Articles tagged with budget

NSBA urges action to prevent across-the-board federal cuts to education

Federal funding for education faces significant across-the-board cuts of an estimated $4.1 billion on January 2, 2013 unless U.S. Congress takes action. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is urging Congress to rescind the across-the-board cuts (sequestration) to education. Impact Aid would face cuts during this school year, and other education programs would face cuts beginning in July of 2013, affecting the 2013-2014 school districts’ budgets. See the U.S. Department of Education’s letter that details the timing. NSBA is encouraging school board members to contact their members of Congress, pass board resolutions, and send a letter to the editor about these drastic cuts to education.

Under the Budget Control Act of 2011 across-the-board cuts of 7.8 percent or more to education and other domestic programs will happen through a process called sequestration (the cancellation of budgetary resources), unless Congress intervenes.

Cuts would include:

  • A 7.8 percent cut to programs such as Title I grants for disadvantaged students would mean a cut of more than $1 billion, affecting nearly two million students.
  • Special education grants would be reduced by more than $900 million, impacting nearly 500,000 children with disabilities.
  • English Language Acquisition grants would be cut by approximately $60 million, affecting an estimated 377,000 students.
  • Sequestration’s budget cuts to these and other education programs would mean increased class sizes and less access to programs for children with special needs, as well as summer school, college counselors, early childhood education and after-school programming.

Most school districts have experienced significant budget cuts already in recent years, resulting in fewer course offerings, thousands of teacher and staff layoffs, four-day school weeks, loss of extracurricular activities, and reduced transportation services, for example. If further budget cuts from sequestration were to occur, several school districts would be forced to cut even more essential services over the long term.

As a school board member, utilize these talking points and background information and take a moment to customize this sample letter and send it to your senators and representative. Also consider customizing and adopting the sample board resolution, take the survey, and edit and send a letter to your local newspaper editor.

Please send NSBA a copy of your adopted resolutions on sequestration along with any published opinions that will help illustrate why Congress should reject sequestration and preserve funding for our schools.

Alexis Rice|September 12th, 2012|Categories: Federal Advocacy, Federal Programs, Student Achievement, Teachers|Tags: , , , , |

NSBA President speaks on unfunded mandates

The National School Board Association’s (NSBA) President C. Ed Massey, a member of the Boone County, Ky., school board, spoke to his local Rotary Club about the need to relieve local school systems from inflexible federal laws that do not come with enough funding to successfully implement.

Massey explained the need for local school board members and other education advocates to become involved in lobbying their members of Congress in a presentation to members of the Florence, Ky. Rotary Club last week.

“A lot of congressional members just get snippets of information,” he said in a story published at the Cincinnati Enquirer’s community website. “Because they are not educators, they don’t understand the issues in depth.”

The Boone County school board and members of the Kentucky School Boards Association have recently worked with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on issues related to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.

 

Joetta Sack-Min|July 23rd, 2012|Categories: Board governance, Educational Finance, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Federal Advocacy, Federal Programs, Legislative advocacy, NSBA Opinions and Analysis|Tags: , , , , |

The week in blogs: Obama’s education budget (abridged)

Want to get the high points of President Obama’s K12 budget — that is, without sifting through all the numbers and the fine print? Read the Quick and the Ed post by Rikesh Nana on the “three key takeaways” from the Administration’s proposal. It’s an excellent synopsis of what the president is proposing and what it all means.

So what are those takeaways? In order: consolidation of Department of Education programs (something that’s been tried in past budgets but never adopted): continued funding of Race to the Top and other competitive grant programs; and — in the absence of congressional action — an administration-sponsored overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

OK, sports fans, this next column is not about Jeremy Lin. (But if we find one on the New York Knicks sensation that has to do with K12 education, we promise to include it next week.) Instead, Eduwonk’s Andrew Rotherham looks at the firing — and quick rehiring by another team — of NHL hockey coach Bruce Boudreau and what that says about the importance of professional “fit.” Hint: It applies to teaching as well as big-time sports.

Been to Cleveland recently? Even if you haven’t, or have no plans to do so, you’ll want to check out another interesting Quick and the Ed blog on the city’s “portfolio” system of managing schools. Schools would operate with greater or lesser autonomy depending on their performance. “Charter schools as well as district-operated ones would participate,” says the blog by Richard Lee Colvin, “with the goal of giving families a real choice among several good options in every neighborhood.”

Lastly, check out Mark Bauerlein of the Chronicle of Higher Education on the attitudes and academic habits of college freshman. Here’s an interesting paradox (actually a bunch of paradoxes): more than 70 percent of students placed their academic ability in the “highest 10 percent” or “above average,” but only 45 percent felt that confident about their math ability, and just 46 percent believed they were that stellar in writing.

Lawrence Hardy|February 17th, 2012|Categories: 21st Century Skills, Budgeting, Charter Schools, Educational Legislation, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, School Reform, Student Achievement, Teachers, Week in Blogs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

The week in blogs

Pundits made a big deal about Rick Perry forgetting the name of one of the three federal departments he plans to eliminate if elected president– for the record, it was the Department of Energy — but blogger Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute is more concerned about just what the Texas governor means when he says the Department of Education would also be “gone.”

“It isn’t clear that abolishing the Department would itself end any federal education programs (since they can migrate elsewhere),” Hess wrote. “So, specifically, which programs and activities will you eliminate?”

Then – wouldn’t you know it? – it gets complicated.

Would Perry try to eliminate federal funding for special education? Hess asked. How about Pell grants or Title 1?

“Many will think there are obvious right and wrong answers to these questions,” Hess writes after posing a few other queries “But I do want to know what the GOP candidate’s bold promises really mean.”

Remember nearly 10 years ago when Connecticut went to court over No Child Left Behind, claiming it would cost millions in unfunded mandates? Well, just look at what it could cost California in required “reforms” in order to be granted an NCLB waiver by the Obama Administration, writes This Week in Education’s John Thompson, and Connecticut’s decade-old legal gambit doesn’t seem that out of line.

Lastly, we turn to two timely blogs from NSBA’s Center for Public Education.  In one Mandy Newport, a former teacher, Center intern, and graduate student at George Washington University, takes the Heritage Foundation to task for it’s ill-conceived idea that paying teachers less will result in education improvements.

Then there is Research Analyst Jim Hull’s blog on Tennessee’s new teacher evaluation system, the title of which I absolutely love:

“Using research to inform policy without understanding the research.”

Sort of like, “Vowing to eliminate the Department of Education without understanding what the Department of Education does?”

Lawrence Hardy|November 19th, 2011|Categories: Center for Public Education, Educational Research, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Federal Programs, Week in Blogs|Tags: , , , , , , , |

Half-day pre-k + half-day kindergarten = big reading gains by third grade

Full-day kindergarten and half-day preschool both lead to significant academic gains — the research consistently bears this out. Put together, these programs offer students the best chance to achieve at high levels.

But what if your district can’t afford that combination yet still wants to provide a rich learning experience for young children? Would it be better, in terms of later reading proficiency, if your students got a half day of preschool and only a half day of kindergarten, or full-day kindergarten alone?

In a report released today entitled “Starting Out Right: Pre-K and Kindergarten,” NSBA’s Center for Public Education looked at both options and concluded that the half-and-half approach — half day pre-k plus half-day kindergarten — is more effective in boosting reading scores at the third grade level, which is often described as the grade in which students are expected to have largely moved from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

The Center’s conclusion is more than academic: It has practical implications in these tough economic times, when school boards are faced with difficult choices about which program to cut, and which to maintain or expand. According to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), state funding for pre-k declined in 2010 for the first time in nearly a decade, leaving school districts to pay more of the cost. But the report suggests that cutting half-day preschool would be a mistake.

“Early education is vital,’ said Jim Hull, the Center’s senior policy analyst and author of the report. “With today’s release of the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] 2011 Nation’s Report Cards in Mathematics and Reading, this report gives us more information on how we can increase academic success in our schools by expanding access to high-quality pre-kindergarten programs.”

Here are some of the report’s key findings:

# Children who received a half-day of both pre-k and kindergarten were 3 percent more likely than those attending full-day kindergarten alone to comprehend words in sentence.

# These half-day pre-k, half-day kindergarten children were also 12 percent more likely than those in full-day kindergarten alone to be able to make “literal references” such as those expressed in the simile “Her eyes were as blue as the sky.”

# Children who received half-days of both pre-k and kindergarten were 18 percent more likely than those in full-day kindergarten alone to be able to extrapolate from their reading. That is, they were able to identify clues in a text and use those clues and their background knowledge to understand the contextual meaning of homonyms, such as whether a sentence containing the word “bear,” meant “to carry” or “an animal.”

In almost all cases, these results were more pronounced among African Americans, Hispanics, low-income students, and English language learners.

 

Lawrence Hardy|November 1st, 2011|Categories: 21st Century Skills, Assessment, Center for Public Education, Curriculum, Data Driven Decision Making, Preschool Education, Student Achievement, Urban Schools|Tags: , , , , |

IDEA covers educational expenses, not medical ones, NSBA says in court brief

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) and five state school boards associations are asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court decision requiring a Colorado school district to pay for a student’s residential psychiatric treatment as part of its responsibilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In a joint amicus brief filed this week, NSBA and the state associations say that IDEA was never intended to cover medical and mental health expenses, and that requiring school districts to do so would deplete the limited funds for public schools.

While school districts “are dedicated to educating children with disabilities,” the brief says. “They are not designed or funded to function as medical providers.”

The case involved Elizabeth, a student Jefferson County School District R-1(JCSDR-1), who suffered from a posttraumatic stress disorder and a number of other psychiatric and emotional disorders. As a result of mediated settlement with her parents when Elizabeth was in eighth grade, the district agreed to pay half her private school tuition. However, a few years later, when her condition worsened, Elizabeth’s parents unilaterally hospitalized her in an out-of-state treatment center and sought reimbursement from the district. A federal district court in Colorado said that IDEA entitled the parents to that reimbursement. The case is expected to be heard by the appeals court sometime next year.

“In these tough economic times, school districts are being forced to drastically cut their budgets,” said NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant. “While IDEA ensures that all children with disabilities receive a quality education, it was never intended to shift the medical costs of treating students’ disabilities to public school districts that are already struggling with budget shortfalls.”

NSBA is joined in the appeal by state school boards associations in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Utah.

Lawrence Hardy|September 28th, 2011|Categories: Educational Finance, School Law|Tags: , , |

Pen may be mighter than the sword, but not the federal budget

2576-1275491944laKRPersuasive writing, technical writing, creative writing, journalism—all have their place in education and are useful in different capacities. Yet, students across all fields of learning must develop basic writing skills in order to excel and communicate effectively.

So why then, did President Obama sign a bill to cut all federal funding to the National Writing Project earlier this month? This all-encompassing program is devoted to teacher development and strengthening writing skills across subjects for students at all grade levels.

The NWP’s 2009 annual survey reports that throughout the nation, program sites (see pages 12-15) are set up on the campuses of over 200 colleges and universities, with over 70,000 teachers serving the program’s objectives. Each year,  1. 4 million students and 130,000 teachers gain academic and professional development through the NWP.

It’s by no means a small program, and results have continuously showed that enrolled students displayed an improvement in basic writing skills by the end. In NWP’s 2010 study , about 92 percent of the NWP students surveyed across seven states showed higher increases in writing achievement than peers who had not participated in the program.
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Naomi Dillon|March 16th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation|Tags: , , |

Recession’s lasting effect on public schools unknown

1-1235664948qCNwHaving made some really tough budget decisions in the past few years—and now confronted with yet another tough fiscal year ahead—local school boards truly are entering “uncharted territory.”

That’s the title of ASBJ‘s May cover story, which examines the budget struggles of public schools nationwide—and what the future holds.

Perhaps the biggest question is how recent budget cuts will affect student learning. If little Johnny must attend a class with 30 other students, how does this affect his ability to learn to read? How is little Sally affected if her math teacher hasn’t had any professional development training since 2007?

Answers are simple: No one knows. But certainly many worry about the accumulated impact of larger class sizes, loss of teacher training, delayed technology and textbook purchases, closed down tutoring programs, and the layoff of many qualified teachers and administrators.

Oh, yes, then there’s the astonishing fact that some financially hard-hit school systems—including the entire state of Hawaii—switched to a four-day school week to balance their budgets.
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Naomi Dillon|April 29th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, NSBA Publications|Tags: , , |

Going green to save some green

I’m cheap.

It’s a value that was instilled in me at an early age, from my mother and grandmother, who knew how to make a dollar stretch as far as it could-because it had to. My bargain-shopping drives my husband crazy sometimes, but he loves to brag as much as I do that I spent only $10 on my wedding dress at an upscale department store.

I don’t like to waste stuff, either, and I’d like to leave this planet in at least decent shape for future generations. That’s why I think the movement to go green may be the silver lining to this ongoing economic downturn.

Environmentalism has been around for years-I wrote my first story about a “green school” nearly 10 years ago, and it wasn’t a new trend even then. But I think what’s really pushing schools to look at green solutions is the cost savings, both in the short and long term.

What has changed in the past decade is the cost of going green. It used to be more expensive to build schools with energy saving features or purchase environmentally friendly cleaning products. Now the rising demand has lowered the prices of many materials and products. Energy costs have risen, too, and that’s one area in a budget where you can almost always find savings without cutting classroom programs. And the savings in the long run make it a no-brainer. 

We looked at the green schools movement in our April issue,  and profiled several school districts that had taken different approaches to sustainability. One had saved more than $1 million by hiring an energy consultant, another district profits from selling recyclable goods while instilling environmental values to its students.

Since the demand for green products and green construction is increasing, especially now that the federal stimulus money is being doled out, we’ll continue to follow the trends and bring you more ideas to save money and save the environment.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

Naomi Dillon|May 13th, 2009|Categories: American School Board Journal, School Buildings|Tags: , , , |

Budget talks exacerbate partisanship in California

So if you think the gridlock that has stalled Congress and any movement on an economic stimulus package is bad, consider California. For months now, state lawmakers have wrangled over a budget proposal, with Gov. Schwarzenegger pitching seven, yes, seven different plans to address the state’s current $42 billion mid-year budget gap. And none of them, including a proposal from the Dems, have been approved.

Besides frustration, what has such inaction meant in California? Deferrment of tax refunds, for one. Same goes for state grants to college students. On Friday, dozens of state offices closed and more than 200,00 state employees took their first unpaid day off, as part of planned furlough that will last until June 2010.

In schools, officials are bracing for a similiar measure as the governor has given districts the option of ending the school year five days earlier; it’s technically not an option, since the state doesn’t plan on paying schools for the five days either way. In total, school districts across the state will have to slash $2.1 billion from their budgets during this fiscal year— a painful process, but one that schools are at least making movement on, unlike the state.

Legislators have been at an impasse because no one is willing to compromise on the best way to deal with the financial morass. Some want to address it with tax increases, while others want to do it purely through spending cuts.

The reality is the budget will probably have to do a little of both, since aggressive tax hikes would likely dampen consumer spending and drastic budget cuts would endanger critical social services and throw the state into an even deeper black hole. What’s critical, however, is that state officials reach a decision … now. Because their inaction puts everyone, especially schools which are dependent on state funding, at risk.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Naomi Dillon|February 9th, 2009|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance|Tags: , , |
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