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, 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
Money for
nothing: Pa. cyber charters rolling in pandemic aid while school districts
scrounge (opinion)
Learn more about the history of
cyber charters, their academic performance and the impact of cybers on your
local district school.
Cyber Charter Schools
Webinar August 26, 1:00 pm
Free and
Open to the Public · Hosted by Councilmember Helen Gym
As families across the state plan for
the start of the school year, join Councilmember Helen Gym, PA Auditor General
Eugene DePasquale, Donna Cooper, Executive Director of Public Citizens for
Children and Paige Joki, Staff Attorney at Education Law Center for a
discussion on Cyber Charters. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP
and submit questions for the experts at: tinyurl.com/cybercharters
Blogger note: PA Schools Work, a group that advocates for
traditional brick-and-mortar public schools, recently created a Check
Before You Choose online
resource where families can compare public cyber-charter schools to traditional
public schools.
York Daily Record Opinion by Richard Robinson
August 24, 2020
Richard Robinson of Springettsbury
Township is a member of the York Suburban School Board.
Remember the 1980s? Ronald Reagan was
President, cell phones were the size of walkie-talkies, and the best source of
music videos was MTV? If you do, you might recall the song “Money for Nothing”
by Dire Straits. It’s about a hard working guy who delivers and installs heavy
appliances. Seeing a music video playing he decides rock musicians get paid
huge sums of money without really working. With apologies to Mark Knopfler
and Dire Straits, the same could be said for cyber charter schools in
Pennsylvania these days. While public schools districts in our state will be
facing revenue shortfalls of $1 billion or more as a result of the Covid-19
pandemic, charter schools and cyber charter schools will benefit from pandemic
relief measures without any drop in revenue. Can that be right? Right or not,
it’s happening. Under the recently enacted state budget, charter schools will
receive $15 million in state health and safety grants to address
COVID-19-related health and safety needs. This is much needed funding for
public schools and brick and mortar charter schools that are offering some sort
of in-person learning this fall. Here’s the best part. Every individual cyber
charter school in Pennsylvania, schools that offer their instruction virtually,
stands to receive $90,000 for health and safety needs! Virtual instruction –
real money!
Superintendent: CARES Act funding not distributed fairly
ABC27 by: Kendra
Nichols Posted: Aug 24, 2020 / 09:13 PM
EDT / Updated: Aug 24, 2020 / 09:29 PM EDT
HUMMELSTOWN, Pa. (WHTM) — The United States
Department of Education approved $523.8 million in CARES Act funding for
Pennsylvania schools to help cover expenses related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Funding
was handed out to both brick and mortar and cyber schools. Lower Dauphin School District Superintendent
Robert Schultz doesn’t believe the money was distributed fairly. Schultz
responded to a recent twitter post about
low graduation rates at cyber schools by questioning how much CARES act funding Commonwealth
Charter Academy received from the federal government. “We would have definitely
benefited from having more funds from the CARES act,” said Schultz. “It upsets
me because we have technology needs just like the cyber charter schools do for
their enrollment but we also have PPE, we have facilities to make sure that we
are cleaning to keep students and staff safe, and transportation. There’s a lot
of things that we provide as a brick and mortar school that the cyber charter
schools don’t have to think about.”
PA Department of Education Charter School Funding
This PDE page includes links to charter
school tuition rates by school district for multiple years.
Cyber charter schools are paid at the same
rates as brick and mortar charter schools.
Blogger note: Beaver County districts have been added to this
list
School Districts Reportedly Opening Virtual Only as of
August 24, 2020
Keystone State Education Coalition
Blogger note: this is work in process. Please
let me know if you have additions or corrections to this list
Lancaster County school year like no other: Welcome back
and good luck [editorial]
THE LNP | LANCASTERONLINE EDITORIAL BOARD August
25, 2020
THE ISSUE: Thousands of Lancaster County
students will return to their schools today to find that a great deal has
changed since they left them earlier this year. A new academic year will bring
not just a new grade but accommodations to a pandemic that continues to shape
American lives. As LNP | LancasterOnline’s
Alex Geli reported last week, some
county school districts have delayed the start of the school year, some
starting as late as Sept. 8. “As it stands,” he wrote, “the only Lancaster
County school districts planning to start fully remote are School District of
Lancaster and Octorara Area. The latter serves students from Chester and
Lancaster counties.”
We’ve considered the policies and challenges
of educating students in the age of COVID-19 and the debates over in-person
instruction vs. online education vs. a blend of the two. Today, however, our
message is simple: Good luck, everyone. Whether your school year begins this
week or later, we are rooting for you. We are rooting for school
administrators, school boards, nurses, teachers, custodians, counselors, social
workers, cafeteria staff, bus drivers — everyone who will be working hard over
the next nine months to ensure Lancaster County’s children are safe and
well-educated. (Thank you, especially, to the school staff members who will be
charged with cleaning classrooms after each use, and to the bus drivers who
will be disinfecting their vehicles after each run.) We are rooting for parents
who no doubt will worry as they watch their kids walk out the door or board a
school bus or — let’s face it, this is the most worrying of all — drive
themselves to school.
After months of speculation and debate, the first day of
an unprecedented school year is here
Lancaster Online by ALEX GELI | Staff Writer August 25,
2020
On Friday, March 13, with 41 confirmed
COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf ordered all schools closed for
two weeks. Two weeks later, Wolf pulled the plug on in-person instruction for
the rest of the school year. Fast-forward to today: Pennsylvania has had at
least 129,474 confirmed COVID-19 cases – 6,351 in Lancaster County – and five
county school districts will welcome students back today for the first time in
nearly five months. That’s right — after an abrupt shift to remote learning in
the spring, followed by months of speculation and debate, evolving (and
sometimes conflicting) guidance from the state and federal governments, and
last-minute planning by school boards, the first day of school has arrived. For
most of the 69,000 students in Lancaster County public schools, the first day
of school means resuming in-person instruction with a range of health and
safety measures, such as social distancing and universal mask-wearing, in
place. Students could be in-person five days a week or as little as two days a
week. For others, the start of school will be fully remote, either by the
family’s choice or by the district’s.
Technical schools grapple with hands-on learning as
classes resume during pandemic
Trib Live MEGAN TOMASIC | Monday,
August 24, 2020 12:01 a.m.
As traditional schools weed through reopening
plans that largely include at least some online learning, career and technical
centers across the region grapple with how to maintain predominately hands-on
classes while keeping students and staff safe. Several of the 16 career and technical
centers that cater to high school
students across Southwestern Pennsylvania have prepared plans that allow
students to attend in-person classes when necessary and use virtual lessons for
the technical side of classes. “We’re going to work the hardest we can in
whatever situation is presented to us,” said Eric Heasley, executive director
of A.W. Beattie Career Center in Allison Park. “We’re prepared for the hybrid
model we’re going to open the school year in, we’re prepared if we have to go
to total remote learning, and we’re prepared, too, if we can get back to
everybody’s here every day.”
Shortages and Inequities in the Philadelphia Public
School Teacher Workforce
Research for Action Report AUGUST 2020 by Jill
C. Pierce, Anna Shaw-Amoah, David Lapp
To facilitate student achievement, schools
need a strong, well-prepared teacher workforce.1 The COVID-19 pandemic and
amplified calls for racial justice have also increased the public’s recognition
of the crucial roles educators and education can play in children’s lives and
in society more broadly. Unfortunately, Philadelphia’s public schools faced
teacher shortages even before the start of the pandemic. Recruiting and
retaining highly qualified educators has long been a challenge in the city.2
This brief provides an overview of the status of the teaching workforce in
Philadelphia’s 320 district and charter public schools. First, we discuss the
extent of teacher shortages in Philadelphia. We then examine racial and ethnic
inequities in the city’s teacher supply and distribution. In the third section,
we outline known barriers to successful teacher recruitment and retention in
city schools. We conclude with implications and recommendations for
Philadelphia to recruit and retain a qualified, more diverse teaching
workforce.
Colonial League joins EPC in voting to delay start of
most fall sports
By KEITH GROLLER THE MORNING
CALL | AUG 24, 2020 AT 8:14 PM
Three days after the PIAA gave the go-ahead
for scholastic fall sports, the Colonial League met Monday afternoon and
decided to push back the start of its fall schedules in most sports as concerns
caused by the coronavirus pandemic persist. As practice began in several sports
and the heat acclimatization period began in football Monday, the league
followed a path pursued by the Lehigh Valley’s other major league, the Eastern
Pennsylvania Conference, and pushed back the start of league competition. By an
8-5 vote, school representatives voted to reject the earliest play dates
approved by the PIAA, which would have had the first league games Sept. 11.
Northwestern Lehigh, Notre Dame, Palisades, Wilson and Pen Argyl were the five
schools who voted to keep the PIAA timetable. By a 12-1 vote, the league
approved start dates for each sport with the only negative vote cast by
Northern Lehigh. By a unanimous vote, the schools voted to delay the start of
the Colonial League-Schuylkill League football merger until next year.
Archdiocese of Philadelphia opts out of interscholastic
fall sports season
Bucks Local News Aug 24, 2020
PHILADELPHIA >> The Archdiocese of
Philadelphia will be opting out of the fall 2020 interscholastic sports season.
Sister Maureen Lawrence McDermott, I.H.M. Ph.D., Superintendent for Secondary
Schools for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and Irene Horstmann Hannan, Chief
Executive Officer of Faith in the Future, made the announcement August 24 in a
letter sent to school families, administrators, faculty, and staff in the 17
Archdiocesan high schools located throughout the five-county region. “We
recognize that this news is disappointing to many of our students, families and
coaches, particularly our seniors. It saddens us greatly as well,” said the
letter. “We recognize the value of athletics as part of our educational
philosophy that seeks to provide for the holistic formation of young men and
women of character. This is not the scenario any of us desired.” The letter continues,
“We are confident that PIAA will seek to provide alternative solutions for
those entities opting out of fall programs in the coming semester. The pandemic
has made every aspect of life unpredictable for all of us over the past several
months. As we continue to live in a time of uncertainty, it would be imprudent
to speculate regarding an exact time when competitions will resume or regarding
the status of spring semester athletics. In keeping with our commitment, we
will share timely information with you about developments and decisions
affecting our schools.”
Beaver Area parents, athletes rally for fall sports as
school board gives unanimous consent
Beaver County Times by Andrew Chiappazzi,Daveen Rae Kurutz,Chrissy Suttles,Dani Fitzgerald August 24,
2020
That was the chant outside of Beaver Area
High School Monday night, as parents and students gathered to try to convince
the district school board to permit fall sports. A couple of hours
later the school board consented, as it unanimously agreed to hold
fall sports, allowing cheerleaders and marching band to perform at home
football games. The move is against guidance issued from the Pennsylvania
Department of Health and Gov. Tom Wolf this summer. But the PIAA voted on
Friday to proceed with fall sports despite that recommendation, and the state's
organizing body for scholastic sports said the final decision on whether to
play would be left to local school districts. Several school boards met
throughout the county Monday night, and members at Beaver were met by a phalanx
of students and parents holding signs and chanting in favor of sports. D.J.
Ziggas, whose son Tyler is a multi-sport athlete entering his senior year in
the district, said the protocols put forth by the PIAA under executive
director Dr. Robert Lombardi and the WPIAL under executive director Amy
Scheuneman convinced him it was time to move forward.
42 PA reps sign letter to Dept. of Health, expressing
frustration with school mask mandate
FOX56 by Dylan Fearon Monday, August
24th 2020
(WOLF) — Pennsylvania state
representatives are frustrated with the Wolf Administration, specifically with
back to school guidance. Last week Governor Wolf threw down a mask mandate for
students in schools. Some of our state representatives say it doesn't make
sense- and that decision shouldn't come from the Governor. Republican Tina
Pickett from Bradford, Sullivan and Susquehanna counties isn't happy- and wrote
a letter to the Department of Health and Department of Education. Co-signed by
41 other reps, saying not all school districts should be treated the same. "The
governor had been saying for weeks, local control, you decide," Pickett
said. "School boards, you decide. Superintendents, you decide. Then at the
last minute he said you don't decide, I do." One of Pickett's arguments is
that school districts in Sullivan county shouldn't have the same regulations as
schools in Philadelphia. "Space is very available in areas like this,
where schools are really spacey compared to the number of students they have.
We have very low case numbers," Pickett said.
Partial Zoom Outage Is Fixed After School Disruptions
Some school districts and colleges also had
outages on Canvas, an online learning platform.
New York Times By Alan Yuhas Aug. 24,
2020
A widespread outage on the video call service
Zoom caused problems for students, teachers and professors around the United
States on Monday morning, the first day of classes for many schools and
universities that are reopening online because of the coronavirus pandemic. The
partial outage, which lasted almost four hours, took place just as working and
school hours began on the East Coast and affected the wide variety of people
who now rely on Zoom as a lifeline. Businesses could not make video calls to
clients, courthouses could not conduct hearings, and city and county governments
had to postpone meetings. Zoom said it had begun receiving reports of users’
being unable to start or join meetings at about 8:50 a.m. on the East Coast.
About two hours later, the company said that it was “deploying a fix across our
cloud,” and at about 12:40 p.m. it said
it had resolved the issue. “Thank you all for your patience and
our sincere apologies for disrupting your day,” the company said on Twitter. The
company did not describe the problem except to say it was “causing users to be
unable to authenticate to the Zoom website” and unable to start and join
meetings. It also said some users were “unable to sign up for paid accounts” or
“upgrade or manage their service on the Zoom website.”
Blogger commentary:
Parents considering cyber charters due to COVID might not be
aware of their 20 year consistent track record of academic underperformance. As
those parents face an expected blitz of advertising by cybers, in order for
them to make a more informed decision, you might consider providing them with
some of the info listed below:
A June 2 paper from the highly respected Brookings Institution stated,
“We find the impact of attending a virtual charter on student achievement is
uniformly and profoundly negative,” and then went on to say that “there is no
evidence that virtual charter students improve in subsequent years.”
In 2016, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers,
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the national charter lobbying
group 50CAN released a report on cyber charters that found that overall, cyber
students make no significant gains in math and less than half the gains in reading
compared with their peers in traditional public schools.
A Stanford University CREDO
Study in 2015 found that cyber students on average lost 72 days a year
in reading and 180 days a year in math compared with students in traditional
public schools.
From 2005 through 2012 under the federal No Child Left
Behind Act, most Pennsylvania cybers never made “adequate yearly progress.”
Following NCLB, for all five years (2013-2017) that Pennsylvania’s School
Performance Profile system was in place, not one cyber charter ever achieved a
passing score of 70.
Under Pennsylvania’s current accountability system, the Future Ready PA Index, all 15 cyber charters that operated
2018-2019 have been identified for some level of support and improvement.
PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference October 14-15
Virtual
Registration is now open for the first ever
virtual School Leadership Conference! Join us for all-new educational sessions,
dynamic speakers, exhibitors, and more! Visit the website for registration
information: https://t.co/QfinpBL69u #PASLC20 https://t.co/JYeRhJLUmZ
PSBA Fall Virtual Advocacy Day: OCT 8, 2020 • 8:00
AM - 5:00 PM
Sign up now for PSBA’s Virtual Advocacy Day this
fall!
All public school leaders are invited to join
us for our fall Virtual Advocacy Day on Thursday, October 8, 2020, via Zoom. We
need all of you to help strengthen our advocacy impact. The day will center
around contacting legislators to discuss critical issues affecting public
education. Registrants will receive the meeting invitation with a link to our
fall Virtual Advocacy Day website that contains talking points, a link to
locate contact information for your legislator and additional information to
help you have a successful day.
Cost: As a membership benefit, there is no
cost to register.
Registration: School directors can register
online now by logging in to myPSBA. If you
have questions about Virtual Advocacy Day, or need additional information,
contact Jamie.Zuvich@psba.org.
Adopt the resolution against racial inequity!
School boards are asked to adopt this
resolution supporting the development of an anti-racist climate. Once adopted,
share your resolution with your local community and submit a copy to PSBA.
Learn more: http://ow.ly/yJWA50B2R72
Save The Date: The PSBA 2020 Equity Summit is happening
virtually on October 13th.
Discover how to build a foundation for equity
in practice and policy.
Learn more: https://t.co/KQviB4TTOj
Adopt the 2020 PSBA resolution for charter school funding
reform
In this legislative session, PSBA has been
leading the charge with the Senate, House of Representatives and the Governor’s
Administration to push for positive charter reform. We’re now asking you to
join the campaign: Adopt the resolution: We’re asking all school
boards to adopt the 2020 resolution for charter school funding reform at your
next board meeting and submit it to your legislators and to PSBA.
292 PA school boards have adopted charter reform
resolutions
Charter school funding reform continues to be
a concern as over 290 school boards across the state have adopted a resolution
calling for legislators to enact significant reforms to the Charter School Law
to provide funding relief and ensure all schools are held to the same quality
and ethics standards. Now more than ever, there is a growing momentum from
school officials across the state to call for charter school funding reform.
Legislators are hearing loud and clear that school districts need relief from
the unfair funding system that results in school districts overpaying millions
of dollars to charter schools.
Know Your Facts on Funding and Charter Performance. Then
Call for Charter Change!
PSBA Charter Change Website:
The Network for Public Education Action Conference has
been rescheduled to April 24-25, 2021 at the Philadelphia Doubletree Hotel
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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