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 October 22, 2020
Another PA
Legislative Session ending without charter reform. Follow the Money: Since August, charter
operators Gureghian & Karp have each given $200K to Senate Majority Leader Jake
Corman’s Build PA PAC; Yass kicks in another $2.1 million to Students First PAC
Why are cyber
charter tuition rates the same as brick and mortar tuition?
Taxpayers in House Ed Committee Member Ed Gainey’s school districts paid
over $13.8 million in 2018-2019 cyber charter tuition. Statewide, PA taxpayers paid over $600 million for cyber charter
tuition in 2018-2019.
|
Pittsburgh SD |
$12,976,083.08 |
|
Wilkinsburg Borough SD |
$832,260.15 |
|
|
$13,808,343.23 |
Source: PDE via
PSBA
Blogger commentary: Over 300 school boards representing more
than 2700 locally elected volunteer officials have passed board resolutions
calling for charter reform. Twenty years on, with the 2019-2020 PA legislative
session coming to a close, there is still no progress on charter reform.
Gureghian:
08/25/20 $50K
09/25/20 $50K
10/02/20 $50K
10/17/20 $50K
Karp (University City Housing):
09/14/20 $50K
10/17/20 $150K
https://www.campaignfinanceonline.pa.gov/Pages/CampaignFinanceHome.aspx
Follow the Money: Students First PAC:
Students First PAC 24 Hour Report
dated 10/19/20 lists $2,150,000.00 contribution from Jeff Yass on 09/25/20 and an
expenditure for Commonwealth Children’s Choice Fund of $2 million on 09/28/20
https://www.campaignfinanceonline.pa.gov/Pages/CampaignFinanceHome.aspx
The future of public education will be decided in the
2020 election | Opinion
Jack Schneider, Jennifer Berkshire and Derek
Black, For The Inquirer Posted: October 21, 2020 - 12:03 PM
The future of public education is on the
ballot this year.
Unfortunately, most voters aren’t aware of
this. The pandemic has displaced school funding and teacher pay as critical
issues — issues critical enough in
2018 and 2019 to fuel massive protests across the country. Many
families are focused solely on the immediate questions of when and how their
children will physically return to school. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has drawn
schools into his culture war, claiming that young people
are being taught to hate America and demanding what he calls “patriotic
education.” Behind the crisis and Trump’s
distractions, however, is a simple truth: Rather than working to improve public
education, his administration has waged a full-frontal assault on it. And four
more years will have devastating consequences for the nearly 90% of American
children who attend public schools —
children of both Republicans and Democrats. When Trump selected Betsy DeVos as
secretary of education, many took it as a sign that he wasn’t serious. After
all, DeVos seemed to know little about public schools. But that was a product
of her extremism. Over the last four years, she has been crystal
clear that her primary interest in the public education system lies in
dismantling it. For evidence, look no further than her proposed Education
Freedom Scholarships plan, which would redirect $5 billion in
taxpayer dollars to private schools.
In a steely anti-government polemic, Betsy DeVos says
America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family
Washington Post By Valerie Strauss Oct. 21,
2020 at 2:23 p.m. EDT
In 2015, Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos
declared that “government really sucks” — and
after serving nearly four years as U.S. education secretary, she has not
tempered that view one iota. She gave a speech this week at a Christian college
disparaging the U.S. public education system, saying it is set up to replace
the home and family. While blasting the government is nothing new for DeVos —
critics see her as the most ideological and anti-public-education secretary in
the Education Department’s 40-plus-year history — she gave what may be her
fiercest anti-government polemic at the Hillsdale College event in her home
state Monday. She explained how her philosophy was formed by Abraham Kuyper, a
neo-Calvinist Dutch theologian-turned-politician who was prime minister of the
Netherlands between 1901 and 1905 and who believed that Protestant, Catholic
and secular groups should run their own independent schools and colleges. The
United States could fix its education system, she said, if it were to “go
Dutch” by embracing “the family as the sovereign sphere that it is, a sphere
that predates government altogether.” And she said that if given a second term
as education secretary, she would keep pushing for alternatives to traditional
public schools. (No surprise there.)
“You see, for over five years Pennsylvania had a fair school
funding formula law, and for over five years, no one has fixed the underfunding
readily apparent before our eyes. It’s straightforward and simple. Some school
districts receive amounts close to what the formula says they should receive.
Other districts receive more than their fair share. Then there are the school
districts that receive less than their fair share. An unfortunate number of
school districts are severely underfunded by tens of millions of dollars per
year.”
Guest column: Separate and Unequal: The problem with
Pennsylvania’s public school funding
Delco Times By Crystal Echeverria Guest
columnist Oct 21, 2020 Updated 10 hrs ago
Crystal Echeverria is a student in
Harrisburg.
In 1896, the Supreme Court established
separate, but “equal,” public schools for black and white students. Almost a
century later in 1954, the Supreme Court struck down the doctrine of “separate
but equal," and ordered an end to school segregation. If you know anything
about the landmark case of Brown vs. the Board of Education, you would know
that black students were denied the same opportunities that white students had
when it came to schooling. Furthermore, if you know anything about the time before
1896, you would know that it was against the law for African American people to
attend school. There is nothing more oppressive than having your education
shortchanged, minimized or taken away from you, yet, this happens every day in
Pennsylvania. Students all across the Keystone State have been kept from the
quality education they deserve. For all of civilization, education has been the
gateway to freedom, but freedom denied is freedom destroyed. Once you are
denied education, or the same education that is afforded to your peers, you are
fighting an uphill battle the rest of your life. Unfortunately for those who
would have it otherwise, my friends and I are working together to make positive
changes in our education.
PPS says it’s ready to start hybrid learning model
ANDREW GOLDSTEIN Pittsburgh Post-Gazette agoldstein@post-gazette.com OCT 21,
2020 10:18 PM
The Pittsburgh Public Schools said it is
ready to move into its hybrid instruction model next month after starting the
academic year in a totally virtual format. School board members voted
unanimously in August to hold the first quarter of the school year completely
online over concerns about the health of students, staff and the community amid
the COVID-19 pandemic. But students are scheduled to return to the classroom
Nov. 9 in a hybrid model of instruction even though state Health Secretary Dr.
Rachel Levine said last week that Pennsylvania is on the verge of a second wave
of the pandemic. District spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said the district will move
ahead with its hybrid learning plan — which includes splitting students into
two groups that each attend classes in person twice a week — unless the
school board takes action.
Calm without police: Woodland Hills’ superintendent
explains how the district boosted supports and phased out law enforcement.
Public Source by Kellen
Stepler | October 21, 2020
As communities grapple with the role of
policing on their streets, youth advocates and educators are also considering —
and sometimes fiercely debating — whether police should have a presence in
schools. At Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] — the area’s largest district, with
an enrollment of 22,859 — advocates and protestors called for removal
of police from the district’s police force. Police
are staying, but the district has approved a resolution which will require the
district to create a public database that combines school police data with
student demographic information. This follows a recent study by the Black Girls
Equity Alliance noted that school police is the largest source of referrals for
Black girls in Allegheny County and has an outsized role in criminalizing Black
youth. Could policing be reimagined in schools? The Woodland Hills School
District — with a notably smaller enrollment of 3,310 in the 2018-19 school
year — eliminated police from schools after a two-year phase out. The
district’s superintendent believes it’s changed the school environment for the
better, though he notes that it’s crucial not just to remove police, but also
to increase student and staff supports. On his first day as Woodland Hills
superintendent in 2018, James Harris said he noticed two Churchill borough
police officers who were assigned to the district wearing full SWAT tactical
gear, as students shuffled off buses and entered the high school for the first
day of school. Immediately, he had the officers trade their bulletproof vests
for khakis and polo shirts. While they were still identified as police, this
would be the beginning of a culture shift when it came to policing at Woodland
Hills. This realization helped lead the district into phasing out police
presence in their school.
https://www.publicsource.org/woodland-hills-superintendent-describes-phasing-out-police/
6,000 Philly kids could be excluded from school if they
don’t get vaccinations; school sites opening for shots
Inquirer by Kristen A. Graham, Posted: October
21, 2020- 11:10 AM
Nearly 6,000 Philadelphia School District
students will be excluded from classes if they don’t receive state-mandated
vaccinations by Nov. 2, but school sites are opening soon to provide shots. Pennsylvania
law requires students to be immunized to participate in school. “While COVID-19
has changed many things in our lives, and we have been in a digital learning
environment for several months, school aged immunization requirements have not
gone away,” Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said at a news conference
Wednesday announcing the district was partnering with CVS to provide shot
clinics at 12 city schools. Even if students do not return to school buildings
this year, the district must exclude those who lack vaccinations unless a state
exemption is filed with children’s schools for families who have medical,
religious, or philosophical objections to vaccination.
https://www.inquirer.com/education/philadelphia-school-district-vaccine-cvs-shots-20201021.html
Philadelphia teachers, district reach contract deal,
avert strike
Chalkbeat Philly By Dale Mezzacappa and Johann Calhoun Updated Oct 21, 2020,
10:03pm EDT
Philadelphia’s teachers and the school
district have reached a tentative contract agreement that includes a 2% raise
and what union president Jerry Jordan calls “one of the most stringent safety
plans in the nation” to regulate in-person schooling during the coronavirus
pandemic. He noted the health and safety plan is not part of the tentative
agreement, yet something his team negotiated as a separate memorandum of
understanding, or MOU. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, or PFT, has
13,000 members. Jordan announced that those attending a Zoom meeting Wednesday
evening had indicated strong approval for the one-year pact. The 2% raise is
retroactive to August 16. In addition, members will receive their “step”
increases, due based on additional experience and advanced degrees, starting on
Jan. 4, 2021. “This is a significant win for us,” Jordan said in a press call
with reporters, noting that 89% of the members present for Wednesday’s meeting
voted in favor of the agreement. Union officials said about half the members
were on the call. He said the pact would cost the district an additional $31
million. “This is not an expensive contract for them,” Jordan said. The overall
district budget is more than $3 billion.
Philly teachers avert strike with tentative deal for
one-year contract
Inquirer by Kristen A. Graham and Maddie Hanna, Updated: October 21, 2020-
9:13 PM
Philadelphia teachers have a tentative
one-year contract.
Jerry Jordan, president of the 13,000-member
Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, told members in a Wednesday night meeting
that the union had come to terms with the Philadelphia School District. Members
will receive a 2% across-the-board wage increase retroactive to Aug. 16, and
pay increases for years of experience and education, effective Jan. 4. “This
was a significant win for us,” Jordan told reporters during a briefing
Wednesday night. The news came at the eleventh hour, averting what could have
been the first Philadelphia teachers' strike in decades. Jordan had said Monday
night that the district had decided it was “unwilling to resolve our one-year
contract extension” and that he would take a strike vote Wednesday night if no
deal was reached.
With increasing COVID-19 cases, school boards make
decisions on virtual learning
Times Tribune BY SARAH HOFIUS HALL, KATHLEEN
BOLUS AND BROOKE WILLIAMS STAFF WRITERS Oct 21, 2020
Within the next couple weeks, some students
in Lackawanna County could be learning from home again. Anticipating that the
county will spend a second week with “substantial” coronavirus transmission and
that the state will recommend remote learning, officials know they have major
decisions to make in the next week. During school board meetings for Abington
Heights, Dunmore, Lakeland and Mid Valley on Wednesday night, officials
discussed what will go into those decisions. Though the state is expected to
make recommendations on Monday, it will be up to each district whether to
follow them. “We need to brace ourselves for that call to come Monday,”
Abington Heights Superintendent Michael Mahon, Ph.D., said. Mid Valley voted to
remain hybrid for now, regardless of state recommendations. Under the moderate level for cases and
positivity rates, the state recommends virtual or hybrid — a combination of
remote and in-person learning — models. When cases reach substantial levels,
the state urges districts to operate virtually only. With the county already
seeing 156 cases in the last four days, district leaders said they expect the
county to be substantial for next week as well. Meanwhile, the leaders also
pointed to the few cases within local schools, and a desire for more
information on the spread within district borders. The districts must also
decide whether to allow athletics if students are virtual.
CDC expands definition of who is a ‘close contact’ of an
individual with covid-19
The new guidance is likely to have the
biggest impact on schools, workplaces and other group settings since more
people are likely to be considered at risk.
Washington Post By Lena H. Sun Oct. 21,
2020 at 7:21 p.m. EDT
Federal health officials issued new guidance
on Wednesday that greatly expands the pool of people considered at risk of
contracting the novel coronavirus by
changing the definition of who is a “close contact” of an infected individual. The
change by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention is likely to
have its biggest impact in schools, workplaces and other group settings where
people are in contact with others for long periods of time. It also underscores
the importance of mask-wearing to prevent
spread of the virus, even as President Trump and his top coronavirus adviser
continue to raise doubts about such guidance. The CDC had previously defined a
“close contact” as someone who spent at least 15 consecutive minutes within six
feet of a confirmed coronavirus case. The updated guidance, which health
departments rely on to conduct contact tracing, now defines a close contact as
someone who was within six feet of an infected individual for a total of 15
minutes or more over a 24-hour period, according to a CDC statement Wednesday.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10/21/coronavirus-close-contact-cdc/
Parents Are Worried About Schools. Are the Candidates?
The pandemic has made education a top issue
for many voters. But you wouldn’t know that from the candidates’ stump
speeches.
New York Times By Abby Goodnough Oct. 22, 2020, 3:02 a.m. ET
Communities large and small are battling over
whether and how to reopen schools closed since March. Superintendents are
warning of drastic budget cuts on the horizon, teachers’ unions are calling for
standardized tests to be canceled for a second straight year and millions of
children are learning remotely, with little evaluation of the impact on their
academic growth. Yet for months now, the extraordinary challenges of schooling
during the coronavirus pandemic have not been a dominant campaign theme for
either President Trump or his opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden
Jr. That is partly because states and local districts have a larger role than
the federal government in funding and running schools. But with so many families
deeply affected by the pandemic’s upending of school routines and potentially
lasting impact on childhood learning, the lack of thoughtful focus on the issue
has frustrated parents and educators alike.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/schools-election-coronavirus.html
What's the connection between reading early and high
school dropout rates? Learn with us at the Education First Compact on 11/5.
Philadelphia Education Fund Free Virtual
Event Thursday November 5, 2020 9:00 am - 10:30 am
From Pre-K to Fifth Grade: Early Literacy as
Dropout Prevention
It’s long been understood that literacy is
the gateway to learning. No doubt you’ve heard the maxim: In grades
K-3, a student must learn to read, so that in grades 4-12 they can read to
learn.
In the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2014
report, “Double Jeopardy,” researchers also found a link between 4th
grade reading proficiency and high school completion rates. Astonishingly,
they discovered that students with low levels of proficiency were four times as
likely to drop out of high school. In Philadelphia, the struggle to improve
upon rates of early literacy is a collaborative one. At the center of
these local efforts are the School District of Philadelphia, the Children’s
Literacy Initiative, and various community partners engaged through
Philadelphia’s Read By 4th Campaign. Join us for the November Education First
Compact to probe such questions as: What lessons has been learned prior to and
during COVID? What adjustments are being made during this period of distance
learning? What challenges remain? And, most importantly, what role can the
larger Philadelphia community play in the effort?
Panelists:
- Caryn
Henning, Children’s Literacy Initiative
- Jenny
Bogoni, Read By 4th Campaign
- Nyshawana
Francis-Thompson, School District Office of Instruction and Curriculum
Host: Farah
Jimenez, President and CEO of Philadelphia Education Fund
Schedule: 9:00 – 9:45am
Presentation
9:45 – 10:15am Q & A
Attendance is free, but registration is
required.
Tell your legislators that school districts need their
support
POSTED ON OCTOBER 12, 2020 IN PSBA
NEWS
If you missed Advocacy Day, it's not too late
to reach out to your legislators and ask for their support for public schools
during this challenging school year. Take Action to
send a letter to your members of the Senate and House of Representatives. The letter
addresses the need to support our schools and help to control our costs so that
districts may better serve their students. Among the most important areas of
concern are limited liability protections; broad mandate relief; delay in new
state graduation requirements delay; the need for broadband expansion; and
charter school funding reform. Now, more than ever, it is vital that
legislators hear from school districts.
https://www.psba.org/2020/10/tell-your-legislators-that-school-districts-need-their-support/
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
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
305 PA school boards have
adopted charter reform resolutions
Charter school funding reform continues to be
a concern as over 300 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.
