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Monday, January 15, 2018

PA Ed Policy Roundup Jan. 15: SB2: The Pa. Senate's latest voucher plan would drain $500m from public schools

Daily postings from the Keystone State Education Coalition now reach more than 4050 Pennsylvania education policymakers – school directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and congressional staffers, Governor's staff, current/former PA Secretaries of Education, Wolf education transition team members, superintendents, school solicitors, principals, charter school leaders, PTO/PTA officers, parent advocates, teacher leaders, business leaders, faith-based organizations, labor organizations, education professors, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 regulatory agencies, professional associations and education advocacy organizations via emails, website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

These daily emails are archived and searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
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Keystone State Education Coalition



Senate Bill 2 specifically allows private & religious schools that accept ESA voucher dollars to discriminate against children on the basis of gender, religion, and disability status. Students with disabilities, if they are permitted to enroll in a private school, must give up their rights under Federal law to an appropriate education.



What Martin Luther King Jr. said about the problem with ‘so-called educated people’
Washington Post Answer Sheet Blog By Valerie Strauss January 15 at 12:13 AM 
Here, as I have published before to mark the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., are some of his writings related to the purpose of education and the U.S. government’s efforts toward educating its citizens. You will see that King was prescient on a lot of things, including the dangers of education reform that fails to focus on the conditions in which children live.

SB2: The Pa. Senate's latest voucher plan would drain $500m from public schools | Opinion
Penn Live Guest Editorial By Dolores McCracken Updated Jan 12, 9:04 AM
Dolores McCracken is a paraprofessional in the Council Rock School District in Bucks County. She wrote this piece on behalf of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, Pennsylvania's largest teachers' union.
Someone once said that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." When I think about some legislators' latest tuition voucher scheme, that sentiment comes immediately to mind.  For the third or fourth time in the last quarter century, a few of Pennsylvania's state senators have again made passing a tuition voucher bill a top priority. The goal of bills like this one has always been the same: take taxpayer money from public schools, and allow people to use it to cover tuition at private or religious schools.  The state Senate plan, which renames these tuition vouchers "education savings accounts," would siphon $500 million in state funding from the 71 school districts where students would be eligible to use them. And, it is the least accountable version yet of these flawed voucher plans.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court to decide if state congressional district map is a partisan gerrymander
By Lindsay Lazarski, WHYY January 15, 2018
Pennsylvania’s congressional district map is often considered one of the most gerrymandered in the United States, but is it unconstitutional? And if so, how do you fix it? Those are the central questions the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will weigh when hearing oral arguments on Wednesday in a lawsuit that has the potential to change the state’s political landscape. The case was initiated by 18 voters, all Democrats, and the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. Plaintiffs claim Republican lawmakers, who drew the congressional map, violated their state constitutional rights, and are requesting the court to order the state legislature to draw a new map before the primary elections in May. Each of Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional seats are up for grabs in the 2018-midterm elections.

The final brief has been filed in the Pennsylvania partisan gerrymandering case challenging congressional map. The PA Supreme Court hears argument on Weds, 1/17 at 9:30 a.m.
INTRODUCTION - The 2011 map is the worst partisan gerrymander in Pennsylvania’s history and among the worst in American history. It rigs the outcome of elections and denies voters a fair say. Faced with damning and incontrovertible proof of the map’s unparalleled partisan intent and effects, Legislative Respondents essentially duck. They make no attempt to explain the map’s multitude of extraordinary anomalies, its unprecedented division of Pennsylvania’s communities, and its surgical packing and cracking of Democratic voters to diminish those voters’ voice in the political process. Their brief essentially pretends that the map does not exist. Rather, Legislative Respondents say that such invidious discrimination is okay because mapmakers have always invidiously discriminated. They urge this Court to throw up its hands and declare a grandfather exception for viewpoint discrimination in redistricting. Their vision of unchecked manipulation of district boundaries for partisan gain is a dim, destructive view of representative democracy. And it is contrary to the freedoms enshrined in Pennsylvania’s Constitution. Make no mistake: Legislative Respondents’ position is a thinly veiled rejection of any constitutional limitation on partisan discrimination in redistricting.

State lawmakers - not the League of Women Voters - are delaying redistricting reform | Opinion
Penn Live Guest Editorial By Susan Carty Updated Jan 12; Posted Jan 12
Susan Carty is president of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. 
On Jan. 9, Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, and Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, dared to suggest that the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania is delaying real redistricting reform. In a statement on the Senate GOP's website, the two Republican leaders called attention to the million dollars of taxpayer money spent so far in defense of their indefensible gerrymandered Congressional district map. They called on the League to drop the current lawsuit (apparently forgetting that the League is no longer a plaintiff) and suggested that they had been eager to hold hearings on redistricting reform bills, but that the lawsuit is an impediment to action. This is nonsense. The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania has been fighting for redistricting reform for a quarter of a century.

 “In Pennsylvania, per-pupil spending in the poorest school districts is 33 percent lower than per-pupil spending in the wealthiest school districts”
PA’s Fair Funding Formula Explained
House Democratic Appropriations Committee January 10, 2018
Pennsylvania has the most inequitable spending per pupil in the United States, according to a 2015 Washington Post analysis of federal data on state and local funding. “In Pennsylvania, per-pupil spending in the poorest school districts is 33 percent lower than per-pupil spending in the wealthiest school districts,” The Post reported . At the time of the Post article, Pennsylvania’s Basic Education Funding Commission (BEFC) was already 10 months into its yearlong development of a new formula to distribute state basic education funds. Education stakeholders welcomed the development of this new formula, hoping it would reduce inequities and provide predictability in a state without a year-to-year consistent formula. BEFC examined appropriate factors to include in a formula, held hearings around the state to gather testimony from school district officials and other experts, and surveyed school districts to get the most recent data to consider. However, BEFC was not charged with addressing the question of how much school funding is “adequate.” The commission was only tasked with recommending an appropriate distribution of the basic education funding annually provided by the legislature.

Senator Eichelberger is Majority Chairman of the PA Senate Education Committee
Eichelberger announces plan to run for 9th District seat
State senator stresses record, plans to ‘reignite’ Obamacare repeal
Altoona Mirror by GREG BOCK Staff Writer gbock@altoonamirror.com JAN 14, 2018
EAST FREEDOM — State Sen. John H. Eichelberger Jr. pointed to his past on Saturday while laying out his hopes for a future in the U.S. Congress. “My record is clear,” Eichelberger told the crowd of about 100 people who gathered at the Freedom Township Volunteer Fire Department on Saturday for Eichelberger’s official kick-off to his campaign to succeed Rep. Bill Shuster, R-9th District. “Taxpayers come first,” Eichelberger said. “Every vote, every time — no compromise.” It was 17 years ago that Eichelberger, then a Blair County commissioner, took a shot at securing the Republican nomination for the same U.S. House of Representatives seat when Bud Shuster announced he was resigning in January 2001, only to lose to Bill Shuster in what was a contentious Republican nominating process. But it was his defeat of longtime Sen. Robert Jubilirer, then president pro tempore of the state Senate, in 2006 that Eichelberger invoked several times Saturday as he talked of his commitment to conservative values and government transparency and accountability. Eichelberger said he got to Harrisburg by standing up to the Republican establishment and “now it’s time to take the fight to Washington.”

Erie School District close to getting a financial monitor
GoErie By Ed Palattella Posted Jan 13, 2018 at 12:01 AMUpdated at 6:33 AM
State Senate has sent a list of potential appointees to the governor. The district is also set to receive $14 million in additional state funding.
The Erie School District is close to getting $14 million in additional annual state aid — plus the state-paid financial administrator that must come with it. The district has completed the grant application to receive the $14 million.  And the process for Gov. Tom Wolf to appoint the financial administrator has reached a key stage. The president pro tempore of the state Senate, Sen. Joe Scarnati, on Friday submitted to Wolf a list of three names to choose from, as the law requires, said Scarnati’s chief of staff, Drew Crompton. “We spent a lot of time on it,” he said. Crompton declined to reveal the names, citing a need to preserve the fairness of the process at this point. The law sets no deadline for the governor to make an appointment from the names on the list. “The governor will be reviewing it in the coming days,” Wolf spokesman J.J. Abbott said. As for the district receiving the $14 million, Abbott said a number of state officials must sign off on the Erie School District’s grant application, as he said is typically the case in such situations. The district on Jan. 3 completed the application process by sending a signed agreement to the state Department of Education.

DePasquale: Aliquippa School District ‘barely treading water’
Beaver County Times Online By Kate Malongowski  Posted Jan 11, 2018 at 4:44 PM Updated Jan 11, 2018 at 5:50 PM
ALIQUIPPA — Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale released an audit report Thursday detailing the Aliquippa School District’s financial struggles, noting that the district went from a $928,556 budget deficit in July 2012 to a more than $1.5 million deficit by June 2016. Aliquippa is among seven districts in the state on the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s financial watch list. Despite the district’s efforts in lessening the financial issues, DePasquale said the district is still “barely treading water.” Pete Carbone, Aliquippa’s school superintendent, said the district has managed to lower its deficit to around $1 million as of June 2017 despite rising retirement fund costs and charter school tuition payments. “We’re just really careful about the money we spend,” Carbone said. ”... Over 60 percent of our revenue comes from state and federal sources, so we don’t have a large local tax base.” With a $3.3 million revitalization effort announced by city officials last week, Carbone said he is hoping for the potential that the district’s tax base can grow. Carbone said the district has also outsourced contracts, is looking into grant opportunities and may refinance a bond later this year. He said the district also soon hopes to sell a district-owned commercial property in the coming months. The school district had a $21.5 million budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year. Charter school tuition payments have also increased between 2013 and 2016, from $1.1 million to $1.7 million, meaning that more students who live in the district are opting to attend public charter and cyber schools. Carbone said the district is trying to find ways to alleviate that issue.

Some Bucks County residents getting early look at possible school tax increases
Intelligencer By Chris English January 15, 2018 Posted at 6:00 AM
Pennsylvania’s Act 1 requires school districts to either pass a resolution pledging not to go above a certain tax increase for 2018-19 or present a preliminary budget by Jan. 25. Residents in six Bucks County school districts know the deepest they will have to dig into their pockets to come up with more money for taxes in 2018-19. Central Bucks, Bucks County’s largest school district, has presented a preliminary budget for 2018-19 that holds the line on taxes. And the Bensalem, Bristol Township, Council Rock, Palisades and Pennridge school boards all have passed resolutions pledging not to go above their maximum allowable property tax increases for the 2018-19 school year that starts July 1. The maximums are set every year by the state Department of Education under Act 1, also known as the Taxpayer Relief Act passed in 2006. Under the law, school districts must either approve the resolution or present a preliminary budget by Jan. 25. Those rules are intended to help keep taxes down as much as possible and give residents more advance notice of how their school district’s finances will impact their own, said PDE spokeswoman Casey Smith. The Act 1 index for maximum tax increases is calculated by averaging the percent increases in the Pennsylvania statewide weekly wage and the federal employment cost index for elementary/secondary schools, she added. School districts can go above their maximums by either holding a voter referendum, or applying for and receiving exceptions for pension and special education costs from PDE.

Lebanon Schools preliminary budget would raise taxes
Lebanon Daily News by Andrea Rich, andrearich@ldnews.com Published 6:32 a.m. ET Jan. 13, 2018
Lebanon School District is proposing a budget with a 6 percent tax increase Monday night, starting a process that is months away from final approval and solid numbers from state and federal sources. The primary reasons the district needs more money are increases in special education costs and having more students to serve. Ninety cents of every dollar of special education costs come from local revenue," Business Manager Curtis Richards explained. State and federal funding for special education does not increase at the rate expenses do, Richards said, so the burden falls on the district to find other areas of the budget to pull money from, and to local taxpayers. "Traditionally the district will work to minimize any increase," Richards said. Last year a tax increase was proposed with the first draft of the budget in January and the board of education finalized a budget in June with no local tax increase for the first time in recent memory, Lebanon Daily News reported.

Charter school applicant faces tough questioning at Philly hearing
The notebook by Greg Windle January 12, 2018 — 5:21pm
It’s the SRC’s final year of authorizing new charter schools, and the eight organizations that have applied range from big names in the industry, such as Mastery, to unknowns such as Qor Charter School – which seem to be longshots rolling the dice in fear that, with the return of local control in July, this is their last chance to get established in Philadelphia. At the Jan. 10 hearing, Qor’s application was picked apart by both the District’s Charter Schools Office and hearing officer Allison Petersen and shown to contain errors and inconsistencies.   Qor’s mission focuses on social and emotional learning, and the curriculum combines project-based learning with data-driven assessment — an odd pairing because project-based learning is typically seen as an alternative to frequent assessment or testing. The elementary school would locate in the old Sankofa charter school building at 4290 Penn St. in Frankford, enrolling 72 students in kindergarten and 1st grade next school year and expanding to 312 students in grades K-4 by its fifth year in operation. Charter Schools Office head DawnLynne Kacer said there was a “lack of cohesion between the educational plan and the curriculum.” The concern was that the school’s mission emphasized social and emotional learning but did not include sufficient emphasis on this work within the curriculum. Both Kacer’s office and Petersen were concerned about the financial viability of the school based on the proposed budget, which contained a major error.

The 2018 Philadelphia Charter Operations Conference
Philly Trib by Erric Moody TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT
Top of Form
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The Philadelphia School Partnership with the PA Coalition of Public Charter Schools and the Excellent Schools PA came together for a one day conference for education innovators and experts from Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Philadelphia Charter Operations Conference was held Thursday Jan. 11th at the International House on 3701 Chestnut Street. Local and national leaders took the day to network and help give best practices and resources for tackling issues their schools are often faced with rectifying. The conference included Michele Mason of the Newark Charter Schools Fund; Karen Daniels, President & COO of Charter School Business Management and Lori Clement with Charter School Business Management.

Heeding science, some Pennsylvania school districts push back high school start times
By Sarah Schneider, WESA January 15, 2018
Later school start times could mean teenagers are more likely to get adequate amounts of sleep, according to research published last month by Penn State researchers. That study supports a 2014 recommendation from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30am in order to give students more time to sleep. A few Pennsylvania school districts in turn are adjusting schedules or considering moving back when teenagers start the school day. For instance, last month the State College Area school board approved changing the beginning of the day for elementary through high school, pushing the start for high school students to 8:40. Avonworth School District, north of Pittsburgh, also recently made a switch. Starting this  year, students there arrived at their first period, for the most part, after sunrise. The High School shifted its first period start time from 7:15 to 8 a.m., and Superintendent Thomas Ralston said his students now pass what he calls “the eye test.” “You can see that kids are coming to school, and they’re awake. They’re coming in when it’s light outside,” he said. “Our faculty have reported that kids are more attentive in class … and faculty feel more prepared.”


After Trump Insult, Educators Rally Around Haitian, African Students
Education Week By Corey Mitchell on January 12, 2018 4:05 PM
Educators across the country are rallying around their students of Haitian and African descents after President Donald Trump demanded to know why the United States should accept immigrants from Haiti and the "shithole countries" in Africa. Trump's comments come at a time when more foreign-born black people live in the United States than at any time in history—and many of the residents are children enrolled in the nation's K-12 public schools. The president made the remarks while rejecting a bipartisan immigration deal on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that would have offered more visas to underrepresented countries in Africa and countries with expiring Temporary Protective Status, including Haiti. Upon hearing the proposal, Trump asked several members of Congress why the U.S. would want people from Haiti and more Africans instead of places such as Norway, a European country. U.S. schools are educating tens of thousands black, foreign-born English-language learners. More than 13,000 of the students are from Haiti, according to a 2015 U.S. Department of Education fact sheet. The same report found that nearly 4,000 of the students were from Kenya, more than 2,000 each from Ethiopia and Somalia and another combined 3,800 students were from unspecified African countries.

Americans Have Given Up on Public Schools. That’s a Mistake.
The current debate over public education underestimates its value—and forgets its purpose.
Bottom of Form
Public schools have always occupied prime space in the excitable American imagination. For decades, if not centuries, politicians have made hay of their supposed failures and extortions. In 2004, Rod Paige, then George W. Bush’s secretary of education, called the country’s leading teachers union a “terrorist organization.” In his first education speech as president, in 2009, Barack Obama lamented the fact that “despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we’ve let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us.” President Donald Trump used the occasion of his inaugural address to bemoan the way “beautiful” students had been “deprived of all knowledge” by our nation’s cash-guzzling schools. Educators have since recoiled at the Trump administration’s budget proposal detailing more than $9 billion in education cuts, including to after-school programs that serve mostly poor children. These cuts came along with increased funding for school-privatization efforts such as vouchers. Our secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has repeatedly signaled her support for school choice and privatization, as well as her scorn for public schools, describing them as a “dead end” and claiming that unionized teachers “care more about a system, one that was created in the 1800s, than they care about individual students.”

What if CHIP Funds Run Out? Here’s What 6 Families Would Do
With Congress yet to agree on a long-term plan to pay for the popular children’s health insurance program, parents start thinking about contingency plans.
New York Times By Fahima Haque Jan. 10, 2018
The Children’s Health Insurance Program, better known as CHIP, covers nearly nine million children whose parents earn too much for Medicaid, but not enough to afford other coverage. But the program, which ran out of funding in September, is at a crisis point. Congress passed a stopgap spending bill late last month that was expected to keep CHIP running through March, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said some states could run out of money as early as next week. We asked readers to tell us how they would be affected if their children lost CHIP coverage. Their stories have been condensed and edited for clarity.



Register now for PSBA Board Presidents Panel 
PSBA Website January 2018
School board leaders, this one's for you! Join your colleagues at an evening of networking and learning in 10 convenient locations around the state at the end of January. Share your experience and leadership through a panel discussion moderated by PSBA Member Services team. Participate in roundtable conversations focused on the most pressing challenges and current issues affecting PA school districts. Bring your specific challenges and scenarios for small group discussion. Register online.

NSBA 2018 Advocacy Institute February 4 - 6, 2018 Marriott Marquis, Washington D.C.
Register Now
Come a day early and attend the Equity Symposium!
Join hundreds of public education advocates on Capitol Hill and help shape the decisions made in Washington D.C. that directly impact our students. At the 2018 Advocacy Institute, you’ll gain insight into the most critical issues affecting public education, sharpen your advocacy skills, and prepare for effective meetings with your representatives. Whether you are an expert advocator or a novice, attend and experience inspirational keynote speakers and education sessions featuring policymakers, legal experts and policy influencers. All designed to help you advocate for your students and communities.

REGISTER TODAY! ELECTED. ENGAGED. EMPOWERED:
Local School Board Members to Advocate on Capitol Hill in 2018     
NSBA's Advocacy Institute 2018 entitled, "Elected. Engaged. Empowered: Representing the Voice in Public Education," will be held on February 4-6, 2018 at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C. This conference will convene Members of Congress, national thought-leaders, state association executives and well-known political pundits to provide local school board members with an update on key policy and legal issues impacting public education, and tactics and strategies to enhance their ability to influence the policy-making process and national education debate during their year-round advocacy efforts.
WHAT'S NEW - ADVOCACY INSTITUTE '18?
·         Confirmed National Speaker: Cokie Roberts, Political Commentator for NPR and ABC News
·         NSBA will convene first ever National School Board Town Hall on School Choice
·         Includes General Sessions featuring national policy experts, Members of Congress, "DC Insiders" and local school board members
·         Offers conference attendees "Beginner" and "Advanced" Advocacy breakout sessions
·         NSBA will host a Hill Day Wrap-Up Reception
Click here to register for the Advocacy Institute.  The hotel block will close on Monday, January 15
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Registration is now open for the 2018 PASA Education Congress! State College, PA, March 19-20, 2018
Don't miss this marquee event for Pennsylvania school leaders at the Nittany Lion Inn, State College, PA, March 19-20, 2018.
Learn more by visiting http://www.pasa-net.org/2018edcongress 

SAVE THE DATE for the 2018 PA Educational Leadership Summit - July 29-31 - State College, PA sponsored by the PA Principals Association, PASA, PAMLE and PASCD.  
This year's Summit will be held from July 29-31, 2018 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, State College, PA.

Any comments contained herein are my comments, alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other person or organization that I may be affiliated with.


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