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PA Ed Policy Roundup July 23, 2019
Pennsylvania: The
State’s Largest Charter School—Low-Performing But Profitable
Diane Ravitch’s
Blog By dianeravitch July 23, 2019 //
Chester Community
Charter School is the largest brick-and-mortar charter school in Pennsylvania,
with more than 4,000 students. It is a for-profit charter school owned by a
wealthy lawyer named Vahan Gureghian, who was the largest individual
contributor to former Governor Corbett. It is hard to know how much money CCCS
makes, because its books are not open to the public. It must be doing very
well, because his 36,000 square-foot oceanfront house in Palm Beach was recently sold for
$60 million. But his
profits are less important than the fact that CCCS now enrolls 70% of the
primary students in the Chester-Upland school district. And it is not because
the charter is an academic success. Its test scores are very low. Only 16.7%
were proficient in English language arts, compared to a state average of 63%.
Only 7% were proficient in mathematics, compared to a state average of 45%. By
most metrics, this charter school is a failing school, yet it gets preferential
treatment. The scores in the charter school are below those of the remaining
public schools in the district. The district, one of the poorest in the state,
is in receivership, and the receiver—who exercises total control over the
district—decided in 2017 to take the unprecedented step
of extending the charter to 2026. No charter in the state has ever had a nine-year extension. The
receiver said he did it in exchange for a promise by the charter that it would
not open a high school to compete with the Chester High School, but would
remain satisfied to enroll 70% of its primary students. Why might the receiver
make this unusual decision? Surely it would not be because he was treasurer of
Governor Corbett’s campaign. So, from 2017 to 2026,
there is no accountability for this low-performing for-profit charter school.
The charter corporation is now recruiting young students from Philadelphia with
an aggressive marketing campaign. Currently, more
than 1,100 students from Philadelphia ride a school bus that takes from 2-3 hours to reach the school in the morning and another 2-3 hours to
return home each day.
“Duquesne, which enrolls just under 400
students in kindergarten through 6th grade, quietly launched its “Bring
Your Kids Home” campaign last summer, and recruited 18 students — and about
$340,000 in tuition payments — back to the district from charter schools,
officials said. The district spent just over $8,000 for the summer recruitment
program, including the cost of the postcards and brochures they sent to every
family or left at the homes they visited in person.”
ELIZABETH BEHRMAN Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Lbehrman@post-gazette.com JUL 21, 2019
Dressed in matching
red T-shirts, a group of educators from the Duquesne City School District on
Wednesday split into two teams and packed into vans adorned with the district’s
red logo. Each was armed with a printed list of the addresses of students who
live in the district’s two square miles and attend charter schools. The group,
which included Superintendent Sue Moyer, raced to beat the summer rain and
spent about two hours knocking on a total of 20 doors. If a parent answered,
they made the case for the Duquesne district and why that student should return
to their neighborhood public school. If no one was home, they left a brochure
hanging on the front door. “Where there is choice, there’s competition,”
said Sarah McCluan, supervisor for communications services at the Allegheny
Intermediate Unit, which handles Duquesne’s communications and
marketing. “If parents have choice, it’s up to the school district to
market ourselves and inform parents why they should send their child here
instead of to a charter school.”
In the mix for
charter school reform: SB497 Brewster (D-45) Allegheny and Westmoreland
Counties
Senator Brewster is
a member of the Senate Education Committee. His SB497, Charter School Reforms,
was referred to the Senate Ed Committee on March 29, 2019. It includes financial
reforms, upgrading accountability to students and taxpayers, and reforms to the Charter Appeal Board. You can read the cosponsorship
memo with details here:
Lack of State Funding Pushes Districts to Financial
Precipice
According to
a recent report published by the Center on Regional Politics at Temple
University, Pennsylvania is becoming permanently divided between have and
have-not districts.
The Legal
Intelligencer By Deborah Gordon Klehr | July 19, 2019 at 12:00
PM
Deborah
Gordon Klehr is the executive director of Education Law Center
The Pennsylvania
legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf recently enacted a state budget that added $160
million to basic education funding for school districts, a modest 2.6%
increase, and added $50 million to special education funding, a more
substantial increase of 4.4%. The budget also includes some welcome increases
in state funding for early childhood programs. Unfortunately, despite some
congratulatory rhetoric from legislators, the approved state budget did little
to change the overall dismal picture of school funding in Pennsylvania.
According to a recent report published by the Center on Regional Politics at Temple University,
Pennsylvania is becoming permanently divided between have and have-not
districts. The report warned that Pennsylvania’s education funding system is
creating a “persistent gulf” between districts with surpluses and districts
with shortfalls. The findings from this report confirm what plaintiffs in an
active school funding case have known for years: Pennsylvania’s schools are
defined by entrenched and deepening inequities, and children residing in
underfunded school districts are deprived of educational opportunities. The
petitioner school districts, parents and statewide organizations in William Penn School
District v. Pennsylvania Department of Education, contend that school
funding in Pennsylvania is both inadequate and inequitable. As a result of
deficient state funding, children in “have-not” districts are deprived of their
right to the quality education guaranteed to them by the state
constitution, and there
is no legitimate state purpose justifying such gross disparities between school
districts. The Education Law Center, along with Public Interest Law Center and
law firm O’Melveny & Myers, represents petitioners in the case. As we get
ready for a likely trial date in 2020, evidence against the state is mounting.
Could Pa. school
districts change funding themselves? A substitute teacher wanted to know
PA Post by Ed Mahon
JULY 22, 2019 | 5:00 AM
Pennsylvania sends
billions of dollars to public schools every year, and some school districts
think the way that lawmakers distribute that money is unfair and
unconstitutional. Amid that dispute, substitute teacher Anne Gray attended an
education forum in York a few months ago. It was hosted by POWER, a group that
says there are “deep and persistent racial disparities” in how the state distributes basic
education money. “That was
pretty shocking and dismaying,” Gray said. That prompted a question for her.
She wondered whether school districts could take matters into their own hands,
instead of waiting for state lawmakers or judges to take action. “Would it be
legal for PA school districts to simply redistribute their own funds between
districts according to the Fair Funding Formula without waiting for a Bill to
pass that forces them to?” she asked in a Listening Post
question. To
understand the conflict, it helps to know how much money is at stake, what
exactly the “Fair Funding Formula” is, and why some people think it’s not fair
enough. First, the money: Each year, state lawmakers appropriate several
billion dollars to public schools across the state through the basic education
funding subsidy. The
recently passed state budget includes $6.7 billion for the basic education subsidy.
PA state budget: spending and spending and spending...
York Daily Record Opinion by Mike Folmer Published
1:32 p.m. ET July 22, 2019
Sen. Mike Folmer is
a Republican from Lebanon whose district includes parts of York County.
Snap your
fingers. Snap them again, again, and again. Now, imagine having a
fistful of $1,000 bills in your other hand. Under the 2019–2020 General
Fund budget, Pennsylvania will spend over $1,000 ($1,078.05 to be exact) each
second. Imagine spending those $1,000 bills you’re holding each and every
second for the next year. Total General Fund spending beginning July 1 is
$33,997,395,000, or $93,143,547.95 a day, $3,880,981.16 an hour, $64,683.02
each minute, and $1,078.05 every second. However, General Fund expenditures are
just one piece of overall state spending. When you add federal and
specially designated funding, total spending tops $80 Billion. These
additional outlays are covered by a host of special funds, including:
Motor License Fund, Lottery, Horse Racing Fund, Capital Budget, debt service
funds, and various other stewardship and singular-purpose funds. Education
remains the largest element of the General Fund budget: $13,127,581,000,
or 38.6% of the total state budget. This is in addition to federal and
local tax moneys (mostly school property taxes – another big issue for another
time). Under the state’s current basic education funding formula (yet
another big issue for another time), appropriations to school districts total
$6,255,078,997, or an average of $12,510,158 per each of the 500 school
districts.
Blogger note: the following is an excerpt
from a PDE “Dear Colleague” letter dated July 18, 2019 from Secretary Rivera.
A Response to the
Auditor General’s Special Report on Standardized Testing
There has been
widespread news coverage and social media engagement regarding the Auditor General’s
recent special report on standardized testing. At best, the report
oversimplified a critical issue that has significant implications for public
schools, students, and educators. More concerning, the report included
inaccurate information about the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and our
state-level implementation efforts. Because Pennsylvania’s education community
played a vital role in establishing our current state assessments, I want to
take a few moments to set the record straight.
…..First, contrary
to the impression left by the report, no state can unilaterally change the
secondary level assessment, or any assessment, it uses to comply with federal
requirements. Any shift in this
regard is governed by 1) the ESSA statute; 2) Title I—Academic Assessments
regulations issued in December 2016; and 3) Assessment Peer Review requirements
issued in September 2018. Assessment selections by states are evaluated based
on a range of criteria including accommodations policies for students with
disabilities; technical quality and validity; reporting procedures; and,
importantly, alignment with the breadth and depth of state academic standards.[2]
As of July
8, 2019, no state that proposes to use the ACT or SAT for its high school grade
span testing has fully satisfied these requirements. While my team is following these developments closely, it is worth
underscoring that Pennsylvania has unique, state-specific standards that were
developed by Pennsylvania educators and approved by the Pennsylvania State
Board of Education. Neither the
ACT or SAT, nor any other national
standardized
test, is aligned to our Pennsylvania-developed state standards.
Blogger note: Last Friday we ran a WHYY article
By Avi Wolfman-Arent dated July 17, 2019 that stated: “Student test scores in
Pennsylvania could spike next year — and a 90-word provision recently tucked
into the state’s school code may be the reason why. The language states that
Pennsylvania will no longer count the standardized test scores of students who
miss at least 20% of school days prior to the end of the state testing window.”
PDE has issued a response:
Act 16 of 2019:
Section 221.3—Full Academic Year Requirement
The 2019 School
Code (Act No. 16 of 2019; formerly House Bill 1615) includes provisions (Section
221.3—Full Academic Year Requirement) to redefine the full academic year (FAY) requirement
for student participation in statewide assessments as contingent on student attendance
during the period of October 1 to the last day of the applicable testing window
the following spring. Specifically, Section 221.3 would exempt from “school
accountability performance calculation” the scores of students who are “absent
for at least 20 percent of the school days” during the period used to calculate
FAY (Section 221.3(a)). The provision includes an important caveat, however:
“This section shall only be effective if in compliance with Federal law”
(Section 221.3(b)).
Section
1111(c)(4)(F) of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires that for “a
student who has not attended the same school within a local educational agency
for at least half of a school year, the performance of such student on the
indicators described in clauses (i), (ii), (iv), and (v) of subparagraph (B)1
may not be used in the system of meaningful differentiation of all public
schools as described in subparagraph (C) for such school year...” (emphasis
added) In the case of Pennsylvania and any state with a 180-day school year,
this language creates a 90-day trigger that matters greatly for annual
meaningful differentiation (i.e., accountability determinations). Specifically, for purposes of accountability,
a student must miss at least 90 days of school before their assessment data can
be excluded from calculations. The 20
percent absence rate trigger established by Act 16, which is equivalent to 36
days across the school year, is far short of the ESSA threshold. While the
federal law affords states additional flexibility in lower stakes reporting not
used for accountability, Act 16 clearly references “school accountability.”
Accordingly, the exemption provision in Section 221.3 is incompatible with the
ESSA and Pennsylvania’s approved ESSA State Plan.
“The program is five years old;
this year, for the first time, the Philadelphia School District funded it,
spending $58,215 for 30 public school students to have the weeklong summer
experience. Some participants are strong students and some struggle in school,
but each has the potential to push past hardships. Colleen Landy, the School
District’s assistant director of education for children and youth experiencing
homelessness, said the funds go a long way. In general, homeless youth and
those who have been involved in the foster care system have lower high school
graduation and college entrance rates than their peers.”
How do the most vulnerable Philly teens get to college?
This program helps them reach higher.
Inquirer by Kristen A. Graham, Updated: July 22, 2019- 11:26 AM
Carlos Torres
recently was homeless. His mother has cancer, and his sister has autism; the
15-year-old knows the weight of worry very well. So, when Torres was offered
the chance to spend a week this summer living on a college campus, taking
college classes, living in a dorm room, and picturing the possibilities of a
future that looks very different from his life now, he grabbed it with both
hands. “I saw this as an opportunity to
leave my predicament behind,” said Torres. “This could be a way out for me.” Torres
was part of Temple University’s College Bound Academy, a program for
Philadelphia high school students who are either homeless or involved in the
foster care system. It’s designed to immerse them in the college experience,
exposing them to information about possible career paths and academic majors
they might otherwise have a tough time accessing. Philadelphia high school
students from Temple University's College Bound Academy program for young
people who have been homeless or involved in the foster care system tour a
garden at Temple's Ambler campus.
What school segregation looks like in the U.S. today, in
4 charts | Opinion
Penn Live Opinion by Erica Frankenberg, Professor
of Education and Demography, Pennsylvania State University By The
Conversation, editorial contributor Posted
Jul 20, 2019
Democratic
presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a senator from California, has spoken
about how she benefited from attending Berkeley’s
desegregated schools. “There was
a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her
public schools and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was
me,” Harris said in the first
Democratic debate to
candidate Joe Biden. “So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an
intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to
act swiftly.” School segregation is the separation of students into different
schools by race. In 1954, the Supreme Court declared segregation was
unconstitutional. Desegregation efforts since then have used a variety of tools
to try to overcome patterns of segregation that persist. Studies have shown that school
desegregation has
important benefits for
students of all races. Recent
research illustrates that its positive impact on the educational attainment,
lifetime earnings and health of African American
families persists
for multiple generations. Yet, despite years of government desegregation
efforts and the proven benefits of integrated schools, our recently
published research shows
that U.S. school segregation is higher than it has been in decades, even if
there are no longer overt
laws requiring racially segregated schools.
“Evangelical leaders have also joined
the chorus.
On July 17, they sent letters to Trump, Vice
President Mike Pence, and Congress calling on them to “respect U.S. laws that
protect children and families seeking asylum,” according to the Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition of faith groups that includes the Assemblies
of God, Bethany Christian Services, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities,
the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist
Convention, Faith and Community Empowerment (formerly Korean Churches for
Community Development), the National Association of Evangelicals, the National
Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, The Wesleyan Church, and World Relief
and World Vision.
Evangelical leaders were critical
to Trump’s 2016 election. More than 1,300 evangelical pastors signed
the letter.”
‘We should not allow
history to repeat:’ How Pa.’s faithful are speaking up on the border crisis |
Monday Morning Coffee
PA Capital Star
Commentary By John L. Micek July 22, 2019
Good Monday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
In ways both large
and small, Pennsylvania’s religious leaders, and religious activists, are
making their voices heard in the ongoing debate over the ever-worsening
humanitarian crisis at America’s southern border with Mexico. From the
processing of asylum requests to conditions in migrant detention centers,
religious leaders and the faithful across a range of religions and faiths are
speaking to say they’re not happy with American policy. And they’re calling on
elected officials and the Trump administration to up their game. In a July 12
letter to Pennsylvania’s U.S. House and Senate delegation, Bishop
Edward Malesic, of Greensburg, called on Washington to “to please work
as hard as you can” on legislation that “releases the unnecessary stranglehold
on immigration to the United States that has caused tragic and inhumane
consequences,” according to the
National Catholic Reporter. Malesic also
sent his letter to President Donald Trump, the newspaper reported. “I
write today, in a land of freedom and almost unlimited opportunity, to call
your attention to the fact that there are people, each one a child of God, who
by our common relationship with the Lord are our brothers and sisters who need
our help,” Malesic wrote, according to the newspaper.
3 Takeaways from Rep.
Smucker's trip to the U.S.-Mexico border
Lancaster Online by
GILLIAN McGOLDRICK
| Staff Writer July 23,
2019
During U.S. Rep.
Lloyd Smucker’s one-night trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, he felt sadness for
the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and migrants staying in
detention facilities. “It was just this overwhelming sense of, ‘It’s up to us
to fix this,’ ” he said Monday in his Lancaster city district office. “We’ve
got to get it done.” Smucker co-led 14 members of the Problem Solvers Caucus on
a trip Friday to the border city of McAllen, Texas. The bipartisan caucus,
consisting of 24 Republican and 24 Democratic members of Congress, has tasked
itself with finding solutions to some of the country’s most pressing problems.
Immigration, members agree, is one of them. “I’m one who felt shame today.
Shame about the failure of the leadership in both houses of congress, Democrat
and Republican, in the White House — not just this one,” Rep. Dean Phillips,
D-Minnesota, said Friday at a news conference. The caucus members visited
several places along the border, including an intake facility, a family
detention center, the Hidalgo port of entry and a nonprofit long-term home for
teenage boys who came unaccompanied across the border. Other Pennsylvania
lawmakers have recently visited the border, too, including U.S. Sen. Bob Casey,
D-Pa., last week. Smucker said it was important for Problem Solvers Caucus members
to visit the border to see the problems firsthand. Here are three things
Smucker took away from his visit to the border.
Scanlon, Dean make
surprise visit to Berks detention center
Pottstown Mercury By
Karen Shuey MediaNews Group July 23, 2019
BERN TOWNSHIP, PA —
It's not like it is at the border. After touring immigration detention centers
at the southern border earlier this year, congresswomen Madeleine Dean and Mary
Gay Scanlon stopped by the Berks County Residential Center for a surprise visit
Friday afternoon. The facility houses undocumented immigrants seeking asylum
from their country of origin in an arrangement between the county and the
Department of Homeland Security. While the conditions at the Bern Township
facility are far superior to those at the border, Dean and Scanlon said, the
fact that asylum-seekers are being detained at all is wrong. "A golden
cage is still a cage," Dean told a group of reporters after their two-hour
tour had ended. "The conditions we are seeing here are not the conditions
we are seeing on the southern border," Scanlon added. "While it's
clearly bad for the mental health of children to be detained at all, at least
there are beds and classrooms here so it is not the same situation." Berks
manages and pays for the operation, including 59 staff, and is reimbursed by
the federal government. In return, Immigration and Customs Enforcement pays to
lease office space and provides about $1.3 million in revenue annually to the
county. The center can hold a maximum of 96 people. It is one of three ICE
residential centers in the United States with the two larger facilities located
in Texas.
“Even though their daughters are U.S.
citizens, the government is moving to deport them as fast as it can, said
Christopher Casazza, an immigration attorney who has taken their case. This is
a “100 percent change in policy” from what generally happened before President
Trump took office, said Casazza, a partner with the firm of Solow, Isbell &
Palladino LLC, who has been working in immigration law for 10 years. From a
legal standpoint, being a parent of minor children who are U.S. citizens is a
“non-factor” in deportation proceedings, Casazza said. In practice, however,
under previous administrations, people in such situations who have no criminal
record were generally allowed to stay under “orders of supervision” and
required to check in periodically with immigration officials. “It was called
‘staying the removal,’ but the current administration has done away with that
altogether,” Casazza said. “They’re trying to clean up how many orders of
supervision they have. They’re trying to get people off that list, and they’re
doing that by detaining and removing them.”
Indonesian parents, here for 20 years, await deportation
under more stringent Trump policies
Prior
administrations typically let parents of minor children stay under supervision.
Trump has ended that practice.
The notebook by Dale Mezzacappa July 20 — 11:42 am, 2019
Elly and Fnu (not
their real names) came to the United States in 1999, fleeing religious and
political persecution in their home country of Indonesia. They are ethnic Chinese
and Christian and were living in a country where both groups were major targets
during deadly riots in 1998 set off by the nation’s economic collapse. “Bad
things were happening,” said Sinta Penyami Storms, who runs an Indonesian dance
studio in South Philadelphia and is herself an immigrant. Food was scarce and
unemployment was high. “It was unsafe for them to go out. There was a lot of
robbery of houses and rapes of Chinese Indonesians,” Storms said. More than 300
people were killed in the unrest. The couple are Catholic. Indonesia is
majority Muslim, and although it is not a religious state, Christians face
discrimination. “It’s hard to go to church; your church can’t get a permit to
have a house of worship. They’re a double minority,” Storms said. The couple
fled to the United States, applied for political asylum, and settled in South
Philadelphia, where there was an established Indonesian community. Their asylum
petition wound its way through the system. In 2007, it was denied. They
appealed. In 2009, 10 years after they first arrived, their appeal was turned
down, and they were ordered deported. By this time, they had a life here. They
had bought a house. They had jobs and paid taxes. They were active parishioners
in their church and had no trouble with the law. They had two daughters, who
are U.S. citizens; one of them is a minor. Both the husband and wife work in
delicatessens, but they had high hopes of a prosperous life in the United
States for their daughters and were determined to get them a good education.
Facing all this,
they decided to stay.
“Despite the governor’s insistence the
legislation is clear, gun-control groups say they fear some school officials
may use the legislation to arm teachers, said Shira Goodman, executive director
of CeaseFire PA.”
Law change bars schools
from arming teachers, Gov. Wolf says
Meadville Tribune By
John Finnerty CNHI News Service Jul 20, 2019
HARRISBURG — A gun
control activist is worried that an attempt to clarify training requirements
for armed security in schools muddies the water about whether schools can arm
teachers. Gov. Tom Wolf said those concerns are misplaced and that his
administration made sure the changes in Senate Bill 621 can’t be used to allow
teachers to carry guns in school. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Wolf noted
he went so far as to pen a letter when he signed the legislation into law
indicating that school districts shouldn’t try to use the legislation to
justify arming teachers. In that letter, Wolf said all schools will be notified
by the Department of Education that the legislation “bars teachers from being
armed.” “I want teachers to teach,” he said. The legislation was authored by
state Sen. Mike Regan, R-Cumberland County. “The bottom line is that this
legislation provides schools with options to allow them to continue protecting
their students and staff as they see fit,” Regan said when Wolf signed the bill
on July 2, making it Act 67. He said it was necessary because the state’s
school code didn’t allow armed private security guards or sheriff’s deputies to
carry weapons in schools. The law only allowed police officers to carry
firearms in schools.
“If you know of a school district in
Pennsylvania trying put guns in our schools, CeaseFirePA is here to help. We
can assess the situation and work with our legal and organizing partners to
help fight back against this dangerous maneuver. CeaseFirePA is focused on
protecting all Pennsylvanians against gun violence and will work to get you the
resources and focused attention needed to keep guns out of our schools. Send us
an email at SafeSchools@CeaseFirePA.org or call 215-923-3151 and
someone from our team will reach out to you shortly.”
CeaseFirePA Guns in Schools Hotline
CeaseFirePA Website
We all want our
schools to be a safe place for our children to learn and teachers to teach.
Some Pennsylvanian school boards believe that putting guns in classrooms will
protect students and faculty against school shootings. Teachers, students, and
parents across Pennsylvania and the nation have voiced concerns about this type
of policy. Time and time again we have seen incidents in schools in which
untrained staff members have left their firearms unattended, leading to unintentional
discharges or guns ending up in the hands of students. This creates a real safety concern that puts lives at risk. CeaseFirePA
is committed to building a safe learning environment for everyone without the
presence of firearms in our classrooms. If you have concerns about the policies
or safety procedures of your school district, CeaseFirePA may be able to help. Arming
our teachers is not the answer to preventing gun violence in our schools.
Governor Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvanian Department of Education have made it
clear that it is unlawful to allow teachers to carry firearms yet some school boards
have expressed interests in manipulating a new Pennsylvania law to try to do
so.
Woodland Hills becomes the first PA school district to
pass climate change resolution
NextPittsburgh by Bill O'Toole July 22, 2019
On July 17, the
Woodland Hills School District made history.
The district’s
school board passed a “Call to Climate Change Action” resolution calling for
state and federal lawmakers to address the climate change crisis and committed
the district to a new set of eco-conscious policies. “Climate change is here
and it’s real, and we have to do anything we can to fight it,” says Mike
Belmonte, the vice president of the Woodland Hills School Board. “Bringing
awareness and educating our children are great ways to do that.” Fifty-four
school districts across the nation have passed similar climate actions since
2017 but Woodland Hills is the first to do so in the state of Pennsylvania. “The
Woodland Hills School Board recognizes climate change as a generational justice
and human rights issue,” reads the resolution. While people at every age and
every level of society are affected by our increasingly extreme climate, “it
disproportionately affects people of color and people in poverty, thereby
exacerbating existing inequalities and limiting equality of opportunity which
is a foundational aspiration for modern America.” The push for the resolution
began in Margeaux Everhart’s eighth grade science classes at Woodland Hills
Junior High School, where students took part in a Climate Change Workshop led
by Pittsburgh-based environmental nonprofit Communitopia earlier this year. Inspired by the workshop, the class sent 27
letters to the school board, expressing concern for the future of our region
and our planet. The resolution specifically calls for lawmakers to quickly
enact carbon pricing policies, and directs the Woodland Hills Superintendent to
create a Climate Change Committee to create a roadmap for new
environmentally-conscious policies at the district level. Those policies
include reducing food, instituting green design standards and incorporating
more environmental studies and activism into the school’s curriculum.
Don’t have your lunch money? 1 Pa. school district
threatens foster care
WHYY/NPR By Bobby
Allyn July 22,
2019
Dozens of families
in Pennsylvania received an alarming letter from their public school district
this month informing parents that if their kid’s lunch debt was not settled,
their child could be removed from their home and placed in the foster care. Wyoming
Valley West School District, one of the poorest districts in the state as
measured by per-pupil spending, is located in a former coal mining community in
Northeastern Pennsylvania, known affectionately by locals as “the valley.” When
officials there noticed that families owed the district around $22,000 in
breakfast and lunch debt, they tried to get their money back. “By mail, email,
robo calls, personal calls and letters,” said Joseph Mazur, the president of
the district’s board of education. But, Mazur said, nothing worked. That’s when
district officials sent out the now-infamous letter to about 40 families deemed
to be the worst offenders in having overdue cafeteria bills — those were
children with a meal debt of $10 or more. “Your child has been sent to school
every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch,” said the letter
signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West
School District. “This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition
and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to
food. If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being
removed from your home and placed in foster care.” Not all local officials
endorsed the move. County officials criticized the threat of foster-care
placement, pointing out that the foster-care system should be used only when
children are abused or in danger, not as a weapon to collect money. But in an
interview with NPR on Sunday, Mazur defended the letter.
Businessman: Wyoming
Valley West board president denied 22K school lunch debt donation offer
Citizens Voice by BOB
KALINOWSKI / PUBLISHED: JULY 22, 2019
A Philadelphia
businessman says he has offered to pay the school lunch debt at Wyoming Valley
West that recently sparked a national controversy, but the district's board
president refused the offer. In a message to The Citizens’ Voice, Todd
Carmichael, the CEO and co-founder of La Colombe Coffee, claimed Board
President Joe Mazur on Monday denied his offer to pay the full tab, which is
around $22,000. The school ignited shock and outrage across the nation recently
after sending letters to parents threatening to place students in foster care
if the debt was not paid. “Shockingly, Mr. Mazur turned us down. I can’t
explain or justify his actions. Let me be clear: we offered over $22,000 with
no strings attached. And he said “NO,” Carmichael wrote. A consultant for La
Colombe on Monday confirmed the authenticity of the letter in a phone call,
also expressing surprise Wyoming Valley West would refuse the donation and let
the controversy fester. “Over the weekend, Todd saw a lot of the national press
about the issue. He said this doesn’t need to be a thing. We can fix this,”
said Aren Platt, a consultant for La Colombe. “Mr. Mazur was emphatic that he
was non interested in taking the money. It’s bizarre to me you’d call a school
board president and they would say no.”
Taxpayers shouldn't
be paying millions to fund state Capitol spin machine
Lancaster Online by
THE LNP EDITORIAL BOARD July 23, 2019
THE ISSUE: The Pennsylvania General Assembly,
with 253 members, is one of the largest and most
expensive legislatures in the United
States. And it spends nearly $10 million a year, on average, on legislative
communications, according to first-of-its-kind analysis of spending records
from 2013 through 2018 conducted by Sam Janesch, a staff
writer for The Caucus, an LNP Media Group watchdog publication that
covers state government. With large budgets and a combined 130 staffers at
their disposal, each of the four legislative caucuses — the Senate and House
Republicans and the Senate and House Democrats — essentially operates its own
public relations firm, Janesch noted in The Caucus. (An abridged version of his
article was published in Monday’s LNP.) Communication between lawmakers and their constituents is essential. But
who is the audience for videos of legislators touring factories in hard hats,
for what Janesch describes as “television-quality shows produced in studios
built within the Capitol”? Have you watched any of these videos lately? No one
we know has except for journalists, and only to assess the videos’ news value,
which is generally minimal. So what is the point of the videos, beyond making
lawmakers look good? “People tell us that they want to be more connected with
government, and we’re trying on our end to provide those services,” Drew
Crompton, chief of staff to Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Joe
Scarnati, told Janesch. “To what degree do they really want to be connected with
government? I don’t know. But we think it’s important to send out as much
information as someone would view.”
Murphy scraps Christie’s salary cap for N.J.
superintendents
WHYY By John
Mooney, NJ Spotlight July 22, 2019
Nine years ago,
almost to the day, then-Gov. Chris Christie turned New Jersey school
administrative pay on its head when he announced a $175,000 cap on
superintendent pay — a figure equal to his own salary. On Friday, Gov. Phil
Murphy — without fanfare — signed into law an end to the cap, an almost
inevitable conclusion for a measure that had run its course but also left a
lasting mark. In both policy and politics, Christie’s unilateral move resonated
in a state where the high end of superintendent pay was easily topping $200,000
in 2010. A recent state report highlighted the Keansburg superintendent getting
a package of more than $500,000. Pushback and court challenges were immediate,
but that only added to the political theater of the then new governor’s bold
cost-cutting agenda. “This is a new day for superintendent pay in New Jersey,”
Christie said, when announcing the salary cap at a Spotswood elementary school
on a July morning in 2010. “Everyone knows this is right to do, but people are
afraid to take the first step.”
PCCY: 2 seconds for
$200,000 and a game-changing opportunity for kids
PCCY needs
your votes! We are in the running for a $200,000 Key to the Community
Grant from the Philadelphia Foundation! Our idea is simple – give more parents in the Greater Philadelphia region
tools, resources and networks to amplify their voices in advocacy and policy
impacting our children. To launch the Parent Advocacy Accelerator, we need your
help. The Philadelphia Foundation is running an on-line voting
contest. The idea that gets the most votes in a category, wins the grant. Voting
is quick and easy at https://www.philafound.org/vote/. Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and vote for the
project listed as the Parent Advocacy Accelerator under the “Community and
Civic Engagement" category, Every vote, every day counts. VOTE EVERY DAY UNTIL JULY 26! Share with your networks in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, or
Delaware and ask them to vote every day, too.
Thank you for your
votes and support!
In November, many boards will be
preparing to welcome new directors to their governance Team of Ten. This event
will help attendees create a full year on-boarding schedule based on best
practices and thoughtful prioritization. Register now:
PSBA: Start Strong:
Developing a District On-Boarding Plan for New Directors
SEP 11, 2019 • 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM
In November, many boards
will be faced with a significant transition as they prepare to welcome new
directors to their governance Team of Ten. This single-day program facilitated
by PSBA trainers and an experienced PA board president will guide attendees to
creating a strong, full year on-boarding schedule based on best practices and
thoughtful prioritization. Grounded in PSBA’s Principles for Governance and
Leadership, attendees will hear best practices from their colleagues and leave
with a full year’s schedule, a jump drive of resources, ideas for effective
local training, and a plan to start strong.
Register online at MyPSBA: www.psba.org and click on “MyPSBA” in the upper right corner.
The deadline to
submit a cover letter, resume and application is August 19,
2019.
Become a 2019-2020 PSBA Advocacy Ambassador
PSBA is seeking applications
for two open Advocacy Ambassador positions. Candidates
should have experience in day-to-day functions of a school district,
on the school board, or in a school leadership position. The purpose of the
PSBA Advocacy Ambassador program is to facilitate the education and engagement
of local school directors and public education stakeholders through the
advocacy leadership of the ambassadors. Each Advocacy Ambassador will
be responsible for assisting PSBA in achieving its advocacy goals. To
achieve their mission, ambassadors will be kept up to date on current
legislation and PSBA positions on legislation. The current open
positions will cover PSBA Sections 3 and 4, and
Section 7.
PSBA Advocacy
Ambassadors are independent contractors representing PSBA and serve
as liaisons between PSBA and their local elected officials. Advocacy
Ambassadors also commit to building strong relationships with PSBA members with
the purpose of engaging the designated members to be active and committed
grassroots advocates for PSBA’s legislative priorities.
PSBA: Nominations for The Allwein Society are open!
This award program
recognizes school directors who are outstanding leaders & advocates on
behalf of public schools & students. Nominations are accepted year-round
with selections announced early fall: http://ow.ly/CchG50uDoxq
EPLC is accepting
applications for the 2019-20 PA Education Policy Fellowship Program
Education Policy & Leadership Center
PA's premier education policy leadership program for education, policy
& community leaders with 582 alumni since 1999. Application with program
schedule & agenda are at http://www.eplc.org
2019 PASA-PSBA School
Leadership Conference Oct. 16-18, 2019
WHERE: Hershey Lodge and
Convention Center 325 University Drive, Hershey, PA
WHEN: Wednesday, October
16 to Friday, October 18, 201
Registration is now open!
Growth from knowledge acquired. Vision inspired by innovation. Impact
created by a synergized leadership community. You are called upon to be the
drivers of a thriving public education system. It’s a complex and challenging
role. Expand your skillset and give yourself the tools needed for the
challenge. Packed into two and a half daysꟷꟷgain access to top-notch education and
insights, dynamic speakers, peer learning opportunities and the latest product
and service innovations. Come to the PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference to
grow!
NPE Action National
Conference - Save the Date - March 28-29, 2020 in Philadelphia, PA.
The window is now open for workshop proposals for the Network for Public
Education conference, March 28-29, 2020, in Philadelphia. I hope you all sign
on to present on a panel and certainly we want all to attend. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NBCNDKK
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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