Articles tagged with education funding

School boards prepare for layoffs, program cuts as federal deadline looms

School boards across the country will be forced to lay off thousands of teachers and teacher aides in coming weeks as they create their budgets for the 2013-14 academic year because of the federal budget cuts scheduled to take place March 1.

The sequester, which will require across the board budget cuts for all federal programs on March 1, will eliminate about 5 percent of funding for K-12 programs and Head Start. However, representatives from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) pointed out in a press conference call this week that those cuts disproportionately affect school districts that are educating large populations of disadvantaged students.

Michael A. Resnick, NSBA’s Associate Executive Director for Federal Advocacy and Public Policy, noted that many school districts are beginning to plan next year’s budgets, and in an informal survey, three-quarters said they would be issuing layoff notices this spring.

For some school districts, the process of issuing pink slips has already started.

Minnie Forte-Brown, a school board member in Durham, N.C., and chair of NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education, said her school district planned to eliminate 34 teacher and staff positions. Title I cuts would be about $800,000 of about $1.7 million in cuts that the 33,000 student school would endure for the next 10 years, special education would amount to another $600,000 each year.

The school board has already stopped filling vacant positions and has cut all travel and professional development.

“We are implementing extreme measures,” said Forte-Brown. “This is not the promise we made to our families when we said we were going to educate excellently.”

In rural Alabama, Steve Foster, vice president of the Lowndes County Board of Education, said his school district has already seen significant state cuts in recent years, and a further reduction from the federal government would diminish books and classroom supplies, teacher retention and professional development programs, and cuts to the library, where many parents and students who do not have home computers or internet access go to work on school assignments.

”Our school system has made great strides in the last 10 to 12 years. These cuts are going to affect the programs that help us make progress,” said Foster, who is also President of the Alabama Association of School Boards.

President Obama has frequently used education and early childhood examples in recent speeches about the impact of sequestration on the country. The White House released state-by-state estimates that include how much K-12 funding each state stands to lose, the number of teacher and staff jobs, the number of children that will lose access to Head Start, and other details. (The Washington Post published this graphic detailing the cuts.)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program on February 24 to warn of the impact of the looming cuts to K-12 programs.

More than 700 school boards have passed resolutions urging Congress to stop the sequester. Go to NSBA’s website, www.nsba.org/stopsequestration, for sample letters, resolutions, and other activities for school boards.

 

Joetta Sack-Min|February 26th, 2013|Categories: Board governance, Budgeting, Educational Finance, Educational Legislation, Federal Advocacy, Federal Programs, Legislative advocacy, Policy Formation, School Boards, Teachers|Tags: , , , , , , |

NSBA urges House to reject “Plan B” legislation to avoid fiscal cliff, GOP leaders cancel vote

A GOP-backed “fiscal cliff” compromise bill, which is opposed by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), appeared to be in jeopardy when Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives abruptly cancelled a vote Thursday evening.

NSBA sent a letter to all House members of urging them to strike down the Budget Control Act, more commonly known as part of the “Plan B” legislation. The Budget Control Act would ease some of the tax hikes that are slated to occur on Jan. 2, 2013, but would also significantly cut K-12 education and other programs. The Washington Post reported that House leaders were unable to secure enough votes for passage.

The act of sequestration, across-the-board budget cuts that are scheduled as part of last year’s deficit reduction plan, would cut all federal education programs about 8.2 percent, or $82,000 for every $1 million a school district receives in federal funds. According to the Post, the lack of a vote “throws into chaos efforts to avoid the fiscal cliff, just 11 days before more than $500 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts are set to take effect. Unless Congress acts, many economists predict the nation will again descend into a recession.”

The bill “would impose record budget cuts to elementary and secondary education programs, which would be well beyond the reductions legislated in the Budget Control Act,” the NSBA letter states. “From deep cuts to Title I grants for disadvantaged students and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to mandatory reductions that would eliminate automatic eligibility of 280,000 low-income students for free school lunches, these measures would be a regression to the progress our school districts have made in student achievement.”

NSBA is continuing to monitor any action by Congress. Both chambers are scheduled to reconvene on Dec. 27. For more information and resources, visit NSBA’s Stop Sequestration website.

 

Joetta Sack-Min|December 21st, 2012|Categories: Board governance, Budgeting, Educational Finance, Educational Legislation, Federal Advocacy, Federal Programs, Legislative advocacy|Tags: , , |

NSBA opposes funding for unproven D.C. voucher program

The National School Boards Association has asked the House Appropriations Committee to eliminate funding for the Washington, D.C., school voucher program, an experimental program which provides tuition assistance for about 1,600 disadvantaged students from the District of Columbia to attend private or religious schools.

The program has repeatedly failed to show effectiveness in improving student achievement over the years,” writes Michael A. Resnick, NSBA’s associate executive director for federal advocacy and public policy, in a June 20 letter.

“At the time when Congress is considering cutting billions of dollars from the federal budget, it should not be spending $20 million of taxpayer dollars, or a 35 percent increase from last year’s funding level, for a small number of students to attend private schools.”

The funding is included in the FY2013 financial services appropriations bill, which is scheduled to be debated by the committee on June 20.

The letter cites four studies by the U.S. Department of Education, ordered by Congress and conducted in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 that found no significant impact on math achievement among students who were in voucher schools compared to their peers in public schools.

In the programs’ first two years, data showed no significant improvement in reading achievement. There were some gains in reading achievement in the next two years, but NSBA noted that students coming from “failing schools” and those who enter the voucher program in the lower third of the test-score distribution—the very groups the program intended to help—showed no improvement in reading.

“Not only does the experimental program lack academic evidence to support its continuation, the [2007 report] documented numerous accountability shortcomings, including federal taxpayer dollars paying tuition at private schools that do not even charge tuition, schools that lacked a legally-required city occupancy permit, and schools employing teachers without bachelor’s degrees and/or certification,” Resnick writes. “It also noted that children with physical or learning disabilities were underrepresented compared to public schools.”

 

Joetta Sack-Min|June 20th, 2012|Categories: Educational Finance, Educational Legislation, Legislative advocacy, Mathematics Education, School Vouchers, Student Achievement|Tags: , , , |

Schools will pay, even with boost from stimulus package

What’s the most unenviable job in Washington? I have a candidate — the press secretary for Rep. Pete Sessions, ( R-Texas), who not once but twice referenced the Taliban as models for a GOP  “insurgency” against the Democratically-controlled Congress and its $800 billion-plus stimulus package.

“What the Congressman meant to say was….”

“Yes, they’re great — wickedly great.”

“It depends on what your definition of  ‘insurgency’ is…”

Enough with the jokes. This is a critical time for public schools, which are starting to shed more and more jobs as the economy worsens. With the exact dimensions of the stimulus package undecided, public school advocates have less to fear from Sessions and his band of Mujahedeen than from more mainstream congressmen, most of whom, to be sure, are trying in good faith to reach a compromise to get the legislation passed. However, the bill the Senate is set to vote on today reduces by billions the amount that would go to public schools and other programs that benefit children and families under the House legislation.

Granted, schools and children would still get a boost. But, according to the children’s advocacy group First Focus, they would take a disproportionate hit from the Senate reductions: More than 45 percent of the $83 billion in reductions would be to public education and children’s programs, First Focus estimates. They cuts would come from such things as Head Start, school construction, and special education.

In addition, the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund — half of which would go to local school districts – would be reduced by $40 billion, or more than half, in the Senate version,  meaning school districts wouldn’t have all the support they need to avoid layoffs that harm both their students and the economy as a whole.

Soon I will begin work on a May ASBJ story on the impact of personnel cuts on school districts. (And let me disclose here that I have friends and relatives who could be affected.) Assuming the Senate bill passes, let’s hope that when Congress conferees get together to reconcile differences in the House and Senate bills they will restore the cuts on the Senate side.  Then maybe my story won’t be quite so depressing.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Naomi Dillon|February 10th, 2009|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance|Tags: , |
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