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 Feb. 11, 2021
Know Your Facts on
Funding and Charter Performance. Then Call for Charter Change!
Know Your Facts on Funding and Charter Performance. Then Call for
Charter Change!
PSBA Charter Change Website: https://www.pacharterchange.org/
“Reopening schools is probably the most
thorny and challenging of all the problems presented by the pandemic. Every
side represents opposing pressures: parents with jobs who need kids to be in
school, educators and other child advocates alarmed about the devastating loss
not only of in-person learning, but social supports provided by schools, and
families and teachers concerned about safety. Add this to lack of consistent
guidance or support from the federal government, and it’s a dilemma playing out
in school districts across the country, with few satisfactory solutions.”
More voices needed on
reopening Philly schools, including Mayor Kenney’s | Editorial
The Inquirer Editorial
Board | opinion@inquirer.com Posted: February 11, 2021 - 5:00 AM
The latest
public school debacle unfolded this week when teachers refused to return to classrooms at the direction of Philadelphia
Federation of Teachers boss Jerry Jordan, defying Superintendent William Hite’s
directive for them to show up. When Hite threatened no-shows with discipline,
Mayor Jim Kenney stepped in and said teachers could stay away after all. The
call was for 2,000 teachers to return to classrooms Monday to prepare a limited
reopening for about 9,000 pre-K through second grade students on February 22.
The district says it has worked to make buildings safe for return, but
the PFT balked at some elements of the plans for ventilation. Hence the
showdown. Reopening schools is probably the most thorny
and challenging of all the problems presented by the pandemic. Every side
represents opposing pressures: parents with jobs who need kids to be in school,
educators and other child advocates alarmed about the devastating loss not only
of in-person learning, but social supports provided by schools, and families
and teachers concerned about safety. Add this to lack of consistent guidance or
support from the federal government, and it’s a dilemma playing out in school
districts across the country, with few satisfactory solutions.
Pittsburgh City
Council moves forward with plan to open talks with school board
ANDREW
GOLDSTEIN AND ASHLEY MURRAY Pittsburgh Post-Gazette FEB 10, 2021 5:03 PM
City Council
will move forward with its plan to open conversations with Pittsburgh Public
Schools officials on how it can help the district reopen schools amid the
COVID-19 pandemic and solve issues of inequities and low achievement levels. Council
on Wednesday approved holding a series of public hearings with district
officials after council members Ricky Burgess and Daniel Lavelle last week
introduced legislation declaring an “educational emergency” in Pittsburgh.
"I'm going to work with council in terms of how we move forward
together," Mr. Burgess said. "I am hopeful that we'll start this
process in February." The school board has expressed willingness to work
with the city, but some board members objected to council’s approach to the
matter because the government and the district operate as separate entities.
Northampton Area,
Southern Lehigh will start bringing students back for 4-day in-person
instruction in March
By KAYLA
DWYER THE MORNING CALL | FEB 10, 2021 AT 5:56
PM
Two Lehigh
Valley school districts on Wednesday announced plans to phase students back
into the classroom four days a week beginning in March, eliminating the hybrid
option but keeping an all-virtual option for families who are not comfortable. Southern
Lehigh School District makes the transition March 1 for students in all grade
levels whose families choose for them to learn in person; Northampton Area
School District will bring students back in phases, beginning March 9 for
kindergarten through second grade, according to letters the respective
superintendents sent to families. Both districts had previously been in hybrid
learning for all grade levels. Northampton had been planning for this since
before the winter holidays, Superintendent Joe Kovalchik said, but spikes in
COVID-19 cases in the community during the holidays led him to revert to online
learning from mid-December to mid-January. The decision to bring back the lower
grades first was based on lower transmission rates among young children and the
smaller class sizes the district already has at that level, Kovalchik said.
North Penn board OKs
five-day return for students starting Feb. 22
North Penn
Reporter By Dan
Sokil dsokil@21st-centurymedia.com @dansokil on Twitter February 11, 2021
LANSDALE —
The community has spoken, North Penn School District officials have heard them,
and students could be back in school full-time soon. The district's school
board voted Tuesday night to prepare for five-day in-person instruction
starting Feb. 22, for those students who choose to do so. "A motion: to
return students to five-day in-person learning, or virtual, or hybrid, or
whatever they so desire, beginning on February 22nd," said board Vice
President Christian Fusco, before the board unanimously approved it. In late January the
school board approved a new round of surveys for parents of district students,
as staff reported on efforts to plan a return from fully virtual learning in early January, to a split-hybrid return with
alternating groups of students in school since then, and toward a full five-day
a week return parents have pushed for. During Tuesday
night's school board meeting, Dietrich
outlined the results of the latest survey data and steps staff will need
to take to make a full return possible for those who want it. "We recently
asked our parents if they desire fully virtual, hybrid, or the third choice, of
five days of in-person instruction per week," he said. "Our
principals and our central office administrators have been reviewing the
results, and are looking at various solutions to meet the ask," Dietrich
said.
Wheatland Middle
School to go virtual after staff shortage
LANCASTERONLINE
| Staff February 10, 2021
Wheatland
Middle School will immediately move to a virtual format through Wednesday, Feb.
17 due to a shortage of staff, the School District of Lancaster announced on
Wednesday. All students will report to class online beginning Thursday, Feb.
11, the school district announced. Students will keep their regular class
schedule. Though the school does not currently have any cases of COVID-19, the
virus is currently keeping an unspecified number of employees in isolation or
in quarantine, making it difficult to provide coverage for students, the school
district said. “While this brief closure is unfortunate, these practices are to
ensure the health and safety of our students and staff,” Superintendent Dr.
Damaris Rau wrote to families in a letter Wednesday. “We will not compromise
that.”
“The 11,000-student Erie School District
started its hybrid program for its 4,900 elementary school students on Feb. 1. Since
the first day of school, on Sept. 8, all district students had been
taking remote-only classes, with exceptions for some special
education students and career and technical school students in high school.”
Erie School District
to poll high schoolers about return; bids awarded for Erie High work
Ed
Palattella Erie Times-News
- Erie School Board on Wednesday night
approved sending survey to high school students for return to in-person
classes under hybrid plan
- Erie School District wants to bring
middle, high school students back by start of fourth quarter on April 7
- School Board also awarded bids for Erie
High renovation project
Families of
high school students in the Erie School District are next up for answering the
big question related to the pandemic. After asking how many middle school
families want their children to return to in-person classes with a hybrid
approach, the Erie School District is surveying high school families for the
same reason. The Erie School Board on Wednesday
night consented to the district administration
sending a survey to high school families about students' plans. The
district will use the survey results as it works to bring high school students
back to class on April 7, the start of the fourth quarter, or possibly
earlier. The survey will go out on Friday, district spokeswoman Erica Erwin
said. The Erie School District is targeting the same return date of April
7,or possibly earlier, for its middle school students. The middle school
survey showed that 65% to 70% of those students want to return to school under
the hybrid program, which features rotating in-person and online-only classes,
Assistant Superintendent Teresa Szumigala told the School Board on Wednesday
night. District students can choose to stay remote-only under the hybrid plan.
Council members offer
support to three Philadelphia school board nominees
Chalkbeat
Philly By Dale
Mezzacappa Feb 10, 2021, 6:22pm EST
City Council
members questioned Mayor Jim Kenney’s three new nominees to the Board of
Education Wednesday, offering all of them strong support and a word of caution
about the difficulty of the volunteer position. “It can be a thankless job,”
said Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez, chair of council’s education
committee. Council president Darrell Clarke concluded the 90-minute hearing
with the words, “It will be a challenge for you.” The three appointees are Lisa
Salley, an engineer and businesswoman; longtime education activist Cecelia
Thompson; and attorney Reginald Streeter, who sits on the board of the
Philadelphia ACLU. All three are lifelong Philadelphians who graduated from the
city’s public schools. They are all Black, potentially making the board composition
six Black members, one Latina, and two white
members. If the three are approved and seated, Streeter also will be the only
male on the nine-member board. The hearing was held in the council’s capacity
as Committee of the Whole, which voted unanimously to put the nominees before
the full body. A vote to approve will be held Feb. 18. The next board of
education action meeting is Feb. 25.
Made in Philadelphia,
the ‘first modern computer’ is celebrated on 75th anniversary
Inquirer by Tom Avril, Posted: February 11, 2021- 5:00
AM
Imagine life
without your laptop, your smartphone, even such ordinary electronic gadgets as
your alarm clock. The ancestor of them all — a room-sized contraption made of
switches, cables, and 18,000 glass containers called vacuum tubes was unveiled
to the public 75 years ago this week, in a lab at the University of
Pennsylvania. Called ENIAC, it was the first all-electronic, programmable
computer. Historians, engineers, and tech aficionados are celebrating its
creation in a weeklong series of events, starting Thursday. And unlike in some
past anniversary celebrations, organizers are recognizing not only the men who built
the massive device, but also the pioneering women who programmed it. With its
coding prowess, Silicon Valley can claim to be the center of today’s tech
world. But with the wartime effort to build ENIAC, Philadelphia laid the
groundwork with both sides of the computer equation: hardware and software.
https://www.inquirer.com/science/eniac-75-anniversary-computer-penn-philadelphia-20210211.html
“Greenleaf was a Republican member of
the state Senate between 1978 until retiring in 2019, earning recognition
for passing and influencing more legislation than any other member of the
General Assembly in session at the time.”
Former PA state Sen.
Stewart Greenleaf dies at 81
Chris
Ullery Bucks County Courier Times February 10, 2021
Former state
Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, who represented the 12th District in parts of Bucks and
Montgomery counties, died Wednesday at 81. News of Greenleaf's death first
appeared via the Twitter account of Patrick Cawley, former Counsel to
the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee and current attorney for
Keystone Elder Law P.C., of Mechanicsburg. "A great mentor, Pennsylvania
Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf, has died. A rarity in today's politics, he cared
about justice above partisanship and was a work horse to achieve it. He taught
me much about protecting the dignity of vulnerable people. Godspeed to an
extraordinary man," Cawley wrote.
Mars school district,
teachers union continue negotiations ahead of Feb. 19 strike deadline
Post Gazette
by SANDY TROZZO FEB 10, 2021 3:21 PM
Negotiations
between the Mars Area School District and its teachers union have produced
agreement on several issues as both sides face down a Feb. 19 deadline before a
possible teachers strike. “We are committed to working toward a fair
settlement,” Joe Graff, president of the Mars Area Education Association, said
following a seven-hour negotiating session on Monday. “It is not personal.
There is obviously a difference of opinion, a disagreement on numbers, but
there is a hope that a settlement is reached.” Monday’s meeting was the 15th
bargaining session since the contract expired June 30, 2020. Another round of
talks are scheduled for Thursday, followed by additional sessions Feb. 16, 17
and 18.
Will There Be
Standardized Tests This Year? 8 Questions Answered
Education
Week By Andrew Ujifusa & Sarah Schwartz — February 09, 2021 12 min
read
With spring
around the corner and end-of-year state testing season looming, there’s still
uncertainty about what standardized assessments will actually look like this
year—or whether schools will give them at all. In the early months of the
COVID-19 pandemic last spring, the U.S. Department of Education approved
requests from all 50 states to be excused from the standardized testing
required by federal law. In fall 2020, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
said that the Education Department wouldn’t be granting these waivers again,
but with the change in administration, the decision will be up to President Joe
Biden’s nominee for education secretary, Miguel Cardona. Proponents of giving
the exams this year argue that the data are necessary to quantify student
learning loss during the pandemic and to help target support to the kids who
need it. But others say that testing adds another stressor to an already
difficult year and presents insurmountable logistical challenges—safety risks
for testing in person, and validity issues testing remotely. Amid these
debates, educators planning for testing windows this year have practical
questions: Will the exams happen? If so what will they look like, and how will
the results be used? Education Week answers some of the most-pressing questions
below.
Virtual Town Hall on
education fair funding co- sponsored by Avon Grove Charter School and
Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools set Feb. 24
West Chester
Daily Local by MediaNews Group February 6, 2021
WEST GROVE—There
will be a virtual Town Hall Meeting on Fair Funding in Education on Wednesday,
Feb. 24 at 7 pm. The public is invited. The Town Hall is being co- sponsored by Avon Grove Charter School and Pennsylvania
Coalition of Public Charter Schools. Topics include: problem solve fair
funding solutions; learn how public schools are funded in PA.; learn
about the differences between charter & district schools funding.
All are
welcome. RSVP Link - https://forms.gle/8of8ARxr7Zfdfmp97.
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/
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
NPE/NPE Action
Conference In Philly was rescheduled to October 23/24 due to concerns w/
COVID19.
Network for
Public Education
NPE will be
sending information to registrants very soon!
https://npeaction.org/2021-conference/
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
351 PA school boards have
adopted charter reform resolutions
Charter school funding reform continues to be
a concern as over 350 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/
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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