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.
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Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for January 19, 2021
Important Enough to
Repeat: This article should be required reading for new Pennsylvania
legislators & staff: Virtual Reality: Cyber Charter Schools and The Need
for Reform
Blogger note: this one is important
enough to repeat
This article should
be required reading for new Pennsylvania legislators & staff: Virtual
Reality: Cyber Charter Schools and The Need for Reform
https://www.pabar.org/pdf/2021/PBA-Quarterly-CyberCharterSchools.pdf
Joint Letter from PA Statewide
Education Organizations Asking the President, Secretary of Education, Senators
Toomey and Casey to Waive the Tests
The PA
Principals Association believes it unrealistic and poor educational practice to
administer the PSSAs and Keystones this spring. Join us in asking @usdoegov @SenBobCasey and @SenToomey to #waivethetests #PAPRINCIPALS
Did you catch our Monday postings?
Cyber charters; ESSER II funding; Chester
Upland Charterization; Jeff Yass Donations…
PA Ed Policy Roundup
for January 18, 2021
This article
should be required reading for new Pennsylvania legislators & staff: .Virtual
Reality: Cyber Charter Schools and The Need for Reform
Biden picks Pa.’s Dr.
Levine to be assistant health secretary
WHYY By Associated Press Will Weissert January 19, 2021
President-elect
Joe Biden has tapped Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr.
Rachel Levine to be his assistant secretary of health,
leaving her poised to become the first openly transgender federal official to
be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A pediatrician and former Pennsylvania
physician general, Levine was appointed to her current post by Democratic Gov.
Tom Wolf in 2017, making her one of the few transgender people serving in
elected or appointed positions nationwide. She won past confirmation by the
Republican-majority Pennsylvania Senate and has emerged as the
public face of the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Billionaire backer
feels ‘deceived’ by Josh Hawley over election objections
Jeffrey
Yass, Club for Growth donor, told associate he did not foresee senator’s role
in attempt to overturn US democracy
The Guardian
by Stephanie
Kirchgaessner in Washington @skirchy Mon 18 Jan 2021 03.00 EST
A
secretive billionaire
supporter of Josh Hawley and
other rightwing lawmakers suggested he had been “deceived” by the Republican
senator from Missouri, who led the effort to overturn the results of the 2020
election. Billionaires
backed Republicans who sought to reverse US election results Jeffrey Yass is a co-founder of Susquehanna
International Group – headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a critical
swing state – who has donated tens of millions of dollars to hardline
Republican groups who supported Donald Trump’s effort to invalidate his defeat
at the polls by Joe Biden. Yass privately told a longtime associate he had not
foreseen how his contributions would lead to attempts to overturn US democracy.
“Do you think anyone knew Hawley was going to do that?” Yass wrote to Laura
Goldman, a former stockbroker who has known him for more than three decades. “Sometimes
politicians deceive their donors.” Yass, who does not give interviews and
generally avoids publicity, also told Goldman he did not believe the 2020
election had been “stolen”, even though he has directly and indirectly
supported rightwing Republicans who have repeatedly – and falsely –
sought to discredit the results.
Capitol attack gives
corporate donors sudden conscience; will it last?
Protesters
and their political enablers have been funded by corporate millions. The Jan. 6
attack on the U.S. Capitol interrupted some of the money flow. Will it resume?
Inquirer by Joseph
N. DiStefano | Columnist Published Jan 18,
2021
The founder
of the Marriott hotel chain chaired Richard Nixon’s inaugurals and hired
Nixon’s brother before that president resigned under threat of impeachment.
Last week, though, the firm led the list of big U.S. companies that cut off campaign
money to Republicans who rejected Joe Biden’s election. We’ve grown so used to
corporations — and rich people and labor unions — funding our politicians. But
the ugly Capitol riot that accompanied the political assaults on
President-elect Biden’s legitimacy has made this “the right moment” to end
business as usual, says Mike Posner, a former State Department official who now
heads the Center on Business and Human Rights at New York University “Rejecting
a democratic election has turned out to be a bright red line,” he told me,
adding. “When a lot of companies say ‘That’s not OK,’ it changes behavior.”
https://fusion.inquirer.com/columnists/capitol-protest-marriott-comcast-20210118.html
Lehigh Valley schools
look to emerging tech to make sure buildings are safe for classes: bipolar
ionization
By KAYLA
DWYER THE MORNING CALL | JAN 19, 2021 AT 6:35
AM
It’s not
often school board directors need a science lesson before deciding to spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars. This year, as the science has evolved on
COVID-19 and best practices to mitigate the spread, several in the Lehigh
Valley have decided to pursue an air purification strategy that the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention still considers an “emerging technology,” though
its basic principals are as old as the Earth’s atmosphere. In normal times,
using a process called bipolar ionization to clean the air would seem a luxury
for schools. These days, it’s looking to directors like one more thing they can
do, often with money available from state-distributed coronavirus relief
grants, to try to make schools safer. So at least four Lehigh Valley school
districts have or are getting ready to install these unimpressive blue boxes in
their HVAC systems.
Ligonier Valley
school staff get covid vaccine; doses pending for those at Greater Latrobe
Trib Live by
JEFF
HIMLER | Monday, January 18,
2021 6:55 p.m.
Greater
Latrobe School District expects to have the majority of its staff receive the
first dose of the Moderna covid-19 vaccine before the end of January. Meanwhile,
neighboring Ligonier Valley School District confirmed that the better part of
its staff already has been vaccinated against the virus at the heart of the
ongoing pandemic that has disrupted in-person classes at area schools. Greater
Latrobe could learn on Tuesday if The Medicine Shoppe pharmacy in Latrobe will
have enough doses in time to vaccinate the staff on Saturday, according to
Assistant Superintendent Mike Porembka. If not, he anticipates the vaccinations
could be administered on the following weekend.
Norwin to keep any
tax hike to 3.9% or less
Trib Live by
JOE
NAPSHA | Monday, January 18,
2021 9:36 p.m.
Norwin
School District will not raise real estate taxes more than 3.9% for the
2021-2022 school year, under a resolution the school board approved Monday. By
passing the resolution under Act 1, the board members promise not to raise
property taxes more than the state-determined inflationary index of 3.9%. The
school board raised property taxes for the current fiscal year by 2.9% to
balance at $76.93 million budget. That 2.9% increase raised property taxes in
North Huntingdon, Irwin and Norwin by 2.4 mills to 84.8 mills. For the 18
properties in White Oak and South Versailles in Allegheny County that are
served by Norwin, taxes increased 0.36 mill to 12.72 mills. A Westmoreland
County homeowner with a property at the median assessed value of $22,130, is
paying an extra $53 a year. It was the first time in more than six years that
Norwin approved a budget that did not raise taxes to the maximum allowed under
the state formula, Superintendent Jeff Taylor said last year. Norwin could have
raised taxes by 3.4%.
https://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/norwin-to-keep-any-tax-hike-to-3-9-or-less/
Hamlet to receive
yearly pay increases in new contract with Pittsburgh schools
ANDREW
GOLDSTEIN Pittsburgh Post-Gazette agoldstein@post-gazette.com JAN 18, 2021 12:39 PM
The
Pittsburgh Public Schools board will vote this month on pay raises and other
financial terms of Superintendent Anthony Hamlet’s new contract. The four-year
contract extension includes annual pay increases, performance bonuses and five
weeks’ vacation. School board members in August approved the renewal of Mr. Hamlet’s contract through June 2025 by a vote of 7-2 and
must now agree on the compensation. If approved, Mr. Hamlet will
make $236,350 in 2021 — up from $229,372 in 2020. Then he’ll receive a
salary of $241,083 in 2022, a 2% increase; $248,316 in 2023, a 3%
increase; $255,765 in 2024, a 3% increase; and $265,996 in 2025, a 4%
increase. In 2016, his first year leading the district, Mr. Hamlet made a
salary of $210,000. In addition to the salary increases, Mr. Hamlet will
have an annual performance bonus of up to $15,000, 25 vacation days and 15 sick
days. School board members who voted to approve Mr. Hamlet’s contract extension
in August said that the district needed stability as it navigated the COVID-19
pandemic and pointed to modest gains in student performance and graduation
rates.
After Capitol attack,
social studies and civics teachers struggle with real-time history lessons
Washington Post
By Joe Heim and Valerie
Strauss Jan. 19, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EST
America’s
social studies and civics teachers have never felt more pressure.
The United
States is in the middle of a traumatic month of political upheaval that, so
far, has included a violent assault by a mob on the U.S. Capitol, the
impeachment of the president for his role in directing that mob and his efforts
to overturn a legal election, and threats of right-wing violence in state
capitals. A new president will be inaugurated Wednesday in a city with areas
under military lockdown. And the educators responsible for teaching students
how government works — or is supposed to work — say they are trying to explain
and make sense of it all in real time for their students. It’s not easy. When
she reached out to social studies teachers across the country after the attack
on the Capitol, the common sentiment they were experiencing was “shock and
grieving,” said Emma Humphries, the chief education officer for iCivics, a
nonpartisan nonprofit organization founded in 2009 by retired Supreme Court
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to create content and games to promote civic
education in schools. “It felt like a day of mourning for social studies
teachers,” she said. “It might have felt like that for all of America, but they
were thinking about what they have to say to their students.”
Pandemic Teacher
Shortages Imperil In-Person Schooling
The nation’s
schools need thousands of more teachers, full-time and substitute, to keep
classrooms open during coronavirus outbreaks.
New York
Times By Natasha Singer Jan. 19, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
As exposure
to the coronavirus forced thousands of teachers across the United States to
stay home and quarantine this winter, administrators in the Washoe County
School District, which serves 62,000 students in western Nevada, pulled out all
the stops to try to continue in-person instruction for students. They exhausted
the district’s regular supply of substitute instructors. They asked teachers to
use their planning periods to cover classes for quarantining colleagues. Some
schools tapped principals, librarians, guidance counselors and other staff
members to teach classes or monitor lunch and recess. The superintendent even
filled in for an absent teacher. “We had to embrace an all-hands-on-deck
mind-set to keep schools open,” said Joe Ernst, an area superintendent who
oversees 24 Washoe County schools. But by late November, the virus had forced
so many teachers to stay home that the district was unable to cover some 2,000
requests for substitutes. Soon after, the district halted in-person
instruction, shifting all middle and high schools to remote learning until this
week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/pandemic-substitute-teacher-shortages.html
PSBA: Upcoming PA budget
recap webinar Feb. 3rd
POSTED
ON JANUARY 15, 2021 IN PSBA NEWS
On Tuesday,
February 2, Gov. Tom Wolf will present his 2021-22 state budget proposal before
a joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives. Following the
governor’s budget address, the Senate and House appropriations committees will
convene hearings beginning March 15 on specific components of the proposal. The
PSBA Government Affairs team will be providing members with complete coverage
of the governor’s budget proposal, budget details and resources for school
boards on February 3 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Claim your spot for the budget
recap here.
https://www.psba.org/2021/01/gov-wolf-to-present-budget-address-february-2/
PA SCHOOLS WORK: New
Tools for Public Education Advocates in PA
Thu, Jan 21, 2021
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EST
PA Schools
Work partner Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials will hold a
digital workshop to roll out their new suite of tools on their Data Dive
website to show parents, educators, and public education advocates how they can
use the site (including interactive data maps and graphic visualizations) when
talking to other members of their community, legislators, media, etc. Don't
miss this first-look at these innovative tools for PA public school advocates!
Register here:
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register
Attend the NSBA 2021
Online Experience April 8-10
NSBA is
pleased to announce the transformation of its in-person NSBA 2021 Annual
Conference & Exposition to the NSBA 2021 Online Experience. This experience
will bring world-class programming, inspirational keynotes, top education
solution providers, and plentiful networking opportunities. Join us on April
8-10, 2021, for a fully transformed and memorable event!
https://www.nsba.org/Events/NSBA-2021-Online-Experience
PSBA Spring Virtual Advocacy Day - MAR 22, 2021
PSBA Website January 2021
All public school leaders are invited to join
us for our spring Virtual Advocacy Day on Monday, March 22, 2021, 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
spring 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: Complimentary
for members
Registration: Registration
is available under Event Registration on myPSBA.org.
https://www.psba.org/event/psba-spring-virtual-advocacy-day/
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.
Resolution for charter funding reform (pdf)
Link
to submit your adopted resolution to PSBA
339 PA school boards have
adopted charter reform resolutions
Charter school funding reform continues to be
a concern as over 330 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.
https://www.psba.org/2020/03/adopted-charter-reform-resolutions/
Know Your Facts on Funding and Charter Performance. Then
Call for Charter Change!
PSBA Charter Change Website:
https://www.pacharterchange.org/
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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