Grove High
School, explaining the hazards of gerrymandering and proposing some solutions.
“Somehow, we've gotten to a point in our
national politics where rigid intransigence gets hailed as courage - and
compromise blasted as cowardice. That gets things exactly backward. How did we reach this sorry pass? Culprits
abound, but chief among them is gerrymandering.”
Satullo: Citizens starting to see dangers
of gerrymandering
Inquirer Opinion by Chris Satullo Updated: APRIL 3, 2017 — 3:01 AM EDTChris Satullo is a former Inquirer editorial page editor.
Do you remember the film Lincoln?
Recall Daniel Day-Lewis' riveting
depiction of a crafty, urgent Abraham Lincoln doing whatever it took to get
Congress to approve the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery? By Hollywood standards, the movie got the
history pretty right. That includes the parts where Lincoln - our greatest
president - deploys unsavory intermediaries to offer federal jobs to lame-duck
Democratic congressmen in return for their yes votes. Bribe is such an unpleasant word, but the man
in the stovepipe hat sure worked the old quid pro quo pretty hard. Recent events in Washington have had me
thinking back to Day-Lewis' Lincoln.
Maryland to Pennsylvania (and four other
states): We'll redistrict when you do
WHYY Newsworks/Keystone
Crossroads BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF,
WPSU APRIL 3, 2017President Donald Trump, a Republican, won Pennsylvania by a narrow margin of 68,000 votes. The state has about 900,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. And yet, 13 of the state's 18 congressional seats are held by Republicans. One of the reasons for that imbalance is gerrymandering, the drawing of voting districts to benefit a political party. Pennsylvania is often ranked among the most gerrymandered states in the country. In Pennsylvania, gerrymandering helps Republicans hold onto their seats. But in Maryland, Democrats have drawn the districts to their advantage. In both states — like most states in the country — the party in power would rather keep their majority, so it's hard for redistricting efforts to get traction in the state legislature. After voting down Republican Governor Larry Hogan's proposal to redraw the congressional districts, Maryland Democrats have offered a plan of their own: a six-state regional pact. If Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Virginia and North Carolina agree to redistrict by 2020, Maryland will too. The idea is that these six state would even each other out — some would go more red while others would go more blue.
“Unfortunately, under current law,
private/religious schools that receive EITC/OSTC vouchers are allowed to
discriminate against students for any reason, including disability, race,
socio-economic status and religious affiliation. Students don’t have increased
school “choice” unless a private school chooses to enroll them. In addition, the vast majority of funding for
private/religious school vouchers flows into large urban areas of the state,
which are home to most of PA’s private/religious schools. Rural communities
receive very few dollars from the EITC/OSTC programs. To put the PA House’s proposed EITC/OSTC
funding increase in perspective, Governor Wolf’s 2017-18 budget proposes a $100
million increase in Basic Education Funding for 1.7 million students who attend
public schools. The PA House voted for a $55 million in increase in voucher
funding for private/religious schools that educate 250,000 students.”
HB250: Increasing EITC/OSTC vouchers
hurts PA taxpayers
Chambersburg
Public Opinion Online Opinion by Susan Spicka 10:23 a.m. ET March 31, 2017
Increasing taxpayer-funded
vouchers for private/religious schools has emerged as a top budget priority for
state lawmakers. Recently, the PA House
approved legislation (HB 250) that would provide $55 million in new funding for
private/religious school vouchers through the Educational Improvement Tax
Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs. This 44%
increase would bring total funding for vouchers in PA to $180 million/year.
The EITC and OSTC programs allow
businesses to divert their tax payments away from the state and into
private/religious schools. These programs have virtually no fiscal or academic
performance accountability standards and there is no evidence that they have
contributed to improved student achievement in PA.
The EITC/OSTC programs do,
however, come at a steep cost to Pennsylvania taxpayers. Every tax dollar that
is sent to private/religious schools through the EITC/OSTC programs creates a
hole in the state budget that must be filled by hard-working Pennsylvanians.
In order to pay to for $55
million in new private/religious school voucher funding in the 2017-2018
budget, state lawmakers will need to either raise new taxes or cut programs and
services from the budget that benefit Pennsylvanians.
Blogger note: Rep. Turzai is the lead
sponsor on HB250 which would increase the EITC and OSTC tax credit programs.
Turzai run for Pa. governor looks likely
WHYY Newsworks BY KATIE MEYER, WITF APRIL 3, 2017
Pennsylvania's gubernatorial
election is still well over a year away. But, already, Republicans are
announcing intentions to contest Democratic incumbent Tom Wolf's bid for
re-election. It's likely that GOP House
Speaker Mike Turzai — long rumored to be interested in higher office — will
soon be among them. The Pittsburgh-based
political agency Cold Spark Media has confirmed it's working with the Allegheny
County Republican. Mark Harris, a partner with the agency acting as Turzai's
strategist, said the politician may explore a run more seriously after the state
budget is finished. Cold Spark has
helped other prominent Republicans, including U.S. Sens. Pat Toomeyof
Pennsylvania and Marco Rubio of Florida , win elections. Harris wouldn't specifically confirm the bid,
but he made it clear that it's on the table. He also repeatedly stressed
Turzai's electability.
Did you catch our weekend postings?
PA Ed Policy Roundup April 2: Community
Schools: Who Needs Charters When You Have Public Schools Like These?
First Book: A Novel Model for Social
Enterprises
Knowledge@wharton
Feb 15, 2017
First
Book founder Kyle Zimmer talks about the hybrid model that's key to the
nonprofit's success.
In
the early 1990s, Kyle Zimmer was a practicing attorney who spent her free time
volunteering at a soup kitchen in Washington, D.C. Working with struggling
families made her realize that many children do not have access to new,
high-quality books, which are the building blocks of education. She did her
research, came up with a plan and launched First Book, a social enterprise that
has distributed millions of books and other items to children in need. But
it’s not run like most nonprofits. First Book charges a small shipping fee
per book that covers the operating cost of its book bank and it adopted
atypical publishing terms so it could buy books at a discount. Zimmer spoke to Katherine Klein,
a management professor and vice dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative,
about the hybrid business model First Book has adopted that was key to its
success.
TRIBUNE-REVIEW Editorial
| Saturday, April 1, 2017, 9:00 p.m.
State lawmakers' $118 million
“reserve” could help with Pennsylvania's projected multibillion-dollar budget
shortfall. Often called a “slush fund,” it's less than fully accountable to
taxpayers. And lawmakers didn't tap it
during the last, nine-month budget impasse, making its continuing existence
even harder to justify. Legislative
leaders maintain that their reserve buttresses separation of powers, ensuring
that the Legislature can operate even if a budget-battling governor cuts off
normal funding. Yet during the last impasse, PennLive notes, House and Senate
Republicans and Senate Democrats instead borrowed money and House Democrats
instead got a Treasury advance, undercutting that rationale. The reserve is audited annually by an outside
firm hired by the Legislature. State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he
would love to do an independent audit but can't, telling The Philadelphia
Inquirer “it would take a statute.” Essentially, the Legislature makes sure
that only it audits its own “slush fund” — despite that fund consisting of
unspent taxpayer dollars from prior legislative budgets.
“A year ago, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a law
delaying use of the Keystone Exams as a high school graduation requirement
until the 2018-19 academic year. The delay reflects concerns among lawmakers of
both parties about whether the Keystone Exams are a fair or reliable marker for
graduation. Meanwhile, legislative proposals are emerging to provide
alternatives to the Keystone Exams.”
Federal moves keep Keystone Exams in limbo
Philly Trib by Robert Swift Mar
31, 2017
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s
experiment with a high-stakes student test remains in limbo as state lawmakers
digest the impact of the latest changes in education policy from Washington. The Senate and House education
committees held a joint hearing last week on the effects of the federal Every
Student Succeeds Act signed in 2015 by former President Barack Obama. This law
outlines how states are to establish student performance goals in public
schools and hold schools accountable for academic progress. It’s the successor
to the No Child Left Behind Act, which put more emphasis on teaching to pass
tests. In Washington, Betsy DeVos,
President Donald Trump’s education secretary and school choice advocate,
says she wants to give states more flexibility in meeting the law’s goals. “ESSA was passed with broad bipartisan
support to move power away from Washington, D.C., and into the hands of those
who are closest to serving our nation’s students,” she said. Pennsylvania developed the statewide Keystone
Exams in algebra, biology and literature for high school seniors in 2013 as
part of the trend toward greater emphasis on tests to measure academic achievement.
Students party before grueling PSSA tests
Delco
Times By Rick Kauffman, rkauffman@21st-centurymedia.com, @Kauffee_DT on Twitter POSTED: 04/02/17,
10:41 PM EDT | UPDATED: 53 SECS AGO
UPLAND >> The wild fervor
of students pleading for teachers to win their class a pizza party by dunking
their face in crime pies in search of a hidden Tootsie Roll reverberated the
walls at Chester Community Charter School on Friday. Students covered their ears in response to the
shrill cacophony by friends and classmates who wanted nothing more than to see
teachers make their best pie-to-the-face “Mrs. Doubtfire” impression. All in preparation to the Pennsylvania System
of School Assessment tests that begins today, the students were in need of some
pep, practice and perseverance.
York County bee hives
sweetened by STEM experiment
York Daily Record 6:02
p.m. ET April 2, 2017
Armed with a bag of
powdered sugar and an infrared camera smartphone attachment, a team of
Harrisburg-area students came to Jeremy Barnes' Springfield Township
apiary for the mites. The students,
ranging from fourth through ninth grades, are competing in FIRST LEGO
League, a STEM-driven challenge for which they identify and try to solve a
real-world problem involving animals. After researching varroa mites, which
plague bee colonies, the team hypothesized that forcing powdered sugar into a
bee hive would irritate the mites off the honeybees and that they could use an
infrared camera to detect displaced mites on the bee hive's bottom board.
"It's quick;
it's non-invasive," Barnes said of the students' proposed method.
"You don't have to open the hives, you don't have to kill bees, you don't
have to pull out frames to do it."
Free-market think tank calls out Salisbury School
District for budgetary tactics
Andrew
Wagaman Contact Reporter Of The Morning
Call April 3, 2017
In 10 of the last 11
years, the Salisbury Township School Board has requested permission from the
Pennsylvania Department of Education to potentially raise property taxes above
the state-designated cap. It's a
budgetary move that about one-third of school districts statewide make each
year — one that affords school boards some flexibility as they figure out how
to balance budgets plagued by steep state-mandated expenses and unpredictable
state funding. Business Administrator
Robert Bruchak said Salisbury will for the third consecutive year likely keep a
tax hike at or below the Act 1 cap — 2.5 percent this year —despite seeking
exceptions to levy a hike more than twice as high.
Trump Taps Former Jeb Bush
Aide as Ed. Dept. General Counsel
Education Week
Politics K12 Blog By Alyson Klein on April 2,
2017 7:09 PM
UPDATED - President Donald
Trump has tapped his first political appointee for the U.S. Department of
Education: Carlos Muñiz, who will serve as the agency's general counsel,
if confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The position would give him a key role in
overseeing legal matters at the agency.
Muñiz, who was most recently a senior vice president at the counsulting
firm McGuire Woods, was the deputy attorney general and chief of staff to Pam
Bondi, Florida's attorney general and a Trump ally. Before that, he was deputy general counsel
under former Florida governor Jeb Bush. The Trump administration's "beach
head team" of early arrivals at the department includes a handful of alumni from Bush's
Foundation for Excellence in Education. And DeVos herself served on
the nonprofit's board before she was nominated as education secretary.
House Democrats ask Trump
administration to remind schools that they must educate undocumented children
Washington Post By Emma Brown April
3 at 6:00 AM
House
Democrats are asking the Trump administration to send a clear message reminding
the nation’s public schools that, despite recent changes in federal immigration
enforcement policy, they are still legally obligated to educate undocumented
children. The representatives expressed
concern that the educational rights of undocumented students may be overlooked
as the new administration cracks down on those in the country illegally. The
Supreme Court ruled 25 years ago that U.S. public schools must serve all
children, regardless of their immigration status. “In this environment of trepidation, it is
important that we do all we can to minimize the impact these policies have on
school attendance and student learning,” the top Democrats on the judiciary,
education and homeland security committees wrote in a letter Monday. The lawmakers also sought public assurance
that the administration intends to avoid enforcement actions at schools and
other “sensitive locations,” as has been the federal government’s stated policy
since 2011.
PSBA Spring Town Hall Meetings coming in May!
Don’t be left in the
dark on legislation that affects your district! Learn the latest from your
legislators at PSBA Spring Town Hall Meetings. Conveniently offered at 10
locations around the state throughout May, this event will provide you with the
opportunity to interact face-to-face with key lawmakers from your area. Enjoy
refreshments, connect with colleagues, and learn what issues impact you and how
you can make a difference. Log in to the Members Area to
register today for this FREE event!
- Monday, May 1, 6-8 p.m. — Parkway West
CTC, 7101 Steubenville Pike, Oakdale, PA 15071
- Tuesday, May 2, 7:30-9 a.m. — A W
Beattie Career Center, 9600 Babcock Blvd, Allison Park, PA 15101
- Tuesday, May 2, 6-8 p.m. — Crawford
County CTC, 860 Thurston Road, Meadville, PA 16335
- Wednesday, May 3, 6-8 p.m. — St. Marys
Area School District, 977 S. St Marys Road, Saint Marys, PA 15857
- Thursday, May 4, 6-8 p.m. — Central
Montco Technical High School, 821 Plymouth Road, Plymouth Meeting, PA
19462
- Friday, May 5, 7:30-9 a.m. — Lehigh
Carbon Community College, 4525 Education Park Dr, Schnecksville, PA 18078
- Monday, May 15, 6-8 p.m. — CTC of
Lackawanna Co., 3201 Rockwell Avenue, Scranton, PA 18508
- Tuesday, May 16, 6-8 p.m. — PSBA, 400
Bent Creek Boulevard, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
- Wednesday, May 17, 6-8 p.m. — Lycoming
CTC, 293 Cemetery Street, Hughesville, PA 17737
- Thursday, May 18, 6-8 p.m. — Chestnut
Ridge SD, 3281 Valley Road, Fishertown, PA 15539
For assistance
with registration, please contact Michelle
Kunkel at 717-506-2450 ext. 3365.
The
2017 PenSPRA Symposium Keeping Current: What’s New in School
Communications April 7th Shippensburg
Join PenSPRA Friday, April 7, 2017 in Shippensburg, PA 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with evening social events on Thursday, April 6th from 5 - 8 p.m. at the Shippensburg University Conference Center
The agenda is as follows: Supporting transgender students in our schools (9 am), Evaluating School Communications to Inform Your Effectiveness (10:30 am), and Cool Graphics Tools Hands-on Workshop (1:15 pm).
Join PenSPRA Friday, April 7, 2017 in Shippensburg, PA 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with evening social events on Thursday, April 6th from 5 - 8 p.m. at the Shippensburg University Conference Center
The agenda is as follows: Supporting transgender students in our schools (9 am), Evaluating School Communications to Inform Your Effectiveness (10:30 am), and Cool Graphics Tools Hands-on Workshop (1:15 pm).
The $150 registration fee also
includes breakfast, lunch and Thursday’s social! You can
find more details on the agenda and register for the Symposium here:
PSBA
Advocacy Forum and Day on the Hill APR
24, 2017 • 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Join PSBA and your fellow school
directors for the fourth annual Advocacy Forum on April 24, 2017, at the
State Capitol in Harrisburg. Hear from legislators on how advocacy makes a
difference in the legislative process and the importance of public education
advocacy. Government Affairs will take a deeper dive into the legislative
priorities and will provide tips on how to be an effective public education
advocate. There will be dedicated time for you and your fellow advocates to hit
the halls to meet with your legislators on public education. This is your
chance to share the importance of policy supporting public education and make
your voice heard on the Hill.
“Nothing has more impact for
legislators than hearing directly from constituents through events like PSBA’s
Advocacy Forum.”
— Sen. Pat Browne (R-Lehigh), Senate Appropriations Committee chair
— Sen. Pat Browne (R-Lehigh), Senate Appropriations Committee chair
Registration:
Visit the Members
Area of PSBA’s website under Store/Registration tab to register.
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!
Save the Date
2017 PA Principals Association State Conference October 14. 15, 16, 2017
Doubletree
Hotel Cranberry Township, PA
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