Thursday, September 3, 2020

PA Ed Policy Roundup for September 3: State College Area SD students will have their first “snow day” of the school year on Friday as educators monitor COVID-19 data in the surrounding community


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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PA Ed Policy Roundup for September 3, 2020
State College Area SD students will have their first “snow day” of the school year on Friday as educators monitor COVID-19 data in the surrounding community

Why are cyber charter tuition rates the same as brick and mortar tuition?
Taxpayers in Senator Tom Killion’s school districts paid over $17  million in 2018-2019 cyber charter tuition. Statewide, PA taxpayers paid over $600 million for cyber charter tuition in 2018-2019.

Chester-Upland SD
$7,862,258.12
Chichester SD
$1,448,856.02
Garnet Valley SD
$478,945.45
Kennett Consolidated SD
$1,038,532.60
Penn-Delco SD
$820,756.92
Ridley SD
$744,523.98
Rose Tree Media SD
$814,161.50
Unionville-Chadds Ford SD
$734,074.82
Wallingford-Swarthmore SD
$435,777.25
West Chester Area SD
$2,641,779.90

$17,019,666.56
Data Source: PDE via PSBA

With deadline approaching, here’s how Pa. counties are doing with their Census response rates | Thursday Morning Coffee
PA Capital Star By  John L. Micek September 3, 2020
Good Thursday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
As we’ve mentioned before, the U.S. Census is a very big deal, indeed. The decennial head count of everyone living in the United States impacts everything from federal assistance to the states to representation on Capitol Hill. So, with the count set to end on September 30, the Pennsylvania State Data Center has an update on how the Keystone State’s 67 counties are faring in that effort. As of Aug. 27, the counties with the highest response rates were:  Bucks (77.0 percent), Chester (76.4 percent), Lancaster (76.4 percent), Montgomery (76.1 percent), and Cumberland County (75.7 percent), according to the Data Center. In 2010, the counties with the highest response rates included Cumberland (77.3 percent), Lancaster (77.2 percent), York (76.9 percent), Adams (76.7 percent), and Northampton County (76.5 percent), data showed. While Lehigh County has done well with Census response, some of the region’s biggest cities are still lagging, the Morning Call reported this week. “I’m really disappointed about the low participation across the city,” Allentown City Council member Julio Guridy told the newspaper. “We need to do something dramatic fast in order to not lose so much money over the next decade.”

Philly students head back to class, virtually; education leaders demand more funding
Inquirer by Kristen A. Graham, Posted: September 2, 2020- 12:53 PM
Despite its being the first day of school, there were no students inside Lowell Elementary on Wednesday, and without significant federal help, it will be difficult to safely bring them back this year, local, state and national leaders said outside the redbrick building. Officials including Mayor Jim Kenney and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten took aim at President Donald Trump and Senate leaders who have failed to pass the Heroes Act, a COVID-19 relief package that would send billions to cities and school systems like Philadelphia’s, which opened, fully virtual, Wednesday. “This is clearly not a typical first day of school for anyone,” Kenney said. “Under normal circumstances, we’d be in school buildings, greeting students and teachers, we’d be celebrating all the promise a new school year brings. Had the White House led a competent national pandemic response under the direction of medical experts, we might very well be in a different position today. But here we are.” As classes began for 125,000 kids across the district Wednesday, teachers, students and parents reported some first-day glitches, but enthusiasm at the beginning of the 2020-21 term.

School opens in Philadelphia amid ‘Day of Action’
Chalkbeat Philly By Dale Mezzacappa  Sep 2, 2020, 7:41pm EDT
On the first day of the school year in Philadelphia, an array of city, state, and teacher union officials excoriated the Senate and President Donald Trump for blocking a House-passed federal rescue plan that would pump billions of federal dollars into education to help districts deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The speakers, including American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, were participating in a Nationwide Day of Action for Safe Schools, which included events across the country. They said the failure to pass the HEROES act, which was approved by the Democratic-led House in May, most adversely affects school districts like Philadelphia, where most of the students are Black and brown. “Let me say unequivocally that... Black children matter, and the reality is that we have gotten a very clear message from our U.S. Senate...that Black lives and Black children’s lives don’t matter,” said Bishop Dwayne Royster, director of the faith-based advocacy group POWER. The HEROES act would pump $58 billion into school districts, with some $2 billion coming to Pennsylvania for K-12 education. The Senate has proposed a smaller aid package with corporate tax breaks and other provisions opposed by Democrats, resulting in a legislative stalemate.

With Philly teachers in contract fight, leaders press feds for more K-12 virus aid
WHYY By Avi Wolfman-Arent September 2, 2020
With a tense labor negotiation as backdrop, local and national teachers union leaders held a press conference in Philadelphia Wednesday to press for more federal coronavirus relief.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, joined Jerry Jordan, head of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) and a cavalcade of local politicians outside James Lowell Elementary School in Olney. Democrats and union leaders say the extra aid is necessary to stave off financial disaster for school districts and allow officials to purchase the items needed to reopen classrooms while reducing the risk of viral spread. “[We’re] not just fighting for more funding for schools to fix them up. It’s bigger than that. We’re fighting to save the American dream,” said U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Philadelphia), who attended Lowell as a child and whose mother worked as a crossing guard at the school.

Political Cartoon: Back to the one-room schoolhouse
Inquirer by Signe Wilkinson Posted: September 3, 2020 - 5:04 AM
Virtual learning turns out to be virtual hell for parents who are stuck home helping “teach” their kids while “concentrating” on their own virtual “work” at the next laptop over. In the good old days, parents could send their kids off to one-room schoolhouses to learn their ABCs. It turns out parents are now the teachers in their own one-room schoolhouses taking over their dining room tables, living room sofas, or kitchen counters, as my colleague Maria Panaritis described with exasperation oozing from every sentence. Parents who have to work outside the home have it even worse, juggling which relative, friend, or neighbor they can lean on for help. Kids with wealthier parents are in one-room school “pods” sharing a teacher, at a few daring local charters, or parked in private schools that are fully opening. If life were equitable, every child would be there with them.

Gov. Wolf eases guidelines on spectators at high school sporting events
Delco Times By Mike Drago mdrago@readingeagle.com @MDrago59 on Twitter September 3, 2020
Gov. Tom Wolf has eased his restriction on spectators for high school sports, but it remains to be seen how effective the change will be in accommodating parents and other fans. Wolf agreed Tuesday to amend COVID-19 guidelines and allow spectators to attend high school contests but only within established parameters for gatherings – 25 for indoor events and 250 for outdoor events. Spectators are now included within those figures; they previously were not allowed to attend. The PIAA last week urged the governor to expand those parameters, requesting in a letter that gyms and stadiums be allowed to permit 25 percent of capacity. Wolf did not agree to that, leaving high school athletic administrators in a quandary. For indoor sports played in the fall, girls volleyball and water polo, the 25-person limit would easily be exceeded by players, coaches and officials. Schools are making plans to have some reserve players stationed outside gyms and pools, and that doesn't sit well with the PIAA or schools.

Guidance for All Sports Permitted to Operate During the COVID-19 Disaster Emergency to Ensure the Safety and Health of Employees, Athletes and the Public
Governor Wolf’s Website Issued June 10, 2020, last updated September 2, 2020
Intent: The virus that causes the Coronavirus 2019 Disease (“COVID-19”) is easily transmitted, especially in group settings, and it is essential that the spread of the virus be slowed to safeguard public health and safety. COVID-19 can be transmitted from infected individuals even if they are asymptomatic or their symptoms are mild, such as a cough. It can also be spread by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching your mouth, nose or eyes. This guidance document addresses the procedures sports organizations and teams must follow to limit the spread of COVID-19 to the extent they are permitted to conduct in-person operations.
This guidance will be updated as more public health data and other information is available.

Revenue Department Releases August 2020 Collections
PA Pressroom 09/01/2020
Harrisburg, PA — Pennsylvania collected $2.5 billion in General Fund revenue in August, which was $209 million, or 8.9 percent, more than anticipated, Revenue Secretary Dan Hassell reported today. Fiscal year-to-date General Fund collections total $6.7 billion, which is $210.3 million, or 3.3 percent, above estimate. The Department of Revenue estimates that approximately $187 million of the revenue collected in August can be attributed to extending the due date to August 14, 2020 for corporations that had annual corporate net income tax payments due in April, May, June or July. “August revenue collections show us that we’re still seeing the effects of extending tax deadlines to provide relief to Pennsylvania taxpayers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those extensions included moving back the deadline for corporate taxpayers to file their returns and make their annual payments,” Secretary Hassell said. “We will continue to keep a close eye on revenue collections so that the Governor and members of the General Assembly have the most up-to-date information possible in the coming months.”

Latest Pa. GOP attempt to strip Gov. Tom Wolf of his coronavirus emergency powers fails
Inquirer by Cynthia Fernandez, Posted: September 2, 2020- 5:51 PM
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter.
HARRISBURG — The latest Republican attempt to curtail Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency powers failed Wednesday, as GOP lawmakers in the state House did not garner enough Democratic support to end the state’s coronavirus disaster declaration. The hour-long debate culminated in the unsuccessful vote to override Wolf’s veto of a resolution that would force him to end the order, which the governor renewed this week. While Republicans argued that the state’s case count and hospitalization rate have fallen to a level that should allow businesses, including bars and restaurants, to open at full capacity, the Wolf administration has repeatedly said ending the declaration would not lift those restrictions. Democrats also argued that the threat of the coronavirus is still imminent, and new cases and outbreaks are being reported daily. On Wednesday, the Department of Health reported an additional 816 additional cases of COVID-19.
Nine Democrats voted with all Republicans in favor of overriding the veto. But supporters failed to meet the higher bar needed to succeed — two-thirds of members, or 136 votes.

“Both bills now go to the Senate for consideration.”
Pa. House passes pandemic-related school bills, including one that guarantees school boards have the power to decide whether to hold sports
Penn Live By Jan Murphy | jmurphy@pennlive.com Updated Sep 02, 2020; Posted Sep 02, 2020
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives wants to guarantee school boards that they hold the power to decide whether to allow sports and extracurricular activities to occur this school year and whether spectators can attend. The House on Wednesday passed House Bill 2787 , sponsored by Rep. Mike Reese, R-Westmoreland County, by a bipartisan 155-47 vote that would school boards with the assurance that they have that authority, not the governor. A separate school-related bill, House Bill 2788, sponsored by Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford County, passed by a 197-5 vote that would allow parents to request their public or private school student repeat a grade if they felt there was educational loss last year or this year due to the interruptions in in-person learning prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This Pa. Senate race is a rare political beauty | John Baer
By John Baer | For PennLive Today 5:30 AM
It’s a race to watch. Even as down-ballot contests aren’t getting attention. Even amid COVID-19, when campaigns can’t press the flesh, and going door-to-door seems unwise. It’s happening as Pennsylvanians no longer can vote a straight-ticket -- something insiders in both parties are jittery about. And as worry persists over mail-in voting. Yet the race in the 15th state Senate District, covering Perry County and most of Dauphin County, including Harrisburg, is maybe the best undercard contest in the state; a rare bit of politics filled with the promise of high-end performance. And since it’s key to Democratic hopes (I’d say optimistic hopes) of flipping four Senate seats to grab control of the chamber, it’s certain to be spirited. It features first-term incumbent Republican Sen. John DiSanto and Democratic challenger George Scott. Two strong candidates familiar with tight, tough races.

How Black students are becoming empowered in the Lehigh Valley’s largest, mostly white schools
By KAYLA DWYER and MICHELLE MERLIN THE MORNING CALL | SEP 02, 2020 AT 8:13 AM
A comment Parkland junior Demi Olatilo often hears from her white peers is that she’s an “Oreo”: black on the outside and white on the inside. They tell her, a Black student, that she “sounds white.” In middle school, she would laugh it off. Even though her classmates were always predominantly white, she never thought of herself as being different or marginalized. That changed when she joined Parkland’s new African American Cultural Club last fall, where she compared notes with her Black peers. Through their conversations, she began to realize that comments like “Oreo” had racist origins. And, together, they felt empowered to stand against those types of comments. “Now I realize how harmful those things are, how truly insulting they are,” she said. For Black students who make up less than 5% of the population at the Lehigh Valley’s two largest, mostly white suburban public school districts, Parkland and East Penn, speaking up has never been easy. They battle a majority mindset that makes microaggressions mainstream — often unconsciously — and a curriculum that gives greater weight to white hands in history. Nor have they felt their voices being sought out. Until now.

As school begins, local officials offer guidance on sports, PPE, special ed and more
West Chester Daily Local by Fran Maye fmaye@21st-centurymedia.com September 3, 2020
CHADDS FORD — When will students be back in the classroom, what is the financial impact of providing protective equipment to students and teachers, will students be tested for coronavirus when they return to school, why are private and Catholic schools opening for in-person instruction when public schools are not, and what will the high school sports season look like this fall? Those were just some of the questions asked Tuesday night in a Tele-Town Hall, sponsored by state Sen. Tom Killion, in which nearly 3,000 people participated. Providing answers were George Fiore, executive director of the Chester County Intermediate Unit, Michael Barber, chairman of the PIAA's District One and assistant superintendent in the Kennett Consolidated School District, and Marc Bertrando, superintendent of the Garnet Valley School District.
Killion, R-9th, of Middletown, said that although officials in every school district in Chester and Delaware counties are permitted to make their own decision on whether to offer in-person instruction, and whether to play fall sports, most of the decisions have been guided by recommendations of Gov. Tom Wolf and officials at the Chester County Department of Health. Those recommendations have been that schools should start the year virtually, and sports programs should be postponed.

State College students to stay home Friday as administrators monitor community COVID-19 data
Centre Daily Times BY MARLEY PARISH SEPTEMBER 03, 2020 01:04 AM
State College students will have their first “snow day” of the school year on Friday as educators monitor COVID-19 data in the surrounding community. The State College Area School District board of directors met virtually Wednesday to reevaluate closure protocols outlined in its reopening plan. After 108 new coronavirus cases were reported in district boundaries over the past week, officials had to consider making a switch to district-wide remote learning per health guidelines. With no confirmed cases among district students or staff, officials were hesitant to make the change and close facilities. But on Friday, students will stay home as educators monitor data and consider how long the closure will last — following a 5-4 vote, with board members Daniel Duffy, Scott Fozard, David Hutchinson and Jim Leous voting against the motion. Though the majority of new coronavirus cases reported in Centre County have been connected to Penn State students and their return to campus for in-person learning, board members wanted to balance safety and avoid potential community outbreaks in the district. Penn State students who test positive are put in isolation, while those who are probable cases or awaiting results quarantine. According to the health and safety plan, district officials must consider closing schools once 50-75 case numbers are reported in district ZIP codes over a one-week period. But with more information and research months into the pandemic, educators said the “conservative” plan might not be the best guide to make decisions.

Back to class: Which school districts in York County have reported COVID-19 cases?
Teresa Boeckel York Daily Record September 2, 2020
Several districts have reported coronavirus cases as the new school year kicks off.
South Western School District in the Hanover area has reported three cases of the virus. Its buildings are closed for a week, and virtual instruction is being given. School districts with positive COVID-19 cases have been in touch with the state Department of Health and have notified anyone who had contact.
Here is a list of which districts have reported cases:

Spring-Ford furloughs 42 workers as schools will be closed for online learning
ROYERSFORD — The Spring-Ford Area School Board followed in the footsteps of other area school districts and voted 5-4 Monday to furlough 42 workers. Voting no were Vice President Tom DiBello and board members Clinton Jackson, David Shafer and Margaret Wright. The furlough affects primarily food workers, who have no work because students are starting the year by learning online from home due to health concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic, said Superintendent David Goodin. Many only work a few hours a day, he said. "Nobody at this table wants to furlough anybody, but we're a point where that may not be realistic," said board member Christina Melton. Board member Margaret Wright said the board has a "responsibility to the taxpayers to not be carrying employees who don't have meaningful work."

Erie district aims to stop busing private high schoolers
The Erie School District will continue to bus nonpublic elementary and middle school students while the district’s students are enrolled in online-only instruction in September and October.
GoErie By Ed Palattella @etnpalattella Posted Sep 2, 2020 at 9:22 PM Updated at 5:09 AM
Erie School District will still bus nonpublic K-8 students despite changes due to district students learning online-only. The Erie School District is leaning toward limiting the number of nonpublic students it buses while those students attend in-person classes and district students learn solely online during the pandemic. The Erie School Board is considering a proposal that would save the district about $15,000 to $20,000 a month by stopping its payments to the Erie Metropolitan Transit Authority to bus high school students who attend in-person classes at nonpublic schools. The district will continue to use its yellow buses to transport nonpublic students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The change would require about 230 nonpublic high school students to pay their own way to ride EMTA buses for as long as the change is in place, based on district figures from 2019-20. Those students attend Cathedral Preparatory School, Villa Maria Academy and Mercyhurst Preparatory School, the school district said. The cost to the district for providing the vouchers in 2020-21 would be $3.10 a day per student, the district said. The district said 161 nonpublic students in kindergarten through eighth grade rode district-operated yellow buses in 2019-20. The district is still compiling the numbers for 2020-21. The Erie School District is no longer obligated to pay for busing for nonpublic students as long as district students are enrolled in online-only classes, the district said. The change does not apply to charter schools and nonpublic special education students. The district must continue to bus them or pay for their busing under the law.

Blogger note: connecting the dots… Students First PAC school privatization advocate and GOP megadonor Jeff Yass also serves on the board of the Cato Institute.
Pa. must fund students, not school districts | Opinion
Corey DeAngelis, For The Inquirer Posted: September 2, 2020 - 9:00 AM
Corey DeAngelis is the director of school choice at Reason Foundation and an adjunct scholar at Cato Institute. He is also the executive director at Educational Freedom Institute.
Families are in need of educational options now more than ever as we deal with the coronavirus pandemic. Seventeen of the 20 largest school districts in the country, including the School District of Philadelphia, have chosen to begin this school year without offering an in-person learning option for students. Although remote learning may prove suitable for some families, others may strongly prefer in-person instruction for various educational and child-care needs. The only way to truly address the diverse needs of families during the pandemic — and beyond — is for Pennsylvania to fund students, rather than school districts, directly. This is exactly how we fund many other taxpayer-funded initiatives, including Pell Grants for higher education and prekindergarten programs. For these programs, funding goes to families who can then choose from a wide array of public or private providers of the service. The same goes for food stamps. In these scenarios, the power is rightly in the hands of families rather than institutions.

$30 million campus to replace asbestos-contaminated North Philadelphia school
WHYY By Catalina Jaramillo September 3, 2020
A state-of-the-art campus is on track to replace a North Philadelphia elementary school building shuttered in 2019 after teachers and parents rang alarm bells over damaged asbestos and flaking lead paint. Plans for the modern new campus for T.M. Peirce Elementary School, a K-6 school in North Philadelphia were conceptually approved on Wednesday by the Philadelphia Art Commission. The new building will rise on the West Cambria Street property where a red-brick, four-story box of a school has sat since 1909 without any green space. Blackney Hayes Architects have designed a more inviting and highly efficient three-story building with plenty of open areas that include a brand new playground with porous surfaces to manage stormwater, trees, and a mural. “This is a school for 21st-century learning, a school where education is happening in a contemporary way for the students of this community,” said Kevin Blackney, a founding partner of Blackney Hayes Architects, during his presentation to the commission.

PSBA testifies on cost savings, improved efficiencies for school districts
POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 IN PSBA NEWS
This week, PSBA President Eric Wolfgang presented testimony to the House Democratic Policy Committee regarding cost savings and improved efficiency for school districts. Wolfgang emphasized PSBA’s call for various specific solutions, including legislation that would create broad, permanent relief from mandates that consume much of district budgets and stifle innovation. The association is working with Senator Langerholc to introduce Senate Bill 1286. Another helpful solution is to address the antiquated law which only allows advertising/public notice requirements to be fulfilled by publishing in printed newspapers, by providing districts with a flexible menu of print and online options to use in complying with advertising/public notice requirements. PSBA has worked with Representative Ortitay to introduce House Bill 2743 and Senator DiSanto to introduce SB 1222. Click here to read PSBA’s testimony.

“This post is an open letter to Biden and DeVos from Chris Reykdal, the Washington state superintendent of public instruction, offering 10 steps that Reykdal said would help set a foundation for a more equitable school system.”
An open letter to Biden and Harris: 10 steps to undo the damage Betsy DeVos did to public education
Washington Post By Valerie Strauss Reporter September 3, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
If Joe Biden becomes president, you can expect an overhaul of U.S. education policy.
For nearly 3½ years, President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have made their top education priority — and pretty much their only one — the expansion of alternatives to traditional public school districts, the ones that enroll the vast majority of American students. They have repeatedly asked Congress to pass a $5 billion tax credit program that would ultimately allow students to use public funding for private and religious school tuition. In some bit of irony, Trump and DeVos pushed the public schools that they have disparaged to open for the 2020-2021 school year, and at one point threatened to withhold federal funding from those that did not. (They didn’t have the power to withhold funding already approved by Congress.) Biden, vice president under President Barack Obama and now the Democratic presidential nominee, and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), have both savaged the Trump-DeVos education agenda. And they have said they would try to make the education system more equitable for underserved students.

UC must immediately drop use of the SAT and ACT for admissions and scholarships, judge rules
The University of California must immediately suspend use of SAT or ACT test scores for admission and scholarship decisions, an Alameda County Superior Court judge has ruled.
LA Times By TERESA WATANABESTAFF WRITER  SEP. 1, 2020 12:43 PM UPDATED 6:58 PM
The University of California must immediately suspend all use of SAT and ACT test scores for admission and scholarship decisions under a preliminary injunction issued by an Alameda County Superior Court judge. The ruling came in a lawsuit asserting that the use of standardized test scores is broadly biased — and particularly detrimental to students with disabilities who seek to take the test during the coronavirus crisis. Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman said in his Monday ruling that plaintiffs had shown sufficient cause to stop the tests for now because applicants with disabilities had virtually no access to test-taking sites or legally required accommodations during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The barriers faced by students with disabilities have been greatly exacerbated by the COVID-19 epidemic, which has disrupted test-taking locations, closed schools and limited access to school counselors,” Seligman wrote. Seligman added that little data existed to show whether the tests were even valid or reliable indicators of their future college performance. He set a case management conference for Sept. 29.
The injunction on the use of SAT and ACT results will affect all California applicants to the UC system.

Pharoah Sanders - Hum Allah Hum Allah Hum Allah
Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas from the album Jewels of Thought
YouTube 103,735 views May 28, 2011 Runtime: 14:56


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.

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.

PA SCHOOLS WORK WEBINAR : Public School Advocacy in the New Normal of a COVID-19 World; Tue, Sep 15, 2020 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM EDT
For the foreseeable future, COVID-19 is a part of our everyday lives. More parents and community members than ever before have engaged at the school district level as schools wrestled with their options for reopening this fall. This conversation will be about continuing our advocacy for public schools, and how the challenges districts are facing in the COVID-19 era are magnified by long-term inequities in our funding system and years of lackluster financial support for public education from state government. So, what can we do about it? Come find out

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.

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.

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

What to expect at this year’s School Leadership Conference
POSTED ON AUGUST 31, 2020 IN PSBA NEWS
At the 2020 PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference on October 14-15, you'll encounter the same high-quality experience you've come to expect, via new virtual platform. Hear world-class speakers and relevant educational sessions, and network with exhibitors and attendees — from the comfort of your home or office on any internet-enabled device.
The virtual conference platform is accessible via a unique link provided to each registrant about a week before conference. No additional app downloads are required. The intuitive 3D interface is easy to use and immersive — you'll feel like you're on location. Registrants will be able to explore the space a day before conference starts. Highlights include: 
  • Virtual exhibit hall 
  • Interactive lobby area and information desk 
  • Virtual auditorium 
  • Digital swag bag 
  • Scavenger hunt 
This year, conference is completely free to attend! Be among the first 125 to register, and receive a special pre-conference swag bag, sent to your home. Click here for more information about how to register.

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.

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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