Started in November 2010, 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
Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg
If any of your colleagues would
like to be added to the email list please have them send their name, title and
affiliation to KeystoneStateEdCoalition@gmail.com
PA Ed Policy Roundup for April 2, 2020
Political Cartoon: Homeschooling President Trump on
coronavirus
Inquirer by Signe Wilkinson April 2, 2020
“The district has mulled several stopgap measures, including
using buses as mobile Wi-Fi hotspots that would pull up to students’ houses and
allow them to download their work. The Connellsville Area School District
southeast of Pittsburgh asked local businesses to host free Wi-Fi hotspots for
this purpose. District residents can now drive up to Indian Creek Baptist Church,
Mountain Pines Campground, or even Lynn’s Dairy Queen, where students can
download assignments and dig into a Blizzard while riding out the coronavirus
storm.”
WHYY By Avi Wolfman-Arent April 1, 2020
When the coronavirus shutdown hit
Pennsylvania public schools, Cathy Keegan felt ready.
As superintendent of the Milton Area School
District in central Pennsylvania, she’d already bought enough laptops and
tablets so that each of her roughly 2,000 students had a personal device. They
seemed well positioned for the statewide pivot to virtual learning. “We
thought, ‘Wow, this is great. We at least are ready with devices and a hybrid
learning model and students being familiar with online learning tools,’” said
Keegan. Then her district hit the internet-access wall. Milton realized that a
combined 240 students and teachers had no internet connections at home.
Officials decided to buy hotspot devices for each of those households, but that
plan presented its own problems. Wireless providers used to offer hotspot
hardware for free, Keegan said — as long as the district committed to a year of
internet service for each new device. But with the coronavirus outbreak fueling
demand for at-home internet access, prices skyrocketed and supply evaporated. “As
we called vendors to purchase hotspots, if we even blinked and a couple of
minutes went by, those hotspots were sold and gone,” Keegan said. Wireless
hotspots, it turns out, have quickly become the hand sanitizer of the technological world.
Congressional Democrats sought government aid for school districts purchasing
the devices, but the final relief bill out of D.C. didn’t include a subsidy for
hotspots.
Gov. Wolf said Pa. could allow students to move to next
grade based on work before schools were closed
Penn Live By Jan
Murphy | jmurphy@pennlive.com Updated Apr
01, 2020; Posted Apr 01, 2020
Gov. Tom Wolf said the state Department of
Education is considering allowing students to be promoted to the next grade or
graduate provided they achieved passing grades prior to the March 16 school
closure due to the coronavirus.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is considering
promoting K-12 students to the next grade or graduating them if they had
passing grades before public schools were closed due to the coronavirus. “I
think the Department of Education is looking at that and other things,"
Wolf said during the news conference
on the daily COVID-19 report for Pennsylvania. School
districts around the state are struggling to get their educational programs
back on track as they deal with ensuring students have access to lesson or the
technology being used to deliver instruction. Some are resorting to sending out
packets of enrichment activities, which are not being counted toward their
grade. The state Department of Education on Tuesday rolled out an array of
resources to help schools get back to the business of educating students, which
Wolf said is the department’s major focus right now.
Blogger comment: PA tax reform proponents may take note here of
the potential danger of overreliance on sales and income taxes for funding
schools.
“Revenues from sales and income taxes — which Pennsylvania
counts on for roughly three-quarters of general fund revenues — dipped in March
but will likely plunge in the coming months, as some businesses shutter
permanently and thousands of workers are laid off. Already, Pennsylvanians are
filing for unemployment in record numbers.”
Here’s the first look at how the coronavirus is gutting
Pa. state finances, and it’s not pretty
Inquirer by Charlotte Keith, Updated: April 1, 2020-
11:06 AM
Spotlight
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powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with the Pittsburgh
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HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania tax revenues fell
6% short of official estimates in March, according to figures released
Wednesday by the Department of Revenue, the first glimpse at the fiscal
challenge the state will face in the coming months. The latest numbers do not
reflect the full extent of the economic damage caused by the coronavirus
outbreak because of a lag in when some taxes are collected, and because Gov.
Tom Wolf first began ordering businesses to close about halfway through the
month. Even so, the $295 million shortfall is enough to completely wipe out a
financial cushion accumulated after months of higher-than-expected revenues. “State
revenues are beginning to fall a little, but this is really just the tip of the
iceberg,” state Revenue Secretary C. Daniel Hassell said Wednesday. Pennsylvania’s
tax revenues for the current fiscal year are now 0.2% lower than estimated. “Clearly
we’re not going to hit the revenue numbers that were in the governor’s budget,
and there are going to be major adjustments that have to be made," Hassell
said. Almost every source of tax revenue that Pennsylvania relies on will be
affected by the outbreak and the efforts to contain it. On March 19, Wolf
ordered all but “life-sustaining” businesses to close their physical
operations, in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.
Pa. tax revenues were down in March, as officials brace
for bigger future hit from COVID-19
PA Capital Star By Stephen Caruso April 1,
2020
This story was updated at 5:12 pm with
comment from Rep. Matt Bradford.
In the first sign of expected financial
strains from COVID-19, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue announced that
March tax revenues were 6.2 percent less than projected. The department
reported $4.4 billion in revenue, about $294.6 million less than anticipated. The
shortfall, Revenue Secretary Dan Hassell said in a statement, was only
partially related to the coronavirus pandemic. “We expect the pandemic will
have a greater impact on revenues in the coming months,” Hassell said. Matt
Knittel, head of the Independent Fiscal Office — which offers nonpartisan
analysis of state policy — said that some of the dip was expected, due to
shifts in tax payments. Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic mediation efforts, including a
March 19 order to shut down thousands of businesses, did not go into full
effect until more than half way through the month.
That order
Guest Opinion: What K-12 education needs during the
pandemic
GoErie Opinion by By Dan O’Brien Posted
Mar 30, 2020 at 5:30 AM
Dan O’Brien is the Bucks County Coordinator
of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY), which advocates quality
health care, child care, public education and family stability. O’Brien lives
in Bristol Township.
We’re in an unprecedented time that will
require unprecedented action to ensure the health and well-being of all,
including children, is at the forefront of any action taken by our government.
To limit the effect the coronavirus pandemic will have on Americans, we have
already seen measures implemented to create social distancing, including the
closing of schools. There’s a legitimate chance that all Pennsylvania schools
will be closed for the remainder of term. If enacted, this measure needs to be
limited to each school’s physical location. The Pennsylvania Constitution
requires the state to provide every child an education regardless of outside
factors, stating: “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance
and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the
needs of the Commonwealth.”
The educational clause clearly states that
the General Assembly is required to ensure the “needs of the Commonwealth” are
met when it comes to public education. During this difficult time, we must
still meet our constitutional obligations. That will require bold and
innovative action from our state lawmakers.
“There is an obvious problem. One cannot practice welding, frame
a house, or take a patient’s blood pressure over the internet. While CTE
students do a great deal of book work (more, perhaps, than many folks assume), there
is a hands-on element that is critical to their education.”
As Schools Tackle Coronavirus Pause, Don’t Forget Career
And Technical Education Students.
Forbes by Peter Greene Senior Contributor Apr 1, 2020,04:21pm EDT
At this juncture, nearly all schools in this
country have been shut down, forcing teachers, families, and students to
grapple with some form of crisis schooling. The need for teachers to teach and
students to learn at a distance has sparked discussion of many issues. How do
schools keep contact with students who have little or no access to the
internet? How do teachers construct useful materials while holding in place
inside their own homes? How do parents adapt to this involuntary version of
home schooling? Some of the biggest discussions, from the local level all the way up to the federal department of
education, have centered on the challenge of providing
crisis schooling for students with special needs. But there is one other group
of students who face unique concerns, and there has been far less discussion
about how the coronaviral hiatus will affect them—career and technical
education students. My former district is part of consortium that has run a very good CTE school for many
decades, training students in fields including
welding, building construction, auto body repair, home health services, and
operating heavy equipment. For most of my career, these students passed through
my classroom, and I cannot overstate how much they have benefited from these
excellent programs.
Teaching without schools: Districts face challenges to
complete school year
Pennsylvania must ensure that students don’t
fall behind educationally through no fault of their own
THE EDITORIAL BOARD Pittsburgh Post-Gazette APR
2, 2020 6:00 AM
School administrators and teachers will be
scrambling in the next few weeks to come up with ways to resume the education
of the state’s nearly 1.7 million school-age students. The only certainty at
this point is that one way or another, the school year will end June 30. And
while many districts are planning to use their “instructional days” plans to
provide instruction and coursework remotely, that will be a problem for rural
districts where high-speed internet access may be limited or nonexistent.
Likewise, poorer districts, whose students may not have computers and internet
access, will be hard-pressed to conduct remote learning. The state Department
of Education needs to be ready to step in with assistance — and funding —
quickly if school districts are expected to meet the challenge of providing the
necessary education in a shortened school year.
Upper Darby goes digital as schools close indefinitely
Delco Times by Alex Rose April 2,
2020
The Upper Darby School District’s digital
learning platform came online this week through the social networking service
Schoology, though it was not without some fits and starts. Schools
Superintendent Dr. Daniel P. McGarry reported the system was “a little
overwhelmed” Monday as Upper Darby and districts across the world strained its
resources, but it was back up and running as of Tuesday. “Communication is
always going to be the key,” said McGarry. “We can’t control the network from
home to home and obviously we can’t control the server where this information
is stored, but we can control how we communicate and our expectations of our
staff and kids. The message I want to communicate is: Be patient, we’re going
to work through this together.” Upper Darby’s online instruction – which is
aimed at reaching 12,500 to 13,000 students – booted up just in time for Gov.
Tom Wolf to announce that schools would remain closed indefinitely. McGarry
said the district had planned to return to its brick-and-mortar classrooms
April 10, after spring break, but will now continue to use online learning
tools until the end of the month and await further instruction from the
Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Pa. school districts mounting distance learning plans
Herald Mail Media By Joyce F. Nowell jnowell@herald-mail.com April 1,
2020
With the closure of Pennsylvania schools
because of the COVID-19 pandemic now indefinite, districts are ramping up
programs to provide continuity of education. Herald-Mail Media asked officials
from the four largest school districts in Franklin County to discuss their
current plans. The following are responses from
Superintendent Tod Kline of the Waynesboro Area School District, where the
enrollment is 4,385 students.
Expanded list of where to get free meals in Philadelphia
Anyone in need, not just students, can get
free nutritious food.
the
Notebook April 1 — 3:15 pm, 2020
The city and the School District are
expanding the number of sites where free meals are available. As the shutdown
as lengthened, the demand for meals has grown. Mayor Kenney said at the daily
COVID-19 briefing that the city has distributed 220,000 meals in one
week. Here is a link to the
city’s website, which has a list and a map of the food distribution sites.
Pittsburgh Public Schools open additional meal sites
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE localnews@post-gazette.com APR 1, 2020
Pittsburgh Public Schools on Wednesday
announced two additional locations where students can pick up meals while
schools remain closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The locations are at 1710
Belleau Drive, Allegheny Dwellings, Fineview; and 237 37th St., Zion
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lawrenceville. The school district
opened 30 other grab and go meal
distribution sites in March.
“I could continue to go on and on. These bonds that we have and
will forge are what gives me and so many of my peers hope in this supposedly
hopeless time. Students may not tell you this directly, but your kind emails
bring us comfort. I can not even begin to count the number of social media
posts I have seen of students overjoyed by just a simple hello from their
favorite teacher. Please, in this time of trial, keep those bonds alive. No
matter your role, thank you for your tireless work over these last two weeks
preparing, innovating, and keeping Dallastown strong. Our appreciation for all
of you can not be overstated. Stay safe and stay kind.”
Dallastown student: Thank you to educators and staffers
for tireless work during crisis
Dylan J. Rexroth Published
10:39 a.m. ET April 1, 2020
Editor's note, Dallastown Area School
District spokeswoman Nicole Montgomery shared this letter send by Student
Council President Dylan J. Rexroth:
All, I’m sending this email on behalf of all
of us students in Dallastown.
A constant theme of this moment in history
has been that this is an unprecedented time that requires an unprecedented
response. The past 12 years of my Dallastown education have given me great
confidence in this district’s ability to remain strong in the face of adversity.
The events of the past 12 hours have only served to strengthen my faith in our
ability to overcome. I had to drop something off today for the
guidance office. While walking inside to the drop box, I saw lunch workers
providing bagged meals for families in cars. While they waited for their meal,
I saw the workers and the families talking, laughing, just being normal people
for a change. In the midst of all of this, I was reminded of what makes me
proud to be a Wildcat, but what we so often forget in the mundane — our relationships
with one another. It’s the relationship between our Chartwells staff and the
students that make every child feel special by giving a smile and telling them
to have a good day with each meal. It’s the relationship between administrators
and families that provide a sense of calm amid chaos. It’s the relationship
between our security and grounds staff and all in the district who provide us
with a safe, clean, school to come to each day. It’s the relationship between
coaches and advisors and those they mentor that push us to become the best we
can be. It’s the relationship between guidance counselors and their students
that give us someone to turn to when in need of advice. It's the relationship
between secretaries and those called to the office that makes us feel welcomed
wherever we go. It’s the relationship between teachers and students that gives
us the greatest gift in the world, a love of learning.
Paul Muschick: What are they waiting for? All
Pennsylvania schools should start online classes
By PAUL MUSCHICK THE MORNING
CALL | APR 01, 2020 | 8:00 AM
The longer the coronavirus crisis drags on,
the harder it is to believe that students will return to school this semester.
So it’s time for districts to ramp up their online instruction. Everything
won’t go smoothly. Not every student will be able to participate. But those who
can be taught deserve to be taught. Teachers are being paid, so they should be
teaching, even if they can’t reach all of their pupils or reach them as
effectively. The idea of teaching for only some students — those who can afford
high-speed internet and laptops or iPads, and who don’t have special needs or
speak other languages — is contrary to how school districts legally must
operate. That may mean a limited audience in districts such as Allentown, where
about three-quarters of the 17,000 students live in poverty, about 3,000 are in
special education and about 17% don’t speak English as their first language. But
Pennsylvania and the nation have never been in a situation such as this before.
Exceptions must be made in education just like they are being made elsewhere,
such as with licensing requirements being eased to increase the number of
health care workers. Districts should do all they can to reach all students.
But if they can’t, they should proceed, and state lawmakers should back them. Tuesday,
Rep. Jake Wheatley Jr. said he will introduce legislation to prevent school
districts from being sued over operational changes they make during the coronavirus crisis, including
remote learning.
FBI issues warning about ‘hijacking’ of online classes by
intruders after schools report serious disruptions
Inquirer by Valerie Strauss, Washington
Post, Updated: March 31, 2020- 3:59 PM
The FBI just issued a warning to the public
about the "hijacking" of online classrooms and teleconferences after
it received reports of disturbances by people shouting racist and threatening
language and displaying hate messages. Concerns about online security have been
rising as most of the nation has moved to online education as school buildings
have closed to try to stem the spread of a novel coronavirus that has stopped
public life around the world. Schools have rushed to put together online
lessons and programs, sometimes without strict security filters. The FBI said
in its new warning that it has received multiple reports of conferences being
disrupted by pornographic images and other things, while two schools in
Massachusetts reported intruders signing into online classes. In one instance,
a high school reported that an unidentified person dialed into a class being
held on the Zoom software and broke into a lesson by yelling a profanity and
shouting the teacher's home address. At another school, an online class with
disrupted by someone who was visibly displaying tattoos of swastikas.
Commentary: Crisis no justification for thwarting
democratic practice
The Board of Education gave Superintendent
Hite emergency powers to deal with the crisis. There were better ways to
respond, says activist.
The notebook Commentary by Lisa
Haver April 1 — 7:59 am, 2020
Lisa Haver is a retired Philadelphia teacher
and co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.
As the city of New Orleans struggled to
restore itself to some semblance of normal life after Hurricane Katrina, the
agents of school privatization moved in. Even before many teachers and students
could return to their homes, their neighborhood schools had been converted to
charter schools, until only a handful of public schools were left. During that
time of upheaval, when most school board meetings were cancelled, public
schools became low-hanging fruit for charter investors. On a smaller scale, but
in the same vein, the Board of Education, at its March action meeting, approved
an item ceding many of its own powers to Superintendent William Hite, allowing
decisions on expenditures and contracts to be made without public oversight and
opening the door to potential violations of the PA Sunshine Act. Item 55,
posted just hours before the meeting began, cites the Covid-19 crisis as
justification. If there were any compelling reason for this transfer of power
from a nine-person representative body to one administrator, the board would
have given one during the meeting or in the body of the item itself. But the
board did not. Because it was posted at the last minute, and the public’s
ability to process it and comment on it was severely limited due to the
logistics of the meeting, the board had an obligation to give sound reasons for
its passage.
Ellis Marsalis, New Orleans jazz piano legend
hospitalized with coronavirus symptoms, dies
Nola.com BY DOUG MACCASH | STAFF WRITER PUBLISHED
APR 1, 2020 AT 8:31 PM | UPDATED APR 1, 2020 AT 8:51 PM
Ellis Marsalis Jr., the jazz pianist, teacher
and patriarch of one of New Orleans’ great musical families has died. The
85-year-old jazz piano legend was hospitalized with symptoms of COVID-19. He had
been tested for coronavirus and results were pending. Mayor LaToya Cantrell
issued a statement Wednesday night on his passing. "Ellis Marsalis was a
legend," she said. "He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk
about New Orleans jazz. The love and the prayers of all of our people go out to
his family, and to all of those whose lives he touched. He was a teacher, a
father, and an icon ... This loss cuts us deeply."
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Venus and the Pleiades
in April
Digital Illustration Credit & Copyright: Fred Espenak (Bifrost Astronomical Observatory)
Digital Illustration Credit & Copyright: Fred Espenak (Bifrost Astronomical Observatory)
Explanation: Venus is currently the
brilliant evening star. Shared
around world, in tonight's sky Venus will begin to wander
across the face of the lovely Pleiades star cluster. This digital sky map
illustrates the path of the inner planet as the
beautiful conjunction evolves, showing its position on the sky over the next
few days. The field of view shown is appropriate for binocular equipped skygazers but
the star cluster and planet are easily seen with the naked-eye. As
viewed from our
fair planet, Venus passed
in front of the stars of the Seven Sisters 8
years ago, and will again 8 years hence. In fact, orbiting the Sun 13 Venus
years are almost equal to 8 years on planet Earth. So we can expect our sister
planet to visit nearly the same place in our
sky every 8 years.
PSBA FAQ Sheet Regarding Closure of School Due to
Coronavirus
PSBA has compiled answers to your most
pressing questions surrounding school closures due to the #coronavirus outbreak.
View this resource here:
Request@PSBA.org: PSBA establishes
channel to answer COVID-19 questions
POSTED ON MARCH 19, 2020 IN PSBA
NEWS
In light of statewide school closings and as
the COVID-19 outbreak continues to evolve, PSBA is here to provide support to
members and answer questions regarding how schools will operate, meet
instructional requirements and provide services both now and in the future.
Please send your questions to request@psba.org with
your name, district and contact information. A member of PSBA staff will respond
directly or will funnel your inquires to the Pennsylvania Department of
Education. PSBA will act as your voice and ensure you receive the answers and
information you need to make decisions at this crucial time.
PSBA: Coronavirus Preparedness Guidance
In the last few weeks, the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2),
which causes the respiratory illness COVID-19, has become a topic of concern
nationwide. Although the virus is not widespread in Pennsylvania at this time,
that status could change. Being proactive is key to prevention and mitigation. Below,
you will find a list of resources on all aspects of preparedness, including
guidance on communication planning, policy, emergency management and disease
control. Use these resources to help you make decisions regarding the safety
and health of those in your school district.
Rescheduled: Join us for Advocacy Day in Harrisburg to support public
education Monday May 11, 2020!
All school
leaders are invited to attend Advocacy Day at the state Capitol in
Harrisburg. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA), Pennsylvania
Association of Intermediate Units (PAIU) and the Pennsylvania Association of
School Administrators (PASA) are partnering together to strengthen our advocacy
impact. The day will center around meetings with legislators to discuss
critical issues affecting public education. Click here for more information or register
at http://www.mypsba.org/ School directors can register online now by
logging in to myPSBA. If you need assistance logging in and registering contact
Alysha Newingham, Member Data System Administrator at alysha.newingham@psba.org
PSBA Board Presidents Panel April 27, 28 and 29; Multiple
Locations
Offered at 10 locations across the state,
this annual event supports current and aspiring school board leaders through
roundtable conversations with colleagues as well as a facilitated panel of
experienced regional and statewide board presidents and superintendents. Board
Presidents Panel is designed to equip new and veteran board presidents and vice
presidents as well as superintendents and other school directors who may pursue
a leadership position in the future.
PARSS Annual Conference April 29 – May 1, 2020 in State
College
The 2020 PARSS Conference is April 29 through
May 1, 2020, at Wyndham Garden Hotel at Mountain View Country Club in State
College. Please register as a member or a vendor by accessing the links below.
Register today for the 2020 PASA/PA Principals
Association PA Educational Leadership Summit, August 2-4, at the Lancaster
Marriott at Penn Square
(hosted by the PA Principals Association and
the PA Association of School Administrators). Participants can earn up to 80
PIL hours (40 hours for the Summit and - for an additional cost of $50 -
40 hours for EdCamp) for
attending the conference and completing program requirements. Register
early to reserve your seat! The deadline to take advantage of the Early Bird
Discount is April 24, 2020.
Click here to
register today!
Network for Public Education 2020 Conference in Philly Rescheduled
to November 21-22
NPE Website March 10, 2020 7:10 pm
We so wanted to see you in March, but we need
to wait until November!
Our conference will now take place on November
21 and 22 at the same location in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Please
read the important information below.
Registration: We will be rolling over our
registration information, so there is no reason to register again. You will
be automatically registered for the November dates. If you cannot attend in
November, we ask that you consider donating your registration to absorb some of
the costs associated with rescheduling the conference. If you feel you cannot
make such a donation, please contact: dcimarusti@networkforpubliceducation.org.
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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