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
Visit us on Facebook at KeystoneStateEducationCoalition
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
We will be offline until Tuesday, January 5th. Happy New Year!
Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for Dec. 30, 2020
“We all recognize a 0-40 record as not
being a good performance. The overwhelming consensus in those
decisions is that there is no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in
the November 3rd election. Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that United
States Attorney General and the Director of the FBI, both of whom are Trump
appointees, have publicly stated that there is no evidence to support claims of
widespread fraud and irregularities. Either Trump has the dumbest
lawyers on the planet or there really is no proof of widespread fraud or
irregularities.”
Senator Yaw: Let’s
Get Things Straight
Senator Yaw’s
Website By: Sen. Gene Yaw (R-23) Posted on Dec 28, 2020
At the
outset, and in the interest of full disclosure, I will state that I voted for
Donald Trump every time his name was on the ballot. I also
supported his campaign financially. Do I like the fact that the
candidate I supported lost – NO. Nevertheless, our system requires that, as
a citizen, I respect the laws of this state and country.
Since the
November 3rd election, I have been told that “I am not a Patriot.” I am a
military veteran and, of course, that previous comment came from a person who
has never carried a weapon in the defense of this country. I have been
told “I do not understand the law.” I am a lawyer, and, of course,
that previous comment came from a non-lawyer. I have been told that “I do
not understand importance of the state legislature in the election process.”
I am a fairly senior member of the Pennsylvania Senate and, of course, that
comment was made by a person who has never served in any elected
office. One misinformed soul even pontificated that it was
clear I was “not running for office again.” Of course, they fail to
recognize that I have not yet been sworn into the term for which I was just
re-elected. A final threat I received is that if I don’t agree with those
who don’t like the election results “I can guarantee you that you will never be
re-elected to any other office again.” Ironically, that comment came from
a disgruntled citizen from Iowa. For the record – I do not plan to
run for office in Iowa.
Whether any
of these misinformed comments mean anything is a question I will leave to my constituents.
Pending that, however, I will explain what my background and experience tell me
about the November 3rd election and where we stand today. For those
who want to take the time to understand, hopefully this will help to close this
issue and move us on to matters which need our undivided
attention. For the minority who think they have all the
answers and disregard any facts contrary to their belief, this will do nothing.
There are
two primary issues raised about the election. One is that there is
“widespread fraud and irregularities” in the election. The second
is that under Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the legislature
is the only body, which can determine how a states electors are chosen. I
will address each, but before doing so, I will make it clear that I am a firm
believer in the “rule of law” because without honoring the rule of law, we are
left with chaos. In the current situation, there are laws which
have been in existence for many years. Those laws set the stage for
the conduct of the election on November 3rd and we are bound by them, like it
or not.
https://www.senatorgeneyaw.com/2020/12/28/lets-get-things-straight/
“We know that the current charter
funding mechanism forces school districts to overpay cyber charter schools and
overpay for charter special education costs by hundreds of millions of dollars
each school year.”
OP-ED: Pa. schools
are bleeding cash while students receive substandard education
York
Dispatch Opinion by Eric Wolfgang, PA School Boards Association December 29,
2020
Eric
Wolfgang is president of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
Since the
COVID-19 pandemic hit, there has been a huge increase in cyber
charter school enrollment across the country, including
in Pennsylvania, where cyber charter school enrollment is
up by 63% to 62,000 students as of Oct. 1,
2020. This trend should have Pennsylvania parents and taxpayers
extremely concerned for two glaring reasons. First, this enrollment increase
will have financial implications for school districts. To put this
impact into numbers, school districts can expect as much as a $350 million
dollar increase in their cyber charter tuition bills this year alone due to the
pandemic-generated cyber charter school enrollment increases. It’s important to
keep in mind that this massive sum is only part of the overall $475 million
overall charter school tuition increase this school year that school districts
are facing in addition to navigating through a global pandemic. The $475
million increase in charter school tuition this school year effectively
nullifies the majority of the federal funds public schools received under the
CARES Act. This means most of those funds will not have their intended impact —
to aid our public schools in a time of crisis. Moreover, for many districts,
their Act 1 index rate will not allow for them to increase property taxes to
cover the gap in increased charter school payments, leaving hopelessly unbalanced
budgets.
Schools get a
$54 billion lifeline in stimulus package — but the money won’t last for
long
Washington Post
By Moriah
Balingit Dec. 28, 2020 at 7:31 p.m. EST
The nation’s
public schools, which collectively serve more than 50 million
schoolchildren, are set to get about $54 billion in coronavirus aid, funding that will help them cover
steeply escalating costs from paying for personal protective equipment,
building renovations and for technology needed to educate children remotely. But
education advocates warn that the funding will not be enough to compensate for
the deep and painful cuts schools are likely to endure as a weakened economy
wreaks havoc on state and local budgets. State and local dollars provide the
vast majority of funding for public schools. When state and local governments
face shortfalls, schools are often the first to feel the pain. The funding
represents about a quarter of what many advocates had hoped for, and includes
no additional money for a program that expands Internet access. “Any failure to
provide any funding for state and local governments is going to impact our local
school districts,” said Anna Maria Chávez, executive director of the National
School Boards Association. The bill President Trump signed into law Sunday
provides about $900 billion worth of aid, including to extend unemployment
benefits, maintain lifelines for foundering businesses, boost vaccine
distribution and deliver $600 stimulus checks to American households, among
other things.
Trump opens up
federal dollars for private school vouchers amid pandemic
The White
House said that the order would give states new flexibility in how they use
federal block grant programs.
Politico By MICHAEL
STRATFORD 12/28/2020 08:18 PM EST
President
Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order allowing states to use their
share of money from a federal anti-poverty program to provide vouchers to help
“disadvantaged families” pay for private school tuition, homeschooling or other
educational expenses during the pandemic. The move comes after the $900 billion
coronavirus relief deal, H.R.
133 (116), that Trump signed on Sunday excluded many
of the school choice provisions that his administration and GOP lawmakers had
sought to include in that sweeping legislation. The White House said that the
order would give states new flexibility in how they use federal block grant
programs that provide money for a wide range of community services designed to
alleviate poverty and help low-income Americans. It will “provide certain
disadvantaged children with emergency K-12 scholarships to access in-person learning
opportunities,” the administration said. The order opens up federal money
provided to states under the Community Services Block Grant program — a roughly
$700 million-a-year program administered by the Department of Health and Human
Services — to pay for “private school tuition, home schooling, micro schooling,
learning-pod expenses, special education services, or tutoring.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/28/trump-private-schools-pandemic-451757
A quiet and
‘unsettling’ pandemic toll: Students who’ve fallen off the grid
WHYY/NPR By Lauren Hodges December
29, 2020
Even with
teachers working hard to educate their students virtually during the pandemic,
they're growing increasingly anxious about the ones who aren't showing up to class
at all.
For American
families and their children, school is more than just a building. It’s a social
life and a community, an athletic center and a place to get meals that aren’t
available at home. The pandemic has disrupted — and continues to disrupt — the
lives of U.S. students in profound ways. Many kids haven’t set foot in their
schools since March, when most
in-person schooling shut down across the country. Teachers are
working tirelessly to educate their students online, but they are growing
increasingly anxious about the kids who aren’t showing up at all. An
estimated 3
million students may have dropped out of school learning
since March, according to Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit
that focuses on underserved youth. The group’s study cited a lack of Internet
access, housing insecurity, disabilities and language barriers as major
obstacles to attending virtual classes during the pandemic.
Schools nationwide
should teach ethnic studies | Opinion
David A.
Love, For the Inquirer Posted: December 29, 2020 - 12:27 PM
David A.
Love is a writer based in Philadelphia, and an adjunct professor of journalism
and media studies at the Rutgers University School of Communication and
Information.
In
Philadelphia and across the country, 2020 was a year of public awakening on
issues of institutional racism and longstanding socioeconomic inequities
plaguing Black people and other people of color. The protests following the
murder of George Floyd raised awareness of racial injustices rooted in an
untaught history. Overcoming our past means learning the lessons of history—and
requiring that high schools offer Black, Latino and other ethnic studies
programs.
Ethnic
studies present history from the standpoint of underrepresented groups in
America, and acknowledges the pivotal role of race
and racism in society, along with
gender, class, sexual orientation and other identities. The ethnic studies
movement was a product of the civil rights, Black Power, and antiwar era of the
1960s and early 1970s, a time of heightened political consciousness and
self-identity for young people.
Environmental task
force provides guidance to Scranton School District
Times
Tribune BY
SARAH HOFIUS HALL STAFF WRITER Dec 28, 2020 Updated Dec 29, 2020
In the midst
of widespread environmental problems in the Scranton School District 10 months
ago, parents and other community members demanded transparency and greater
communication. The district’s environmental task force has helped with those goals.
As the district abated asbestos and turned off any fixture with lead-tainted
water, a group of parent volunteers received input and offered recommendations.
Now, nearly a year since the district revealed the environmental issues, the
parents will continue to meet quarterly to discuss long-range plans for making
buildings safer for students and staff. “The task force gave us an enormous
opportunity to take in a wide variety of viewpoints and work toward a plan that
we can see moving forward,” said Scranton school Director Ro Hume, chairwoman
of the board’s operations committee and a member of the task force. “We think
it’s a model for other community task forces moving forward … so we as a
district can be responsive to stakeholders.”
In central Pa. school
district, the debate over Native American team nicknames comes home
By Andrew
Destin Special
to the Capital-Star December 29, 2020
BELLEFONTE,
Pa. — The sound of an imitation war whoop echoes throughout Rogers
Stadium. It’s the kind of sound used in old Hollywood westerns, the sound
children playing “Cowboys and Indians” might make as they move their hands over
their mouths. When Bellefonte high plays Penns Valley in an early October
football game, fans let out the cry as the Red Raiders rush onto the field. To
the fans it’s just another Friday night, as it has been since 1936. Others in
town would definitely not approve. In a year of division all over the country,
high school football has been at the center of a fight that’s as bitter in
these parts as the presidential election — Democrat Joe Biden won 52 percent of
the vote in Bellefonte precincts — or attitudes toward the coronavirus
pandemic. A petition started in June called on the Bellefonte school board and
superintendent to change the district’s mascot from the Red Raiders to
something “better.”
Pro-Trump teen’s
civil rights lawsuit against Pa. school district ends with confidential deal
Penn Live By Matt Miller | mmiller@pennlive.com Updated Dec 29, 2020; Posted Dec 29,
2020
A
confidential resolution has ended a federal civil rights lawsuit by a
Pennsylvania high school student who claimed she was suspended for wearing a
face mask and a t-shirt bearing a pro-Trump slogans to class. Morgan Earnest, a
sophomore, filed that case against Mifflin County School District in
U.S. Middle District Court in late October, about two weeks before the
presidential election that was won by Democrat Joe Biden. The 15-year-old
Lewistown girl said school officials told her she was violating a district
clothing policy, adopted just weeks earlier, that barred articles of clothing
“which contain political speech or symbolize a particular political viewpoint,
including but not limited to confederate flags and swastikas, as well as BLM
logos or phrases associated with that movement.”
With Remote Learning,
a 12-Year-Old Knows Her English Is Slipping Away
In New York
City, 142,000 children are learning English in school. Online classes are
especially challenging for them.
New York
Times By Juliana Kim Dec. 29, 2020
When Taniya
Ria moved to the Bronx from Bangladesh in 2019, she didn’t know a word of
English. Within months, Taniya, now 12, was translating for her mother, making
American friends in class and getting good grades. Then the pandemic arrived. This
fall, she took classes on an iPhone from her family’s one-bedroom apartment in
Parkchester, struggling to make sense of the teachers’ English through the tiny
screen. Words and grammar she once knew evaporated, and so did her confidence. “This
is the hardest school year of my life,” said Taniya, who is in sixth grade. “I
feel like the year is going to waste.” While the disruptions of 2020 have
threatened learning loss for nearly all students across the country, the toll
has been especially severe for students who come from immigrant homes where
English is rarely if ever spoken. In-person instruction is essential for these
students, teachers, parents and experts say. Not only are they surrounded by
spoken English in their classrooms; they also learn in more subtle ways, by
observing teachers’ facial expressions and other students’ responses to
directions. Teachers, too, depend on nonverbal gestures to understand their
students. All these things are far more difficult to perceive through a screen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/nyregion/coronavirus-english-language-students.html
Ravitch: The Dark
History of School Choice
The New York
Review by Diane
Ravitch January 14, 2021 issue
How an
argument for segregated schools became a rallying cry for privatizing public
education.
During her
tenure as secretary of education, Betsy DeVos repeatedly asked Congress to
allocate billions of dollars for vouchers for religious and private schools.
She was repeatedly rebuffed. Even Republican members of Congress were unwilling
to use the federal education budget to pay for vouchers. After all, most of
their constituents’ children attend public schools. After the pandemic struck,
DeVos tried again. Late last March, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion relief bill
called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which
allocated $13.2 billion for K–12 education. Congress expected that the money
would be shared, as federal education funds typically are, among the nation’s
nearly 100,000 public and 7,000 charter schools, as well as private schools
based on the number of low-income students they enroll. DeVos instead directed
states to share the money allotted to public schools with private and religious
schools that enrolled middle-income and affluent students. The NAACP and
several states responded with lawsuits, arguing that her order was illegal.
Three federal judges in different parts of the country ruled against DeVos, and
she backed down. But the Trump administration found another way to enrich
charter and private schools. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), also part
of the CARES Act, was supposed to rescue small businesses. Lobbyists
for the charter industry, however, encouraged charter schools to apply as
nonprofits, thus double-dipping into both the public school and PPP funds
(public schools were ineligible for PPP funding). Private and
religious schools also qualified for PPP funds as nonprofits.
Therefore, through a bill supposed to aid small businesses at risk of
bankruptcy, thousands of charter, private, and religious schools received an
average of about $855,000 each, compared to about $134,500 per public school
through CARES.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/01/14/the-dark-history-of-school-choice/
PSBA Webinar: New
Congress, New Dynamics
JAN 14, 2021
• 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
The 2020
election brings significant changes to the 117th U.S. Congress. How will the
newly sworn-in senators and representatives impact public education? What
issues will need to be addressed this session? To become an effective
legislative advocate you’ll need to understand the new players and dynamics.
Our experts will profile key new members, discuss what big trends you can
expect and highlight the issues that will be debated over the next two years.
Presenters: Jared Solomon, senior public advisor,
BOSE Public Affairs Group
John Callahan, chief advocacy officer, PSBA
Cost: Complimentary for members.
Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CQkk1Sd0QmOhdJ3VmlSzGg
https://www.psba.org/event/new-congress-new-dynamics/
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
337 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.
