Chalkbeat

NYC schools will no longer require 5-day COVID quarantines, following CDC guidance

2024-03-18T22:07:29+00:00

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New York City schools will no longer require a five-day quarantine for those who test positive for COVID, according to new guidance issued to principals and posted online Monday.

Educators across the five boroughs have been eagerly awaiting an update for more than two weeks, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ended its pandemic-era guidance that urged individuals who tested positive for COVID to isolate for at least five days.

Since March 1, the federal agency has instructed people to remain at home until their symptoms improve and they have not had a fever for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication. The CDC still advises people to take precautions over the following five days, including wearing a mask, social distancing, and testing.

Education Department policy directs those experiencing COVID symptoms to isolate themselves from others and get tested. Like the CDC, the city now recommends students and staff stay home until symptoms have improved and they’re fever free for 24 hours without the aid of medication. The department also urges students and staff to wear a mask and take other precautions for five days after returning to school.

For those who test positive for the virus but exhibit no symptoms, “there is no need to stay home, but precautions outlined in the updated guidelines should be taken upon return to school,” according to the email sent to principals.

The new policy for schools also matches the city’s Health Department guidelines.

The elimination of a minimum isolation period is the latest in a series of changes that have loosened COVID-related restrictions in schools — as federal and city health authorities have moved to treat the virus more like the flu and other common respiratory infections. Last spring, Mayor Eric Adams announced that proof of vaccination against the virus would no longer be required for city employees and school visitors. And schools previously sunsetted masking requirements, vaccine mandates for student athletes and prom attendees, as well as daily health screenings and in-school COVID testing for students and staff.

The city’s public schools will continue to provide COVID tests in school upon request, according to the email sent to principals. (As of this month, the federal government has ended its free COVID test distribution program, and the city’s public libraries are no longer distributing free tests.)

Schools staff will still be able to take up to 10 days off for COVID-related absences without dipping into their sick days this year, according to the United Federation of Teachers, which emailed members about the updated guidance Monday evening.

COVID cases have fallen steadily since mid-January, after the city saw an uptick in cases over the holidays. As of March 14, there were about 22 cases per 100,000 people, according to New York City’s daily average of the last seven days from the Health Department. That was down slightly from the week before and had fallen from roughly 87 cases per 100,000 people in September.

Though the city’s Health Department tracks cases by age group, the spread of the virus is no longer publicly reported by school. In September, the city’s Education Department scrapped a map tracking the daily number of cases among students and staffers across schools.

The city’s Education and Health departments did not respond to multiple requests for the city’s COVID guidance for schools in recent weeks.

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Nonprofits are collaborating with the state to meet Michigan’s universal pre-K goal

2024-03-18T21:11:17+00:00

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s goal to make preschool free and available to all families is a big task.

The biggest hurdles for the state to overcome are shortages of qualified staff and too few affordable, quality child care spots for 4-year-olds.

To create a universal prekindergarten program, the governor plans to improve pay for early childhood educators, create affordable pathways for future teachers to get credentials, and expand or open new child care centers.

Now, the state also plans to collaborate with nonprofit organizations, school districts, and colleges to address the issue.

“Any problem that’s this big requires all hands on deck,” said Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist Friday after a visit to a pre-K class in northwest Detroit. “We need a diversity of options to be made available to families. In order to provide that, we’re going to need a diversity of partners.”

Gilchrist visited Angels of Essence Day Care to have a roundtable discussion about expanding pre-K and child care with parents and early childhood educators. While there, he also read to a preschool class and helped the kids recite the colors of the rainbow.

Courtney Adams, whose son, Elijah, was in the class, said during the roundtable that she and her husband have to pay out-of-pocket for child care. She chose Angels of Essence because she felt it was a safe and affordable option.

“He comes home every day with something new,” she said of her son’s education. “He’s going into kindergarten in the fall, and I know he’s going to do great.”

About 40% of Michigan’s 4-year-olds currently do not attend preschool, according to the governor’s office.

Last year, Whitmer announced plans to make the state’s Great Start Readiness Program, or GSRP, available to all Michigan 4-year-olds. The program currently offers free pre-K to students from mostly low-income families.

Originally, Whitmer said she planned to expand GSRP to be offered universally by 2026. But in her State of the State address, the governor announced that she would accelerate those plans by two years.

During the 2021-22 school year, the program enrolled more than 35,000 4-year-olds, an increase of more than 9,000 students compared to the previous year, according to the most recently available data.

Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, right, reads to a preschool classroom on Friday at Angels of Essence Day Care in Detroit.

Gilchrist noted that Michigan’s early childhood educators are often underpaid. A 2022 report by the Michigan League For Public Policy, found that early childhood educators often live in poverty. The low wages force many workers to leave the profession, making it difficult for centers to retain full staffing.

“We have this challenge broadly with educators that for so long the profession has been utterly disrespected,” said Gilchrist. “One of the manifestations of that disrespect is that it’s woefully underpaid.”

Salaries for GSRP teachers have improved slightly in recent years, but were still 31% lower than salaries for K-12 teachers, according to the program’s 2021-22 report. GSRP teachers made a median annual salary of $43,094 that year, while associate teachers earned a median annual salary of $22,077.

Michigan gave $30 million in 2021 to support bonus pay for early childhood care and education staff to help stabilize centers during the upset of the pandemic. But those funds ran out in 2023.

“Certainly, we want to try to continue to make those gains more permanent,” said Gilchrist of the additional funds for salaries.

Nonprofits have already had success widening the K-12 teacher pipeline in the state. Talent Together, an initiative made up of nonprofits, regional superintendents, and other education leaders, has helped bring new educators to the field. The program has created grow-your-own programs for school support staff to become teachers, as well as apprenticeships, and other avenues of removing financial barriers for future teachers to become certified.

The Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative, a nonprofit that is already part of the Talent Together program, recently announced it is applying for a grant from the state’s Office of Labor and Economic Opportunity to expand registered apprenticeships for early childhood center leaders and teachers.

“The registered apprenticeship model helps create an environment where there are processes, a clear training regime, and all the right partners at the table to inform what early childhood learning looks like,” said Jack Elsey, founder of the MEWI.

Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency, Montcalm Area Intermediate School District, Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency, the Early Childhood Investment Corporation, and the Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation are collaborating with the nonprofit on the effort.

“We recognize as a whole in the state, there is a gap,” said Sophia Lafayette-Lause, executive director of early childhood at Wayne RESA, about collaboration to recruit and retain more pre-K teachers. “Supporting those efforts is critical.”

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools chancellor hints at reversal of hundreds of millions in preschool cuts

2024-03-18T21:11:10+00:00

New York City Mayor Eric Adams could soon reverse a major budget cut to early childhood education, schools Chancellor David Banks hinted Monday.

Adams previously announced $170 million in cuts from city funding to free early childhood education programs effective next fiscal year as part of sweeping citywide cuts in November and January.

On top of that cut from the city’s coffers, prekindergarten programs are due to lose one-time federal pandemic aid that expires this summer. Roughly $92 million in federal aid is going toward supporting this year’s 3-K program for the city’s 3-year-olds, and another $90 million is helping pay for special education programs for preschoolers.

The city is facing a total “fiscal cliff” of nearly $1 billion next year, and advocates have been sounding the alarm for months on the need to come up with new funding to replace those disappearing federal dollars.

At a City Council budget hearing Monday, Banks called the city cuts “extremely hurtful to the entire enterprise of early childhood,” and said he was “fighting like heck to get these cuts restored.”

Though he didn’t commit to anything specific, Banks said, “I have great confidence in the coming weeks we will have really good news around early childhood.” He added, “The mayor’s office, City Hall, feels the same way.”

Asked later in the hearing by Council member Jennifer Gutiérrez (D-Brooklyn) which specific funding streams he’s fighting to get restored, Banks named the $170 million city cut. He also cited the expiring $92 million in federal funding for 3-K this year. Deputy Chancellor Emma Vadehra mentioned the $90 million in federal money for preschool special education seats that will dry up after this year.

The early childhood cuts, if reversed, would be the latest item slashed by Adams in recent months to get restored thanks to what city officials describe as an improving budget picture.

Adams has also announced restorations of cuts to the police, fire, and sanitation departments, as well as a $10 million cut to community schools that partner with community organizations to provide extra support to families. More recently, the city promised to allocate additional funding to bring back popular food items that were cut from school cafeteria menus in February.

Adams had initially planned another round of city budget cuts in April, but canceled those cuts last month.

Critics of the cuts have long contended that they were never necessary in the first place, and that city officials were being overly pessimistic with their financial predictions to create more pressure on the federal government to boost funding for the city’s influx of migrants.

The cuts and subsequent reversals have created a whiplash that’s been disorienting even for seasoned budget watchers.

Early childhood education advocates have warned that the early education cuts could have devastating consequences and force the city to permanently close seats.

If the city comes up with money to replace the expiring federal money for 3-K and special education preschool programs, it would mark the city’s largest commitment yet to replace an education program at risk from the fiscal cliff.

So far, the city has only committed $80 million to keep Summer Rising, a free academic and recreational summer program, going this year. Promising to prop up 3-K and special education preschool funding after the federal aid expires would prevent significant cuts to seats and drastic pay cuts for preschool special education teachers.

Even if cuts are reversed, preschool program face challenges

City officials conceded Monday that some 600 preschoolers with disabilities are still languishing without adequate preschool seats, despite federal legal mandates and the city’s own promise to get every child a seat.

And even before this year, Adams had already curtailed former Mayor de Blasio’s plans to aggressively expand the city’s free 3-K program to make it universal. De Blasio’s vision was largely funded with one-time federal pandemic aid, raising questions about its sustainability, and when Adams took office, he seemed to be hobbling the program. Program providers complained of rising payment delays and lackluster outreach from city officials.

Adams administration officials have contended that they’ve simply been right-sizing the program, and that they still plan to be able to offer a 3-K seat to any family that wants one. They have also argued that the existing seats aren’t properly distributed, with some neighborhoods seeing lots of open seats, while others have much more demand than supply.

Deputy Chancellor Kara Ahmed, who oversees early childhood education, said the city has cut roughly 8,000 seats that weren’t being used and redistributed 7,000 to other programs to parts of the city where they’re more likely to be filled.

Making matters more complicated, officials said Monday they’re still waiting on the results of a $760,000 study commissioned more than a year ago from the consulting company Accenture mapping out the city’s preschool seat needs. Banks said he expects the Accenture report in early April.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Long-awaited FAFSA fix means students from immigrant families can finally finish aid applications

2024-03-18T20:41:17+00:00

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Many students breathed a sigh of relief last week when federal education officials announced critical fixes to the federal application for financial aid that allows parents without Social Security numbers to contribute information to the form.

The change means tens of thousands of U.S. citizen students and others who are eligible for federal financial aid can finally complete their FAFSAs. But it also leaves families and college counselors scrambling to get through the process months after other students. And some families are still encountering problems.

“It can be very discouraging for students and families who feel like they’re doing all the right things and yet are still coming up against barriers,” said Amanda Seider, who oversees the Massachusetts branch of the college access group OneGoal.

Chalkbeat reported in January that a technical glitch had blocked students with undocumented parents from completing their financial aid applications for over two months. That left many educators and college access groups worried that students who already face higher barriers to college would be deterred by the delays — piled on top of an already difficult rollout of the new, supposedly easier FAFSA. Some colleges and scholarships award aid on a first-come, first-served basis, so students who apply later are at a disadvantage.

During that time, students were left to navigate a confusing array of options, including whether they should just sit tight and wait for a fix, or try a partial workaround that could put them at a higher risk of making a mistake on their application or would require them to come back and fill out more paperwork later.

And there are still outstanding issues. As federal officials put the new fix in place, they uncovered two more issues affecting the same group of students that still need to be resolved.

That means parents without Social Security numbers will have to enter their financial information manually, instead of having it pulled directly from the IRS. And in some cases — when a parent enters a name or address that doesn’t exactly match what their child put down, for example — parents are still getting error messages that block them from filling out the form. Federal officials said last week they would work to fix the issue “in the coming days.”

Federal officials estimated that around 2% of financial aid applicants were affected by the original Social Security number glitch, which would equate to hundreds of thousands of students in a typical year.

The issue caught the attention of dozens of Democratic House members, who sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona urging the department to fix the problem quickly. In a press release issued last week, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman of California said the glitch was a “completely unacceptable error” that had caused “fear, stress, and missed opportunities for many kids across my district and the country.”

“I hope to see the Department take the steps necessary to ensure issues like this never arise again,” Huffman said.

The rollout of the new FAFSA has been riddled with problems and delays. Education department officials have blamed insufficient funding and significant technical challenges in updating old systems. Republicans have accused the administration of being distracted by dealing with student loan forgiveness. Outside observers have said all these factors and more played a role, according to news reports.

FAFSA applications are down 33% compared with this time last year, according to federal data tracked by the National College Attainment Network.

In the meantime, many colleges have pushed back deadlines as they wait for student financial information that will help them assemble aid packages. And families are waiting.

Now, college counselors and advisers say they’re working to make sure students know what to do if they continue to encounter glitches. They’re also trying to keep students’ spirits up and getting them ready to compare their financial aid and acceptance packages when they come in.

“The most important thing we can do is to share information about how to go about entering information manually, how to make sure that as they are completing those steps that it requires a lot of precision,” Seider said. “We really want to make sure that students and families are being proactive, and not experiencing this as their shortcoming, but rather saying ‘Hey, this system has been a little confusing, we need some help with it.’”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s budget plan leaves out extra money for schools to help migrant students

2024-03-18T19:28:29+00:00

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Illinois lawmakers and education advocates say Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed budget does not recommend enough money for schools to help newly arrived migrant students.

Pritzker’s budget proposal in February did not include an additional $35 million to support migrant students that the Illinois State Board of Education had requested in the budget proposal it submitted in January.

State Rep. Fred Crespo, a Democrat representing suburbs northwest of Chicago, has filed a pair of bills — House Bill 2822 and House Bill 3991— that would allow the Illinois State Board of Education to create a $35 million New Arrival Grant program that would distribute funding to school districts to support migrant students.

Crespo said he plans to amend the legislation to request $150 million for the grant program.

Both bills are currently in committees in the House.

A spokesperson for Pritzker said in a statement to Chalkbeat that the governor’s priority is to ensure newly arrived migrant families have shelter, food, and a path to independence. The governor and Cook County officials pledged $250 million for shelter, health care, and wraparound services in February

“Schools are also able to access federal funding for many new arrived students under the federal McKinney Vento law to support homeless services,” said the governor’s office. “The Governor also proposed a $350 million increase in K-12 funding and new students will be incorporated into funding formulas at their districts moving forward.”

Since 2017, Illinois has distributed funding to K-12 public schools through a formula that takes into account need, such as how many low-income students, English language learners, or students with disabilities are enrolled.

Erika Méndez, director of P-12 education policy and advocacy at the Latino Policy Forum, said the state’s evidence-based funding formula to fund K-12 public schools is not enough to keep up with the number of migrant students entering and leaving school districts.

“When you’re thinking about funding distribution, they use enrollment data which doesn’t capture all of the transiency that happens in a school year when you’re receiving newcomers or they’re leaving your school districts,” said Méndez.

Méndez said migrant families are resettling in communities around the state and schools need money to reduce class sizes, address staffing shortages, and fix infrastructure of schools.

Chicago Public Schools has said it does not collect information on the immigration status of students. But overall enrollment in the district has climbed since the start of the school year and nearly 7,000 more students have been identified as English language learners, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of mid-year enrollment data from the district. English language learners are not all new arrivals.

School districts across the state have also seen an increase in English language learner enrollment over the last five years, moving from 12.1% of the state’s total enrollment in 2019 to 14.6% in 2023, according to the state report card. In October, state officials said they could not say how many students are migrants from Latin America or refugee students from Ukraine or Afghanistan.

Teachers have said schools need more support to help students who are in need of housing, clothing, and food, as well as more staff who can speak Spanish.

The City of Chicago has reported over 37,000 asylum-seekers have arrived in the city as of March 14, 2024. The city’s dashboard doesn’t specify how many of those new arrivals are of school age.

Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and one of the architects of the state’s evidence-based funding formula, said the funding formula will adjust for the needs of the school based on the schools overall enrollment and the enrollment of students from low-income households, English learners, and students with disabilities. But it depends on the tier of the school.

Tiers determine the level of need for state funding. School districts that fall in Tier 1 or 2 are higher on the priority list for state funding and receive more funding, while Tiers 3 and 4 receive a smaller amount of state dollars.

“CPS schools are in Tier 2,” said Martire. “They are not going to get the full benefit of the support of the enhanced investment that a Tier 1 district would get.”

Chicago Public Schools moved down from Tier 1 to Tier 2 in 2022 after the district saw a loss of low-income students but an increase in property tax base. In 2022 and 2023, the district saw slightly less new money from the state. Since the change in tiers, CPS officials have raised concerns about the decrease in state funding and what it means for the district.

District officials recently said in a statement to Chalkbeat that they appreciate the governor’s continued commitment to put new money into the state’s evidence-based funding formula, but the model has fallen short, leaving CPS about $1.1 billion short of its “adequacy target.”

A report from the Center of Tax and Budget accountability found last year that the evidence-based funding formula is working to reduce funding gaps between wealthier and underfunded districts and increase funding for districts serving more students of color and those from low-income families.

The state’s final budget won’t be finalized until the end of the spring legislative session in late May.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

NYC chancellor said he’d resign without mayoral control. His threat could add fuel to critics.

2024-03-15T20:20:00+00:00

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New York City schools Chancellor David Banks made headlines this week saying he had “no interest” in continuing in his role if state lawmakers enact sweeping changes to the city’s school governance structure.

That statement, some observers say, is likely to harm his cause.

For months, Banks has served as an ardent defender of the polarizing mayoral control system, which centralizes power over the city’s schools in the hands of Mayor Eric Adams and is set to expire on June 30.

The comments represent an escalation of the chancellor’s rhetoric on mayoral control. They come just weeks before the expected March 31 release of a state Education Department report on the city’s current school governance structure that Albany lawmakers say will help inform if and how they extend mayoral control.

Earlier this week, state legislators chose not to include an extension of mayoral control in their budget proposals — an initial rejection of the four-year extension sought by Gov. Kathy Hochul. Lawmakers have argued the city’s school governance structure should be determined outside of budget negotiations.

The school governance structure has been regularly extended over the past two decades and has largely relied on the mayor’s power to choose a schools chancellor and appoint a majority of members to the Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, a city board that votes on major policy proposals and contracts.

In prior years, lawmakers have tweaked mayoral control to weaken the mayor’s grip on the PEP. In 2022, for example, they adjusted the system so that PEP members could no longer be removed for voting against their appointer’s wishes, making it harder to remove a panelist for opposing proposals from City Hall. At the same time, the board also expanded from 15 to 23 members, with the mayor appointing 13 of them and retaining the majority.

But recent months have seen repeated calls from critics of the school governance structure to go a step further and remove the mayor’s ability to appoint a majority of members.

On Thursday, Banks told reporters that such a change would render his position ineffective.

“If you don’t have the majority of the vote, you don’t have the power, because that means now you have to negotiate for every vote that you’re trying to do,” he said. “That’s politics. I do not think that that would be good for the school system. I certainly did not sign up for that.”

Banks added he had “no interest in serving as a chancellor in a system where you don’t really have the authority to make real decisions.”

Observers expressed surprise at the chancellor’s comments, noting they could very well fuel critics who argue the system excludes community voices.

“His reasoning shot himself and the mayor in the foot, regarding the assumption of autocratic rule,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. “He gave opponents of mayoral control good reason for calling out the lack of openness to other points of view.”

Banks opens himself to criticism from opponents

Banks voiced “the quiet part out loud,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of politics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

“What usually attracts superintendents or chancellors into these roles under mayoral control is, of course, the autonomy — the ability to make sweeping reforms without a lot of political barriers,” he said. “But you still see these administrative figures give lip service to the idea of connecting with communities and making reforms that are rooted in understanding the needs of kids across a district.”

In his two years at the helm of the nation’s largest school system, Banks has staked his legacy on overhauling the city’s approach to literacy, requiring all elementary schools use one of three curriculums. His curriculum mandates have also reached prekindergarten and ninth grade algebra and will likely continue to expand.

To Bloomfield, the Thursday comments suggested that Banks “believes the knee jerk reaction of non-mayoral appointees would be in opposition” to proposals from the chancellor.

“The idea that he doesn’t think he could convince a majority of the PEP — no matter how constituted — to buy into his leadership is shocking,” he said.

Some members of the PEP also felt blindsided by the chancellor’s comments.

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a PEP member appointed by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, said she’s had productive conversations with Banks, though they don’t always agree. Salas-Ramirez added he should know that she and the other non-mayoral appointees are working with the city’s Education Department to improve its schools.

“What do I believe? Do I believe in the man that sits down and talks to me, or do I believe this person that’s showing up at press conferences and saying the opposite?” she said. “I’m still a little perplexed, and wondering how he believes that after hearing comments like that we can continue to genuinely engage with each other as the state is having these conversations around mayoral control.”

Banks’ comments suggest fears over mayoral control’s future

To Collins, the comments signal the chancellor feels “a high degree of uncertainty” over the fate of mayoral control.

And though Bloomfield does not expect the comments from Banks to significantly influence the decision by lawmakers, he noted they still hurt the case for renewal.

“It’s apparent from his extreme rhetoric that he sees mayoral control in danger,” he said. “But he did the effort for extension a disservice by holding his own chancellorship hostage.”

Meanwhile, Adams doubled down on the chancellor’s opposition to reforming mayoral control during an interview on PIX11 on Friday.

“I am not going to have a pseudo mayoral control. I want to be held accountable for improving our educational system,” he said. “That’s what the chancellor wants. ... Let us continue the good work that we are doing. Don’t let politics get in the way of our pupils.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago student homelessness is rising. Could a tax change backed by the mayor help fix that?

2024-03-14T19:55:36+00:00

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Derrianna Ford lived with her grandmother on Chicago’s north side growing up, but when the older woman lost her home, Ford and her siblings had to relocate to the south side for about a year.

They moved from the city’s West Ridge neighborhood to the South Side during her freshman year at Mather High School. Ford said she had to wake up at 4 a.m., take a bus to the southernmost stop on Chicago’s Red Line, ride almost the entire 26-mile route north, and then get on another bus in order to get to school by 8 a.m.

During the week, she would occasionally stay with a friend closer to school to avoid the long commute.

“This is so normal to us,” Ford said. “You don’t see yourself as struggling because you’re used to it. You don’t see it as homelessness.”

These days, Ford, now 20, is searching for a place of her own. But she has another goal. She’s knocking on doors to help pass a ballot referendum in Chicago on March 19 that advocates say could put a real dent in reducing homelessness.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer and middle school teacher, promised in his education platform and transition plan to house the city’s homeless, with a focus on more than 20,000 students in Chicago Public Schools currently facing housing instability. In the last year, the number of CPS students in unstable housing situations — which can disrupt or derail students’ academic progress — has risen by roughly 50%.

To address that, Johnson and his allies are pushing to increase a real estate transfer tax on sales of property sales worth more than $1 million to generate an estimated $100 million annually to fund services for the homeless and affordable housing.

Some progressive groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union which helped propel Johnson to office, have been advocating to increase the city’s real estate transfer tax to help the homeless since Rahm Emanuel was mayor. The effort — dubbed Bring Chicago Home — is something Johnson emphasized often on the campaign trail last year.

“The people of Chicago voted for me because I said that I’m going to address homelessness,” Johnson said Wednesday. “Bring Chicago Home is an opportunity to address homelessness.”

A document obtained by Chalkbeat outlining Johnson’s first-term goals suggested his administration hopes to help house 10,000 students and their families.

But opponents of the initiative challenged the ballot question’s legality in the courts, even asking the Illinois Supreme Court to block the measure, which the court declined to do Wednesday. Still, some groups, including the nonpartisan budget watchdog Civic Federation, are concerned the mayor and City Council have not been specific enough about how the money would be used.

“This is the mayor’s signature item,” said Ald. Brendan Reilly, who represents much of downtown and opposes the referendum because it lacks specifics and could have unintended consequences on rental property and commercial real estate. “He’s put a lot of political capital into it and right now the Chicago electorate gets to give him a report card. I think this is as much about the policy as it is about a commentary on his agenda.”

Chicago Public Schools would not directly get any of the estimated $100 million in revenue that a change to the real estate transfer tax would generate. CPS officials did not comment on the ballot initiative, but said the district will continue to support homeless students and protect their rights under federal law.

More Chicago Public Schools students identified as homeless

The number of students in temporary living situations enrolled at Chicago Public Schools has hovered around 5% for at least the last decade — twice the national average. Recent data indicates the problem is getting more acute as the numbers climb.

District data shared with Chalkbeat from the end of February indicated 21,855 students currently enrolled at CPS were considered Students in Temporary Living Situations, or STLS. That’s up from more than 14,317 such students last February. CPS data includes any student categorized this way at any time during the school year, and once a student is marked as such, they keep that status for the remainder of the year.

The vast majority — around 16,000 students — are classified as “doubled up,” meaning they are living with another family temporarily, like Ford was while a freshman in high school.

But the number of CPS students listed as living in a shelter, hotel or motel, or living out of a car, park, or other public place more than tripled in the last year — from about 2,000 last February to nearly 8,000 as of Feb. 29. The jump has coincided with the ongoing influx of migrants arriving from the southern border.

Chicago grappled with students facing homelessness or housing instability long before the COVID pandemic and recent wave of migrants. A 2021 study from the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab analyzed nine years of district data between 2009 and 2018 and found that, over the course of their K-12 experience, about 13% of CPS students experienced housing instability.

The report noted that research shows homeless students come to school less often, have lower academic achievement, and are more likely to drop out. At the same time, school districts like CPS “have limited capacity to connect students to housing supports.”

Cook County Commissioner Tara Stamps, the daughter of a longtime housing activist, saw this “heartbreaking” reality up close during the more than two decades she spent as a classroom teacher, including working alongside Johnson at a school serving the Cabrini Green public housing complex.

One time, she said, a single mom of one of her students had no place to stay, so Stamps and the school’s security guard “called and called and called around” to help them find housing.

Stamps, who now also works for the Chicago Teachers Union, said past administrations have emphasized academic achievement and improving test scores without prioritizing the conditions students faced that affected those scores: “There is no [academic] progress … if a baby doesn’t know where they’re going to sleep at night, if they don’t know where they’re going to eat.”.

Federal law requires school districts to support students facing housing insecurity. Some districts also get money through competitive grants to support homeless students. Students identified as such are entitled to transportation, the right to enroll without a permanent address, and the right to continue attending the same school through the end of the academic year even if they move.

But few districts have been directly involved in finding families housing.

With the help of federal COVID money, some schools across the country have added staff to help families with housing, others have provided emergency hotel stays and even propped up shelters inside schools.

Alyssa Phillips, an education attorney with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which has been advocating for Bring Chicago Home for several years, said the city needs a consistent revenue stream to tackle homelessness, along with input about what works from people experiencing homelessness and service providers.

“I think the most important thing is having that continuous funding,” Phillips said.

Federal COVID money for homeless set to expire

During the COVID pandemic, housing instability rose across the country. Homeless students were disconnected from schools and districts struggled to identify how many students were entitled to additional support and resources.

Chicago Public Schools received about $10.1 million in federal pandemic aid to serve homeless students, as part of roughly $800 million distributed nationally to states and school districts.

The city and school district created a program to give $500 stipends to families in Students in Temporary Living Situations, using money from the initial 2020 wave of federal COVID relief dollars. It’s not clear how many families received the money, and district officials deferred to the city, which administered the program.

Ald. Maria Hadden, who represents Chicago’s north lakefront and is a supporter of the Bring Chicago Home initiative, said the city also used some of its share of federal COVID dollars to provide rental assistance to thousands of people. She recounted helping one family in her ward with a CPS student with epilepsy avoid an eviction because they were able to get six months of rental assistance.

But soon, federal COVID money is drying up. Expenditure data obtained by Chalkbeat shows most of the school district’s share of federal COVID money has been spent, primarily for school staff.

If the ballot initiative to raise the real estate transfer tax on property over a $1 million is approved, Hadden said, the city could revive, continue, or expand pandemic-era programs, like rental and mortgage assistance and rapid rehousing efforts for people living in tent encampments.

Mayor Brandon Johnson is greeted by supporters after he spoke while dozens rally for the Bring Chicago Home resolution outside the Thompson Center before a City Council meeting on Nov. 7, 2023.

Political ‘slush fund’ or nimble revenue stream?

Ford and others continue to knock on doors to garner support from voters who will ultimately decide whether Chicago should have a graduated real estate transfer tax.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union is gearing up for another round of contract negotiations with a mayor more amenable to their views than his two predecessors. During contract negotiations in 2019, the union pushed to include provisions around affordable housing. But then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the union contract was “not the appropriate place for the City to legislate its affordable housing policy.”

Leaked contract proposals for upcoming contract talks include two focused on affordable housing: mortgage and rental assistance for teachers, and a vocational program that would have students build affordable housing.

Whatever happens with the teachers union contract, Johnson is forging ahead with a plan to borrow $1.25 billion dollars to fund affordable housing and other development. On Wednesday, the mayor said he’ll soon name a new chief homelessness officer. And he directed the city’s Department of Family Support Services to work with CPS to match the district’s most vulnerable students with housing. The two agencies meet weekly, a spokesperson confirmed.

If voters approve the ballot initiative, the City Council would still need to pass an ordinance spelling out how to appropriate the revenue.

Reilly, the downtown alderman, said that “anyone who has a soul” cares about the homeless and wants to find solutions. But he worries that if the tax is approved, the revenue could quickly turn into a “slush fund” for political allies of whomever is mayor.

“There’s no guarantee that any of this money lands with helping the homeless people,” Reilly said. “It’s just going to be a big stack of money that a whole lot of people are gonna wanna fight over.”

Emma Tai, campaign director for the Bring Chicago Home Ballot Initiative, said the revenue would be legally dedicated to fund affordable housing and services for the homeless. A draft ordinance for implementing the change to the transfer tax would create a 15-member panel appointed by the mayor and approved by City Council to make recommendations annually based on the “most pressing needs.”

“The idea is for the funds to be nimble,” Tai said, noting that during the height of the pandemic, there was a critical need to provide housing to domestic violence victims, whereas now that pandemic-era eviction moratoriums have ended, there’s a need for emergency rental assistance. The idea is that the panel’s recommendations would take such shifts into account.

For young people like Derrianna Ford, who experienced housing insecurity as a student and is searching for an affordable apartment now, the issue boils down to one thing: “stability.”

This story has been updated to more accurately characterize Tai’s comments about how housing needs have shifted in Chicago.

Chalkbeat reporter Reema Amin contributed reporting.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Career exploration plays major role at Detroit’s Martin Luther King High School

2024-03-18T16:07:21+00:00

In Shedrick Ward’s science class Thursday morning, all eyes were on the eyeballs.

Four students hunched over the long table in front of them, each of them holding a cow’s eyeball in their gloved hands as they snipped off the fatty tissue surrounding it with a pair of scissors.

“We have talked about vision and sight, knowing that there’s two differences between them,” Ward said to the class. “You use your eyes for sight, you use your brain for vision. We want them to understand that they have to have a vision of themselves for tomorrow, just as they need sight in order to do the dissection today.”

Dissections are one of many things students are learning about anatomy in the science academy at Martin Luther King Senior High School in Detroit. The academy is a partnership between the school and NAF, an education nonprofit aimed at addressing students’ economic and social disparities by creating career pathways in high schools across the country.

The organization has 619 academies across 34 states and two territories. In Detroit Public Schools Community District, NAF operates 30 academies in 20 high schools such as Southeastern, Osborn and Cody. The academies focus on pathways in growing industries – engineering, health sciences, finance, hospitality and tourism, and information technology. At King, the school offers three specialized programs: Mathematics, Science and Technology, the Center for International Studies and Commerce, and College Preparatory Liberal Arts.

Sue Carnell, deputy superintendent for the Michigan Department of Education, and NAF CEO Lisa Dughi toured the learning academies at King and Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men last Thursday.

Dughi said she visited the two schools to get an inside look into some of the academies so that NAF can continue to replicate the initiative at other schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District.

“One of the things that we see so clearly in this is that this is truly changing how differently students are thinking about their futures and they get these real-world experiences while they’re in high school,” she said. “And so, getting to see that in action really does change for us how we think about it and how we make sure that we’re continuing to provide those opportunities for students.”

Ward, who has been teaching for 50 years, said he continues to remain in the classroom because it’s important to have people like himself who love their craft involved with youth.

“I thought, if I walk away, there is no replacement,” he said. “There is no one, doing at this level, integrating all the sciences…the real world does not have a separate partition for each of these content areas. It’s just science. It’s just problem-solving.”

One of the students handling the eyeballs was K’Lynn Clemons. This is the first year the 11th grader has been a part of the health sciences academy. Clemons, 16, said Ward is different from other science teachers she’s had.

“Any other science class I had we never did anything that Dr. Ward does, so it’s a nice experience,” she said.

Finding their path

King Principal Damian Perry said kids can begin exploring careers in the ninth grade, where they can try out each of the school’s pathways driving the first semester. By the second semester, students should select which pathway they want to study. Then for the next three years, students’ electives will focus on those pathways.

Perry said this year will mark the first graduating for kids in the learning academies.

As a 1994 King alumnus, Perry said he’s glad kids have more exposure to careers than he did when he was a student.

“Allowing kids to see firsthand experiences instead of just reading a book … are just priceless. That is the value of CTE (career and technical education). It also excites the students because this is what they want to do. So what better way to demonstrate that by ‘This what I like to do, this what I’m passionate about.’”

Meanwhile, Carnell said the school visits allowed her to see the passion students have to explore careers that may become a part of their futures.

“I really liked the mentorship that I saw of people wrapping their arms around those students, giving them wraparound support, to help them see their potential to move forward,” she said. “That was amazing.”

Beyond the game

The tour also included looking at King’s M3 pathway, which focuses on sports management, medicine, and marketing. Dan Wolford, the lead teacher for the pathway, said the program offers students a chance to explore careers in the sports industry beyond being an athlete. The school has been able to form partnerships with Detroit City FC, the Detroit Tigers, and University of Michigan’s School of Kinesiology and School of Information.

In addition, the sports pathway offers a mentorship program with the Detroit Pistons called Beyond the Baseline. Over five months, students are mentored by Pistons staff where they learn about careers in sports management and professional development, Wolford said. Interns were also responsible for creating an event with a $25,000 budget that utilized one of the Pistons’ four pillars: mentoring, equality, education, and health and wellness. During a presentation, five students revealed they will be hosting an educational event in June at Belle Isle.

Hillery Marks, 16, said it didn’t take too long for her and her classmates to create the event, which will feature games, food sponsored by Little Caesars, and a raffle for two scholarships. The hardest part was figuring out a way for them to make education fun for kids, she said.

The high school junior said she has been a part of the academy for two years and has enjoyed learning different aspects of the sports industry, like management and sports media. Marks plans to attend an HBCU after high school and study business.

“I definitely think I’m going to go the business route because I feel like that fits me better,” she said. “I feel like I want to go into a sports job eventually. I just don’t know which one yet.”

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Illinois could switch from the SAT to the ACT next school year

2024-03-14T17:04:03+00:00

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Next year, Illinois high school juniors could take the ACT instead of the SAT as the federally-mandated state test. The Illinois State Board of Education has started the process of awarding a three-year, $53 million contract to ACT Inc.

The College Board’s contract to administer the SAT for 11th graders and PSAT for ninth and 10th graders is set to expire June 30. The state board is required by federal law to administer accountability assessments to high school students. State law says that exam must be a nationally recognized college entrance exam like the SAT or ACT and must be awarded through a competitive procurement process. All Illinois public high school students must take a college entrance exam in order to receive their high school diploma.

The ACT would be administered in school buildings starting with the school year 2024-25, but students will still be able to take the SAT if they want to pay for it.

Illinois’ plan to switch tests comes at a time when the SAT is going fully digital and will take two hours instead of three. (The ACT is three hours). The new SAT will also be adaptive, with test questions that adjust in difficulty based on how students respond to previous questions.

While around 2,000 schools nationwide have become test optional or test free, elite universities like Yale, Brown, and M.I.T have backtracked and reinstated standardized tests as an admission requirement.

Illinois used the ACT for 15 years before the state board switched to the SAT in 2016. Since then, the state board has renewed the College Board’s contract several times. In 2016 and 2018, ACT Inc. protested the state’s College Board contract without success.

The new contract says that ACT Inc. will provide an assessment to ninth, 10th and 11th graders that aligns with the Illinois Learning Standards in English and math. The next step in the process is for certain parties to protest the bid. In the past, when the College Board was awarded a contract, ACT Inc. protested it. The board has not said when it will formally approve the contract.

A spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools said in an email to Chalkbeat that “CPS urges that if ISBE makes a change in the high school accountability assessment selection, they allow at least a year transition period before any new assessment becomes mandatory to ensure a smooth transition for our students.”

The Chicago Board of Education renewed a three-year contract with College Board in April 2023 and a spokesperson for the district said it plans to continue administering the PSAT and SAT until at least 2026.

Matthew Raimondi, who works at district U-46 in Elgin, asked the board on Wednesday morning at their monthly meeting not to move forward with contracting with ACT Inc. because he says the exam has not changed for years and does not align with the state’s learning standards.

“That high school assessment is ultimately going to guide how teachers teach. Teachers are going to teach to the test that you select,” said Raimondi. “I urge you as board members to make sure you make the best decision to move Illinois forward and not back to a test from the last century.”

State Superintendent Tony Sanders wrote in a weekly message Tuesday that the state board will ensure that assessments are in line with the board’s learning standards and that ISBE will provide schools with “ample support.”

Cassie Creswell, executive director of Illinois for Public Families, says that no matter what tests the state switches to, she wants to protect Illinois’ students from having their data sold to other institutions.

Creswell urged board members on Wednesday to stop allowing testing agencies to sell student data that they collected through their exams. Creswell’s group recently sent a letter to state Attorney General Kwame Raoul asking his office to enforce the state’s student data privacy law, the Illinois Student Online Privacy Protection Act.

“Any new contract signed with the College Board or ACT Inc. should be clear that data sales are illegal and will no longer be tolerated,” Creswell said. “There is no exception in the student data privacy law for asking students or parents permission for sales. Licensing is actually the same as selling or renting data.” Creswell said.

In February 2024, the New York attorney general announced that the College Board is set to pay $750,000 in a settlement for sharing and selling student data it collected through the SAT, PSAT, and Advanced Placement tests.

Newark candidates discuss diversity, board policies, and state aid at NAACP school board forum

2024-03-15T21:24:18+00:00

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Parent engagement, curriculum, and school equity dominated a school board candidate forum for New Jersey’s largest district.

During the two-hour forum, candidates answered questions about which Newark Public Schools policies they would revise or enact, strategies to tackle academic learning loss, and how they would use the record-high state aid proposed in Gov. Phil Murphy’s budget, among other questions.

The event, organized by the Newark branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, began with opening statements and questions from moderators Kaleena Berryman, the executive director of the Newark Youth Career Pathways program, and Ali McBride Jr., chair of the civic engagement committee of the Newark NAACP. Toward the end of the event, a small group of residents disrupted the evening and objected to the lack of community questions. Police arrived to ease tensions between the group and volunteer organizers.

Ten candidates are running for four seats, including one who is running for an unfinished one-year term left by former board president Asia Norton. Four are incumbents, four have run before, and two are newcomers. Returning candidate Jimmie White was not at Thursday’s forum.

Candidates discuss district policies, curriculum, diversity

The first question the moderator asked was about which district policies the candidates would revise.

Latoya Jackson, a former beauty salon owner turned full-time community advocate and two-time school board candidate, said she wants an open-door policy for parents who want to visit their children at school. Her son has a disability, and she said she had sometimes been denied access to his school.

Returning candidate Che J.T. Colter is running alongside newcomer Muta El-Amin on the “It Takes a Village” slate, a duo of parents and advocates. Colter, the father of a ninth grader, wants to focus on improving program and instruction policies that impact student learning. He wants more intervention for students struggling in math and reading.

Sheila Montague, a returning candidate and educator, pointed to third-grade scores on the state’s English language arts test that showed only 19% of public school third-graders reached proficiency levels for the second year in a row. She said she wants to address the issue and incorporate more phonics-based learning into the curriculum. Last fall, the district introduced new approaches to teaching phonics and implemented explicit writing strategies.

First-time candidate Debra Salters, who ran in the 2021 general election for New Jersey General Assembly District 29 and works with Newark teens, said she would revise the district’s harassment, intimidation, and bullying policy to encompass racial harassment and equity. She referred to student claims of racist harassment at the Newark School of Global Studies that raised questions about how the district handled those allegations.

Co-vice president Dawn Haynes is one of the longest-serving board members and is running for reelection along with Vereliz Santana and newly appointed board members Helena Vinhas and Kanileah Anderson on the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” slate.

Haynes also raised concerns about the district’s equity policy and school diversity issues that “keep coming up.” She also noted the school board’s work to rebuild programs and curriculums that were removed while the district was under state control. The state returned local control to the Newark district in 2020.

“Let’s not forget that the state had control of our schools for 25 years. We are building and driving the plane at the same time,” added Haynes during the forum, which was held at The Clubhouse community center in the Central Ward.

Newark students raise questions about student advocacy

Science Park High School juniors Nathaniel Esubonteng and Breanna Campbell each posed one question to the candidates during the forum. The Newark city council unanimously approved an ordinance in January to lower the voting age to 16 for school board elections, but students won’t be voting this April because of state and county delays in getting voter registration machines ready.

Esubonteng and Campbell asked candidates what inspired them to run and how they would learn about student needs. Anderson, who has a daughter with a disability and was recently appointed to the board in January, said she wants to see all high school student government association presidents convene regularly to discuss the biggest student problems and present them to board members.

El-Amin, a newcomer running with Colter, said he was inspired to run after he found out his children were failing math and English language arts last year. He runs the community center at Bradley Court, a public housing complex that he said needs more city services, youth, and community engagement.

“This triggered an alarm system that went off in my head. I as a father have to do something. I as a community advocate have to do something,” said El-Amin, who joined the Newark Community Street Team’s safe passage to schools initiative to help city teens.

Santana, who is running for reelection, said the state legislature should revise the funding formula used to calculate aid to school districts and account for inflation and cost of living. Although the district is slated to get a record-high $1.25 billion in aid for next school year, those dollars “are just going to supplant what federal dollars have been funding,” Santana added.

Federal COVID relief funds sent to school districts are set to expire this fall, and those dollars have been funding the district’s academic programs such as after-school and summer programs, Saturday school, and tutoring, Santana said.

During the forum, returning and new candidates also expressed their concern about the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” slate, which garners support from state and local leaders like Mayor Ras Baraka and Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz every year. The slate has won every election since 2016. Seven current board members were part of that slate.

Vinhas, who is of Portuguese descent and the mother of two public school students, said she would advocate for more services and resources for English language learners and immigrant families trying to navigate the public school system.

Montague wants to involve parents in board decisions about school curriculums and policies. She also wants to see new members on the school board who are not backed by the mayoral slate that has historically won every election since 2016.

“The most important issue is that we remove politics from the education of our children,” Montague added.

The forum was disrupted when a small group of residents arrived at the end of Haynes’ closing remarks. One resident, who claimed he was the chairman of the new Black power movement in Newark, asked why community residents could not ask candidates a question. McBride tried to address the concerns, but the conversation became volatile. After the police arrived to calm those in the audience, the remaining candidates gave their closing remarks.

NAACP Newark president Deborah Smith Gregory addressed the crowd and said residents were not given an opportunity to ask questions because the event was designed to allow the community to hear from the candidates.

City residents can vote in person on April 16 at their designated polling location or vote by mail if they register for that option seven days before the election. Ballots must be postmarked no later than April 16 and received by the Essex County Board of Elections no later than six days after polls close on election day.

Residents can watch the NAACP Newark candidate forum in full on the organization’s Facebook page.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia teachers say affinity groups are capable of ‘rewriting the structure of education’

2024-03-18T11:00:00+00:00

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Can affinity groups for teachers of color help give Philadelphia a stronger, more diverse, and more stable teaching workforce? One education group is putting time and energy behind its belief that they can.

Teach Plus Pennsylvania, the state affiliate of a national nonprofit that trains teachers to advocate for policy change, launched a Philadelphia affinity group network this year that they say will provide teachers with a sense of community, belonging, and understanding in an effort to “diversify and strengthen Philadelphia’s educator workforce.”

Philadelphia public school teachers of color from traditional public or charter schools can join one of 21 teacher-led groups meeting in classrooms, coffeeshops, and other locations across the city.

The goal is to create “safe, culturally affirming spaces where educators of color can develop personal and professional connections that ultimately support and empower them and encourage them to stay in the profession,” said Andrea Terrero Gabbadon, an expert on teacher retention and an education leadership coach with Teach Plus Pennsylvania.

Any effort to tackle systemic labor force issues in Philadelphia schools faces an uphill climb. In 2022, teacher attrition rates in the city reached their highest levels since 2018, with 13% of traditional public school teachers and 23% of charter school teachers leaving the classroom, according to research by Ed Fuller at Penn State’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy Analysis. Fuller found that the highest attrition rates were for early-career teachers with up to five years of experience.

Additionally, the share of teachers of color in Philadelphia is low compared to the student body makeup, and nationwide, they are leaving the profession at growing rates. Black students in Philly also say they want more teachers who look like them.

The extent to which affinity groups can help keep teachers on the job at scale is still unknown. Teachers leave the field for a variety of reasons, from low salaries to big workloads and a lack of support, that such groups might not be able to address. And affinity groups that are racially exclusive and officially backed by schools can be controversial and present legal issues, although the Philadelphia district is not involved in or sponsoring the effort by Teach Plus.

Laura Boyce, executive director of Teach Plus Pennsylvania, said affinity groups like these are showing early promise in other states such as Illinois. In a 2021 report on how Philadelphia could improve its recruitment and retention of teachers of color, Teach Plus and the Center for Black Educator Development recommended that they have “access to mentoring and affinity groups.”

“It’s an experiment to see, can we actually improve retention in a measurable way for the facilitators and participants in these groups and hopefully create an environment where they feel seen and valued, heard, affirmed, and supported to continue in this work?” Boyce said.

And Terrero Gabbadon said the new Philadelphia affinity groups are “part of a larger strategy” to tackle “systemic issues” that push teachers of color out of the profession.

The Philadelphia district already offers similar racial affinity groups, but they’re only for principals and assistant principals. Brandon Cummings, the district’s deputy chief of leadership development, said the district has been engaging in these group discussion sessions — which they call “think tanks” — for four years, in addition to other equity-centered initiatives.

Cummings said his office handles the logistics of finding locations, getting food, and organizing virtual meetings if needed, but that otherwise, the district doesn’t “intrude or in any way insert ourselves” into the groups’ activities. He said the district wants the people in the groups to direct their own conversations.

Morgan Craig-Williams, a kindergarten teacher at General George A. McCall School and a facilitator of the Black educators affinity group, said having a space that does not involve administrators or “anyone who will give any punitive action or higher ups in the school district” is crucial to their success.

Craig-Williams, who is in her ninth year of teaching, added that “teacher burnout is very real” in the city.

Creating community but also pushing for change

Stephanie Felder teaches African American History at Tacony Academy Charter High School and is the facilitator of the mid-career African American educator affinity group. She said the program has been “life giving.”

Though many of her peers are leaving the profession, Felder said she’s already made “a solid decision to stay.”

For her, the affinity group discussions have been “more about ‘how can we at this stage in our careers, help make it better for those coming up behind us. Help make it better for the students that we serve, and help make education across the board more than what we are seeing right now.’”

The event, "Convening of the Philadelphia Affinity Group Network for Public Classroom Teachers" on Thurs., Feb. 29, 2024 at. Cristo Rey High School in Philadelphia, PA.

Cristina Gutierrez, a bilingual educator at Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington, facilitates a group of Latino and dual-language teachers of color. She said often, people get emotional in group settings when they talk about an experience in the classroom or the difficulty of advocating for bilingual education “and feeling like you’re the only one” going through it.

“We don’t have a cohesive system with bilingual education in Philadelphia,” she said.

Gutierrez said she wanted to create a space for multilingual educators to come together and discuss the challenges they face “and let our voices be heard.” But it’s about more than just talking about struggles, she said.

“It’s like the thing that you need, but you don’t know you need,” she said. “Yes, we create community, but we could also create a lot of change.”

Boyce said the aim is not to have gripe sessions or tell teachers of color to “go figure it out and solve it yourselves” but rather to develop “two-way communication and being able to elevate … some concerns and systemic solutions and really all learn from this work.”

Through her group, Craig-Williams connected with an educator who has been in the classroom for nearly 25 years. The two women text daily, she said, and swap tips about how to navigate school culture and deal with difficult days.

“She was a complete stranger before we set up these affinity groups,” Craig-Williams said. “Now, that’s a connection that I’ll probably keep forever.”

The moments she’s shared with her group members feels like the start of something bigger.

“These affinity groups are the beginning of us coming together and rewriting the structure of education,” she said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Inside a Colorado bill to provide extra funding to school districts serving migrant students

2024-03-16T00:37:32+00:00

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All Colorado school districts that have enrolled any migrant students since the Oct. 1 school funding cutoff date would get extra money — between $15,000 and $750,000 per district — under a draft bill approved unanimously on Friday by the powerful Joint Budget Committee.

But districts where the new arrivals have caused a net increase in students — meaning the district has more students now than on Oct. 1 — would get the most extra money. Those districts could get as much as an additional $4,500 for every newly arrived student.

The bill allocates $24 million to be distributed by May 31 to districts that have enrolled what it calls “new arrival students,” or students who moved to the United States less than a year ago, are not proficient in English, and are attending a U.S. school for the first time.

The city of Denver alone has served more than 39,000 new arrivals from Venezuela and other South American countries since it began keeping track more than a year ago, including families with children who have enrolled in public schools.

The details of how the $24 million would be doled out are somewhat complicated. First, there is a tiered system of lump sum payments to school districts based on the number of new arrival students they’ve enrolled since the October count. Districts would get:

$15,000 if they’ve enrolled between one and five new arrival students
$30,000 if they’ve enrolled between six and 10 new arrival students
$75,000 if they’ve enrolled between 11 and 30 new arrival students
$125,000 if they’ve enrolled between 31 and 50 new arrival students
$200,000 if they’ve enrolled between 51 and 100 new arrival students
$400,000 if they’ve enrolled between 101 and 200 new arrival students
$550,000 if they’ve enrolled between 201 and 500 new arrival students
$750,000 if they’ve enrolled 500 or more new arrival students

On top of that, districts with a net increase in enrollment would get $4,500 per student. Here’s where it gets complicated: Districts with a net increase would either get $4,500 for each migrant student they’ve enrolled or $4,500 per student based on the net increase, whichever is lesser.

If the $24 million isn’t enough to cover the costs, the bill says state officials can reduce the $4,500 per student to a lower dollar amount. If calculations show there will be leftover money, state officials could increase the $4,500 to a higher dollar amount.

State Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who sits on the budget committee, said in a text message that she’s happy that the bill could provide relief for districts statewide that are dealing with a “very out of the ordinary influx of new to country students arriving.”

Lawmakers have been working on the bill for over a month, debating various ways to dole out the $24 million. Sirota said the tiered funding proposal acknowledges districts incur fixed costs to educate any and all newly arrived students.

Friday’s vote by the budget committee finalized the language of the bill, but it has yet to be filed for consideration by the full Colorado General Assembly.

“I know my colleagues, our school districts, and our educators are going to be very excited to shepherd this bill across the finish line in the coming weeks,” Sirota said.

The funding is less than what school districts get for each student enrolled on Oct. 1: $11,319 on average. However, budget committee members wanted to earmark the $24 million to provide some relief for districts struggling with the extraordinary influx — money the districts would never get otherwise. (Students who stay enrolled next year will be factored into the school funding formula, and school districts will get money for those students.)

“This sudden influx has strained existing school infrastructure and staffing, led to overcrowded classrooms, stretched resources, and increased complexity to the student learning environment,” the bill says.

The bill also acknowledges that newly arrived students may need extra services, including English language development classes, mental health support, and more. Some may have been out of school for long stretches of time and need help catching up academically.

“New arrival students face unique challenges, including language barriers, cultural adjustments, and various academic backgrounds,” the bill says. “These unique challenges require specialized resources and support services.”

How much funding districts might get under the bill

Denver Public Schools and Aurora Public Schools have enrolled the most migrant students since the October count, according to data obtained through open records requests.

Denver has enrolled an additional 2,340 newcomer students, and Aurora has enrolled an additional 1,366 migrant students. Denver’s numbers were as of March 4, while Aurora’s were as of Feb. 29. The bill uses Feb. 29 as the date to calculate the difference between October count enrollment and how many students districts are serving now.

Accounting for students who left the districts between the October count and those dates, Denver had a net increase of 1,025 students, while Aurora had a net increase of 727 students.

Under the legislation, Denver Public Schools would get a lump sum of $750,000 for the 2,340 newcomers it has enrolled. The district would also get $4.6 million for the 1,025 net increase based on the $4,500 per student formula.

In Aurora’s case, the district would also get $750,000. And the district would get about $3.3 million for its total increase of students since the October count.

Most other districts that have enrolled more than 100 migrant students since the October count had either a much smaller net increase or a net decrease.

For instance, as of Feb. 29, the suburban Cherry Creek School District had enrolled an additional 532 newly arrived students since the October count. But the district has had a net decrease of 41 kindergarten through 12th grade students since Oct. 1.

Greeley-Evans School District 6 had enrolled 488 more migrant students, but only had a net increase of eight K-12 students. Adams 12 Five Star Schools had enrolled 389 additional students, but its school population only grew by 42 students.

And Jeffco Public Schools and Mapleton Public Schools had net decreases, despite enrolling 382 and 140 more new arrivals, respectively.

The student influx creates financial challenges for schools across the state, Brett Johnson, chief financial officer for Aurora Public Schools, said in an interview before the bill text was approved.

“There’s a real and specific impact of these 1,200 kids who have enrolled in our schools in terms of hiring new staff, repurposing classrooms for those schools,” Johnson said. “And those are real costs that are being incurred in real time.”

The challenges remain even in districts that have net decreases in overall enrollment.

A Cherry Creek spokesperson said the district has hired six staff members since January to support the new arrivals. Three of those hires are in newcomer classes and three are cultural liaisons who provide interpretation and other support to families who do not speak English.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

‘Happier families, happier students’: How Denver’s community hubs are helping migrants and others

2024-03-11T21:35:17+00:00

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While her 5-year-old son attends kindergarten at west Denver’s Colfax Elementary School, Maelka attends class too. In a trailer near the playground, she and three other moms learn English.

On a recent Thursday, the group practiced letters and numbers by playing bingo.

“B eleven,” the teacher called out.

“Eleven! Eleven!” Maelka said. Then she translated the number into Spanish — “once,” pronounced on-say — for her classmates.

The trailer at Colfax Elementary is one of Denver Public Schools’ six “community hubs,” and the English language classes are among the most popular offerings. Launched in 2022 by Superintendent Alex Marrero, the community hubs were meant to take a two-generation approach to improving students’ lives by helping both children and parents with everything from food and clothing to financial counseling and mobile medical appointments.

Now, as more than 3,500 migrant students have enrolled in DPS since the beginning of the school year, the hubs are increasingly serving their families as they build new lives in Denver. The influx has stretched the hubs’ capacity, but district leaders said they remain committed to soliciting more donations and grant money to support the work.

“I need to learn English to understand, to work — and to learn, too,” Maelka said in Spanish. “It is important to know the language in the country where you are.”

Maelka and her family arrived in Denver from Venezuela in early December. After spending time in the city’s shelters, they found a house to rent near Colfax Elementary. Chalkbeat is withholding Maelka’s last name to protect her privacy.

The free classes do more than teach English, which offers the promise of higher-paying jobs. The hubs also foster a sense of community, said Manager Jackie Bell. On Maelka’s birthday, another mom baked her a cake and brought it to class.

The hubs are also a safety net. When one of the moms showed up to class in pain with a tooth infection, hub staff scrambled to connect her with a free dental clinic. When staff saw students were walking to school without warm jackets, the hub got a grant to buy brand new kid-sized puffy coats for students. When a grandmother who’s raising a grandson with autism told hub staff he would only eat one brand of rice, they were able to stock it in their mini market.

“That’s the message to our DPS parents that says, ‘We want you here,’” Bell said.

Karen Rodriguez picks up snacks for her daughter Carely, 11 months, at the mini market inside the community hub at John H. Amesse Elementary School.

There’s ‘magic’ in the hubs’ differences

The community hubs are an expansion of a previous program called the Family and Community Engagement Centers, often shortened to FACE Centers. The hub at John H. Amesse Elementary in far northeast Denver was one of two original FACE Centers.

Marrero toured the center at John H. Amesse early in his superintendency. On her wall, Manager Carla Duarte has a framed map of the city on which Marrero scribbled his vision to have a similar center in every region of Denver. Now, two years later, the six hubs offer the same programming that the centers offered and more, depending in part on the hub’s space.

Two hubs have micro grocery stores with fresh produce and frozen meat, while others have food pantries stocked with dry and canned goods. All hubs distribute diapers, but some partner with a local nonprofit to give away car seats and strollers. At least one has a thrift store-sized used clothing boutique. Some are now partnering with Denver Health, which parks its mobile clinic on the curb and sees patients for half-hour appointments.

The hubs’ staffing differs, too. They all connect parents to programs that help pay their bills, but some have financial coaches and classes on household budgeting. Others help parents find jobs. The workforce development coordinator at the far northeast hub recently helped a migrant father who’d worked as a barber in Venezuela for 24 years get a job at a Denver barber shop.

When a hub doesn’t have a particular service, the staff refer families to one that does.

“That’s the magic of the community hubs,” Duarte said. “We’re all so different.”

The hub at John H. Amesse is among the biggest and busiest. Its spaces are sprinkled throughout the school in converted classrooms and once-empty offices.

On a recent Wednesday morning, adult Spanish-speaking students in a GED class were practicing math and celebrating with pink-frosted cupcakes a classmate who passed their tests.

In a small room off the library, two women rocked the babies of the GED students. One of the women, a refugee from Afghanistan with children in DPS, first came to the community hub seeking help paying her family’s rent. Through a translator who spoke Dari, the woman’s native language, Duarte said the woman asked an important question.

“She just looked at me and said, ‘Do you have any jobs for me?’” Duarte said.

Duarte was looking to fill a child care position, but she was unsure about the language barrier. Nearly all hub employees speak Spanish, but none spoke Dari. But DPS said yes, and the woman is now learning English through the hub’s classes — and picking up Spanish, too.

“She’s so amazing,” Duarte said. “It’s like the best thing we ever did.”

There’s a similar story across the hall, where a former participant leads a “play and learn” class for toddlers and their parents, who on this day were busy blowing soap bubbles with straws.

Many of the “play and learn” parents also attend GED or English classes at the hub. Ingrid Alemán had to stop because her 2-year-old son, Dylan, cried too much when he was separated from her in the child care room. But the mother and son still come to “play and learn.”

“He’s learning how to socialize with other kids,” Alemán said in Spanish. “And as a mom, it helps me to be with other moms who can give me advice. Because in the house —”

“You and the kids —” Duarte said.

“In the house, it’s crazy,” Alemán said, laughing.

Teacher Mayra Lagunas, right, works with students Hugo Esparza, center, and Janeth Carhuamaca, left, on math during a GED class at the community hub at John H. Amesse Elementary School.

Migrants are among the more than 4,000 families served

The hubs cost approximately $737,000 each to run, for a total yearly cost of about $4.4 million, according to Esmeralda De La Oliva, the district’s hubs director. When Marrero announced the initiative in 2022, he said the hubs would be partly funded with savings from cuts he made to the district’s central office as part of a reorganization.

In the past two years, the hubs have served more than 4,000 families, De La Oliva said. That includes more than 1,000 parents who are enrolled in adult education classes. In addition to GED and English language classes, some hubs offer classes to help parents pass citizenship tests and classes that teach Spanish to English-speaking parents.

About 350 newly arrived adults are enrolled in the classes and the hubs have served 600 migrant families this year, De La Oliva said. The GED classes are at capacity, and De La Oliva said she’s seeking more funding for the GED and English language classes, mini markets, and food pantries from private donors and nonprofit organizations including the Denver Public Schools Foundation’s newly launched New Arrivals, Students & Family Fund.

The work of serving migrant families, many of whom have harrowing stories, can weigh on the hearts and minds of hub staff, De La Oliva said, which is why the district plans to offer intensive self-care training for staff starting next month. But the work is making a difference.

De La Oliva recalled a family who came into a hub this school year looking for diapers three weeks after arriving from Colombia. Within a month, the mom was enrolled in GED and English language classes. Within two months, the dad was working for the DPS transportation department, which has been notoriously short-staffed.

The hub at Swansea Elementary in north Denver is a 15-minute walk from the Western Motor Inn, which has served as an unofficial shelter for hundreds of migrants. As of a month ago, Swansea had enrolled more than 50 migrant students — and the hub was serving their families and others who heard about it through word of mouth, Manager Sandra Carrillo said.

People would walk through the hub door, sometimes in groups of six or more family members, Carrillo said. “They were like, ‘We just arrived today.’” Hub staff jumped in, providing everything from socks and underwear to help enrolling families’ 4-year-olds in Colorado’s new free preschool program.

Among the new arrivals at the Swansea hub was a 27-year-old man who is blind, Carrillo said. He doesn’t have any documentation from Venezuela that he’s legally blind. That has led to roadblocks in getting services such as RTD’s Access-a-Ride, which provides transportation to riders with disabilities. But the hub is doing its best to clear those roadblocks for its own offerings.

The man’s goal is to eventually study economics and computer science at a university, Carrillo said. He enrolled in the hub’s English classes but all of the materials were on paper. Carrillo said the hubs’ higher-ups were quick to approve the hub working with a local nonprofit to get the man the software he needs to participate in the classes.

“When families let us know they’re going through something, it’s working with everyone in the community to see who has resources,” Carrillo said.

While the work can be complicated, the goal is not.

As Carrillo noted, “Happier families, happier students.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Students, tell us what you think about efforts to ban TikTok

2024-03-15T19:08:39+00:00

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Congress is trying to ban TikTok. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution that gives TikTok owner Byte Dance, a Beijing-based tech company, six months to sell the app or see it banned in the United States. Lawmakers have raised data privacy and national security concerns because of the foreign ownership of such an influential social media app. Opponents of a ban say there is nothing unique about TikTok — that all social media platforms have positive and negative features.

About two-thirds of U.S. teens say they use TikTok, according to Pew Research Center, with 17% saying they are on the app almost constantly. While there are big worries about the mental health impacts of social media use, people also use TikTok as a creative outlet and to stay connected with friends.

We want to hear from students about how a TikTok ban would affect them.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey below, and let us know if we can follow up with you. We’ll keep your information confidential, and only publish your answers if you tell us it’s OK.

Not a student but know one who might have something to say? Please send them this survey.

Having trouble viewing the form? Click here.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

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This New York City counselor used to teach math. Now she helps migrant students destress at school

2024-03-15T14:00:08+00:00

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As a middle school math teacher, Lisset Condo Dutan’s days often revolved around fractions and equations. But when the pandemic hit, her virtual classroom became a place where students came to confide in her.

“I would only see them through a screen, and they would share with me: I lost my grandma, I just lost my dad, I just lost my mom,” she said. She tried her best to listen, but she knew they needed more. “They didn’t really have the emotional support that they needed.”

Lisset Condo Dutan works with newcomer students at an elementary school in Queens through the nonprofit Counseling in Schools.

Driven by those conversations, Condo Dutan went back to school to get her master’s in counseling — while she was teaching full-time — and became a school counselor.

Last fall, she took a position with the nonprofit Counseling in Schools, which places school counselors in dozens of schools throughout New York City. Condo Dutan now works at P.S. 149 in Queens, not far from where she grew up. She was among a dozen bilingual or bicultural counselors that the nonprofit hired to meet the needs of a growing number of migrant students who’ve enrolled in the city’s schools.

Now, she spends her days popping into classrooms to see if newcomers need any help and meeting with students in small groups or one-on-one.

“Even though they went through a lot, they’re the strongest people that I’ve ever met,” she said. “I admire that.”

Condo Dutan spoke with Chalkbeat about how art therapy, breathing exercises, and sharing details from her visits to Ecuador have helped her connect with her students.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the mental health or social-emotional needs that your newcomer students have?

A lot of them have undergone some sort of trauma. Especially when they share their journey coming here to New York, either what they saw on their way here or what they saw at the detention centers at the border. It impacts them a lot.

Thankfully, a lot of the teachers pick up on these little emotions. Maybe they walk in sad one day or they look upset, or there’s a change in behavior. They’ll ask: Can you please just check up on the student? And when you check up on them, you realize that there’s a lot of things that are still bothering them.

They’ll share: You know, I had this nightmare, I’m still thinking about this. I remember when we were crossing the river. Or, honestly speaking, they’ve seen people pass away on their way here. Unfortunately, they’ve seen bodies and stuff like that. And these are third graders, second graders, fifth graders.

That’s still there for them. So, sometimes they do have days where they’re a little off. [It’s important] to provide them with that support and that safe space.

When you’re starting to build a relationship and a rapport with a student who has been through a really tough journey, what are some of the things you do to help establish that you’re a safe person and that they’re in a safe place?

I let them speak about their culture. A lot of these students are very proud of where they come from, so I give them that opportunity and that time to teach me about themselves.

Sometimes, we’ll share memories. But usually, we do a lot of art therapy. For most of them, that’s easier. Markers, crayons, glitter, pens, paints — anything that I have in the office.

They’re drawing their favorite dishes, their favorite places, or their favorite people that they left behind, as well as their pets or any traditional celebrations. For example, for Christmas, they shared that certain countries have a whole festival for like a week. They would draw bumper cars and parties, and certain cultural outfits.

What are some of the acculturation struggles that you’re seeing?

Usually, what they share is that it’s just hard overall. In their countries, they would have more freedom. There would be much more fresh air and free space for them to run around. Coming here and being in an apartment, or being stuck in school, it’s different for them.

They’ve slowly been getting accustomed to school life. It’s been a lot of teaching them how to schedule their time, time management, as well as asking them what other resources they need in order to feel comfortable.

What strategies or coping skills have you taught students that they’ve found helpful?

We’ve done a lot of breathing exercises. Sometimes [their exposure to trauma] does get them a little uneasy. They really like [an exercise called] smell the flower, blow out the birthday cake candle.

I usually ask them: If I had a flower in my hand, how would you smell the flower? And they would inhale and breathe in. And when I ask them to blow out a birthday candle, they blow out through their mouth. It teaches them how to not take quick breaths.

I’ve also done a lot of cooked spaghetti, uncooked spaghetti. I have students basically tense up every part of their body. So they’ll become very stiff, like uncooked spaghetti. And then I allow them to become like cooked spaghetti, very noodly, so they let go of everything.

It’s allowing them to take notice of what part of their body is under stress, and teaching them how to express themselves when they feel that stress.

How does being able to speak Spanish allow you to connect with the students in ways that wouldn’t be possible if you didn’t speak their language?

Instead of having to translate what they’re feeling, they’re able to just express themselves exactly how they feel.

If I don’t understand something, I do ask them: Oh, what do you mean by this? It could be because of cultural differences. I take that time to let them teach me about what they’re trying to say, or what they’re trying to get out.

Do you ever share things about yourself with the students to help make a connection with them?

My parents are Ecuadorian, and I do bring that to the table. When I go to Ecuador, I visit my grandpa, I go to the countryside, I go to the city, and I’m able to share that with them. Even if the child is not from Ecuador, they’re more open to opening up to me because they realize: She’s been outside of New York, she understands what’s going on in other countries.

Lisset Condo Dutan often shares stories about visiting her family in Ecuador as a way to connect with the students she works with.

They ask me: Have you tasted salchipapas? Have you tasted a traditional dish called tripa mishqui? I’m open to sharing that information with them, and they’re usually very happy [to talk about it].

Where my grandpa lives, it’s like a farmland. A lot of them came from farmland. So, me being able to say: You know, when I go to Ecuador, I spend a week with my grandpa, and I help him feed the cows and feed the horses. That usually sparks something in them. They look at me like: You did that? I used to do that! Little things like that have really helped me connect with them.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Community college can be a gateway to a 4-year degree. Indiana has one of the worst success rates.

2024-03-15T17:47:34+00:00

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This article was originally published by WFYI.

Community colleges are often touted as an affordable start for students who aim to earn four-year degrees. And it’s for good reason: The average annual tuition and fees for two-year colleges is less than $4,000.

But fewer than 1 in 10 Indiana students who enroll in community college go on to earn degrees from four-year institutions, according to recently released federal data. Indiana has the third-lowest success rate in the country.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Tyre’k Swanigan, a former Ivy Tech Community College student from Indianapolis. “It pisses me off honestly, because I was at Ivy Tech. And this is me. Like, this number — I’m a part of that.”

Community colleges offer two-year degrees and short-term certificate programs that can help students get good jobs. But bachelor’s degrees can ultimately lead to higher incomes. And about 80% of U.S. community college students say they plan to transfer to four-year schools.

Swanigan, 23, knew he wanted a bachelor’s degree when he enrolled. He started at community college because it was flexible and convenient. “I could still have my full-time job and then make it to my classes on time,” he said.

He did well at first, but Swanigan said he struggled when the pandemic pushed classes online, and he eventually withdrew.

Swanigan’s difficulties are part of a national problem. Last year, the U.S. Education Department released data from students who received federal financial aid. It found that just 13% of those who enrolled in community college in 2014 graduated from a four-year institution within eight years. The rate in Indiana is about 7%.

About 7 percent of Indiana community college students earned bachelor's degrees

Community colleges offer crucial access to higher education because they have open enrollment and low tuition. Nationally, community colleges educate about 40% of undergraduates. Those students are diverse — including first-generation college students, single parents, and adults returning to school.

“The community college transfer pathway has long sort of held this potential as a more affordable and accessible route to a bachelor’s and graduate degree,” said John Fink with the Community College Research Center. “More recently, with the sort of increasing costs of college generally, a lot of students have been turning to community colleges as that on ramp to a bachelor’s.”

About a quarter of recent high school graduates who enroll in an Indiana public college or university start at community college, according to the latest state data. The vast majority go to Ivy Tech, a statewide system that enrolled nearly 54,000 full- and part-time students last fall.

Students face challenges when transferring

While most community college students plan to earn bachelor’s degrees, fewer than a third transfer to four-year schools. Students who do transfer still face barriers, like struggling to get credit for classes they already took. And many students don’t get enough advising and support at four-year colleges.

These days Swanigan works in a K-12 school. He wants to help lead a school one day, and he needs a bachelor’s degree to do it. Still, he has struggled to find a college that works for him.

Last year, he briefly transferred to a private, four-year university. That school told him they wouldn’t accept all his community college classes.

Swanigan, who’s gay, didn’t feel welcome at the Christian college, and he withdrew. Now, he’s headed back to Ivy Tech.

Tyre’k Swanigan walks in the hall of the Indianapolis K-12 school where he works. He wants to work in school leadership one day, but knows he needs a bachelor's degree to do it.

Losing credits is a common barrier for transfer students. Neka Booth, 40, returned to school after years working in dialysis because she wanted to become a social worker. Ivy Tech was free for her. And it helped her transition and prepare for a four-year university, she said. “I would tell everybody they should start at Ivy Tech,” she said.

After Booth earned an associate degree in 2022, she transferred to a private college to pursue a bachelors. The new college required her to retake three classes, Booth said.

When students lose credits like Booth did, they’re forced to take extra classes, said Lorenzo Baber, director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Office of Community College Research and Leadership. That’s time-consuming and expensive.

“That’s money,” he said. “That’s a couple thousand dollars, which matters.”

Indiana lags far behind other states

Experts say that policy can improve success rates for transfer students. Community college students in Illinois are more than twice as likely to earn bachelor’s degrees compared to Indiana, according to the federal data.

Illinois made improving transfer success a priority more than three decades ago. In 1993, higher education leaders created a statewide “articulation initiative” to help students transfer without losing credits. More recently, state law has pushed institutions to grant transfer credit and guaranteed admission to four-year public colleges for qualified community college transfer students.

Indiana has one of the lowest community college to four-year degree success rates in the nation.

But even in Illinois — one of the top states in the nation — only about 16% of community college students earned bachelor’s degrees, according to the federal data.

Experts say one reason why improving transfers is challenging is because many community college students have responsibilities outside the classroom.

If students need to care for their family or have a medical problem, that can derail their education. For states to improve college completion rates, they need to support people throughout their lives, Baber said.

“You could have the best designed programs,” Baber said, “but that gets rendered meaningless if somebody needs to stop out because they need to take a job to pay the bills of their household.”

State pushes to improve degree rate

Indiana leaders know there’s a problem, and they have made policy changes to make it easier for community college students to earn four-year degrees.

In 2013, lawmakers required state colleges and universities to create transfer pathways for students who complete associate degrees. If students earn associate degrees in nursing at Ivy Tech, for example, they can transfer to a public four-year university without losing credits, said Mary Jane Michalak, vice president of legal and public affairs for Ivy Tech.

“Whenever possible we direct students into those pathways,” Michalak said, “because by state law then those credits are supposed to transfer seamlessly as long as it’s within the same program.”

Ivy Tech Community College is a a statewide system that enrolled nearly 54,000 full- and part-time students last fall.

There’s a similar program, known as Indiana College Core, to help students who take a year’s worth of classes at community college or while in high school.

Ivy Tech has also worked with universities to make transfer easier. In February, Ivy Tech announced its latest partnership: dual admission to Indiana University in Indianapolis. The aim is to connect students to IU, with counseling and events, while they earn associate degrees at Ivy Tech. Similar models have been successful in other places.

During a recent interview with WFYI, Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery pointed to the Ivy Tech and IU Indianapolis partnership and the state’s focus on transfer pathways as examples of how the state is tackling this problem.

Because the new federal data followed students for eight years, the people it tracked started back in 2014. Michalak said it doesn’t capture the impact of the improvements the state has made.

“Ten years is a long time,” Michalak said. “There have been a lot of changes since then, both in state law and in the operation or in the administration of institutions.”

But the transfer system is still complicated and it can be hard for students to navigate.

A spokesperson for the Indiana Commission for Higher Education said the office plans to release data on transfer students in the near future. When that data comes out, it will be the first time in more than six years that the state publishes details on how many community college students transfer and complete four-year degrees.

Without that data, Indiana doesn’t know whether policy changes are working.

Contact WFYI education reporter Dylan Peers McCoy at dmccoy@wfyi.org.

Have a question for the 2024 Newark school board candidates? Help us build a voter guide.

2024-03-08T11:05:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Newark’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

The Newark school board election on April 16 will be hotly contested with 10 candidates competing for four seats on the nine-member elected body tasked with leading the district’s efforts to improve literacy rates and manage a billion dollar budget, among other pressing issues.

Three seats come with full three-year terms while one is for an unexpired one-year term.

The pool of candidates includes current co-vice presidents Dawn Haynes and Vereliz Santana, and recently appointed Helena Vinhas and Kanileah Anderson. The remaining candidates, Che J.T. Colter, Muta El-amin, Latoya Jackson, Sheila Montague, Jimmie White, and Debra Salters are vying to unseat the four incumbents.

Ahead of the election, Chalkbeat Newark wants to know what questions residents, parents, students, and other school community stakeholders have for the contenders. The questions will be key in creating our annual voter guide, a user-friendly interactive feature with essential information about candidates’ positions to help voters make informed decisions. The questions may also be used in an upcoming candidate community forum, a collaborative effort in the works between Chalkbeat Newark, Project Ready, and other local organizations. More information on that will be available in the coming weeks.

City residents must register to vote by March 26. The last day to apply by mail for a vote-by-mail ballot is a week before the election. Voting in person at designated polling locations takes place on April 16.

In the form below, let us know what questions you have for the candidates as soon as possible. For more information on what’s at stake in this election and who’s running, read this story.

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Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Reach Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Many migrant students need mental health support. Here’s why this program is a go-to for schools.

2024-03-11T09:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.

When thousands of Syrian families fleeing violence resettled in Canada several years ago, Ontario’s school mental health agency wanted to give schools tools to help refugee children process their traumatic journeys and adjust to their new lives.

The children didn’t necessarily need intensive support. But kids were bursting into tears and struggling to explain how they felt. Parents, too, noticed their usually social children had become more withdrawn and were struggling to make friends. That was especially common after kids had been in Canada for a few months and the honeymoon period ended.

So a team of experts in child mental health put their heads together and developed a program for newcomers that focuses on their strengths and who they can turn to for support. Known as STRONG, the program is now used across the U.S. in several cities serving lots of newcomers, including Chicago, Boston, Seattle, New York, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and Little Rock, Arkansas. Many others are asking for training, as schools struggle to meet the needs of students who’ve been through difficult journeys with limited school mental health staff, and even fewer bilingual ones.

STRONG, which stands for Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, can’t solve everything. Some kids may still need more intensive mental health support — and finding the time and staff to run these groups can be challenging. But many experts, educators, and students themselves see the intervention as a promising tool to help newcomers forge connections and head off mental health struggles before they turn into a crisis.

“They’ve just really appreciated the opportunity to connect with other kids,” said Lisa Baron, a psychologist who trains schools to use STRONG and directs the Boston-based Center for Trauma Care in Schools. “A lot of them said that they just had not really known that other kids were feeling the same way as they were.”

Why some newcomers struggle with mental health

Newcomer students can be refugees or asylum-seekers or the children of undocumented immigrants. Some arrive with families, some arrive alone. Some have been in the U.S. for just a few days or weeks, while others have been here longer. And while their experiences vary, they’ve often faced various hardships, from hunger to abuse.

Many children did not feel in control during their travels, and now crave stability and predictability.

It can also be difficult for newcomer families to access mental health services in the U.S. — driving home the importance of offering help at school. There’s often stigma around seeking treatment, and some families fear that doing so could put them at risk for deportation.

Here’s how STRONG typically works: The school identifies a group of students who are close in age and relatively new to the U.S. who could benefit from extra support. Then the school makes sure parents are on board, which can mean having careful conversations, especially if families are unfamiliar with schools offering mental health support.

The group meets for 10 sessions, usually during the school day. Early sessions help students understand that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed or stressed sometimes. Kids learn different relaxation techniques, such as curling their toes into the floor as if they were standing in a mud puddle, or visualizing the sights and smells of a favorite place.

In later sessions, they learn coping and problem-solving skills, such as how to map out steps to achieve a goal. Kids who are shy about speaking English could identify people they’d feel safe practicing with.

“The coping skills [are] what will stay with you forever,” one Ontario student told Canadian researchers for a 2019 report. “Whenever you are in a stressful situation, you will always remember what to do.”

In STRONG, students learn various problem-solving and coping skills.

What makes STRONG unique and appealing to many schools, said Colleen Cicchetti, a pediatric psychologist who helped develop the intervention, is that it takes a strengths-based approach.

“There were strengths that were inside you that you had in your home country that are still with you, here, today — how do we build on them?” said Cicchetti, who directs the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and now trains schools on how to use STRONG. “We really want young people and their parents to say: ‘This is a part of who I am and what I’ve experienced, but it shouldn’t define who I am entirely.’”

That’s what attracted the attention of mental health and school staff in the Madison, Wisconsin area. The district tried tweaking another group that addresses student trauma to help newcomers, but realized it wasn’t quite meeting their needs.

Kids need to “talk about good memories and coping strategies, not necessarily the exposure to the traumatic event,” said Carrie Klein, a school mental health coach for Madison Metro schools, which is considering using STRONG.

For Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School in Chicago, STRONG has been transformative for her and her students.

Related: Amid Chicago’s migrant influx, one school is trying to help newcomer students navigate trauma

Over the last year, Moorhouse has run four STRONG groups — known as “clubs” at her school — alongside school counselor Stephanie Carrillo. The program helped Moorhouse get to know newcomers’ families, and has made students comfortable to seek her out when they need essentials like toothpaste or body wash.

Brighton Park Elementary School threw a quinceañera for newcomer students who were sad they would miss celebrating in their home country.

The group has helped in unexpected ways, too. When kids said they weren’t eating at school because they didn’t like the food, Moorhouse figured out they did like Ritz crackers and Skinny popcorn, so she keeps those on hand. And when she found out some newcomers were crying in the bathroom, upset that they were going to miss their quinceñera back home, the group threw a big party at school, complete with balloons and empanadas.

“The students really have created this bond with Ms. Moorhouse — that’s their person,” said Cecilia Mendoza, the assistant principal. “Every student needs someone. For someone new entering the country, entering a new school, having someone is even more important.”

Brighton Park is one of 83 schools across the district that’s been trained in STRONG, with another 50 schools in line to be trained next school year.

Why talking about their journeys can help newcomers

When experts first developed STRONG, they imagined it would be delivered by social workers, school counselors and other mental health staff, since many newcomers have experienced trauma.

But given that mental health professionals are often stretched or in short supply, more schools are asking for others to be trained, too, said Sharon Hoover, a psychiatry professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine who helped create STRONG.

Now, many schools run STRONG sessions with two adults. A teacher with language or cultural skills can act as the interpreter, while the staffer with mental health training takes on tasks such as screening children for post-traumatic stress.

“We don’t want to be irresponsible with the curriculum and just throw it into the hands of anybody who has no mental health training at all,” Hoover said. “But on the other hand, we don’t want to restrict it in a way that’s going to lead to it not getting to students who might benefit.”

On a recent Tuesday morning, Hoover and Bianca Ramos, a STRONG trainer, showed what a one-on-one session that invites students to share about their journey can look like during a virtual training for two dozen school staffers.

The group, mostly social workers and school counselors from Connecticut, had gathered to learn strategies to help newcomer students from many parts of the world, including Haiti, Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Ukraine.

Related: We are facing a migrant mental health crisis. More school social workers could help

In the video demonstration, Hoover sat beside Ramos in the corner of a blue-walled room. Ramos, a Chicago-based social worker, played the role of a 13-year-old girl who’d fled Guatemala without time to say goodbye to family and friends after her father was killed. Hoover explained that talking about something hard can be like stepping into cold water.

“The more we do it, slowly and gradually, usually the more comfortable we get,” Hoover said. “You don’t have to dive right in.”

In early sessions of STRONG, students learn various relaxation techniques and that it's OK to feel stress sometimes.

In the scenario, as the young girl neared the U.S.-Mexico border, robbers threatened to take her family’s few belongings. Hoover asked how she got through that time, using it as an opportunity to draw out the child’s strengths.

“I had this picture of my mom and I just remember looking at it, and trying to stay hopeful that I was going to be able to see her again,” Ramos said. And she had her little sister to watch out for: “I was like a mom to her.”

“That’s amazing,” Hoover replied, pointing out how brave and caring the child had been.

Later, Hoover asked if the girl was having trouble sleeping, reliving any memories, or feeling sad a lot. She wasn’t, but thoughts of her dad did pop into her head in class, making it hard to concentrate. Hoover made sure that wasn’t happening too much, and then kept the door open to talk more in the future if anything changed.

In Chicago, Moorhouse has seen that some kids feel relieved when they share about their journey. But she also cautions that it can be a lot for other students and teachers to take in. After one student shared details that made Moorhouse tear up later, she realized she couldn’t probe too deeply in her conversations with the student, and needed to let the school counselor step in.

“We’re not therapists,” she said. “That’s very important for teachers to realize.”

STRONG can help students, but there are challenges

STRONG is still being rigorously evaluated in the U.S. But research conducted by Western University in Canada, where STRONG was first piloted during the 2017-18 school year, has shown promising results.

Evaluations from across Ontario found the program helped kids build trust, increase their confidence, and develop a sense of belonging at school. Students reported that STRONG helped them feel more welcome and connect with their peers.

STRONG can also shift school culture and help the entire staff become more attuned to newcomers’ needs. When Moorhouse notices certain patterns of behavior, she shares that with other teachers, so they can keep an eye out.

That could be explaining why some kids may not want to take off sweaters or jackets — after border agents took everything they had except for what they were wearing at the time — or that playing certain sounds, like chirping birds or rushing water, could be upsetting to kids whose journey involved swimming or walking through the jungle.

There can be practical challenges. School leaders may be hesitant to pull kids out of class for STRONG when they are struggling academically. Elizabeth Paquette, who’s part of the team that trains school staff in Ontario, said it can be tricky to get enough kids together in smaller schools and rural communities without resorting to virtual groups that can make it harder for students to make friends.

And if groups use more than two languages, the interpretation needs can take away from the group’s conversational flow.

Still, Moorhouse said the group can be a place for kids to talk about those academic struggles, whether they’re lost in class or frustrated because they already know the content, but can’t yet express themselves. This year, especially, kids want to talk about school stress even more than their journeys.

“They were struggling with: ‘Do I give up?’” Moorhouse said. And her message was: “Let’s keep finding other ways to work through this. What are your thoughts?”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Bill would make kindergarten mandatory for Michigan children

2024-03-12T22:22:12+00:00

Lawmakers want to make kindergarten attendance mandatory in Michigan to improve academic achievement — and the head of the state’s largest district says such a requirement could also help address chronic absenteeism.

Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat from Livonia who introduced a bill to make kindergarten mandatory, said it’s necessary “if we’re serious about improving academics.”

Students in the state currently don’t have to attend school until first grade, though many do attend kindergarten and most districts offer it.

Detroit school Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, who supports the legislation, said Tuesday during a legislative hearing that requiring kindergarten will improve attendance and student academic outcomes.

Vitti said more than 70% of the kindergarten students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District last year were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more days in the school year. The rates, he said, were lower for first, second, and third grades.

“We want to start as early as possible, creating a culture and an expectation that school is important every day,” Vitti said.

The district has long struggled with chronic absenteeism. During the 2021-22 school year, 77% of the students were chronically absent, in part because of quarantining rules during the pandemic. That rate improved to 66% during the 2022-23 school year.

Vitti pointed out that at the beginning of the school year, about 6% of kindergarten students typically perform at or above grade level on district tests. That number soars to 58% by the end of the year.

“We actually believe that the 58% number would be higher if kindergarten was mandatory. It just sets the stage and the expectations the right way.”

Polehanki, who chairs the education committee, said the impetus of her bill had been to create a continuum from preschool through postsecondary education. She said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s push to provide free preschool for all, regardless of income, is an important initiative. But she said in order to do that, kindergarten must not be optional.

After hearing from Vitti, she said the bill would address academic achievement, but also “do quite a bit to remedy” chronic absenteeism in kindergarten. She said she wants lawmakers to have a broader discussion about addressing chronic absenteeism. Nearly a third of the students in the state were considered chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year.

Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat from Bay City, said the kindergarten chronic absenteeism rate in Detroit “is the most compelling case to say this is the right thing to do.”

Sheryl Kennedy, legislative liaison for the Michigan Department of Education, said the MDE supports making kindergarten mandatory. But she said the department would like to see some changes, such as funding to help districts that might see increased costs from the requirement. She said 17 states and the District of Columbia already have mandatory kindergarten laws.

There was also a back-and-forth between Kennedy and Sen. John Damoose, a Republican from Harbor Springs over language in a slide that accompanied her presentation that said “Demonstrated enrollment in private, parochial, charter, or home school meets the requirements of this bill.”

Damoose questioned the home school language, asking “Can you describe what demonstrated enrollment looks like especially if we’re talking about home schools?”

In Michigan, home-schooled children aren’t required to register with the state, so officials have no idea how many kids are being educated at home. There has been considerable debate recently because State Superintendent Michael Rice and some lawmakers have called on changing the law to require parents who home-school their children to register with the state.

Polehanki said the intent of the legislation is not to demonstrate enrollment among home-schoolers.

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

Grocery cards and car repairs: How COVID aid changed the way schools can help homeless kids

2024-03-14T21:15:14+00:00

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Mollie Eppers tried for years to give students experiencing homelessness prepaid grocery cards that would allow their families to shop for food.

But the student services specialist in Juneau, Alaska, couldn’t devise a system that would satisfy the spending rules for both her local school district and the federal program that helps homeless students.

So when Congress sent schools COVID aid for homeless students with fewer restrictions, Eppers knew her first order of business: Get the grocery cards.

She found a local Safeway that accepted prepaid cards, then bought them in bulk. Families can get $100 to $200 cards at a time, depending on how many kids they have. The aid has made it easier for families sleeping in their cars or who don’t have a stove to choose foods they can eat. That’s been especially helpful as Alaska works through a huge backlog of applications for food benefits that left many families waiting months to get aid.

The Juneau School District in Alaska purchased $25,000 in grocery cards to help students experiencing homelessness buy food.

“It’s been a lifesaver,” said Eppers, who’s spent $25,000 on grocery cards so far, and plans to buy more. “They don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Across the country, Eppers and other school staff are doing things to help homeless students that they’ve never been able to before. That’s in part due to the size of the aid package. But it’s also because federal education officials said explicitly that schools could spend this money on items like prepaid store cards, gas cards, and cell phones that schools were often reluctant to buy in the past for fear of running afoul of various spending and record-keeping rules.

That’s meant more schools are providing families with direct aid that allows them to choose which foods, clothing, and other supplies will best meet their children’s needs. It’s one more way that schools have stretched beyond their typical roles and used pandemic assistance to help families in dire straits in new ways.

But schools might stop doing this soon — unless federal officials spell out that other funds can be used like this, too.

“You can provide somebody a pair of shoes, but if you say: ‘Here’s a store card, pick out the shoes for your child that your child will wear,’ there is a sense of dignity, and there’s also a sense of agency,” said Barbara Duffield, the executive director of the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection, which recently gathered data on how often schools are spending COVID aid in this way. “And what that has translated to is trust and engagement. A store card is much more than a store card.”

Schools used to face more limits on helping students

In a survey of more than 1,400 school liaisons earlier this school year, SchoolHouse Connection found that 40% had purchased gas cards for families and 34% had bought store cards. That was double the share who planned to purchase cards when the nonprofit did a similar survey in 2021.

“These unusual uses may be the very ones that are the most impactful and strategic in meeting broader goals of increasing enrollment, attendance, and performance,” the report concludes.

In Washington state, one liaison said gas cards were now among the top-requested forms of assistance by families. The offering made families feel heard and open to more collaboration, the liaison wrote on the survey.

In Rhode Island, another liaison said that it had been a “huge plus” to give families store cards so they could buy sneakers and underwear. “I would argue that being able to make their own selections is better for the kids, physically and emotionally,” the liaison wrote.

In the past, some schools did provide this kind of assistance to homeless students. But Duffield said it often boiled down to a judgment call.

The federal education law that outlines the rights of homeless children, the McKinney-Vento Act, says that schools can provide “extraordinary or emergency assistance” to make sure homeless kids can attend school and participate in school activities.

While some schools interpreted that to include prepaid store cards, many other districts or states didn’t allow schools to buy store cards. Officials worried about how they would show the cards benefitted a particular student, Duffield said, and some feared giving away prepaid cards could be ripe for misuse or fraud — a long held, and often misplaced, complaint among critics of public assistance programs.

For that reason, Duffield and others are calling on the federal government to issue guidance saying that schools can use McKinney-Vento funding in the same ways that were permissible with the COVID aid.

“Having clear federal guidance saying that you can, that then shapes what a state allows,” Duffield said. Getting something in writing is key, because many school business officers will ask: “Where does it say that?”

How cell phones and car repairs help students

Still, school liaisons like Eppers say they’re taking lots of precautions. The grocery cards Eppers hands out to families don’t allow for the purchase of alcohol or tobacco, and she locks up the cards in her office to keep them safe. Families have to sign for each grocery card, too.

“I don’t want anything to come between my ability to provide that to the students,” she said.

In the suburbs of Madison, Wisconsin, Claire Bergman used COVID aid to buy five cell phones with internet hotspots for homeless teens who live on their own without the support of their parents. Each month, the Sun Prairie Area School District pays their phone bills.

The new initiative has helped social workers stay in touch with students who tend to move around a lot and may be parents themselves. That’s helped ensure their ride to school shows up in the right place and that students are connected with child care.

The phone hotspots enable unaccompanied teens to use the internet on their school-provided Chromebooks, so they can do their homework wherever they’re staying. And the district also allows the teens to download certain social media apps so they can stay in touch with classmates — an added benefit for kids who often feel isolated from their peers.

“The phones have really opened up lines of communication and supported attendance efforts,” Bergman said. That success has helped Bergman make the case the district should keep paying for cell phones when the COVID aid is gone.

“Our business office has been really open to exploring different opportunities and understanding the connection piece of the phones,” she said. “Once these funds run out, it will be a little bit more of a: ‘Is this really a priority?’ question.”

In North Dakota’s Bismarck Public Schools, COVID relief funding has allowed Sherrice Roness to make more “outside the box” purchases that she is hoping to continue, too.

With COVID aid, the district now covers up to $500 in critical car repairs, such as fixing brakes or power steering. It’s a strategy advocates for homeless youth say can be more cost-effective than paying for a bus pass or taxi, and it has the added benefit of helping families get to work and doctor’s visits, in addition to taking their children to school.

“It gives them that pride of: They’re able to do that — provide that normalcy for their kids,” Roness said.

Roness has also paid for children’s medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when a family’s insurance has lapsed, and she purchased a post office box so a 17-year-old who was no longer living with her parents could still get her college and financial aid letters in the mail.

When unique needs like that pop up, Roness said, it’s made a big difference to be able to tell students: “You know what? I can help you with that.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Why can’t New York City schools design a decent app?

2024-03-15T09:00:00+00:00

Years ago, while chatting with a fellow teacher, I mentioned that my high school was adopting an online learning management system, or LMS, called PupilPath. His expression quickly changed. “You’re going to hate it,” he warned me. He was right. It was awful.

These days, however, I miss it terribly.

Learning management systems — digital databases of student information and electronic grade books, all in one — are great innovations, but their execution often falls short. With rosters of about 170 students, teachers can become swamped with administrative work, so procedures need to be quick and efficient. Anything requiring extra eye or brain work, whether it be an incomplete heading or a tedious procedure, can turn routine work into a quagmire.

Mike Dowd

PupilPath was not nearly as efficient as some other learning management systems I’ve used or seen, yet it had useful features. The system allowed teachers to post and grade assignments, look up guidance counselor and parent contact information, check students’ attendance and grades in other classes, and create and view “anecdotals” — staff reports about issues of concern involving students. The phone app even had a seating chart (an online Delaney Book, for you old-timers), making it quick and easy to take attendance, which was then viewable to parents.

Still, PupilPath was flawed enough that when the company was hacked and the city’s education department banned it, I was elated. But when the city announced that, because so many schools had relied on PupilPath, it would develop its own replacement that would be made available at no cost to schools, well, you probably see where this is going.

For starters, the city’s Grading, Attendance, and Messaging Application, or GAMA, which I started using late last school year, isn’t a single app. In fact, I now find myself using six different apps and websites to do the same job as before, and yet I am still without some of PupilPath’s most useful functions.

For schools that haven’t purchased a new LMS to replace PupilPath, grading has become a nightmare. Because the new grading app won’t allow attachments, I find myself keeping two separate grade books, one in Google Classroom and the other on DOE Grades. But no matter how carefully a teacher tries to transfer the grades from one site to the other, student averages never seem to match up. The discrepancies confuse students and parents and create a lot of extra work for teachers.

Meanwhile, finding basic student information requires teachers to slog through the various sites, many with their own complex navigation. Each site has bits of essential information, but one would need a graphic organizer to remember what exists where. Even obtaining simple facts about students — schedules, grades, or contact information — can be time-consuming and, frankly, infuriating.

Identifying a student’s guidance counselor while viewing their grades, for example, requires logging into a new website that requires an additional texted password, then choosing among 18 vaguely worded information portals and eventually downloading and scrutinizing a PDF of the student’s class schedule.

Even obtaining simple facts about students — schedules, grades, or contact information — can be time-consuming and, frankly, infuriating.

Since teachers take attendance while teaching, the process needs to be quick and simple, but, like just about everything else with GAMA, it’s not. That’s because after class attendance is submitted, it is forever lost to teachers. This absurd setup necessitates taking attendance once on paper and then once or twice electronically each period. Why twice electronically? During my school’s two “daily attendance” periods, teachers fill out the same electronic attendance sheets twice — once to show that students were in class, another to show that these same students were in school. I’ll leave it to readers to ponder this logic.

It’s hard to convey the difficulty of using this app. The phone version defaults to organizing students alphabetically by first name, but then puts last names before first ones, making them harder to scan. Bizarrely, those with two-part first names (common among Chinese-American students) are organized using the second name, placing them completely out of order.

The computer version of the app does contain a seating chart, but — I’m not making this up — it is positioned upside down, making it useless to me. Meanwhile, both versions of the app show so few student names at once that it’s inconvenient to scroll through rosters while teaching.

This system has many more design flaws, but I don’t have the space to explain them all. Furthermore, the apps often load slowly or simply don’t function. The result is constant irritation and mental fatigue among teachers, with our lunch-period discussions becoming less about teaching strategies and more about information-management woes. GAMA woes have even become a topic of conversation among my fellow wrestling coaches and me at weekend tournaments.

At a citywide teachers union meeting last fall, I aired some of the gripes I’ve articulated here. I was then advised by a teacher who was part of the team that created GAMA that if enough teachers emailed the education department, we could likely convince them to address some of the system’s flaws. (Education department officials told Chalkbeat that the city has made multiple updates to GAMA based on feedback from schools, including numerous changes to its grading and attendance applications as recently as February.)

A response to a broken product should not depend on the number of complaints made about it. Teachers, students, and families deserve an LMS that works well for everyone. With a little common sense, some focus from Mayor Adams’ “efficiency czar,” and a review of the well-designed learning management systems that some city schools have invested in, these problems should be simple to fix. For now, though, GAMA remains as dysfunctional as ever.

Mike Dowd is a social studies teacher and wrestling coach at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. He founded the school’s cycling club, and he has been active in transportation advocacy for many years. He and his wife have two children, both of whom attended New York City Public Schools.

Third Purdue Polytechnic school in Indianapolis delays opening

2024-03-14T22:00:49+00:00

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The opening of a third Purdue Polytechnic High School in Indianapolis is being delayed again — now until 2025.

It is one of three schools that Education One, the charter school authorizing arm of Trine University in Angola, approved to open in Indianapolis in the next few years.

Purdue Polytechnic High School West will open somewhere on the west side of Indianapolis within Indianapolis Public Schools borders, but the exact location remains unclear, according to its application with Education One. It initially planned to open in fall of 2023, and then delayed its start until the fall of 2024 while searching for a facility.

The school still does not yet have a site in hand, so the start date will again be pushed back to fall of 2025, Lindsay Omlor, the executive director of Education One, said at Education One’s board meeting on Thursday.

Purdue Polytechnic said in a statement that it does not have any expansion updates at this time.

“We remain committed to expanding high-quality seats, especially for our underrepresented populations,” the network said.

Purdue Polytechnic sought approval from Education One after the Indianapolis Charter School Board rejected its pitch to open in Pike Township amid strong public pushback. The Purdue charter network already has two high school campuses in Indianapolis — both of which are part of the Indianapolis Public Schools network of autonomous Innovation schools — and a third location in South Bend.

Education One has also approved the Purdue Polytechnic High School network for four other charters, although exact locations of those high schools and timelines for opening have yet to be determined. The network still must go through a process to activate each approved charter, according to Omlor.

The Purdue Polytechnic network emphasizes STEM education, particularly for students of color, and seeks to boost the pipeline of underrepresented students attending Purdue University. The Indianapolis Charter School Board within the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation authorizes its two other Indianapolis campuses.

The Purdue Polytechnic network has pitched a slow growth model for its new west campus, adding one grade each year to ultimately serve a maximum of 500 students in its seventh year.

Two other schools approved by Education One — Girls IN STEM Academy operated by Paramount Schools of Excellence and The Match high school operated by Matchbook Learning — still plan to open in the fall of 2024.

The opening of Girls IN Stem Academy in Washington Township has also sparked pushback from community members who are against charter schools. The fight has become a battle over zoning, as the school seeks to rezone property it acquired from a church to use for educational purposes. The city’s Metropolitan Development Commission will review its rezoning request at a meeting next week. The rezoning process, however, can be lengthy and ultimately ends with a vote from the Indianapolis City-County Council.

Like Purdue Polytechnic, Paramount also received approval from Education One for five separate charters. One of those charters is for Paramount South Bend, but the other three K-8 school locations have yet to be determined.

The Match plans to open off West 16th Street in warehouses that were renovated with the help of a U.S. Department of Energy grant.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Aplicaciones ayudan a que los maestros se comuniquen con familias que no hablan inglés

2024-03-13T22:35:42+00:00

Read in English

Por años, Emma Gonzalez Gutierrez ha tenido dificultades para comunicarse con los maestros de sus cinco hijos.

Ha intentado mantenerse involucrada. Ha asistido a reuniones, gravitado hacia el personal que habla español, y dependido de traductores, incluidos sus hijos, a lo largo de los años.

Ahora, gracias a una aplicación que su escuela en Adams 12, la escuela Primaria McElwain, empezó a usar este año, ha encontrado oportunidades para participar de nuevas maneras en la educación de su hija más pequeña.

Recientemente, la maestra de kindergarten le mandó un mensaje de texto usando esa aplicación, ReachWell, que permite que los maestros escriban en inglés y que los padres reciban mensajes en su propio idioma. La maestra le dijo a Gonzalez Gutierrez que su hija había ganado un premio parecido a “estudiante del mes” y la invitó a ir a la escuela para sorprender a su hija cuando le dieran el premio. Fue un pequeño gesto que significó mucho para Gonzalez Gutierrez.

“Para mí fue muy emocionante”, Gonzalez Gutierrez dijo. “Fue muy valioso para mí que pudo hacerme saber”.

ReachWell y aplicaciones similares de traducción se han convertido en algo más común y, para algunos maestros, se han convertido en una herramienta esencial para comunicarse con una creciente cantidad de familias que no hablan inglés. Las aplicaciones con frecuencia permiten que los mensajes entre padres y maestros sean personales. Algunos maestros dicen que han ayudado a que los padres se abran sobre problemas que su hijo o familia está teniendo, lo cual ayuda a que los maestros interactúen mejor con los estudiantes.

Además de ver los mensajes de texto de los maestros en su lengua materna en ReachWell, los padres pueden responder en su propio idioma y los maestros ven las respuestas en inglés.

Kayli Brooks, una maestra en la escuela Primaria Tollgate en Aurora, usa la aplicación Talking Points, la cual también le permite enviar mensajes de texto a los padres. También traduce los mensajes entre padres y educadores, pero no requiere que las familias descarguen una aplicación.

“Las familias comparten que están teniendo dificultades con el transporte, o esta es la razón por la que [el estudiante] está comportándose mal, o quizás me texteen y digan: ‘Oye, esto pasó en la casa y creo que mi hijo va a estar muy triste en la escuela hoy’”, Brooks dijo. “Es algo enorme. Las familias quieren estar involucradas en la educación de su hijo sin importar de dónde sean, sin importar qué idioma hablen”.

Brooks dijo que desde que su escuela en Aurora empezó a usar la aplicación en 2020, ha tenido mucho más éxito recolectando formularios de permisos, por ejemplo.

Con familias inmigrantes recién llegadas al país y que están “bastante abrumadas”, dijo, enviarles mensajes de texto por la aplicación también las ayuda a entender mejor la información básica que necesitan para que sus hijos empiecen la escuela.

La comunicación personal, a través de un mensaje de texto, con frecuencia es más fácil de manejar para las familias que pedirles a los padres que se dirijan a formularios o recursos en línea, Brooks dijo.

Sara Olson, directora de la escuela Primaria McElwain, dijo que la aplicación ReachWell es “una herramienta que proporciona acceso equitativo”.

“Casi no logro entender cómo estas personas se han guiado por las escuelas durante años sin tener acceso”, Olson dijo. “Como [madre], no puedo imaginarme no tener acceso a la información, a los maestros. Cada niño e integrante de la familia tiene derecho a tener acceso”.

Olson dijo que no tuvo problemas para que las familias en su escuela descargaran la aplicación.

Zuben Bastani dijo que creó la aplicación ReachWell después de que vio a familias en la escuela de Denver de su hijo que no estaban recibiendo todos los mensajes. Dijo que vio a niños excluidos de excursiones cuando llegaban a la escuela sin estar preparados, sin saberlo—como usando tenis cuando había una excursión para caminar por la nieve, por ejemplo—porque sus familias no habían entendido los mensajes de la escuela.

“Fue obvio, muy rápido, qué familias estaban informadas y se aparecían y qué familias no”, Bastani dijo.

La aplicación se está usando en muchas escuelas y distritos en el área metropolitana de Denver y alrededor del país en lugares como Pittsburgh. Además de con escuelas, la compañía también se está asociando con algunas agencias de servicios de emergencia para proporcionar alertas de emergencia—como órdenes de quedarse en casa o evacuaciones durante desastres naturales—que las poblaciones que no hablan inglés pueden recibir en su lengua materna.

Jean Boylan, una facilitadora comunitaria en la escuela Primaria McMeen en Denver, también usa ReachWell en su escuela, pero dijo que además ha usado la aplicación de traducciones de Google en su teléfono para saludar a los padres en persona cuando pasan a buscar a sus estudiantes. Dijo que el personal escolar busca tantas maneras como puede para comunicarse.

En su escuela, inquietudes sobre si las nuevas familias inmigrantes tienen acceso a internet, han resultado en que el personal empiece a imprimir materiales también. McMeen es una de un par de docenas de escuelas en Denver que han inscrito a una cantidad significativa de estudiantes nuevos de Venezuela y otros lugares este año.

Pero cada vez que pueden comunicarse con la aplicación de ReachWell, ahorran tiempo y energía, Boylan dijo. La aplicación ayuda porque las familias hablan muchos idiomas diferentes. Boylan dijo que hay un mapa en su oficina con por lo menos 27 países resaltados que reflejan de dónde vienen las familias actuales de la escuela.

Bastani dijo que ReachWell encontró que, debido a que los padres descargan la aplicación y seleccionan ellos mismos su idioma preferido de una lista de más de 130 idiomas, muchas escuelas descubren que no han estado contando todos los idiomas que sus familias hablan.

En promedio, descubren 25 por ciento más idiomas después de un par de meses, los líderes de ReachWell dijeron.

Boylan ahora está trabajando con Bastani para aumentar el contenido en una página con recursos que ReachWell ofrece en la aplicación para las familias. La página incluye información sobre el acceso a recursos como comida o vivienda para las familias.

Para padres como Gonzalez Gutierrez, la comunicación personal que tienen con los maestros es esencial.

Gonzalez Gutierrez dijo a principios de este año que notó que su estudiante de kindergarten estaba frustrada con un programa en línea que la escuela usaba para que los niños aprendieran matemáticas. Estaba causándole estrés y temor a la niña, y Gonzalez Gutierrez dijo que no sabía cómo hablar con la maestra sobre eso—hasta que se dio cuenta de que podía mandarle un mensaje de texto.

Compartir con la maestra cuál era el problema permitió que trabajaran juntas para resolverlo.

“Vale la pena”, Gonzalez Gutierrez dijo. “Es un regalo para mí”.

Yesenia Robles es una reportera para Chalkbeat Colorado que distritos escolares de kindergarten a 12º grado y la educación multilingüe. Comunícate con Yesenia por correo electrónico a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Traducido por Alejandra X. Castañeda

Apps are helping teachers communicate with families that don’t speak English

2024-03-13T22:36:31+00:00

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Emma Gonzalez Gutierrez has struggled to communicate with the teachers of her five children for years.

She’s tried to stay engaged. She’s attended meetings, gravitated toward Spanish-speaking staff, and relied on translators, including her kids, over the years.

Now, thanks to an app that McElwain Elementary, her Adams 12 school, started using this year, she’s found opportunities to engage in new ways with her youngest child’s education.

Recently, the kindergarten teacher texted her on the app, ReachWell, which allows the teacher to text in English and parents to receive the messages in their own language. The teacher told Gonzalez Gutierrez that her daughter had won a student of the month-type award and invited her to come to the school to surprise her daughter when the award was presented. The small gesture that meant so much to Gonzalez Gutierrez.

“For me it was very exciting,” Gonzalez Gutierrez said. “It was so valuable that she was able to let me know.”

ReachWell and similar translation apps have become more common, and for some teachers, they’ve become crucial as educators work to communicate with the rising number of families that don’t speak English. The apps often allow the communications between parents and teachers to feel personal. Some teachers say it has helped parents open up about issues their child or family is having, which then helps teachers better engage with students.

In addition to seeing text from teachers in their native language on ReachWell, parents can respond in their native language and teachers see the replies in English.

Kayli Brooks, a teacher at Tollgate Elementary in Aurora, uses the app Talking Points, which also allows her to text parents. It also translates texts between parents and educators but does not require families to download an app.

“Families will share that they’re struggling with transportation, or here’s why maybe they’re acting out, or they might text me and say ‘hey this thing happened at home and I think my child is going to be really sad at school today,’” Brooks said. “It’s a huge deal. Families want to be involved in their child’s education no matter where they’re from, no matter what language they speak.”

Brooks said that since her Aurora school began using the app in 2020, she is much more successful at collecting permission forms, for example.

With migrant families who are new to the country and are “kind of overwhelmed,” she said, texting them through the app has also helped them better understand basic information they need to get their children started in school.

Communication that feels personal, through a text, is often more manageable for families than directing parents to online forms and resources, she said.

Sara Olson, principal of McElwain Elementary, said the ReachWell translation app is “a tool that provides equitable access.”

“It’s almost mind boggling to me that some of these folks have maneuvered schools for years not having access,” Olson said. “As a parent I can’t imagine not having access to the information, to the teachers. Every child and family member has a right to have that access.”

Olson said she did not have trouble having all families at her school download the app.

Zuben Bastani created the app ReachWell after he said he saw that some families at his child’s Denver school weren’t getting all the communications. He said he saw children excluded from field trips after arriving at school, unknowingly unprepared — wearing sneakers on the day of a snowshoeing trip, for example — because their families hadn’t understood the school communications.

“It became real apparent, real fast, which families were aware and showed up and which weren’t,” Bastani said.

The app is in use in many schools and districts in the metro area and across the country in places like Pittsburgh. In addition to schools, the company is also partnering with some emergency service agencies to provide emergency notifications — such as shelter-in-place or evacuation orders during natural disasters — that non-English speaking populations can receive in their home language.

Jean Boylan, a community liaison at McMeen Elementary in Denver, also uses ReachWell at her school, but said she also has used Google’s translation app on her phone to greet parents face to face as they pick up students from school. She said staff are all looking for as many ways as possible to communicate.

In her school, concerns about whether new immigrant families have access to the internet, have led staff to start printing materials too. McMeen is one of a couple dozen Denver schools that have enrolled a significant number of new students from Venezuela and elsewhere this year.

But anytime they can communicate with the ReachWell app, it saves time and energy, Boylan said.

The app helps because there are so many languages spoken by families. She said there’s a map in her office with at least 27 countries highlighted, reflecting where the school’s current families come from.

Bastani said ReachWell has found that because parents have to download the app and self-select from more than 130 languages what their preferred language is, many schools find that they’ve been undercounting how many languages their families speak.

On average, they discover 25% more languages after a few months, ReachWell leaders said.

Boylan is now working with Bastani to build out a resource page that ReachWell offers in the app for families. It may include ways for families to access help such as for food or housing.

For parents like Gonzalez Gutierrez, the personal communications they have with teachers are the most critical.

Gonzalez Gutierrez said earlier this year, she realized her kindergartener had become frustrated with an online program the school used for kids to learn math. It was causing the child stress and fear and Gonzalez Gutierrez said she didn’t know how to talk to the teacher about it — until she realized that she could text her.

Letting the teacher know what the problem was allowed them to work together to solve it.

“It’s worth it,” Gonzalez Gutierrez said. “It’s been such a gift for me.”

This story has been updated to reflect that users do not have to download the ReachWell app to get messages through ReachWell, though the downloading the app is an option.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

What Philadelphia public schools could get in new city budget

2024-03-14T19:28:57+00:00

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Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s self-described “big” and “bold” first budget would increase funding for public schools, include a pilot plan for year-round learning, and create a new workforce pipeline program in the Community College of Philadelphia.

But despite ample city coffers due to post-pandemic years of unusually strong revenue collections, the proposal — and accompanying five-year financial plan — still relies on state funding to make up the district’s anticipated $400 million shortfall for the next fiscal year.

This is Parker’s first budget and the blueprint for how Philadelphia’s 100th mayor — and first woman to hold the job — intends to run the city. While shored up by temporary federal pandemic funding for the past few years, the underfunded school district is facing a $407 million gap for fiscal 2025, aging buildings, a gun violence epidemic that injured 10 students last week and killed one, a mandate to make up lost special education services for thousands of students, significant charter school costs, and teacher shortages.

Parker said her budget would increase city funding for the district, with a current budget of $4.5 billion, by $24 million in fiscal 2025. That would come partly from increasing the school district’s share of property tax revenue from 55% to 56%, which would bring in an additional $18 million. The district also gets revenue from other local sources, including an annual city grant which this year amounted to $282 million.

Parker said she also wants to increase the local contribution to the school district by $2 million each year going forward, and announced a plan to speed up the sale of delinquent tax properties, which she said would also raise more funds for the district.

Her budget proposal would bring the total to nearly $140 million in additional city funds for education over five years, the mayor said, with $129 million going directly to the school district and $10 million to a new workforce program at the Community College of Philadelphia.

Parker also doubled down on her year-round schools proposal and promised to pilot the initiative in schools starting this fall.

“On public education, our goals are high — they must be,” Parker said during her budget address to City Council on Thursday. “For far too long, our students have struggled with far too little. The days of settling for crumbs are over. Our students deserve a full loaf and they’ll get it.”

As Parker gets ready to name a new Board of Education, she signaled her support for Superintendent Tony Watlington, who was in attendance on Thursday. She told him, “You’re my guy.”

Watlington and Board of Education President Reginald Streater issued their own statements in support of Parker’s proposal following her address.

Year-round school, city workforce pipeline, and more: what’s in the budget for schools

The mayor’s major education platform during the campaign was for year-round school and a longer school day, which will be expensive and undoubtedly require union negotiation. She never put a price tag on the proposal, but both she and Watlington came out in favor of a pilot to test the concept.

Parker said her budget includes a “plan for full-day and year-round schooling — offering students educational enrichment throughout the year, with schedules that work for working families.” She said her office of education will launch the initiative in 20 pilot schools this fall.

But she did not give a dollar amount during her address Thursday.

Parker also spoke passionately about the impact gun violence has had on Philadelphia students and families. She said the recent spate of shootings at SEPTA bus stops after school dismissal has “left our city shaken.”

“Enough is enough,” Parker said.

The budget includes $33 million in new investments in public safety for fiscal 2025, increasing the total amount to more than $600 million over five years.

She said she wants to hire 400 new police officers every year and fund 100 officers doing primarily “community policing.” She also wants to add new patrol cars, unmarked cars, video software, cameras at parks and recreation sites, drones, and upgrades to investigative equipment.

Parker also said youth safety is tied to opportunities outside of the classroom which is why she proposed $3.2 million for youth sports

“I know youth sports aren’t just about wins and losses — they’re about giving children hope,” Parker said. “”We should be supporting them.”

For postsecondary education, Parker announced $10 million for the Community College of Philadelphia in partnership with the school district to “establish a first-in-the-nation City College for Municipal Employment” — a city workforce pipeline she said will prepare more students for jobs in city government. Participants will “earn a stipend while they learn and graduate into good city jobs” Parker said.

What the budget leaves out

The mayor’s plan to increase the district’s share of property tax revenue to 56% is significant, but won’t entirely solve the district’s looming shortfall. Parker had said during her campaign that she would like to see a larger share of city property tax revenue go to the school district, mentioning 58% as a goal.

Rob Dubow, the city Finance Director, said at a press briefing on Wednesday that they decided to shift the tax revenue split to 56% rather than 58% because the administration is moving “in concert” with what Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed and what district officials said they needed in their budget presentation before the school board.

Last month, Shapiro proposed a state budget that would increase overall education spending by $1.1 billion, of which nearly $300 million in additional funds would come to Philadelphia. The city’s school costs are primarily covered by the state and the city; last year the state provided 46% and the city 41%, with federal money – mostly pandemic relief funds – making up the rest. Usually, the federal share is much smaller.

Parker cited the 2022 court ruling that Pennsylvania’s education funding system is unconstitutional and the finding by a legislative commission that Philadelphia alone needs $1.4 billion in additional state funds to meet the needs of all its students.

On the district’s aging facilities, Parker said “we need to modernize our existing schools and build new ones,” saying she would be “working with our allies on City Council” including Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas. Thomas has proposed creating an independent authority to handle school construction and renovation, but Parker did not comment on that proposal Thursday.

The primary education initiatives of her predecessor, Jim Kenney, were PHLPreK and the city investment in community schools, which bring social service resources and personnel into school buildings.

Dubow said PHLPre-K would be funded at the same level as last year. Under Kenney, PHLPreK served 17,000 students over several years, providing about 5,000 seats at any one time, and he regarded it as one of his biggest legacies.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado transfer students would get help with retaining college credits under new bill

2024-03-13T21:41:10+00:00

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Two years into college during the pandemic, Larry Blackshear wanted a little bit of normalcy.

Hoping a move closer to home would help, he decided to transfer in 2022 from Colorado State University Pueblo to the University of Colorado Denver — a 15-minute drive from where he grew up in Aurora.

But even though he wanted to pursue the same Spanish and political science degrees he studied in Pueblo, not all of his credits transferred with him. Of the 82 credits he had earned, only 64 were accepted at the Denver university.

“If CU Denver had accepted my credits,” Blackshear, 23, said, “I’d be preparing to graduate at the end of this (school) year.”

Instead, he’s likely a year and a half away from earning his degree. And, while he’s not sure of the exact amount, he estimates he’s spent thousands of dollars trying to catch up.

Colorado was a pioneer in working to remove such obstacles with transfers, but students statewide still run into problems when they try to switch between public colleges, pointing to the need to update rules to reflect changes in the way students earn credits and progress through college.

State leaders hope new legislation will provide that update, so that students like Blackshear don’t lose time, money, and credits when they decide to change schools.

Senate Bill 164 includes three different parts to bolster the state’s transfer system. The bill is a priority of the Colorado Department of Higher Education and is sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

The bill would update the state’s student bill of rights — a list that says what students can expect from colleges — for the first time since 2008. The updates would include a requirement that schools tell students whether their credits transfer and what a transfer to another school entails. They would also have to clarify that students have the right to appeal if an institution decides their credits won’t transfer, and the legislation lays out a process for an appeal.

The bill would require colleges to give students information about college costs, including fees and other expenses.

And the bill would require a state report on transfer outcomes, such as how many students transfer statewide and how transfer credits were applied by colleges toward a student’s transcript.

Colorado’s pioneering transfer policies falling short

Colorado was an early adopter of common course numbering, which standardizes certain class numbers across colleges and universities, so that they’re more easily recognized by the receiving college and the credits transfer seamlessly. The state also has other policies for transfer students, such as agreements between two-year and four-year colleges and universities that help students stay on track to earning a degree.

But not all Colorado colleges have such agreements, especially when students transfer between four-year universities. And the system hasn’t evolved fast enough to keep up with changes over the past decade, said Kim Poast, the Colorado higher education department’s chief student success and academic affairs officer.

More students are taking college courses in high school, and the state has more workforce training programs that teach college-level skills. State leaders have also recognized that students move between colleges and universities in ways not accounted for within the current system, which is built around the idea that most students would move from community college to a four-year university. Students take much more winding paths than that and can end up attending multiple universities before they graduate, Poast said.

Statewide groups have also taken notice of issues with the state’s transfer system, especially as national data has shown more than a third of all students transfer. Colorado’s The Attainment Network recently released policy suggestions for the state to update its transfer policies, such as ensuring certain credits transfer into programs and collecting data on how the system works.

Poast said the state worked with two national organizations to create recommendations for updates, some of which are reflected in the new legislation.

The goal of Senate Bill 164 is to help more students when they run into issues and identify and fix where schools are running into issues applying transfer credits, Poast said.

“I think it’s so important for students to have agency and be able to see how to navigate that system in the most effective way possible,” she said.

Barriers cost students time and money

Katherine Harvey’s experience typifies the challenges the new legislation seeks to address.

Harvey, now 27, graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019. But she took a winding route. She started college in California, then transferred to Front Range Community College. She had some credit from Advanced Placement courses in high school, but her California credits didn’t transfer properly.

She ended up having to retake a math class, because her California math class counted for only 2.7 credits. She needed three to meet graduation requirements.

When she eventually transferred to CU Boulder, the school again needed to independently review all of her transcripts, including the credits she earned from Front Range. This time, she kept a detailed record that she gave to advisers.

“Even though that was like all within Colorado, it was so confusing, and I never really got guidance,” she said. “And then you’re paying extra money, and you’re a poor college student.”

The bill is expected to be heard in committee for the first time on March 20. It has support from colleges and advocacy groups statewide, although several are asking for changes.

Katie Zaback, Colorado Succeeds’ vice president of policy, said the bill is a step in the right direction. But her organization wants to see a requirement that the state publicly report information, such as the challenges schools encounter with accepting credits and how the state is responding to those issues. Colorado Succeeds brings together business leaders to advocate for improving education and training.

For Blackshear, the changes can’t come fast enough. He’s not sure when he will graduate. And financial aid he once relied on has run dry, meaning he has to find more money for college.

He plans to testify in support of the bill, because he doesn’t want other students to run into the same issues he has faced. He hopes his testimony can show that the transfer system needs updates to help students who are falling through the cracks, most of whom are students of color and the first in their family to go to college, he said.

“I hope that my story is able to alert students about the challenges and perils of transferring from institution to institution without having all of the knowledge that they need to be successful,” he said. “And I hope it can show just how detrimental the transfer processes are.”

20 Newark schools exit state comprehensive, targeted status this year

2024-03-14T16:52:05+00:00

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More than half of Newark’s public schools are no longer designated as underperforming or in need of support following a state review of high-poverty schools.

This year, 20 Newark schools moved out of state designations for schools in need of support due to low student performance, among other criteria. Among those were Weequahic High School and Rafael Hernandez Elementary School. Both exited one of the lowest designations given to schools in need of recurring support, according to Superintendent Roger León, who announced the school designations during a board meeting last month.

The schools joined a list of more than 30 other schools that did not receive a designation this year.

Although an improvement over past years, the district remains under the state’s average graduation rate and proficiency scores on standardized tests. Seven Newark schools continue to need state support to raise student achievement next school year.

The district’s goal is to have the number of state-supported schools range from “small to zero,” said León during the meeting.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, known by its acronym ESSA, New Jersey must ensure that all students have access to a high quality and equitable education. The federal guidelines set minimum requirements around measuring and reporting school performance and require states to identify the lowest performing schools.

Schools in need of assistance receive federal funds meant to help raise the performance of the lowest-achieving students. High-poverty schools also can be identified as needing additional support through the Title I program. All Newark schools qualify for Title I.

New Jersey considers a variety of factors when identifying schools in need of support, including academic achievement, academic growth for elementary and middle schools, high school graduation rates, English language proficiency, and chronic absenteeism. The state then designates a score.

Last year, the state analyzed data from the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years and identified 25 Newark public schools in need of support. The state required the district to write an action plan and engage the community to help identify and tackle school challenges.

This year, seven schools entered a new state status or remained under the same designation, a significant shift from last year’s state review. During this year’s review, the state analyzed 2022-23 school year data – a time when Newark Public Schools’ state test scores went up 2 percentage points in both math and English language arts, pointing to students’ slow academic recovery post-pandemic.

The pandemic had a devastating effect on student performance and mental health, particularly among Newark’s most vulnerable students, including English language learners and students with disabilities. Third graders’ English language arts scores remained at 19% last spring, prompting concern among advocates who consider that grade a critical year for long-term success.

Two schools – Grover Cleveland and Thirteenth Avenue elementary schools – performed at or below the bottom 5% of Title I schools, which means they will enter “comprehensive status” for the coming year. Last year, Thirteenth Avenue exited that status. High schools enter comprehensive status when they have a graduation rate of 67% or lower.

In the coming year, Barringer High School will move out of “comprehensive II status,” a designation for schools that require intensive support again and didn’t meet the state’s criteria to exit the category. The high school entered “additional targeted status” meaning that a student group at that school is “consistently underperforming.”

Barringer offers a special education program for students with behavior disabilities, and roughly 48% of Barringer students are English learners, according to 2022-23 state fall enrollment data. Natasha Pared, Barringer’s principal, used to lead Rafael Hernandez Elementary school, which moved out of a state designation this year.

“So we have confidence she’ll be able to do the same thing here at Barringer,” said León during the February school board meeting.

Chancellor Avenue and Sussex Avenue elementary schools will continue with “additional targeted status,” while Quitman Street Elementary School and Malcolm X Shabazz High School will continue with “comprehensive II” status.

Quitman offers a bilingual and special education program for students with autism in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Shabazz also offers a special education program for students with behavior disabilities. In recent years, the school has seen declining enrollment, struggles in student performance, and safety challenges. In 2022, Shabazz reported a 64.2% graduation rate, compared to the statewide rate of 90%, according to school performance report data. This fall, it will launch a new bilingual program for ninth and 10th grade students.

In total, 36 schools were not identified for any status and 20 schools exited comprehensive status, according to the state’s review this year. The schools that exited a state designation this year must write a sustainability plan, which details how schools will continue to support student academic achievement.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Florida settlement’s limits on ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law may give teachers and students breathing room

2024-03-13T20:50:30+00:00

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Florida teachers can place a photo of their spouse on their desk. School libraries can stock books featuring LGBTQ characters. And anti-bullying efforts can protect LGBTQ students. But restrictions on classroom instruction related to sexuality and gender identity remain.

Those are the terms of a settlement agreement that puts an end to a lawsuit challenging what’s commonly known as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Advocates are hailing the lifting of a “shadow” that had fallen over the state’s schools. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made challenging “woke” ideas in schools a cornerstone of his political brand, also declared victory.

The resolution calls attention to the enormous gray areas created by laws restricting how teachers talk about gender, sexuality, race, and history. These laws simultaneously touch on issues of personal identity where federal law protects students and teachers, and issues of curriculum and instruction where states have broad authority.

Fearful of lawsuits and state investigations, teachers have emptied out classroom libraries, taken down Pride flags, and quit their jobs. A high school class president was told he couldn’t mention being gay in his graduation speech. State officials have blamed local leaders for going beyond the requirements of the law, but never formally clarified what was and wasn’t covered — until the settlement agreement was signed Monday.

Essentially, the agreement means that the law won’t force teachers back into the closet or prevent students from talking about who they are.

Under the agreement, the Florida Department of Education will also disseminate guidance about the law to all 67 school districts.

“The vagueness of this law was intentional,” said Joe Saunders, senior political director at Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ rights group and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “At any point, [state officials] could have offered deeper guidance and didn’t. The only reason they’ve done it now is because we sued them in federal court and forced them to end the most harmful aspects of this law.”

Laws restricting teaching have wide-ranging impacts

As classroom restrictions proliferate, a survey by the research group RAND found that two-thirds of teachers reported self-censoring how they talk about certain social and political issues in the classroom, whether they lived in a state with formal restrictions or not. RAND also found — in a study released this week — that a majority of teachers thought these restrictions harmed learning and made students feel less welcome and less empathetic.

Teachers in Florida were the most likely to be aware of their state’s restrictions, and the most likely to report having changed instruction in response, RAND found. Florida also had more laws restricting instruction than other states.

A recent Washington Post analysis of FBI data found that school-based hate crimes against LGBTQ students quadrupled in states that passed restrictive laws, which include laws governing teaching as well as which bathrooms and sports teams transgender children have access to.

The relationship between state policies and bullying has been in the national spotlight after the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary student who died in February after a fight in their Oklahoma high school.

Related: ‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

Some state laws ban discussion of certain topics or require that lessons be “age appropriate” or avoid “divisive” framings, while others require parental notification and the opportunity for parents to opt students out of lessons. Many states leave enforcement to school districts and provide little guidance.

Advocates of these laws say parents have a right to know what their children are being taught, especially on issues that might conflict with their own values, and that schools should focus on core academic subjects.

Students and teachers in states with teaching restrictions told Chalkbeat about LGTBQ student clubs receiving less support, and lessons in literature and history being scaled back to avoid talking about queer references in literature or the movement for gay civil rights.

Legal challenges to these laws are underway in a number of states, but how courts will rule could depend on specifics in individual states. Arizona’s teaching restrictions were struck down, for example, because lawmakers had wedged them into the state budget.

Keira McNett, staff counsel for the National Education Association, said the settlement is important in Florida and “for the national tenor.”

“Many states modeled their law after Florida’s and many are facing lawsuits of their own,” she said. “In many cases, they are overly broad. And when the state is required to actually explain what these vague laws mean, they explain it in a way that is a lot more narrow.”

Settlement provides clarity for classrooms, activities

Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the lawsuit, said the settlement provides immediate relief to Florida students, parents, and teachers who were living under a cloud of uncertainty.

“Every kid should be able to go to public school and have their dignity respected and their family respected,” Kaplan said.

The settlement lays out examples of what’s allowed under Florida law, known formally as the Parental Rights in Education Act:

Teachers can respond to students who choose to discuss their own families or identities and can grade essays that include LGBTQ topics.
Teachers can make reference to LGBTQ people in literature or history.
Student-to-student speech and classroom debates can touch on LGBTQ issues.
Schools can explicitly protect LGBTQ students in anti-bullying efforts, and teachers can have “safe space” stickers in their classroom.
Students of the same gender can dance together at school dances and wear clothing considered inconsistent with their gender assigned at birth.

The settlement clarifies that restrictions on classroom instruction apply “regardless of viewpoint.” In other words, teachers can’t teach a lesson on modern gender theory to elementary students, nor can they teach those students that gender identity is immutable and determined by biological traits.

Kaplan said states have significant authority over curriculum, and that the part of the law specifying such restrictions was unlikely to be overturned on further appeal.

DeSantis’ office in a press release emphasized that the law as written remains intact and “children will be protected from radical gender and sexual ideology in the classroom.”

“We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” Florida General Counsel Ryan Newman said in the press release. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

Settlement ‘allows for a reasonable conversation’ on instruction

Suzanne Eckes, a professor of educational law and policy at the University of Wisconsin, said Florida’s law and others that are vague and broad potentially violate federal laws and protections.

As employees, teachers have limited free speech rights in the classroom, but states cannot discriminate against them on the basis of sex, which forms the basis of many legal protections for LGBTQ people. For example, they can’t penalize a teacher for having a picture of a same-sex spouse on their desk while allowing a colleague to have a picture of her husband. The federal Equal Access Act says that schools can’t limit extracurricular clubs based on their content. Bible study groups, future homemakers, and gay-straight alliance clubs all have the right to meet in school, Eckes said.

Eckes said the settlement suggests the challengers had viable claims on equal protection grounds, even as the state maintains the right to regulate curriculum and prevent teachers from offering personal opinions to a captive audience.

While the settlement creates no legal precedent, it could encourage some school district lawyers, even in other states, to reach less restrictive interpretations of their states’ laws. At the same time, even in Florida, there may be disagreements about what exactly constitutes instruction.

“If a teacher does give an opinion in class, there is this overall idea that teacher speech can be curtailed,” she said. “That is a grayer area than banning the gay-straight alliance or pulling all the books off the shelves due to your own ideology.”

Derek Black, a professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, said the settlement could change the political and cultural calculus around sweeping prohibitions, even though it doesn’t set a precedent for other lawsuits.

“If DeSantis is willing to settle, maybe it’s OK for the governor of Oklahoma to settle,” Black said. “Maybe it denies cultural conservatives the ability to say that some governor or AG in another state is weak.”

The settlement also offers teachers important clarity, Black said: “This type of settlement rebalances things so you don’t have to be so afraid and that allows for a reasonable conversation about what’s instruction and what’s not.”

Michael Woods, a high school teacher in Palm Beach County who leads the Florida Education Association’s LGBTQ caucus, said he’s thrilled with the settlement even as he fears it will take decades to get back to the level of inclusion teachers and students experienced just a few years ago.

His school district’s guide for supporting LGBTQ students shrunk from 140 pages to 14 under Florida’s law, he said. And he stopped leading his school’s GSA club because he would have needed to send permission slips home, which led him to worry about outing students. He’s not sure that’s changed.

Woods also worries about colleagues in smaller, more conservative communities, and about trans educators who often face even more hostility than gay and lesbian teachers.

Still, he hopes teachers in other states feel inspired.

“One of the most hateful states in the nation for LGBTQ rights reached a settlement,” he said. “You have to fight, but it can happen.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Denver’s Lincoln High School gets more time to improve, as State Board praises efforts

2024-03-14T01:07:09+00:00

When Colorado officials ordered Denver’s Lincoln High School to work on a turnaround plan to improve the achievement of its students, no one knew schools would be interrupted by the pandemic just a month later.

But the school pushed forward with its improvement plan, despite the switch to remote learning and a more recent influx of new students. And although the school’s test scores and state rating remained low this year, State Board of Education members praised Lincoln’s progress Wednesday and agreed to give its leaders more time to boost its rating.

So far, school leaders have completed a leadership program with the University of Virginia, created a new ninth grade academy, and rolled out new career-focused pathways for students. A program called PTECH allows students to stay in high school for a fifth or sixth year to earn an associate’s degree in business. Lincoln’s first participants are graduating this spring.

Those changes were made possible partly by Lincoln’s status as an “innovation school,” a model allowed for state-ordered improvement plans that gives the school autonomy from some district and state rules and provisions of the teachers union contract.

Lincoln was one of just two Denver schools with state-ordered improvement plans. The other, Manual High School, received an improved rating this year. If it sustains that rating for one more year, it can be freed from its state orders.

Lincoln, on the other hand, has not improved and had to have its plan reviewed this year. The state board unanimously approved a district plan on Wednesday that will keep Lincoln as an innovation school while the state monitors its progress.

If the school doesn’t manage to earn a higher state rating by 2026, then it will have to return to the state for another hearing.

When a school receives several years of low ratings, the state is obligated to order an improvement plan, which can include requiring external management, turning the school into a charter or even closing it. Recently, State Board members have stayed away from those drastic options. One alternative has been to grant innovation status.

With Lincoln, State Board members said they were encouraged that school and district leaders’ assessment of the school and its ability to improve mirrored the feedback from the community, the Colorado Department of Education staff, and an external state review panel.

“I’m constantly reminded of, we leave a school alone, great things happen,” said State Board member Angelika Schroeder. “What you’re offering is something really special.”

Under the district’s plan, Lincoln will continue to expand its offerings for workforce development while students are in high school.

The school will also focus more in the coming years on attendance. Currently, the average attendance rate at Lincoln is 83%, up from 81% last year.

Principal Antonio Esquibel said attendance rates are low among new immigrant students who are facing other challenges that make it difficult to attend school, such as housing instability.

School leaders also talked about the challenges they’ve faced most recently in supporting a rise in students who are new to the country. Lincoln High School houses one of Denver’s newcomer centers, which help students who are new to the country adjust to life in an American high school.

Esquibel said the school enrolled another six new students Wednesday.

He said the school has added staff, and is now doing an orientation every Monday for new students and their families. The orientation introduces them to Lincoln and the U.S. school system, and to living in southwest Denver.

As part of the improvement plan, the school will also expand its efforts to help all teachers accommodate their lessons for English learners through sheltered instruction, where teachers can adjust lessons to incorporate help for English learners throughout the day.

About half of Lincoln’s roughly 1,000 students are identified as English learners, but about 75% identify Spanish as their first language. With so many arriving students who are new to the country, those percentages are rising.

“Every teacher has to be a teacher of English learners at Lincoln,” Esquibel said.

The school also uses a model it calls TNLI that offers students Spanish instruction and then slowly moves toward more English instruction, allowing students to remain bilingual, Esquibel said.

“We know if given the right supports and resources, our students flourish,” he said.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Drama at NYC performing arts school over loss of its celebrated theater program

2024-03-13T22:17:29+00:00

The curtain is expected to close next month on a long-running acting program at a Manhattan performing arts school serving grades 6-12, due to a funding shortfall, the program’s education and artistic director told parents this week.

But students from the Professional Performing Arts School in Hell’s Kitchen want the show to go on and launched a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $20,000 in less than 24 hours.

They’re hoping they can tap famous alumni, who include Alicia Keys, Britney Spears, Claire Danes, and Jesse Eisenberg. Already, Jeremy Allen White from “The Bear” shared the GoFundMe on his Instagram account (after texting a teacher there to make sure it was legitimate, a parent said).

For 13 years, the Waterwell drama program has worked with the Professional Performing Arts School, often called PPAS, offering conservatory-style acting classes led by professional actors: High school students take drama for two hours a day, five days a week; for middle school, musical theater classes run 1½ hours each day. (Waterwell’s co-founder is Arian Moayed, from “Successsion.”)

Earlier this week, Waterwell’s education and artistic director, Heather Lanza, emailed PPAS parents and students, letting them know the program would wrap up April 12 and urged families to advocate on the program’s behalf.

She blamed the program’s early departure on citywide budget cuts, but the Education Department disputed that, saying that Waterwell was charging more from the get-go than the school could afford.

“We love the students dearly, and this has been unbelievably painful,” Lanza told Chalkbeat. “We deeply believe in this training model.”

Some of the students stay in the program for seven years and have gone on to Broadway or other professional roles. Whether the students want to be professional actors or not, learning through theater helps them develop into “empathetic human beings” and helps them tap into “the power of storytelling,” Lanza said.

Lanza told Chalkbeat that the organization’s budget was short by $102,000. Based on what the school told her in a meeting last week, she said, the funding shortfall was a product of the overall cuts in the city and were tied to a midyear adjustment to the school’s budget for the current school year. The principal told families this week that the school needed about $80,000 to save the program, parents said.

Education Department officials disputed the claim that budget cuts were to blame for the program’s gap, saying that the program’s work order was above what the school could afford, and this was communicated to Waterwell in December.

The school did lose money because of an enrollment dip. But that cut only amounted to about $20,000, according to a teachers union database. The school’s current roster is about 520 students, according to public data, down about 20 students from the year before.

“A rigorous theater arts program continues to be a priority for PPAS,” Education Department spokeswoman Jenna Lyle said in a statement. “The school will host end of year performances, and dedicated staff will continue to support students in their drama education through the end of standard academic year program, which ends on April 30, while the school sources a new partner for the next academic year.”

The school is committed to ensuring the theater program will remain strong even if Waterwell leaves next month. Teachers are willing to do “double time” and “step in and fill the gap if we can’t raise the money that Waterwell needs,” said Shawn Dell, the school’s PTA president.

“PPAS is one of a kind. It’s a unicorn. There’s nothing like it,” Dell said. “LaGuardia has DOE teachers that are seeking tenure. Our teachers are seeking Broadway. That’s why we love it.”

Students crushed by news, but elated Jeremy Allen White took notice

“This program brings so much joy to a lot of people,” Tennyson Artigliere, the seventh grader who launched the GoFundMe campaign, said on her way to dance class after the school day ended. “It really brings us so much joy to be able to do what we love to do.”

Tennyson launched the campaign after texting with friends in her group chat about how to take action.

They also immediately changed the group chat name from “PPAS peeps” to “S peeps,” saying that the removal of the theater program “took the ‘PPA’ out of PPAS.” Now it was just “the school,” the students joked.

Before the school day had started, she had tagged White, the “Bear” star, on Instagram, and when she got her phone back at the end of the day, she was ecstatic to see that he had shared the GoFundMe link in his Instagram story.

White wrote: “This is where I went to high school. It’s an incredible program with some incredible teachers. Please help IF YOU ARE ABLE. I have donated.”

His support felt meaningful. “These are the people that are going to be the future of entertainment,” Tennyson said of her classmates, “the next celebrities.”

Marcus Artigliere, Tennyson’s dad, felt frustrated that parents learned about the cuts only from the theater program and not the principal, who is in her first year at the school. But he beamed about his daughter’s drive to launch the fundraising campaign.

“As a parent, I’m really proud of her collective action,” said Artigliere, an education professor at Hunter College. “It’s a public school. We shouldn’t have to fundraise … but there is a lot of beauty in being scrappy and seeing how the kids are taking off.”

Current and prospective PPAS families worry about school’s future

David Glick’s daughter travels about 1½ hours from Staten Island to PPAS for this program, he said.

“I don’t have my daughter do a crazy commute to just do academics. She could go 10 minutes away for that,” he said of his seventh grader. “She’s got this amazing voice and is talented. She was thrilled when she got in, but she also has anxiety and ADHD, and it’s been really nice for her to have these small classes.”

The news about the program has also reached prospective PPAS families.

Sarah Muir, a parent of an eighth grader at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens, was delighted to learn last week that her son was accepted into PPAS, and the family is weighing it against an offer at the famed LaGuardia performing arts high school.

“It is distressing and concerning to have gone through the lengthy and arduous application process now to find that the school he will be attending may be radically different from the one he applied to,” Muir said. “The school’s core mission and identity as a performing arts school depends on this training.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Incoming Memphis schools leader Marie Feagins begins work, set to assume superintendent role April 1

2024-03-13T22:28:00+00:00

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Update: This story has been updated with details of Feagins’ per diem contract.

Incoming Superintendent Marie Feagins has started working with Memphis-Shelby County Schools under a per diem agreement, allowing her to begin a transition to the superintendent role while the school board hammers out her contract.

Feagins’ temporary employment took effect March 1, according to a press release from school board Chair Althea Greene on the same day. Greene said she expects Feagins, a Detroit public school district administrator, to begin officially as MSCS superintendent on April 1, months ahead of the July 1 start that board members had targeted during the search process.

Greene said it is important for Feagins to begin work soon, especially as Tennessee’s largest school district faces major budget decisions and state lawmakers consider several changes to education policy, including a major expansion of private school vouchers that could affect district revenues.

“Dr. Feagins is excited to be here now to start making Memphis and Shelby County her home,” Greene said.

Memphis school board appointment bill on hold amid talks with state lawmakers

Since the board selected Feagins on Feb. 9, she has been in Memphis for several meetings, including a lunch Friday co-hosted in part by former Memphis schools Superintendent Carol Johnson-Dean.

“Everybody wants to welcome her, and they want her to be successful,” Johnson-Dean told Chalkbeat, adding that several community leaders attended, including both the city and county mayors. She said school board members did not attend.

Feagins also attended part of the Memphis school board’s February business meeting and received a standing ovation. A separate press release at the time said she was working on a plan for her first 100 days on the job.

But at the time of the per diem announcement, the school board had not otherwise discussed her employment in a public meeting, and board members had taken no votes on a contract.

Board members Mauricio Calvo and Stephanie Love said that they had not seen the per diem contract. The following week, Calvo shared a copy of the contract to social media with a caption that said: “...Transparency is key as we work to build confidence and trust.”

The document showed Feagins can earn up to $20,000 in March, as she transitions into the role. Greene, in a statement on March 13, also shared the contract.

Chalkbeat’s attempts to reach Feagins for comment on March 1 were unsuccessful.

Greene has said she expects the board to take action on Feagins’ superintendent contract at a meeting scheduled for March 26. The per diem contract also requires board approval, according to the document.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Should students have cell phones in class? Indiana just said no — with a few exceptions.

2024-03-12T13:47:01+00:00

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Indiana students will need to put their phones away during class starting next school year, under a new law that requires districts to ban communication devices from classrooms.

Senate Enrolled Act 185 bans “any portable wireless device.” The bill — which was signed into law Monday by Gov. Eric Holcomb and takes effect in July — requires districts, including charter schools, to adopt policies banning several types of devices during class time.

Lawmakers and advocates hope the ban improves student engagement, behavior, and mental health, all of which they say have declined since cell phones became a common sight in students’ hands. They’re part of a national push to enact bans on cell phones in schools.

“Even as adults, we’re distracted by using our cell phones,” said Sen. Jeff Raatz, a Republican and the bill’s author, in a Feb. 14 meeting of the House Education Committee.

Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming cell phone ban, including exceptions to it, what schools have previously done to limit cell phones, and concerns about it.

How does the new cell phone ban work?

Under the new law, school districts will need to adopt policies banning communication devices during instructional time. That includes phones, tablets, laptops, and gaming systems, as well as any other devices that can provide communication between two parties.

Exactly how that will be done is up to each individual school district. Students might be required to put their phones in locked pouches or designated places in the classroom.

It will be up to school boards to adopt these policies this summer.

However, the law says a student can use their device:

if a teacher allows it for educational purposes during instructional time.
if a student needs to manage their health care, as for blood sugar monitoring, for example.
in the event of an emergency.
if the use of the device is included in their Individualized Education Program or 504 plan.

The law does not define what constitutes an emergency.

The exception for instructional time is important for students in dual credit programs, said Mary Jane Michalak, vice president of legal and public affairs at Ivy Tech Community College, because it will allow them to access two-factor authentication.

Why do people want a cell phone ban?

Lawmakers attempted to ban cell phones in schools over two decades ago, said Rep. Vernon Smith. However, the law was reversed due to safety concerns.

The rapid adoption of phones between 2010 and 2015, coupled with the development of more attention-grabbing apps, has led students to spend more and more time on their phones, said Evan Eagleson, regional advocacy director for ExcelinEd, during testimony.

Eagleson said studies have shown students spend seven to nine hours a day on their phones, receiving around 237 notifications — a quarter of which occur during class time.

Since COVID, teachers report that student behavior and mental health issues linked to cell phones have spiked, said John O’Neal of the Indiana State Teachers Association in testimony.

“It’s becoming a major problem,” O’Neal said. “Students aren’t motivated in class because they’re distracted by their devices.”

How do educators and parents feel about it?

While schools already have the power to ban cell phones, such prohibitions have largely been left to the discretion of individual teachers, the bill’s supporters said, creating inconsistency from classroom to classroom.

A statewide law provides consistency and helps to enforce existing local policies, said Terry Spradlin, executive director of the Indiana School Boards Association, during testimony on the bill.

Education groups that supported the new law include the Indiana State Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the Indiana School Boards Association, and the Indiana Association of School Principals.

While the bill saw little opposition from advocates or lawmakers, some noted the potential increase in school discipline for students who try to circumvent their districts’ new policies. The enforcement of the ban, as well as any potential consequences for students who violate it, will be up to school districts.

Parents, too, have expressed concerns about being able to reach their students in the event of a school emergency.

How have schools tried to limit cell phones?

Spradlin said school districts’ existing guidelines on cell phone use typically ban the devices from classrooms, or leave it up to teachers. They often permit cell phone use during lunch and passing periods.

But a few Indiana districts have recently moved to ban cell phones during the school day. Fort Wayne Community Schools announced in February that it would pilot “phone-free schools” at two of its middle schools and two of its high schools this spring.

Students will be required to put their phones in locked pouches, which will be unlocked at the end of the day.

Hammond and Martinsville schools also adopted policies at the beginning of this school year requiring students to put their phones away.

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect the law includes both traditional public school districts and charter schools.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Lawmakers eye fix so Colorado colleges can launch adult education diploma program

2024-02-07T21:09:00+00:00

Update: This bill was signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis on March 6.

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Colorado’s effort to help the more than 300,000 residents who never graduated high school has been on hold due to an oversight when the law expanding adult diploma programs was written last year.

But the state’s community colleges may soon be able to get the Adult Education and Literacy Grant Program started, thanks to a bill quickly moving through the legislature that fixes a technical problem that’s kept schools from moving forward with the program.

Senate Bill 51 would allow the State Board of Community Colleges and Occupational Education or a college district board of trustees to create a graduation standard. It would also roll over unspent money from the last year.

The program hit a snag because community college leaders were unsure who they should work with to create criteria for what adults should know to get their high school diploma. The program called for colleges to work with a school district, but the majority serve an area that includes numerous school districts — and college leaders said they wanted to be responsive to the needs of the region, not just one school district area.

In addition, Colorado does not have a statewide standard for what an adult should know to get a high school diploma.

“What we’re doing is we’re making a quick amendment that is needed for our community colleges and local district colleges to have the flexibility that they need in order to tailor their curriculum, as well as ensure that their curriculum aligns with the diverse needs of our adult learners,” said state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat who is co-sponsoring the bill, during an education committee hearing last week.

The program is meant to provide a boost to Colorado’s adult education programs.

Community colleges educate about half of the state’s adults trying to get a high school diploma.

But schools needed to work with multiple school districts to confer a degree. College leaders reported it became difficult to get students diplomas because districts focus on serving younger students, and when district leaders left, new ones weren’t always aware of the partnership. The program allowed colleges to set out on their own.

The program also tripled spending statewide on adults without a diploma.

Colorado was the last state in the nation to begin funding adult education when it created a grant program in 2014. Even with last year’s infusion of $2 million more a year for adult education programs — bringing the statewide total to $3 million — Colorado still funds its programs at some of the lowest levels in the country.

The hope from supporters is that the program will get more adults to good-paying jobs. On average, adults without a high school diploma earn about $682 a week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s compared to $852 a week for residents with a high school diploma.

As tensions flare in parent councils, NYC sees a surge in misconduct complaints

2024-03-13T19:19:25+00:00

Fierce debates and in-fighting within New York City’s parent education councils are hardly new.

But as tensions escalated during the pandemic, the Education Department created its first formal process to investigate complaints of harassment and discrimination among these parent leaders and issue sanctions.

That process, after getting off to a slow start, is now facing its first major test amid a surge of misconduct allegations against parents on these boards.

A total of 36 grievances have been filed this school year against parents elected to the city’s Community Education Councils, according to the Education Department. That’s up from five such complaints last year.

Debates in the councils have simmered for years over proposals to strip selective admissions criteria in an effort to racially integrate schools. Conflicts exploded during the pandemic, both locally and across the country, over school closures and masking requirements. And sharp divides have continued this year over rhetoric about LGBTQ youth and the Israel-Hamas war.

“I think what we’re seeing now is a national political fight that has found its way into education,” said Tracy Jordan, the president of Community Education Council 22 in southern Brooklyn, who recently faced accusations of antisemitism from a local City Council member and some parents over a decision to hold a meeting on a Friday night. (Jordan said she cleared the meeting time in advance with all the members of the council, including Jewish members, and that it was a special meeting that didn’t have a public comment portion, so no one was excluded from speaking.)

Jordan doesn’t know for sure if any complaints have been filed against her, but said even the threat of them can “cause concern.”

The spike in grievances, called D-210 complaints, is also a sign that parent leaders are finally making use of the disciplinary process, which was rolled out in December 2021, at the height of the pandemic, and met with deeply divided reactions. Some parents at the time shared personal accounts of racism, harassment, and doxxing at the hands of fellow parent leaders, and they argued it was long past time for city officials to take a stronger role in enforcing behavior norms.

But other parents, including members of PLACE NYC, or Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, a group that supports selective school admissions, argued that the regulation is overly broad, could have a chilling effect on political speech, and gives the Education Department too much power to regulate independent parent leaders.

The resolution ultimately passed, but the process has taken years to get up and running.

City has yet to share outcomes of investigations

When the Education Department receives a complaint, an “equity compliance officer” is supposed to investigate, and within 60 days must turn over their findings to a council of parent leaders elected by their fellow CEC members. That council must then issue recommendations to schools Chancellor David Banks.

The Education Department only hired the equity compliance officer in February 2023, more than a year after the position was created.

Education Department officials said parent leaders recently elected representatives from their home boroughs to the council responsible for reviewing the investigations, though a spokesperson declined to name its members.

Many parents didn’t know about the grievance process or trust that it would yield any results, said NeQuan McLean, the president of District 16′s CEC in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and head of the Education Council Consortium, a group of parent leaders who pushed for the regulation.

“Now that those elements are in place, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the number of discrimination complaints increased,” he said. “The fact that people are filing complaints demonstrates that the regulation and civil rights protections were needed.”

But how the disciplinary process will play out in practice largely remains to be seen.

Potential disciplinary outcomes range from an order from the chancellor to stop the behavior in question to immediate removal if the behavior is criminal, poses a danger to students, or “is contrary to the best interest of the New York City school district.” For lower level offenses, sanctioned council members get an opportunity to reconcile with their colleagues.

An Education Department spokesperson declined to share whether any of the probes have led to discipline.

Camille Casaretti, a member of the Citywide Council on High Schools, said the process “takes too long,” adding that she knows of complaints made during the CEC elections last spring that are still pending.

Meanwhile, some parents are losing their patience.

At a February meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, multiple parents implored Education Department officials to remove members of the CEC on Manhattan’s District 2 who made comments in a private group text chat that denied the existence of transgender kids and referred in graphic terms to the genitalia of a gay state lawmaker, according to The 74. Maud Maron, one of the CEC 2 members in the private chat, declined to answer questions about whether she is the target of any complaints, but told Chalkbeat that “defending the rights of girls and women is not anti-trans.”

Separately, some students and parents at Stuyvesant High School are pushing for Maron to be removed from the School Leadership Team.

Banks, who makes the final call on discipline for elected parent leaders, called the comments “despicable” and “not in line with our values.”

“One of the things I will tell you in the two years I have been chancellor that has been the greatest disappointment to me is to see on a daily basis an example of parents behaving badly,” Banks said. “I’ve tried to give this some time to allow adults to be adults. But when you realize they refuse to do that … we are going to begin to take action.”

Tensions continue to flare in CECs

The conflict in CEC 2 isn’t the only one to draw significant attention this year.

CEC 14 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been locked in a dispute over whether to resume in-person meetings, following a backlash to CEC President Tajh Sutton’s support for a student walkout calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Sutton and other CEC members say they’ve received violent threats, including a package containing feces mailed to the council’s office, and don’t feel safe meeting in person. Critics have accused CEC members of blocking pro-Israel speakers from participating in online meetings – an allegation the CEC members deny.

Sutton said she’s filed D-210 complaints, and she knows she’s the target of multiple complaints. She was initially supportive of the disciplinary process, but doesn’t believe it’s working as intended. She faulted the Education Department for watering down language in the original proposal that referenced specific forms of discrimination, including against transgender people. She said it also took too long to get the process in motion, which caused some parents to lose trust in the process.

“They’re going to have to contend with the fact that this regulation written by parent leaders under attack at the time is now being weaponized against parent leaders under attack,” she said.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said “parent input has been considered at every stage of developing this process, which helps us ensure an inclusive and respectful environment for all members of our school communities.”

It’s not just the high-profile conflicts garnering media attention that are spurring D-210 complaints. Parent leaders and Education Department officials said the grievances are coming from a wide range of districts.

“In other councils, yes we have D-210 complaints that have been filed, many of which over the last several months,” said Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd in a February meeting. “That process is ongoing.”

In District 22, CEC president Jordan said she’s still managing the fallout from media coverage of her Friday night meeting flap with local City Council member Inna Vernikov, a vocal supporter of Israel who recently made headlines for bringing a gun to a pro-Palestine student rally.

“It was really disappointing and deflating,” Jordan said of the experience. “When you’re accused of something it’s a blemish and doesn’t go away easily.” The whole process has made her question whether getting involved in her CEC was worth it.

She said she supports the idea of a code of conduct for parent leaders, but worries that the Education Department hasn’t done enough to train CEC members on what the code entails and what accountability would look like.

Still, she hopes that the Education Department can distinguish between frivolous complaints and ones that target clearly out-of-bounds behavior.

“At the end of the day, we should be open-minded,” she said. “But when we start causing harm, that is a problem.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Summer Rising will face reduced hours this year. Here’s what NYC families should know.

2024-03-04T22:22:20+00:00

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Applications for New York City’s free summer programming opened Monday to all children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

But in the wake of budget cuts ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, middle schoolers will face significantly fewer hours of enrichment programming this summer.

Launched in 2021 with federal pandemic relief funding, the Summer Rising program was designed to help students readjust to in-person learning and expand summer school opportunities beyond children who were traditionally mandated to attend. The initiative includes a mix of academic instruction provided by Education Department teachers and enrichment activities supported by a network of community-based organizations.

Summer Rising will once again include up to 110,000 slots — and is open to all New York City children currently enrolled in grades K-8, including those who attend charter or private schools.

But there will be a few changes this year. The application process is starting about a month earlier, with placements announced in mid-April, to give caregivers more time to plan for the summer and arrange child care if necessary. And families will now apply using MySchools, the sometimes glitchy website that manages the public school application process from prekindergarten through high school.

The most significant change, however, concerns reduced hours for middle school students.

Here’s what you should know about this year’s Summer Rising program:

How does the Summer Rising 2024 application work?

Using the MySchools portal, families can rank as many different Summer Rising sites as they want — choosing from roughly 360 options across the five boroughs. The seats are not issued on a first-come, first-served basis, so families can apply any time until March 25.

In line with the admissions policy last year, some students will receive priority for summer slots. That includes certain children with disabilities, those who live in temporary housing or foster care, children who are behind academically, and students applying for Summer Rising sites that are housed in their regular school.

What is the schedule for Summer Rising, and when does it start?

For students in grades K-5, Summer Rising operates 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from July 2 to Aug. 16.

For middle schoolers, Summer Rising will run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. — two fewer hours — and will no longer operate at all on Fridays. The program for those children runs from July 2 to Aug. 8.

Some students with disabilities are entitled to year-round schooling and those programs operate during slightly different times. Children who attend schools in districts 1-32 generally attend summer classes from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. from July 2 to Aug. 12. Those who attend District 75 schools, which are for children with more significant needs, will attend 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. from July 3 to Aug. 13.

And those who attend programs for students with autism — including Nest and Horizon — attend 8 a.m. to noon from July 2 to Aug. 8.

Students with disabilities who attend school year-round have the option to attend the extended day enrichment programs operated by community organizations that run until 6 p.m. (or 4 p.m. for middle school). Interested families must apply through MySchools and students with disabilities in the categories listed above will receive priority for seats.

Why are there fewer hours for middle schoolers?

Summer Rising is one of a slew of programs initially funded with federal pandemic relief money that is now running out, forcing city officials to either find new funding to replace those expiring dollars or make cuts.

So far, Adams has done a bit of both. The mayor chose to keep the Education Department’s contribution to the program, which helps fund the academic portion of the day, using about $80 million in city money to replace federal dollars.

But the afternoon enrichment portion of the program is funded by a different city agency — the Department of Youth and Community Development. Adams cut $20 million of DYCD’s roughly $149 million contribution to Summer Rising, forcing reductions in programming for middle school children.

Some advocates worry that fewer hours, and the elimination of Fridays, will make the program less popular and hurt its quality.

“Friday was usually when they did field trips and things outside of the school building,” said Nora Moran, the director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents community organizations that operate some of the city’s summer programming. She emphasized that community organizations are able to quickly restore hours if the city makes additional funding available.

“We’re certainly hopeful the mayor reverses his decision to shorten the program day,” she said.

How popular is Summer Rising in NYC?

In a city with few affordable child care options, Summer Rising has been quite popular. Last year, there were about 45,000 more applicants than available slots, officials said (though some of those children eventually won a seat).

Students generally spend their mornings on academic work and in the afternoon participate in enrichment activities, including art, science projects, and trips to cultural institutions. For elementary school children, the final week of the program is dedicated to enrichment activities and trips operated by community organizations.

Many parents have praised the program, noting it gives their children something to do other than expensive camps, watching TV, or spending countless hours scrolling the internet. But others have been disappointed and even pulled their children, citing boring assignments during the academic portion of the day, limited time outside, and few opportunities for field trips.

Here’s what parents told us about their Summer Rising experience last year.

What about students with higher needs?

Students with disabilities are supposed to continue receiving the services they need to access summer programming, such as health and behavioral paraprofessionals, and their schools must devise a “Summer Rising Accommodation Plan” before the program begins.

Still, not all services are available for the afternoon enrichment programming — such as paraprofessionals who help manage student behavior — and community organizations are instructed to provide support “as needed.” In practice, some advocates said community organizations aren’t always well-equipped to serve students with special needs, leaving some families to avoid the program entirely.

“The community based-organizations don’t necessarily have the knowledge, and skill, and staff to help support students with behavioral needs,” said Maggie Moroff, a senior policy coordinator at Advocates for Children, which helps students with disabilities navigate the special education system. “A plan from the school that is supposed to be put in place by the [community organization] leaves a whole lot of room for mistakes.”

Officials also noted that English learners will receive “instruction targeting language and literacy development to support them with grade-level content” during the morning sessions, including in small groups or one on one.

What’s the transportation situation?

Students who already receive yellow school bus service during the school year should generally receive bus transportation for Summer Rising. And students with MetroCards during the school year will continue to receive them for the summer.

But for students who ride the bus, there’s a catch: The city’s yellow bus service stops rolling at 3 p.m., so students who participate in the extended enrichment portion of the day until 6 p.m. (or 4 p.m. in middle school) will instead have access to a prepaid rideshare service.

A caregiver must accompany their child in the rideshare to and from the summer school site, which some advocates have criticized as inaccessible for working families who don’t have time to ride to and from a Summer Rising site at the end of the day.

“I think a lot of families opted to forgo the opportunity because they didn’t have a way of getting their child back home,” Moroff said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s youth shelter system locks out hundreds as migrants seek entry

2024-03-12T19:10:05+00:00

This story was originally published on March 12 by THE CITY.

In the depths of January, without a coat on his back, an 18-year-old orphan from Guinea named Mamdou spent a week riding the subways, before a stranger handed him a $20 bill and led him to the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s main intake for newly arriving migrants. He got a 30-day shelter stint in a converted office tower in Midtown and a few weeks of relative peace after a perilous journey across the world.

But his anxiety built as his eviction day neared. He’d heard about Covenant House, a special youth shelter for people under the age of 21 overseen by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, and was determined to secure a bed there.

“I went there every day, sometimes two or three times a day. They know me there,” he said in French on a recent afternoon, two days after he’d been ejected from his Midtown shelter after his 30 days ran out, under Mayor Eric Adams’ strict limits on stays for adult migrants in shelters.

Both nights since his eviction he’d slept outside on the sidewalk. “But every day when I go there they tell me there’s no room.”

The migrant crisis is increasingly intertwined with another crisis: an explosion in the number of homeless youth. Data obtained by THE CITY shows a dramatic increase in young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 reported as having been turned away from specialized shelters that serve young people in that age bracket, with 473 youth rebuffed in the second half of 2023 — up from seven in the first six months of the year.

Last year, DYCD funded about 800 youth shelter beds, with most of those available only to those under age 21, the agency reported to the City Council.

Service providers and advocates had warned for months that the city’s migrant response does not address the needs of the many young people arriving in New York on their own. Those advocates now say the official rejection numbers don’t begin to document just how many young people are unable to find a spot in a homeless youth shelter.

“I’ve been doing this work for 20 years,” said Jamie Powlovich, the director of the Coalition for Homeless Youth, a statewide consortium of more than 60 groups. “I have never seen the level of unmet needs and young people being further traumatized and forced to endure homelessness, especially street homelessness, ever.”

The coalition tallied more than 200 young people turned away from youth shelters in a 12-day period last fall, including seven children under the age of 18, after which they stopped keeping count.

“The list was getting too long, and it wasn’t moving,” Powlovich said. “We didn’t want to add people to a list and give them false hope.”

Advocates have been pressuring the city to make some concessions for youth in the adult migrant shelter system, urging that at the very least adopting the more forgiving 60-day shelter stay limits used for families with children under the age of 18.

“We’ve been told for about four months now that that is something that they’re working on,” Powlovich said. “But it hast happened yet.”

A spokesperson for City Hall didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly defended the city’s handling of the arrival of migrants from the southern border.

“This is a national problem that has been dropped in the lap of places like New York and Chicago, Massachusetts and others who have similar programs, 30‑ and 60‑day programs,” he said at a press conference this week. “We’ve done our job. New Yorkers have done their job, and we’re going to continue to do our job, but this is a national issue.”

While the city’s “right to shelter” court consent decrees are supposed to guarantee a bed that day to anyone who requests one, no legal requirement exists for teens or young adults to be placed in an age-appropriate shelter.

As a surge of teen and young adult migrants arrived last fall, they were funneled into the same tent shelters, converted warehouses and office buildings as other adult migrants without children. The city’s migrant intake centers don’t distinguish migrants in their late teens or early 20s from other adults, and the city doesn’t keep separate data about that age group.

Through the organizing of mutual aid and community groups, some newly arriving migrants have found their way into the specialized youth shelter system, which allows youth to stay longer and offers more specialized support services. But last fall, that system became overwhelmed and securing a bed within it became next to impossible, as reflected in the new city data.

After their 30 days in shelters run out, migrant youth are directed to the East Village “reticketing site” inside an old Catholic school, where they can get in line for another shelter cot, a wait which takes days or weeks. Those seeking new shelter placements are directed to spend nights in outer-borough waiting rooms where they can rest on the ground, but a city survey found that, like Mamdou, hundreds spent the night on the streets or trains instead.

THE CITY reported last month that the city Office of Emergency Management was working on plans to close the “overflow” locations.

‘A human cost’

The city’s eight youth drop-in centers, run by nonprofits, are the formal gateway into the youth shelter system, providing young homeless New Yorkers with clothing, food and showers, and linking them up with case workers who can help connect them with youth shelter beds if they become available. Those centers, too, have seen a sustained spike in usage over the past several months.

In January, 1,600 youth spent time in city drop in centers, a 28% increase from July according to monthly data reported by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development. Case workers at those drop-in sites served 1,700 people in the first four months of the fiscal year, 300 more than the city had planned to serve in the entire year.

Yet Adams’ preliminary budget released in January proposed slashing $2 million from the $52 million allocated for runaway and homeless youth, eliminating 16 positions that help young people access permanent housing options. The Adams administration is also refusing to implement a recently passed law that would allow people in youth shelters to access CityFHEPS housing vouchers, saying the mandate is too expensive.

Mark Zustovich, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development said funding to shelters themselves remained the same in Adams’ proposed budget.

The department and the nonprofits that run shelters for homeless youth “are providing vital services to all youth who seek support — even as the number of young people accessing drop-ins has increased,” he said.

The surge in homeless youth comes a year after a controversial order by the Adams administration banning people from sleeping in 24-hour drop-in centers.

Youth who can’t find shelter are in jeopardy, advocates warn.

“A young woman had recently been discharged from her shelter because her 30 days was up. She didn’t know anybody in the city, spent a night on the street, and was brutally assaulted. That’s preventable,” said Joe Westmacott, a project assistant at Streetwork, which runs a drop-in center for homeless youth in Harlem, referring to an incident that THE CITY has not independently verified.

“We know from decades of research that street homelessness is expensive…. And there’s also a human cost.”

‘They want to go to school’

Many employees at youth facilities are taking the surge in new arrivals in stride, scaling up programs, deftly finding ways to communicate with hand signals in a plethora of languages, and retooling day-to-day operations like how much food they serve on site.

On a busy day before the latest surge in new arrivals, Safe Horizon’s Streetwork daytime drop-in center on 125th Street served about 50 young people a day who would pop in to use computers, eat a meal, peruse the closet of free clothing, or drop off dirty laundry.

Now the center sees about 100 people a day, almost exclusively newly arriving migrant youth who’ve learned about their services through word of mouth. Last fiscal year, the program enrolled 306 new youths into their programs. Four months into this year, they’ve enrolled 542.

Sebastien Vante, associate vice president at Safe Horizon, said they had to halt all new intakes, unable to accommodate any more people. While they can’t connect their clients to specialized youth shelter beds, there are other ways they can support them, he said.

They’ve taken to sending advocates to the East Village reticketing center with their clients, in order to try to advocate for them to get beds in shelters closer to schools if they’re enrolled. They offer referrals to immigration attorneys, and on a recent afternoon, dozens of migrant youth crammed into a back room of the facility intently listening into a demonstration about the asylum application process held in French and Arabic.

“Right now, this is who this is who’s walking through our doors,” Vante said. “Their needs are no different. They’re looking for shelter. They want long-term housing. They want to go to school. They wanna do all these different things.”

But, Vante went on, with its staff already working at capacity, “we spend a significant amount of time managing the expectations of the young people who come into our space,” Vante said.

Jefferson Academy will open in Coal Creek after parents raised nearly half a million dollars

2024-03-13T02:54:03+00:00

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Parents in a far corner of Jefferson County celebrated Tuesday night after helping to raise nearly half a million dollars to secure the opening of a charter school in their community.

The board of the charter school, Jefferson Academy, voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with opening a new kindergarten through 8th grade school in Coal Creek Canyon.

“I’m voting for the motion because of the hard work that has been done and got us across that line,” said Anil Mathai, a Jefferson Academy board member. “But if we do not focus on year two, year three, this board and the system will have major stress on it. We own this. I want to make sure we aggressively move to make sure year two is financially solid with or without their support.”

The Jeffco school district had decided earlier this year to close the district-operated school after the end of the school year in May, citing unsustainably low enrollment. Since the next nearest schools for families are for many a 20-minute drive away, the district sought a charter school to take over running a school in the community.

Jefferson Academy was approved by the school district in January. But initial enrollment of 60 students and seven homeschoolers was lower than the charter school anticipated.

Schools are funded per student, and the board said the low enrollment numbers meant the school was half a million dollars short of being able to open. But before the board pulled out of plans to open in the fall of 2024, members allowed parents about three weeks to try to help raise the money.

Parents helped the charter school foundation apply for and secure several grants, ran a successful GoFundMe page for individual donations, received funding from several businesses, and put on a silent auction that raised more than $3,000.

All together, the efforts raised $10,000 more than what was needed.

Enrollment is still at 60 students, although there are now 10 homeschooled students who will be connected to the school. Parent leaders believe that once there is no longer uncertainty about the school’s opening, and the first year is successful, more families will enroll.

Although the charter board had previously discussed the idea of opening the school with fewer grades, board members have abandoned that idea for now, with the exception of cutting preschool. The school still intends to have a preschool, but has not yet secured licensing to offer that on the first day of school. It will be available when the school gets licensed, leaders said.

Parents who led the fundraising efforts also presented their ideas for other ways to make the charter school sustainable. Finding babysitters in the canyon is a challenge, they said, and so hosting a night out for parents where they could leave their children in a safe place could be another successful fundraising event, they said.

And to boost enrollment, parents suggested adding before or after school care. At least one parent in the community enrolls her children in Boulder schools close to her workplace, because the canyon school doesn’t have any after school care or activities.

Besides the fundraising, the last bit of help to open the charter came from the Jeffco school district, which agreed to allow Jefferson Academy to operate in the district-owned building for free the first year and with an adjusted cost in the second year.

The only condition was that Jefferson Academy had to decide Tuesday night to open the school and not leave families wondering any longer.

Lisa Relou, chief of staff for the Jeffco school district, told the charter board that the district is committed to helping, but that the goal is for the charter to be sustainable on its own in the long run.

Charter school board members said they also were concerned about long-term sustainability, and said they knew that opening this school in the canyon was a risk, but one that made sense.

Having so much parental involvement in fundraising means that the community “seems to be right up our alley,” one board member said.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s who could be chosen for the new Philadelphia Board of Education

2024-03-13T00:06:34+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education will have at least two new members, according to a list of candidates submitted to Mayor Cherelle Parker.

The 13-member Education Nominating Panel voted to approve its shortlist of 27 finalists at a public meeting Tuesday evening. The list includes former teachers and administrators, education advocates, business leaders, and labor union officials and appears to represent a range of ages and neighborhoods.

Otis Bullock Jr., chair of the panel, said the group was “just looking for diversity all around the board.”

“You need some folks on here with some gravitas … and legislative experience,” Bullock said. He added if the school district is looking to legislators in Harrisburg for additional funding for the cash-strapped district, “you need some folks that know how to do that.”

Parker’s board picks will have the power to set the education agenda in the nation’s eighth largest school district. Board members can authorize or deny new charter schools, hire and evaluate superintendents, guide curriculum decisions, and approve the district’s $4.5 billion budget.

Seven of the names on the panel’s list are current board members, but board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez and Julia Danzy were not on the list. Earlier this month, Fix-Lopez unexpectedly announced she would be resigning, and Danzy had previously indicated she would not be reapplying.

Which candidates Parker chooses to sit on the board — in conjunction with her budget proposal expected to be released on Thursday — will signal her education priorities for the city.

Parker has indicated she may be more open to expanding the charter school sector than her predecessor Jim Kenney. The school board has not approved a new charter school since 2018. Charters, which are publicly funded but privately run, now educate upwards of 70,000 students in Philadelphia, about a third of those enrolled in tax-supported city schools.

Indeed, many of the public comments at Tuesday’s meeting included calls for more charter seats and resources for those schools, a fair authorization process, and an end to charter school closures.

Many of the written comments, which were read aloud at the meeting, were identically worded, and echoed something Parker has said. She wants to eliminate the “us vs. them mentality” between district-run and charter schools.

Despite speculation that Parker’s nominating panel would try to load the shortlist with pro-charter activists, few of the 27 people on the list appear to have direct or deep connections to charter schools.

This is the first full school board nomination process since 2018, when former Mayor Kenney chose his nine appointees to replace the School Reform Commission. It had governed the city school district since 2001, when the state took over the district citing financial and academic distress. Since then, Kenney appointed a few additional members to replace some who resigned.

Lee Huang, a former board member, said Tuesday he would not “sugarcoat” that serving on the board was challenging at times. The position is unpaid, demanding, and comes with intense public scrutiny.

“It was long hours …. and you’ll get yelled at,” Huang said. “That’s part of the job.”

Parker will choose nine people (or request more names if she is not happy with the 27) and send those to City Council, which will hold public hearings. With its approval, the board members will take their seats starting May 1.

In alphabetical order, here’s the list. The mayor’s office provided biographies for each candidate.

Sarah-Ashley Andrews (current board member)
Nakia Carr
Timothy Crowther
Crystal Cubbage
Leticia Egea-Hinton (current board member)
Cindy Farlino
Mark Gittelman
Cheryl Harper
Keola Harrington
Michael Henderson
Jameika Id-Deen
David Irizarry
Dominique Johnson
Whitney Jones
ChauWing Lam (current board member)
Letisha Laws
Maddie Luebbert
Colleen McCauley
Cheryl Mobley-Stimpson
Wanda Novales
Michelle Palmer
Lisa Salley (current board member)
Marisa Shaaban
Joan Stern
Reginald Streater (current board president)
Cecelia Thompson (current board member)
Joyce Wilkerson (current board member)

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

In face of student mental health crisis, City Council wants to expand peer-to-peer support

2024-03-12T23:08:01+00:00

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To help address the city’s ongoing youth mental health crisis, New York City Council members are looking to expand student support groups and tap peer-to-peer connections.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams will announce three new proposals during her State of the City address on Wednesday, directing the city to increase support for peer mental health programs in schools.

The proposals come as recent years have seen an uptick in students grappling with severe mental health challenges, both locally and across the country. For many students, the pandemic upended day-to-day life, isolating them from their peers, and in many cases causing financial or personal loss within their families. Educators have continued to report lingering behavioral concerns years after students returned to the classroom.

The share of New York City students who reported suicidal ideation had jumped to nearly 16% in 2021, while about 9% of local high school students reported they had attempted suicide that year. That was up from about 12% a decade prior.

If enacted, the new proposals would require the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to work with community-based organizations to develop a toolkit for those seeking to start clubs that promote student mental health, while also mandating the city to develop and offer peer-to-peer mental health training for public schools and students, according to a spokesperson for Adams.

The proposals would also create a pilot program for social work students from CUNY programs to support mental health clubs in schools that need professional or clinical supervision.

Peer-to-peer support models have gained traction at schools both locally and nationwide. Mental health clubs and other peer support programs can help raise awareness of mental health issues at school, while reducing stigma around seeking help, advocates and experts have said.

City and state officials have tried for years to address mental health concerns. In 2023, the city launched a free virtual therapy program for teenagers ages 13-17, and in February, it joined the hundreds of other municipalities and school systems that have filed lawsuits against major social media companies, alleging their practices have fueled the nation’s youth mental health crisis.

City Council members are also considering a bill that would require the city’s Education Department to warn middle and high school students about the dangers of social media each school year.

Still, despite these efforts, the city’s schools could lose hundreds of social workers when federal relief funds dry up later this year.

At a town hall in District 28 in Queens on Monday, schools Chancellor David Banks pointed to mental health as one of the key issues facing students across the five boroughs.

“Our kids went through a lot during the pandemic,” he said. “As they have re-entered school and tried to find a sense of normalcy… It has been a harder transition for some kids than others, and we are constantly faced with those challenges.”

Meanwhile, in Albany, Gov. Kathy Hochul has referred to mental health as “the defining challenge of our time.” Earlier this year, Hochul proposed expanding state funding for youth-driven peer support programs in schools, among other mental health policy initiatives.

In a statement Tuesday, a spokesperson for the city’s Health Department said “the city has made mental health a priority” and the department looked forward to “future discussions about how to continue improving care in the city.”

Officials from the city’s Education Department did not immediately return a request for comment on the proposals.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools wants ideas for how to improve outcomes for Black students

2024-03-12T21:27:04+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will host a series of meetings over the next two weeks to hear about how it can improve the school experience for Black students.

The first of eight meetings is taking place at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Uplift Community High School in Uptown.

The public meetings are part of the district’s new Black Student Success Working Group, which CPS created in the fall to provide district leaders with recommendations for its upcoming “Black Student Success Plan.” That blueprint will then be folded into the district’s overall five-year strategic plan, which is expected to be finalized this summer.

CPS, like other districts across the nation, has long reported academic disparities between Black students and their peers, who make up 35% of the school system. In Chicago, 79.7% of Black students graduated on time last year, a rate that has gradually improved but is still behind the graduation rate for all other racial groups, according to district data. And 12.6% of Black students dropped out last year, the highest percentage for any racial group.

“We’re meeting as a working group because historically and today, Black students are situated furthest from opportunity,” said Fatima Cooke, CPS’s chief of equity, engagement and strategy.

“There is so much more work that still needs to be done to create those holistic systems that foster environments where Black students are empowered, that they feel seen, and that they have a sense of belonging.

The working group is made up of more than 60 members, including parents, students, educators, district employees and other community members, according to a CPS press release. The group has been meeting since December and has also convened focus groups of students, families, and staff, Cooke said.

While the working group has already drafted some recommendations that that focus on academics, the members don’t want to present those ideas to the community yet because they want “authentic” input, said Ayanna Clark, a CPS parent who is a member of the working group and also serves as assistant chief of staff to the City Council’s education committee under Ald. Jeanette Taylor.

“We don’t want to go into a space where we’re once again telling people what to think and giving them a set of options and telling them to choose from the set of options,” Clark said.

State legislation that paves the way for Chicago’s first elected school board creates a “Black Student Achievement Committee in response to advocacy from longtime community advocates. Cooke said this work “is parallel to that” and won’t “impede” a committee.

The district working group is focused on three priorities. These are Black students’ daily school experience; “adult capacity and continuous learning,” which focuses on workforce diversity and professional development to ensure teachers are meeting student needs; and how community organizations can support Black students’ needs that “can’t be met by the school-based budget,” said Christopher Shelton, a former science teacher who now works for the district’s central office and is helping to facilitate the group.

The group has also discussed ideas to better support Black students, including providing teachers with more professional development; focusing on conflict resolution practices; diversifying the teacher workforce; and to “leverage corporate, government, and community partnerships to bridge resource gap,” according to a presentation posted on the district’s website.

‘Focusing on what the students need’

The group’s first meeting in December included a history of how city policies have impacted Black families and students. Some of the topics that members highlighted during that meeting were the Great Migration, the practice of redlining that drove racial segregation, and the closing of 50 schools — most of which were majority Black schools — under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The group also reviewed data on academic disparities. At the beginning of this school year, 62% of Black students in grades kindergarten to second grade were behind one grade level in reading, while 66% were behind in math, according to iReady data presented to the group at the December meeting. That’s higher than most other racial groups except for Hispanic students, who are behind in both subjects at the same rates, and the 76% of Haiwaiian or Pacific Islander students who were behind in math.

Chicago’s Black students are the least likely to earn early college credit, which can help offset college costs. And outside of academics, the group looked at data showing that Black girls received more than 7 out of every 100 out-of-school suspensions last school year, while Black boys received more than 10 — the highest rates for any racial group, which grew from 2022.

One bright spot that the group has heard about: Over the past six years, more Black eighth graders have enrolled at schools that offer algebra.

Then there are factors that can place an additional burden on Black students outside school buildings. For example, roughly 20% of Black students travel six or more miles to school compared with 11% of all students.

District officials have previously highlighted how students should not have to leave their neighborhoods to attend a school that fits their needs. In December, the Board of Education made waves when it announced that, as part of the creation of that strategic blueprint, it was planning to rethink the district’s school choice system and invest more in neighborhood schools. That system includes schools that require an application, including charters, magnets, selective enrollment schools, and gifted programs.

Jahnae Roberts, a junior at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts and a member of the working group, said she hears the need for more support around mental health and social emotional learning for Black students. Her peers have also shared with her that they don’t feel some teachers know how to work with or teach them.

The working group is “focusing on what the students need, not just education-wise, but what are they receiving at school that they might not receive at home to make it a better place for them?” Jahnae said.

The working group and the ensuing community meetings are one component of the district’s development of a new five-year strategic plan. The district hosted meetings over improving school facilities, and it will have more community meetings around the broader strategic plan.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to overhaul Colorado’s child care subsidy program clears first legislative hurdle

2024-03-12T21:15:29+00:00

The price tag of a bill to overhaul a Colorado program that helps low-income families pay for child care shocked some lawmakers Tuesday, but that didn’t stop a legislative committee from giving it initial approval.

House Bill 24-1223 would simplify the application process for the $156 million subsidy program the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program or CCCAP. It would also boost subsidy amounts for some families, make the program more attractive to child care providers, and cover child care tuition for the children of some full-time child care employees regardless of family income. Some of the proposed changes wouldn’t take effect until 2026.

The House Health and Human Services Committee approved the bill in an 8-4 vote Tuesday, with the most vociferous opposition coming from Rep. Richard Holtorf, a Republican representing several northeastern Colorado counties. He expressed concerns about the bill’s cost — about $81 million in the first year — among other things.

“When I first saw this bill and the fiscal note, I was shocked,” he said.

Rep. Lorena Garcia, a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill, noted that some of the bill’s provisions are part of new federal regulations and will come with federal money to pay for them.

“This is not the first time that the state has to preemptively pass policy in order to be able to draw down federal dollars,” she said. “In this case … we are extending the timeline out for two years. If something happens where these dollars then do not become available, we have time to correct.”

The bill’s next stop is the House Appropriations Committee.

Key provisions of the amended bill include:

Limiting parent co-pays to no more than 7% of family income, down from the current cap of 14%. An amendment approved Tuesday would delay the effective date of this provision to July 1, 2026.
Creating a uniform statewide application that doesn’t ask for extraneous information, such as custody agreements or child immunization records.
Allowing families to get or continue receiving child care aid for 90 days while their application or renewal paperwork is being reviewed, a provision that will help parents start working immediately and keep children in care. An amendment approved Tuesday would delay the effective date of this provision to July 1, 2026.
Paying child care providers who accept subsidies based on the number of subsidized children enrolled, not on the number of days those children attend. Currently, providers can lose money for days the child is absent beyond the number allowed by their county.
Making child care employees eligible for full subsidies regardless of their family income. An amendment approved Tuesday would limit this benefit to full-time child care employees who work at a facility that accepts CCCAP subsidies.

More than 20 people testified about the bill at Tuesday’s hearing, including single mothers who have used the subsidy program, providers who accept the subsidies, and advocates from groups such as Healthier Colorado, the Colorado Children’s Campaign, and the Women’s Foundation of Colorado.

Most expressed support for the bill, but a few, representing counties, voiced concerns.

Katie First, legislative director at Colorado Counties, Inc., a group that represents county commissioners, said allowing child care employees to access subsidies regardless of family income could take aid away from other families who need it.

“While we appreciate the need to support and recruit child care providers, we fear that prioritizing these providers will decrease the number of low-income families that we would be able to serve in our community,” she said.

Child care is a low-wage, high-turnover industry with many providers facing staff shortages in recent years.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

How the anti-vaccine movement pits parental rights against public health

2024-03-12T20:59:32+00:00

This story originally appeared on KFF Health News and is republished with permission.

Gayle Borne has fostered more than 300 children in Springfield, Tennessee. She’s cared for kids who have rarely seen a doctor — kids so neglected that they cannot speak. Such children are now even more vulnerable because of a law Tennessee passed last year that requires the direct consent of birth parents or legal guardians for every routine childhood vaccination. Foster parents, social workers, and other caregivers cannot provide permission.

In January, Borne took a foster baby, born extremely premature at just over 2 pounds, to her first doctor’s appointment. The health providers said that without the consent of the child’s mother, they couldn’t vaccinate her against diseases like pneumonia, hepatitis B, and polio. The mother hasn’t been located, so a social worker is now seeking a court order to permit immunizations. “We are just waiting,” Borne said. “Our hands are tied.”

Tennessee’s law has also stymied grandmothers and other caregivers who accompany children to routine appointments when parents are at work, in drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics, or otherwise unavailable. The law claims to “give parents back the right to make medical decisions for their children.”

Framed in the rhetoric of choice and consent, it is one of more than a dozen recent and pending pieces of legislation nationwide that pit parental freedom against community and children’s health. In actuality, they create obstacles to vaccination, the foundation of pediatric care.

Such policies have another effect. They seed doubt about vaccine safety in a climate rife with medical misinformation. The trend has exploded as politicians and social media influencers make false claims about risks, despite studies showing otherwise.

Doctors traditionally give caregivers vaccine information and get their permission before delivering more than a dozen childhood immunizations that defend against measles, polio, and other debilitating diseases.

But now, Tennessee’s law demands that birth parents attend routine appointments and sign consent forms for every vaccine given over two or more years. “The forms could have a chilling effect,” said Jason Yaun, a Memphis pediatrician and past president of the Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“People who promote parental rights on vaccines tend to downplay the rights of children,” said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law-San Francisco.

Drop in routine vaccination rates

Misinformation coupled with a parental rights movement that shifts decision-making away from public health expertise has contributed to the lowest childhood vaccine rates in a decade.

This year, legislators in Arizona, Iowa, and West Virginia have introduced related consent bills. A “Parents’ Bill of Rights” amendment in Oklahoma seeks to ensure that parents know they can exempt their children from school vaccine mandates along with lessons on sex education and AIDS. In Florida, the medical skeptic leading the state’s health department recently defied guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by telling parents they could send unvaccinated children to a school during a measles outbreak.

Last year, Mississippi began allowing exemptions from school vaccine requirements for religious reasons because of a lawsuit funded by the Informed Consent Action Network, which is listed as a leading source of anti-vaccine disinformation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. A post on ICAN’s website said it “could not be more proud” in Mississippi to “restore the right of every parent in this country to have his or her convictions respected and not trampled by the government.”

Even if some bills fail, Reiss fears, the revived parental rights movement may eventually abolish policies that require routine immunizations to attend school. At a recent campaign rally, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”

The movement dates to the wake of the 1918 influenza pandemic, when some parents pushed back against progressive reforms that required school attendance and prohibited child labor. Since then, tensions between state measures and parental freedom have occasionally flared over a variety of issues. Vaccines became a prominent one in 2021, as the movement found common ground with people skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines.

“The parental rights movement didn’t start with vaccines,” Reiss said, “but the anti-vaccine movement has allied themselves with it and has expanded their reach by riding on its coattails.”

When lawmakers silence health experts

In Tennessee, anti-vaccine activists and libertarian-leaning organizations railed against the state’s health department in 2021 when it recommended COVID vaccines to minors, following CDC guidance. Gary Humble, executive director of the conservative group Tennessee Stands, asked legislators to blast the health department for advising masks and vaccination, suggesting the department “could be dissolved and reconstituted at your pleasure.”

Backlash also followed a notice sent to doctors from Michelle Fiscus, then the state’s immunization director. She reminded them that they didn’t need parental permission to vaccinate consenting adolescents 14 or older, according to a decades-old state rule called the Mature Minor Doctrine.

In the weeks that followed, state legislators threatened to defund the health department and pressured it into scaling back COVID vaccine promotion, as revealed by The Tennessean. Fiscus was abruptly fired. “Today I became the 25th of 64 state and territorial immunization program directors to leave their position during this pandemic,” she wrote in a statement. “That’s nearly 40% of us.” Tennessee’s COVID death rate climbed to one of the nation’s highest by mid-2022.

By the time two state legislators introduced a bill to reverse the Mature Minor Doctrine, the health department was silent on the proposal. Despite obstacles for foster children who would require a court order for routine immunizations, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services was silent, too.

Notably, the legislator who introduced the bill, Republican Rep. John Ragan, was among those simultaneously overseeing a review of the agency that would determine its leadership and budget for the coming years. “Children belong to their families, not the state,” said Ragan as he presented the bill at a state hearing in April 2023.

Democratic Rep. Justin Pearson spoke out against the bill. It “doesn’t take into account people and children who are neglected,” he told Ragan. “We are legislating from a point of privilege and not recognizing the people who are not privileged in this way.”

Rather than address such concerns, Ragan referenced a Supreme Court ruling in favor of parental rights in 2000. Specifically, judges determined that a mother had legal authority to decide who could visit her daughters. Yet the Supreme Court has also done the opposite. For instance, it sided against a legal guardian who removed her child from school to proselytize for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Still, Ragan swiftly won the majority vote. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signed the bill in May, making it effective immediately. Deborah Lowen, then the deputy commissioner of child health at the Department of Children’s Services, was flooded with calls from doctors who now face jailtime and fines for vaccinating minors without adequate consent. “I was and remain very disheartened,” she said.

A right to health

Yaun, the Memphis pediatrician, said he was shaken as he declined to administer a first series of vaccines to an infant accompanied by a social worker. “That child is going into a situation where they are around other children and adults,” he said, “where they could be exposed to something we failed to protect them from.”

“We have had numerous angry grandparents in our waiting room who take kids to appointments because the parents are at work or down on their luck,” said Hunter Butler, a pediatrician in Springfield, Tennessee. “I once called a rehabilitation facility to find a mom and get her on the phone to get verbal consent to vaccinate her baby,” he said. “And it’s unclear if that was OK.”

Childhood immunization rates have dropped for three consecutive years in Tennessee. Nationwide, downward trends in measles vaccination led the CDC to estimate that a quarter million kindergartners are at risk of the highly contagious disease.

Communities with low vaccination rates are vulnerable as measles surges internationally. Confirmed measles cases in 2023 were almost double those in 2022 — a year in which the World Health Organization estimates that more than 136,000 people died from the disease globally. When travelers infected abroad land in communities with low childhood vaccination rates, the highly contagious virus can spread swiftly among unvaccinated people, as well as babies too young to be vaccinated and people with weakened immune systems.

“There’s a freedom piece on the other side of this argument,” said Caitlin Gilmet, communications director at the vaccine advocacy group SAFE Communities Coalition and Action Fund. “You should have the right to protect your family from preventable diseases.”

In late January, Gilmet and other child health advocates gathered in a room at the Tennessee Statehouse in Nashville, offering a free breakfast of fried chicken biscuits. They handed out flyers as legislators and their aides drifted in to eat. One pamphlet described the toll of a 2018-19 measles outbreak in Washington state that sickened 72 people, most of whom were unvaccinated, costing $76,000 in medical care, $2.3 million for the public health response, and an estimated $1 million in economic losses due to illness, quarantine, and caregiving.

Barb Dentz, an advocate with the grassroots group Tennessee Families for Vaccines, repeated that most of the state’s constituents support strong policies in favor of immunizations. Indeed, seven in 10 U.S. adults maintained that public schools should require vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella, in a Pew Research Center poll last year. But numbers have been dropping.

“Protecting kids should be such a no-brainer,” Dentz told Republican Rep. Sam Whitson, later that morning in his office. Whitson agreed and reflected on an explosion of anti-vaccine misinformation. “Dr. Google and Facebook have been such a challenge,” he said. “Fighting ignorance has become a full-time job.”

Whitson was among a minority of Republicans who voted against Tennessee’s vaccine amendment last year. “The parental rights thing has really taken hold,” he said, “and it can be used for and against us.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

New Jersey lawmakers trying to get — and keep — teachers in schools

2024-03-12T19:02:20+00:00

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More measures designed to fight the teacher shortage in New Jersey schools moved closer to becoming law after the Assembly Education Committee recently cleared five bills that focus on teacher recruitment and retention.

The bills were introduced during the last legislative session but did not make it across the finish line. The measures, moved last week, include removing obstacles to teacher certification, providing scholarships for student teachers and creating a task force to study how and when teachers are evaluated. The bills had widespread support among legislators and representatives of leading education stakeholder groups, who said solving the teacher shortage is a priority.

“Shortages in our educator workforce are damaging to our districts and to the children they serve. It is so important that we fill our educator training pipeline with qualified, motivated individuals who want to become teachers, and want to stay teachers,” Assemblywoman and education committee Chair Pamela Lampitt (D-Camden) said in a statement. “These bills will help school districts and newly certified teachers make meaningful connections, while alleviating some of the financial strain caused by student loans, enabling these educators to focus on their students and giving our youth the education they deserve.”

A survey by the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association found that in August, just before the start of the current school year, only 16.3% of members had fully staffed their classrooms, said Jennie Lamon, assistant director of government relations for the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association.

“School staffing shortages continues to be one of the most significant challenges facing school districts, continues to be one of the most significant obstacles preventing districts from developing or expanding high quality school programs that meet the academic, social, emotional, mental-health needs of their students,” said Jesse Young, a legislative advocate for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Establish teacher database, ‘Grow Your Own’ program, and more

Here is a look at the teacher shortage bills that moved forward last week:

A-1676 would require the Department of Education and the Department of Labor and Workforce Development to create a database of teachers who are eligible to work, including their employment status, certificates, endorsements, and contact information.

The Department of Education would also be required to host three job fairs each year to connect school districts with novice teachers. The fairs would take place in the north, south and central parts of the state.

The bill does not have a Senate counterpart in the current legislative session.

A-1669 would remove the requirement for teacher candidates to take a basic skills test of reading, writing, and math to obtain a certification of eligibility. This would include removing the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators test, which critics believe is a poor measure of teacher qualifications.

“This is being viewed as dumbing down requirements for teachers and that could not be any further from the truth,” said Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-Sussex), who has been in public education for 18 years. “This bill will eliminate a majorly duplicative test. I know from my teaching certifications.”

An identical bill was introduced in the Senate and referred to the Senate Education Committee.

A-1619 would establish a “Grow Your Own” Teacher Loan Redemption program, which would encourage high school graduates from communities facing teacher shortages to return to their home districts to teach. The Higher Education Assistance Authority would offer loan redemption of up to $10,000 per year for up to five years.

“We’re very concerned not only about staffing shortages but also about the pipeline of educators going forward and this bill package will help address both those issues,” said Fran Pfeffer, associate director of governmental relations at the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

An identical bill was reported from the Senate Education Committee and referred to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee in January.

A-3413 would establish a task force to revisit rules for how and when teachers and principals are evaluated in public schools. The 13-member body would offer recommendations for improvements and changes to the current tenure law. The collection of student growth objectives would be limited while the task force is studying the matter. Student growth objectives, known as SGOs, are long-term academic goals set by teachers in consultation with their supervisors; they’re used as part of the summative evaluation process for teachers.

The bill already passed the Senate. It’s a watered-down version of a bill from the last legislative session that would have extended the time between evaluations.

“This piece of legislation did a one-eighty, I would venture to say, in terms of where we were with the idea of teacher evaluation. I’m really appreciative of the great work we all did to get it to where it is in terms of trying to create a task force to do the evaluation and the real nitty-gritty work to provide the data back to us to determine what is the best next step,” Lampitt said.

A-2362 would establish the New Jersey Student Teacher Scholarship to reduce financial barriers to teacher certification. It would provide scholarships of up to $7,200 to eligible students for each semester of full-time clinical practice completed in a school in the state.

The bill garnered a lot of support from lawmakers and stakeholders, with two groups proposing amendments. Representatives from the New Jersey Speech Language and Hearing Association urged lawmakers to amend the bill to include speech language specialists who are doing student teaching. The College of New Jersey also asked for an amendment to remove the language “in the state” from the bill to include students who do their student teaching in neighboring states or internationally through a global teaching program.

An identical bill was introduced in the Senate and referred to the Senate Higher Education committee.

Hannah Gross covers education and child welfare for NJ Spotlight News via a partnership with Report for America. She covers the full spectrum of education and children’s services in New Jersey and looks especially through the lens of equity and opportunity. This story was first published on NJ Spotlight News, a content partner of Chalkbeat Newark.

Bill would require charter school leaders to disclose family, business ties with building owners

2024-01-31T19:55:37+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Charter school leaders would have to publicly disclose if they have a family or business connection to the owners of their school building under a new proposal in the Indiana Statehouse.

It’s the latest call for charter school oversight and transparency following federal charges that could mean decades in prison for the former leaders of the Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy.

The operators of the now-closed schools allegedly inflated the enrollment by thousands of students and accepted more than $44 million in state funding, according to a federal indictment filed earlier this month. The state money was allegedly funneled through several for-profit companies owned by the schools’ founder, Thomas Stoughton, and then paid out to himself, his family, former IVS and IVPA Superintendent Percy Clark, and others, the indictment said.

A Chalkbeat Indiana investigation in 2017 found ballooning enrollment and conflicts of interest at the two schools, among other problems. A lawsuit from Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita to recoup $154 million in state funds from school leaders and others is ongoing as well.

The proposal to beef up charter oversight is an amendment to House Bill 1243, which addresses various education topics. The amendment says that a charter school shall annually post on its website “information for the immediately preceding school year regarding whether there is a familial or business relationship between the organizer, owner, or operator of the charter school and the owner of the charter school’s building.”

The amendment was authored by Democratic state Rep. Ed DeLaney, who represents Indianapolis. The bill — which includes DeLaney’s amendment — passed the House Wednesday and now goes to the Senate.

“It is clear that we need to tighten reporting requirements on the financial activities of charter schools,” DeLaney said in a statement Tuesday after his amendment was added to the bill.

He said the amendment is part of his “step-by-step” approach to require more oversight of charter schools, especially as they grow, and to fight against misuse of public money.

He pointed out that if a school district rented a school building from or contracted with the family member of the superintendent, that would be wrong, and the same goes for charters, given that they are public schools and use public funds.

“We must require transparency so the public knows who is benefitting from rent for the buildings that charter schools are using,” DeLaney said in his statement.

DeLaney is one of several lawmakers who’ve called for more oversight and transparency from charter schools and their leaders.

Sen. Andrea Hunley, a Democrat who represents parts of Indianapolis, filed a bill about charter authorizers, which approve or reject applications for new charter schools. They are also tasked with providing the kind of oversight that elected school boards handle for traditional public schools.

Hunley’s bill would restrict the power to approve and oversee new charter schools in Indianapolis to two government authorizers: the Indiana Charter School Board and the Indianapolis Charter School Board. That would halt charter authorizing in the city by other groups, including authorizers housed at Ball State University and Trine University.

Hunley’s bill follows a Chalkbeat Indiana report on charter school accountability that found roughly a third of brick-and-mortar or blended-model charter schools in Marion County have closed since 2001.

However, the bill, SB 173, is unlikely to advance. It was referred to the Senate education committee, but is not on the agenda for the committee’s last scheduled meeting before the deadlines for bills to advance out of their respective chambers.

You can track HB 1243 and SB 173 on the General Assembly’s website.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Bill would restrict charter authorizing powers in Marion County

2024-01-03T23:07:31+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

A proposed bill would restrict the power to approve and oversee new charter schools in Indianapolis to two government authorizers: the Indiana Charter School Board and the Indianapolis Charter School Board.

Under the legislation pitched by Democratic state Sen. Andrea Hunley, a former Indianapolis Public Schools principal, several other authorizers that are active in the state would no longer be allowed to approve charter schools in Marion County.

Authorizers are institutions that have the power to approve or reject charters for new schools, and provide oversight that an elected school board would for traditional public schools. In Indiana, they can be tied to school boards, the state and Indianapolis charter boards, or certain universities.

Authorizers outside of Marion County don’t fully understand the city’s landscape, Hunley said, and are not sufficiently accountable to the city’s constituents or families. Restricting authorizing power to the city and state charter boards, she argued, would provide more local accountability, while also allowing Indianapolis charter schools to choose from more than one authorizer.

Most charter schools in Indianapolis are authorized by the Indianapolis Charter School Board, which is part of the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation. But the city’s charter schools have also historically been authorized by the state charter board, by Ball State University’s Office of Charter Schools in Muncie, and by Education One, the authorizing arm of Trine University in Angola.

Hunley cites questions about accountability

Chalkbeat’s analysis found that at least three of the schools that closed since 2001 had sought and won approval from a different authorizer, after they or a sister school faced scrutiny from their initial authorizer. Those schools received their second approval from either Ball State University or Education One.

Hunley said the Chalkbeat report raises questions about whether authorizers are providing adequate oversight and quality control in Indianapolis.

“It’s really a problematic process that’s been allowed to happen,” Hunley said. “I think now we’re seeing the reality of how damaging, destabilizing that can be for kids.”

Last year, two Indianapolis charter schools closed in the middle of the school year, sending parents and students suddenly searching for other school options. One was authorized by the Indiana Charter School Board and another by Ball State.

Other schools have been approved by one authorizer after being rejected by another in the application phase. Last year, for example, Education One granted Purdue Polytechnic approval to operate a third campus in Indianapolis after the Indianapolis Charter School Board rejected the charter amid intense local public pushback.

Under Hunley’s bill, charter school operators throughout the state seeking authorization from higher education institutions would also be required to meet with school district leaders in the area where the proposed charter school would operate to discuss their proposal, their financial stability, previous performance of any current schools in the operator’s portfolio, and capacity for growth.

School districts would then make a nonbinding recommendation to the authorizer on whether to approve the school.

The bill would protect charter schools as a whole by ensuring that only high-quality schools are opened, Hunley argued. Some charter schools in her district are doing well, she said, but the general image of charter schools suffers when some close due to mismanagement, underenrollment, or other reasons.

“We don’t want to say in any way all charter schools are bad,” she said. “They aren’t.”

Charter proponents oppose bill

Advocates for charter schools defended the sector’s record of accountability and quality.

Lindsay Omlor, executive director of Education One, said in an email that the authorizer is highly present in all 15 of its charter schools. Staff conduct routine site visits and attend all school board meetings, Omlor said, and annual stakeholder survey results show a satisfaction rate of at least 95% over the last seven years.

“We already follow all statutory requirements for notifying districts and conducting a public hearing, etc. when we are considering an application for a new charter school,” Omlor said. “Point being, we are doing this work in accordance with the law, and based on the feedback we receive from our stakeholders, we know we are doing it well.”

The Indiana Charter School Network, which represents the state’s charter schools, is also opposed to the bill.

“We do not support any limitation on authorizer options in Marion or any county,” Marcie Brown-Carter, the group’s executive director, said in an email. “We do not support placing additional steps into the authorization process for school districts when they are already free to participate in public hearings, and many times do.”

The mayor’s Office of Education Innovation said through a spokesperson that it’s too early to comment on the proposed legislation but that it plans to follow the issue closely. Ball State University and the Mind Trust, which has helped spread charter schools throughout Indianapolis, also declined to comment Wednesday afternoon.

The legislative session begins on Jan. 8.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Bill clarifies exemption to law requiring districts to give closed buildings to charters for $1

2024-02-01T18:27:23+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

New legislation moving through the Indiana Statehouse could put an end to the legal battles over the controversial state law that requires school districts to make unused school buildings available to charter schools for the lease or sale price of $1.

Senate Bill 270 clarifies language added in the last legislative session that led to two different interpretations of the law by Indianapolis Public Schools and the state.

The tweak to the law last year granted school districts an exemption from the requirement if they share funding from voter-approved property tax increases for operating or safety costs with an “applicable charter school.”

IPS has claimed that it is exempt since it shared proceeds from a 2018 operating referendum with charter schools in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools. The state, however, has argued that the law was meant to exempt districts that share funding proportionally from ballot measures passed and adopted from May 10, 2023 onward.

The claim has boiled over into a legal battle with Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office that is now in the state appeals court awaiting a decision. But if passed, the bill could put an end to future legal battles over the exemption while bringing other small wins for charter schools.

The bill would also require all school districts in the state to share voter-approved tax increases for safety and operating expenses passed and adopted after May 10, 2024 — expanding a requirement that currently applies to districts in four counties, including Marion County.

And in another update to last year’s new legislation, the bill clearly forces school districts with declining enrollment to close school buildings that are underutilized. The definition of “underutilized,” however, changes from a building with an average occupancy of 60% over the current and past two school years to 50%.

Republican Sen. Linda Rogers, the author of the bill, did not return a request for comment. Rogers’ district includes South Bend, where a charter school has also expressed interest in occupying a recently closed high school. The school district there has also faced complaints alleging the district did not comply with the $1 law.

The bill has garnered opposition from the Indiana Urban Schools Association, the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, and the Indiana School Boards Association, which are concerned that sharing referendum funds with charter schools will require districts to ask taxpayers for even more money. The groups also remain concerned about the $1 law.

“A community asset paid for by taxpayers should not be required to be sold for $1 but at market value,” said David Marcotte, executive director of the urban schools group who also spoke on behalf of the superintendents association in a hearing last week. “We remain opposed to selling or leasing the school building for $1. However, if this bill moves forward, we do support the dollar law exemption if referendum funds are shared with charter schools.”

Bill clarifies $1 law dispute

Senate Bill 270 also clarifies when a district would be exempt from the $1 law. Districts could only claim an exemption if they share revenue from a ballot question for operating or safety expenses in a resolution approved after May 10, 2023.

Those funds must be distributed through a state-determined formula with charters that serve any student who lives within the boundary of the district that elected to participate in the referendum.

It’s unclear what impact the law would have on the ongoing lawsuit IPS has with the attorney general, which appealed a lower court’s ruling that found the district was exempt from the law. It’s also unclear whether the bill would void a lease agreement the school board approved in December with a local nonprofit for the former Francis Bellamy School 102.

However, the legislation does allow IPS to keep its lease agreement with the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which will occupy the shuttered Floro Torrence School 83 and George Buck School 94 while it awaits renovations on its main campus.

IPS did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said there is always a possibility the legislation could impact the IPS case on appeal.

“We cannot accurately assess the impact of any legislation on the case until we can analyze its final form,” the spokesperson said. “However, it isn’t our intention to dismiss the appeal at this time.”

Bill requires districts to close underutilized buildings

The bill would also more clearly force districts with declining student populations to shutter underutilized school buildings, changing law that states districts “may” close such schools to “shall.” That could make more buildings available to charter schools for $1 throughout the state.

This provision still only applies to districts where enrollment has dropped by at least 10% within the past five years. The district must also have more than one school building serving the same grade level as the one subject to closure, and another building no more than 20 minutes away that can absorb students of the closing school.

Districts can still avoid closing a building if they demonstrate that it meets certain capacity criteria for other uses, such as alternative education programs, administrative offices, or storage.

Districts must also list the factual basis for why they are not making a closed school building available in a statement to the Department of Education. However, interested parties can submit a rebuttal to the department.

The bill passed out of the Senate appropriations committee on Thursday and heads to the Senate.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

The 2024 legislative session has started in Indiana. Here’s what to expect.

2024-01-08T22:28:46+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

After several years of focusing on how teachers teach, Indiana lawmakers appear to have largely shifted their attention this year to concerns about students’ academic performance and behavior stemming from the pandemic’s disruptions.

Banning cell phones from classrooms, holding more kids back, and improving student discipline and absenteeism have all emerged as priorities for the 2024 legislative session, which began Monday, when Gov. Eric Holcomb also laid out his education policy agenda.

It’s a short session in an even-numbered year, meaning lawmakers have less time to consider bills, and no budget to put together. Legislative leaders have also said to expect a quieter session after several years of major curriculum changes affecting things like literacy, as well as divisive and high-profile bills about critical race theory and book bans.

But that doesn’t mean those types of cultural issues won’t get any attention.

On Monday, Sen. Jeff Raatz, the GOP chair of the Senate Education and Career Development Committee, along with Republican Sen. Gary Byrne introduced a bill to require local school boards to approve curriculum materials for sex education classes. They would also have to publicize certain information about those classes, such as what is taught and whether the lessons separate or integrate male and female students.

Here’s what to expect from policymakers this year that could mean big changes for students, families, and teachers.

A focus on reading and third grade retention

Holcomb and Republican lawmakers agree there’s a need to reinvigorate the state’s policy to hold back third graders who don’t pass the state reading test, known as the IREAD.

While retention has long been Indiana law, data from the state education department shows that a growing number of these students have moved on to fourth grade regardless of whether they have what’s known as a good cause exemption, like if they have special education or English language learner status.

Studies on retention have demonstrated mixed results, often showing positive academic effects but negative social-emotional effects. A recent study of Indiana data from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found that retention did not affect attendance or student discipline.

A renewed focus on retention would be the next phase of the state’s ongoing efforts to improve literacy, which have included new laws enacted last year mandating instruction rooted in the science of reading.

“We want to make sure folks aren’t put at a disadvantage in grades 4, 5, 6 and on when they haven’t mastered that reading skill,” Holcomb said Monday.

But teachers, Democratic lawmakers, and education advocates have expressed skepticism over more retention. They say that policies that encourage personalized attention and intervention could better boost students’ reading performance.

“We can’t just hope that we can put 29 or 32 first graders in a classroom and believe the outcomes are going to be the same for schools that are able to staff at a class size of 18 to 20,” said Keith Gamble, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, in a November press conference.

Additional early learning programs, including universal preschool, would improve literacy rates more than “holding kids back and bottleneck schools,” said House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta, a Fort Wayne Democrat, in his opening remarks on Monday.

Lawmakers had yet to file a bill focusing on retention as of Monday. Senate bills must be filed by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, while House bills must be filed by 2 p.m. on Thursday.

Holcomb also called for a new requirement for schools to administer the state reading test, the IREAD, in second grade — an option that the state department of education has offered since last year.

Almost 46,000 second graders in over 700 schools took the IREAD early, allowing their schools to offer targeted interventions in third grade for those who didn’t pass.

Holcomb’s agenda also included new summer reading programs for students who don’t pass the IREAD, as well as ongoing testing for students who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency after third grade.

The state department of education has previously said that there’s little data tracking whether students who don’t demonstrate reading skills by third grade ever catch up.

Senate Bill 6, which Raatz also introduced Monday, would charge the department with developing a method to identify older students who don’t have reading skills.

Laws on attendance, cell phones, antisemitism expected

Legislative leaders have also suggested that they’ll crack down on absenteeism, which has spiked nationwide, as well as consider a ban on cell phones in schools.

While those key pieces of legislation have yet to be released, several bills have already been filed that offer a look into what lawmakers may discuss, including one to require armed intruder drills in schools.

The House Education Committee will meet for the first time on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., with three bills on the agenda:

House Bill 1001 aims to make changes to last year’s legislation on career scholarship accounts, including allowing students to use their scholarship funding to obtain drivers’ licenses. It would also allow students to use funds earmarked for college courses for job training.
House Bill 1002, a repeat bill, aims to codify the state’s policy against antisemitism and discrimination on the basis of religion at educational institutions.
House Bill 1042 would allow the state to use any remaining balance in the next generation Hoosier educators scholarship fund for additional funding for transition to teaching scholarships.

The Senate education committee had yet to schedule a meeting as of Monday.

Meanwhile, the teachers union has called on lawmakers to help fix growing student discipline issues by creating a pilot program on social-emotional learning, as well as a statewide commission to improve student discipline, including absenteeism.

The union also wants to see increased education funding — a tough sell to lawmakers during a non-budget year — in order to boost wages for education support professionals and reimbursements to schools for textbooks that were made available to families for free last year.

More early learning and higher education options

Outside groups like the Indiana Chamber of Commerce have again called for lawmakers to focus on early learning and child care as a critical component of workforce development.

But while the Republican-controlled legislature has taken incremental steps to expand access to child care in recent years, they remain reluctant to commit to sweeping changes like a universal preschool program championed by Democratic lawmakers.

Holcomb called for several deregulatory initiatives likely to gain traction with lawmakers, including lowering the minimum age for infant and toddler caregivers from 21 to 18, and making it easier for K-12 teachers to also work as substitutes in early education.

In higher education, Holcomb outlined several potential initiatives that would allow students who have some credit hours — even those who have left school — to earn associate degrees. Another would require state universities to consider creating three-year degree programs.

One bill already filed by GOP Sen. Blake Doriot would require state educational institutions to publish information about job placement and average wages for different degree programs.

The House and Senate will meet again Tuesday afternoon, with committee hearings throughout the week.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Few students signed up for career scholarships, as lawmakers look to expand the law

2024-01-10T19:19:06+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Just over 200 Indiana students received state funding for job training in the first year of the state’s Career Scholarship Accounts program, state officials said Wednesday, as lawmakers consider expanding the allowed uses for the money to include paying to get a driver license.

These accounts were the centerpiece of Republican lawmakers’ plans to “reinvent high school,” during the last legislative session, and allowed students to access state funding for workforce training outside of their schools. Advocates said the law would open more doors for students whose schools didn’t offer certain training programs, while critics said it lacked transparency, and could affect funding for high schools’ career and technical education programs.

State officials anticipated that 1,000 students in grades 10-12 would participate in the program during its first year, with each one eligible to receive up to $5,000 for job training and related expenses. Lawmakers appropriated $15 million over two years for the scholarship accounts.

While 574 students applied for the program, around 40% were rejected because they did not have job training lined up, said representatives from the Indiana Treasurer’s Office during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Wednesday. The program is jointly administered by the treasurer, the Indiana Department of Education, and the Commission on Higher Education.

The 234 students who were approved for scholarship accounts received an average of $3,200 each for curriculum and course material, they said, for a total allocation of $1.17 million.

A total of 30 organizations have been approved as providers for job training, including Indiana University, Ball State, and Ivy Tech, according to the higher education commission.

Lawmakers are considering a bill during this year’s session that would make changes to the law, including allowing students to use the funding to obtain driver’s licenses so they can commute to job training — something that advocates say would encourage participation.

House Bill 1001, authored by Chuck Goodrich, a Noblesville Republican, also seeks to allow students to use scholarships earmarked for attending college after high school for job training instead — a proposal that was rejected last year.

Proponents of the driver’s license provision said that allowing students to use the funding for licenses would open the program to those who otherwise could not get to work sites. The original career scholarship bill provided funding for transportation, but did not specify driver’s licenses.

“Driver’s licenses are a big barrier to growing the program. Kids couldn’t get to where they needed to get,” said Abhi Reddy, legislative counsel at the Treasurer’s Office.

However, Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, noted that offering funding for driver’s licenses through one program might motivate students to drop academic paths in favor of pursuing a job training scholarship.

The education committee rejected DeLaney’s amendment to remove the provision allowing students to use college scholarship funds — like the 21st Century Scholarship aimed at low-income students — for job training.

It also turned down a separate amendment authored by DeLaney that would’ve required that students be paid for the work they do during their job training opportunities.

“The potential for abuse is all through this bill, and this is one example where the abuse would directly affect the student,” DeLaney said.

HB 1001 passed the education committee and will move to the House.

You can track this bill on the General Assembly’s website.

This story has been updated with a total allocation for career scholarship accounts from the treasurer’s office.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s what’s in Indiana lawmakers’ proposal to hold back more third graders

2024-01-12T19:09:34+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Starting next school year, thousands of Indiana third graders could be held back if they don’t demonstrate key reading skills under a new bill from GOP lawmakers.

Senate Bill 1 — authored by Sen. Linda Rogers, Sen. Jeff Raatz, and Sen. Brian Buchanan, along with 28 Republican co-authors — seeks to bolster the state’s retention policy and is the centerpiece of GOP lawmakers’ education agenda this year. It’s the newest phase of an ongoing effort to improve the state’s early literacy rates. Last year, lawmakers passed a sweeping new law requiring reading instruction to be based on methods rooted in the science of reading that have gained traction nationwide.

Around 80% of Indiana third graders passed the statewide reading test, known as the IREAD-3, in 2023 — a number that has remained stubbornly flat since the pandemic. The Indiana Department of Education wants 95% of third graders to pass the reading test by 2027.

While third grade retention has been part of Indiana policy for over a decade, schools have increasingly avoided actually holding students back, according to data from the Indiana Department of Education, especially since the pandemic. Guidance from the department in 2021 encouraged schools to consider a student’s “overall academic performance” in determining whether retention is necessary.

In 2023, of the 13,840 third graders who did not pass the IREAD, just 412 stayed in third grade for another year, while the rest moved on to fourth grade.

The state has offered “good cause exemptions” for students with disabilities or those who are English language learners that let students who don’t pass the IREAD. But recent state data showed that most students who moved on to fourth grade did not have an exemption, and were instead “socially promoted” to the next grade.

Of those third graders who moved on to fourth grade in 2023, around 5,500 received such exemptions, and nearly 8,000 did not.

The GOP bill would remove language from statute that students “might require retention as a last resort.” Instead, it would require that students repeat third grade if they don’t demonstrate proficiency on the IREAD or meet one of a few exceptions.

It would also require schools to identify and remediate students who are at risk of not passing the test by offering summer school, as well as science of reading-based instruction through eighth grade. Schools would also need to monitor students who fail the IREAD beyond third grade and retest them until they reach proficiency or move into seventh grade.

Students with disabilities and those who are English language learners would still be exempt under the bill, which would add a new exemption for those who demonstrate proficiency in math. Those who have already been retained once would not be retained again.

Around 72% of students who did not pass the IREAD in 2023 came from low-income families. Approximately 43% are white, 25% are Hispanic, and 24% are Black, according to department of education data.

In an email Friday, Secretary of Education Katie Jenner indicated the education department supported the measures outlined in Senate Bill 1, including “creating a strong definition of retention for the first time to ensure significantly fewer third grade students who cannot read are promoted to fourth grade.”

But the retention proposal has encountered skepticism from teachers, education advocates, and Democratic lawmakers, who say the state should focus on non-punitive measures and individualized support for students.

In a panel Thursday hosted by the Indiana State Teachers Association, literacy researchers said improving early education, including preschool and kindergarten, play a significant role in improving literacy. Also key, they said, is ensuring that schools have sufficient resources, teachers, and time for quality reading instruction.

You can track this bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers: Bills on absenteeism, third grade retention will mark 2024 session

2023-11-21T22:51:06+00:00

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Indiana lawmakers want to catch their breath.

After two consecutive sessions of headline-grabbing legislation that put the state in the national spotlight for trying to restrict what could be taught in classrooms, and expanding vouchers to nearly every student, legislative leaders say the public should expect a more measured approach to the 2024 session, which begins Jan. 8.

Without a budget to put together during the short session, which ends in March, lawmakers will instead “build on recent achievements,” like last year’s sweeping expansion of work-based learning for high schoolers, House Speaker Todd Huston said on Organization Day Tuesday, when lawmakers preview the upcoming session.

Lawmakers also intend to further tackle literacy issues — after passing a law last year to require the science of reading — specifically by addressing Indiana’s third grade retention laws. Currently, Indiana requires retaining students who don’t pass the state reading test unless they meet certain criteria.

“Passing them along is a terrible disservice to the student,” Huston said in his Tuesday remarks.

Lawmakers will also consider a proposal to address antisemitism on college campuses, Huston said.

While leadership aims to have a quieter “transition year,” there’s no guarantee that the controversial social issues that have marked the last two sessions will take a backseat in 2024. Indeed, without a budget to pass, lawmakers may have more time to bring forward bills like the “divisive concepts” bill that headlined the last short session in 2022.

Next year’s elections will also factor into lawmakers’ decisions. All 100 seats in the Indiana House of Representatives and half the seats in the state Senate will be up for election. Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers.

“Lots of bills will be filed,” Huston said at an Indiana Chamber of Commerce event Monday.

Here’s what lawmakers have said to expect on education policy next year.

Literacy, careers, and absenteeism in the spotlight

Huston and Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray each said this week that their caucuses would focus on addressing literacy. Last year, the legislature passed landmark laws mandating curriculum and teacher training based in the science of reading, and forbidding instruction that uses models like “three-cueing.”

Huston and Bray indicated that legislation this year would focus on keeping students who don’t pass the state reading exam in third grade. Current Indiana law requires schools to retain those students unless they’ve been retained twice before, or if they’re English learners or have disabilities and receive approval from their educators to advance to the fourth grade.

Lawmakers will also look to expand last year’s laws on work-based learning, which allow students to receive Career Scholarship Accounts for workforce training outside of their schools. Huston said his caucus would once again push to allow students to use state scholarships earmarked for postsecondary education for work-based training as well.

Further tweaks to allow for more applied learning and apprenticeships could be coming as well.

At a legislative preview event Monday hosted by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Huston and Bray also highlighted the need to address chronic absenteeism, which remains higher than before the pandemic.

“Anything good we do in the education system, for those kids who aren’t there, they’re not going to have success,” Bray said.

Bills about divisive social issues could return

In recent years, Indiana lawmakers have attracted national attention for a series of controversial education-related bills, including one to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts” related to race that failed in 2022, and another that banned “harmful materials” from school libraries that passed in 2023.

Lawmakers have also passed legislation aimed at transgender youth, including one that prohibits transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams in 2022, and another that bans health care providers from providing gender-affirming services to anyone under 18 in 2023.

Leaders of the Democratic caucus said lawmakers should leave such issues alone during the 2024 session.

“We don’t need to bog down this session with [critical race theory] and how we feel about affirmative action,” said Senate Minority Leader Greg Taylor, an Indianapolis Democrat.

One piece of controversial legislation likely to make a comeback is the push to make school board elections partisan. Previous versions of the bill have divided lawmakers and drawn public backlash, but momentum for the idea grew between 2022 and this year.

Chamber calls for more action on child care

In a legislative preview event Monday, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce called for the state to once again focus on access to child care as an avenue toward economic development.

Lawmakers passed several laws on child care last year, including expanding eligibility for the On My Way Pre-K program and approving a third-party review of child care regulations, with the intent to streamline administrative burdens on providers.

The Chamber of Commerce called for an acceleration of this review, as well as other changes, like allowing child care workers to automatically qualify for child care vouchers.

This summer, the interim committee on Public Health, Behavioral Health and Human Services also approved a draft report of recommendations centered on testimony from child care providers who raised concerns about the affordability and access.

Bray referenced this report Monday when discussing how the Senate may tackle the child care question in 2024.

Lawmakers can begin filing bills now before reconvening in January.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana bill allowing chaplains in public schools advances despite constitutional concerns

2024-01-24T21:43:36+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana lawmakers advanced two bills on Wednesday that could further blur the lines between religious instruction and public schools, despite concerns that they might put schools in legal jeopardy.

Senate Bill 50 would allow schools to bring in chaplains as volunteers or employees to provide counseling to students and educators, while House Bill 1137 would require principals to let students leave campus for religious instruction under certain conditions.

Both bills passed their respective chambers’ education committees Wednesday despite questions about whether they maintain appropriate boundaries with respect to religion in public schools. Proponents say that neither bill requires students to receive religious instruction.

Under Senate Bill 50, school chaplains could provide only secular counseling unless the students or their parents gave permission for nonsecular guidance — prompting concerns from the ACLU of Indiana about violations of students’ constitutional rights.

Sen. Stacey Donato, a Logansport Republican who wrote the bill, described the proposal as another tool to address students’ social-emotional needs while alleviating the workload on the state’s school counselors. Indiana has one school counselor for every 694 students, according to one report from last year from the American School Counselor Association, which recommends a ratio of one for every 250 students.

The bill, which passed along party lines, received support from education groups, including the Indiana School Boards Association, the Indiana School Counselors Association, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, who all said the bill provided clear guidelines for chaplain positions.

Last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation allowing unlicensed chaplains to work in state public schools. Donato’s legislation says the chaplains must have master’s degrees and at least two years of counseling experience under the provisions of the bill, and would have to pass a criminal background check.

Their communication with students would be confidential, though Donato said she will amend the bill to require that they report child abuse or neglect.

The ACLU of Indiana raised concerns about violations of the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion. Similar concerns were echoed by Democratic lawmakers.

They also raised several questions, such as whether the chaplains would be school employees, what would happen if a student practiced a different religion from the chaplain, and what would happen if a student’s parent requested that they receive religious counseling against the student’s wishes.

Sen. Andrea Hunley, an Indianapolis Democrat, also said the bill didn’t specify how a parent would be notified if a student gave permission on their own for the chaplain to provide religious instruction — a departure from lawmakers’ recent efforts to ensure schools notify parents when students request to use different names or pronouns.

Republican lawmakers defeated an amendment to require parental permission for religious counseling, as well as another to require that the religious counseling be nonsecular.

Clergy members did not immediately throw their support behind the bill.

Chaplains may not have training in child development and psychology, and may not be qualified to act as counselors, said Gray Lesesne, dean and rector at Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis, who opposed the bill. And the provision protecting communication between a student and school chaplain as confidential could violate boundaries, he said.

“Even if I were to dispense secular advice to a young person as a chaplain, they would have a difficult time separating me from my role and calling and could interpret that as religious counseling whether I intend it to be or not,” he said.

Bill would change off-campus religious instruction rules

House Bill 1137, meanwhile, would bolster an existing Indiana law that allows students to leave school grounds for religious instruction for up to 120 minutes per week, subject to their principals’ discretion.

Under the bill, principals would be required to allow students to leave. The principals would work to determine an appropriate time to do so in collaboration with parents and religious organizations. In order to leave for religious instruction, students must not be listed as chronically absent.

The bill received broad support from lawmakers and advocates for religious instruction, who said many parents wanted to provide students religious teaching during the school day.

While the bill passed unanimously out of committee, Democratic lawmakers and representatives of public school organizations raised concerns about its impact on student absenteeism and academics.

With several religious organizations potentially pulling students out of the school day, the bill takes away principals’ discretion to keep academic time intact, said Christopher Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association.

Furthermore, Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, said it empowered religious organizations to pressure public schools into allowing students to leave — and put schools at risk of lawsuits.

Still, advocates for the bill said releasing students for religious instruction — a concept protected under U.S. law — allowed students to take religious lessons during times that didn’t conflict with academic courses or after-school extracurricular activities.

“A lot of parents want the ability to send a message to their students, this is how important it is to our family that you have religious instruction,” said Joel Penton, founder of LifeWise Academy, a national organization that provides Bible-based education to public school students off-campus during the school day.

Dennis Gutwein, a board member at the West Central School Corporation, said students at his district took LifeWise classes during library hours, but that the librarian allowed them to visit at other times during the day, like during study hall.

Committee members also added an unrelated amendment to House Bill 1137 that seeks to bolster civic education in the state by creating a seal to recognize excellence in civics for students, teachers, and schools.

Both HB 1137 and SB 50 will advance to their respective chambers.

You can track HB 1137 and SB 50 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers advance bill to hold back more third graders who don’t pass reading test

2024-01-17T22:44:34+00:00

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A bill to hold back and provide more support to third graders who can’t read proficiently passed the Senate Education and Career Development Committee Wednesday along party lines.

Senate Bill 1 would reinforce the state’s policy of holding back students who fail the state’s reading test, while also requiring schools to identify and give remediation to those who are at risk of not passing the exam.

Under the provisions of the bill, schools would also need to track students’ reading skills beyond third grade, and provide reading instruction rooted in the principles of the science of reading through eighth grade.

The legislation continues the state’s recent focus on improving students’ literacy and reading instruction. Last year, Indiana lawmakers enacted a law requiring schools to adopt research-backed curriculum based in the science of reading. The state also prohibited schools from using a reading instruction method known as three-cueing.

Sen. Linda Rogers, a Republican from Granger who authored the bill along with 30 other GOP lawmakers, denied that her proposal amounted to a “retention bill.” She said that retention would continue to be a last resort after other intervention methods — like early identification and summer school for young students who lack key reading skills — have been exhausted.

Still, Rogers called retention a “necessary policy” for students who can’t read by third grade, and who don’t have a qualifying exemption like a disability.

“While some may say that retention is not good for a child, what really isn’t good is to move that student on without foundational reading skills,” Rogers said.

Details of the legislation surfaced last week. In 2023, out of 13,840 students who did not pass the third grade reading exam (known as the IREAD), just 412 stayed in third grade for another year.

The bill has support from GOP policymakers as well as several statewide education advocacy groups like RISE Indy and the Indiana School Boards Association. Advocates said the measures are necessary to address Indiana’s stagnating literacy rates. Around 1 in 5 students did not pass the IREAD in 2023 — a number that has remained about the same for three years.

But teachers, parents, and other education experts expressed skepticism about increased retention, saying that it would negatively affect students’ social-emotional well-being and long-term outcomes.

“Painting with broad strokes is dangerous,” said Rachel Burke, president of the Indiana Parent Teacher Association, who told lawmakers Wednesday that mandatory retention would have harmed her daughter. “She just needed more time, and it didn’t need to be in third grade.”

How retention and remediation would work

If the bill passes, beginning in the 2024-25 school year, students would have three attempts to pass the test — in second grade, third grade, and the summer after third grade. Those who don’t pass would be eligible for summer school focused on literacy, and their parents would be notified of their skill level, as well as any interventions needed.

Students who don’t pass the IREAD in third grade, or don’t have an exemption, would repeat a year. Qualified exemptions under the bill include having a disability or an individualized education program that specifies that retention is not appropriate; being an English learner who has received less than two years of language services; and passing the statewide math test — though these students would receive extra support in reading in fourth grade.

A repeated year must look different than a student’s first year of third grade, said Kymyona Burk, former state literacy director at the Mississippi Department of Education who spoke at the hearing. (Mississippi has attracted attention for its dramatic gains on national tests, including reading assessments.) Students should be placed with teachers who have a proven record of teaching reading, and need intensive literacy interventions throughout the year.

Burk noted that data from Mississippi showed that among students who were on the borderline of passing the statewide test, students who were retained performed higher in the long-term than those who moved on to fourth grade instead.

“We can prevent reading difficulty in children. We have to make sure that we are identifying them early and providing them with support much earlier than third grade,” Burk said.

A long-term decline in literacy

In testimony supporting the bill, Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said literacy has declined in Indiana for over a decade. But retention rates have also declined, as the state softened its policy on holding students back and allowed for “social promotion.”

“This was not just a COVID challenge. It would almost be easier if it was purely due to COVID,” Jenner said.

Asked why students are struggling to learn to read, Jenner pointed to absenteeism as one possible cause. Of the 20% of students who did not pass the IREAD in 2023, nearly one-quarter were considered chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more days of school. Among students who passed, chronic absenteeism was around 9%, she said.

“We can invest all the dollars we want but if you’re missing school, then your teachers can only do so much to get you there,” Jenner said.

Without a clear understanding of the reasons for the decline, some speakers said lawmakers should refrain from adopting any sweeping solutions.

“In order to prescribe a solution to the problem we need to understand what caused the problem in the first place,” said Joel Hand, speaking on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers Indiana and the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

Concerns about student well-being

Public testimony in opposition to the bill focused on concerns that a broad mandate would supersede local control and parental input on when and how a student should be retained.

Other speakers expressed concern that a retention mandate would disproportionately affect students who are learning English, and thus exacerbate existing disparities.

Studies on retention frequently find positive academic outcomes among students who have been held back, but mixed or negative social and emotional effects, including more behavioral issues and higher dropout rates

State policy should focus on solutions proven to be most effective, said Vincent Edwards, who authored a Ball State University analysis on retention that found a slight positive effect for retained students. More effective solutions could include additional staffing or early learning programs.

“We need to focus on what we feel really confident about instead of what is at best marginally positive,” Edwards told lawmakers.

The committee rejected an amendment by Sen. Andrea Hunley, an Indianapolis Democrat, to delay the implementation of the bill until the 2025-26 school year.

Committee members discussed but did not yet vote on Senate Bill 6, a companion bill by GOP Sen. Jeff Raatz to identify older students who can’t read proficiently.

Senate Bill 1 will now head to the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

You can track this bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana school funding bill would give money to families to create ‘a la carte’ education

2024-01-18T23:19:24+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

A school funding bill heard in Indiana’s legislature Thursday proposes to radically reshape the state’s education system by allowing families to use state money to pay for a wide range of services and effectively customize their children’s education.

The bill, Senate Bill 255, is on hold until next year, when lawmakers take up issues tied to the state budget. But its backers say it’s the start of a conversation about expanding school choice in the state, far beyond the scope of existing voucher programs.

For now, few details are available about how the program would work. But depending on how it takes shape and how many students participate, it could have a major impact on K-12 schools, graduation requirements and postgraduate paths, and give Indiana one of the most relaxed school choice policies in the country. And it would add to the financial pressures on public school systems that already stand to lose funding to voucher programs, while they try to improve low reading scores and college-going rates.

Lawmakers have already made nearly all Indiana children eligible for private school vouchers, on the premise that parents should be empowered to determine how educational dollars are spent.

But critics say these voucher programs aren’t reaching the students they were originally intended to help — those from low-income backgrounds who are attending failing schools.

Families could choose programs a la carte

Indiana’s existing voucher programs allow students to use state funding for private school, or for special education services outside of public school. A new program also allocates funding for career training.

Under the new proposal, those programs would be combined into a new program, with relaxed requirements that allow families to use state funding to purchase classes and services a la carte from schools, tutors, and other approved organizations.

So a student could take a chemistry class at a public school, a math class at a private school, and music lessons with a professional musician, said Indiana State Treasurer Daniel Elliott, who spoke in support of the bill at the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday.

Lawmakers at Thursday’s hearing listened to concerns about the bill from a wide array of groups, including the Indiana School Boards Association, the Indiana Association of School Principals, the Indiana Catholic Conference, and home-schooling advocates.

The bill’s fiscal note estimates that state expenditures would increase by $46 million just for the cost of migrating students from the existing voucher programs to the new funding pool.

Author Sen. Ryan Mishler, a Republican from Mishawaka, said he wanted to begin the conversation about the proposal this year and expects it to continue through the summer.

Mishler notably voiced opposition to last year’s expansion of the school voucher program, citing concerns about a lack of accountability at private schools. In introducing the bill, he said he hoped to offer even more flexibility to Indiana parents.

Elliott agreed.

“If we really want to make a difference, we need to give parents more than two choices,” said Elliott. “We need to give them the option to create their child’s unique educational pathway.”

How the money would move

The grant program in Senate Bill 255 would function like an expanded version of the existing Education Scholarship Account program, which allows families of students with disabilities to use funds on services outside their schools. It would replace the education scholarships, the state voucher program, and the new Career Scholarship Accounts established last year.

Under the bill, students enrolled in a public school could receive 50% of the foundation grant amount — around $3,000 in 2023 — to spend on services outside of their school’s jurisdiction, likely making an impact on their school’s funding. Students enrolled in private school would receive 90% of the foundation grant amount.

They could use the funds to pay for expenses like tuition and fees at a private school, services for a disability, extracurricular activities provided by a school, apprenticeships, and transportation.

While home-schooled students were included in the bill draft, Mishler and Elliott said they would change the bill to exclude them from the funding and the accompanying requirements of state oversight.

Lawmakers raised questions about the additional cost, as well as the increased workload for the treasurer’s office, which would administer the combined program.

Schools may need to price their classes at a credit hour rate, according to Elliott. And parents would be responsible for transporting their children to different schools and classes.

Sen. Shelli Yoder, a Bloomington Democrat, said the transportation issue raised concerns about equity, as parents who can’t drive their children to different schools likely wouldn’t be able to benefit from the program.

Elliott said that it’s likely very few families would take advantage of the program.

Currently around 90,000 students attend private schools in Indiana, compared with over 1 million students who attend public schools. Recent data shows that voucher use grew by 30% over last year, compared with a 5% increase in private school enrollment, suggesting that most of the beneficiaries of vouchers are families whose children are already in private schools.

For the career scholarship accounts, just over 200 students received vouchers in the first year. The program, which offers students state funding to take career training courses outside their schools, is a centerpiece of GOP lawmakers’ plans to “reinvent high school” in 2023.

Senate Bill 255 is not expected to be heard again in the 2024 session.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana bill would make schools disclose details about sex ed classes

2024-01-31T21:45:32+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a bill requiring schools to seek school board approval for their sex education materials, as well as publicize information about who teaches the courses and when.

Sex ed is not required in Indiana schools, despite evidence linking such courses to improved behavioral outcomes among teens. Schools are required only to teach lessons about HIV and AIDS, and if they do choose to offer additional sex ed, they must emphasize abstinence.

Still, many schools do offer sex ed, sometimes contracting with outside organizations that offer lessons on consent and healthy relationships alongside reproduction and contraception.

The legislation from two GOP lawmakers marks the latest attempt by the Indiana legislators to shape how schools should approach sex, sexuality, and gender. Last year, they restricted the teaching of human sexuality in the earliest grades. And a state law that took effect last school year requires schools to disclose students’ requests to use different names or pronouns, prompting criticism from the LGBTQ community and mixed reactions from districts.

Supporters of the bill say it’s appropriate for schools to be especially sensitive about sex ed in particular, and that the proposal could defuse political tensions. Critics say it could shut down conversations related to sexuality and run afoul of federal law. Observers pointed out that some of the bill’s provisions are already part of state law.

Under Senate Bill 128, schools would need to seek approval from their school boards before using curriculum materials related to sex ed. They would also have to share details like which grade levels will receive sex ed lessons and when, whether male and female students will be taught together, and whether the class is led by a male or female instructor.

The bill would also require schools to post all this information on their websites.

The bill passed the Senate Education and Career Development Committee on Wednesday on an 8-5 vote, with GOP Sen. Dan Dernulc joining the four Democrats on the committee in voting no.

The bill was authored by Sen. Gary Byrne and Sen. Jeff Raatz, chairman of the Senate education committee.

Byrne said publishing the information would help parents decide whether they want to allow their children to take the lessons. Indiana already allows parents to opt their students out of sex education.

Byrne said the bill targeted sex ed — and not other subjects — because of the sensitive nature of the subject and families’ differing views on when it should be taught.

“I think putting the local school boards in the driver’s seat is an issue that makes good sense,” Byrne said.

The bill received support from the Indiana School Boards Association for strengthening local control and parental engagement. But Terry Spradlin, the association’s executive director, said its provisions requiring school board approval and public posting of curriculum were already part of Indiana law.

Other supporters said the bill could prevent turmoil at school board meetings by making board members aware of what’s being taught.

But critics of the bill, including advocates for gender diversity and sex education, said school boards already have the ability to review and approve curriculum. They also say a state mandate could create an additional burden on teachers and school administrators and ultimately serve as a deterrent to offering sex ed at all.

“This is a bill requiring every school district in the state to now hold hearings on very volatile issues in which a small number of folks can come and take over those meetings, that also allows a small number of school board members to inject their own political beliefs into sex education,” said Chris Daley, executive director of the ACLU of Indiana.

Daley also called the proposal an unfunded mandate.

Emma Vosicky of Gender Nexus, a group that advocates for gender diverse people in Indiana, said the ambiguous language of the bill could create a chilling effect on broader discussions of gender, including on children’s books about LGBTQ families.

Furthermore, the requirement to approve things like the gender of the person teaching a sex ed course leaves districts at risk of violating federal mandates prohibiting sex discrimination, she said.

Sen. Shelli Yoder, a Bloomington Democrat, said that requirement could also be discriminatory toward teachers who identify as a gender other than male or female.

Tammy Carter, CEO of Lifesmart Youth, a nonprofit organization that provides sex ed to 26,000 students in 122 Indiana schools, said the bill’s requirements are redundant, as the organization already meets with school boards and parents and posts its full curriculum material on its own portal.

Additionally, the bill would force her organization to release proprietary information to schools to post online under the bill, Carter said.

Other efforts have sought to expand access to medically accurate sex education, especially in the wake of Indiana’s near-total abortion ban.

Both GOP and Democratic lawmakers have previously authored bills to require schools to provide information about conception and contraception if they choose to teach sex ed. These bills have not been taken up, and similar bills have not been filed this year.

You can track SB 128 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers want more parental help, wraparound services to reduce young students’ absenteeism

2024-01-31T23:53:56+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Too many students in Indiana are missing school. And Indiana lawmakers have struggled to find a fix for the issue of absenteeism.

Finding a balance between punitive and proactive measures to fix absenteeism where it’s highest — in the earliest grades and in high school — has evaded Indiana lawmakers trying to grapple with the state’s absenteeism rates, which peaked during COVID and still remain high in Indiana and nationwide.

With Senate Bill 282, which members of the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development approved unanimously on Wednesday, they seek to begin to address the bell curve of absenteeism.

“There are younger students that have truancy issues, and there are older students. Trying to wrap your arms around that 900-pound gorilla I found to be absolutely impossible,” said said Sen. Stacey Donato, a Republican from Logansport and the bill’s author.

GOP lawmakers flagged absenteeism as a priority for their agenda this year. But they had yet to bring a bill forward before Wednesday, the last opportunity for bills to be heard in the education committee before midway deadlines.

The proposals targeting each side of the bell curve are different.

First, it prescribes steps that schools must take to contact the parents of truant elementary students and provide them information and wraparound services to help improve attendance.

The bill also urges the bipartisan Legislative Council to further study absenteeism this summer — including ways to promote school attendance and age-appropriate consequences for habitually truant students — which will help address absenteeism among older students, Donato said.

“We’re going to do our absolute best to get those children the services that they need, the parents the services that they need, and work with those children to get them to school so that they can learn to read,” Donato said.

Donato ended up heavily amending her original bill, which in its initial form prescribed both punitive and preventative measures that schools could use to curb habitual truancy.

It would have referred more students to juvenile courts, which could have assessed fines of up to $1,000 to parents of truant students and assigned community service to the students themselves.

Absenteeism is ‘far beyond’ scope of one bill

Under Donato’s revised bill, schools would be required to notify parents of elementary students in writing of their student’s absences, their responsibility to ensure their student’s attendance, and the possible consequences for failing to do so, like juvenile court intervention. Schools would need to hold attendance conferences with parents no more than five days after the student’s fifth unexcused absence in a 10-week period.

The revised bill also mandates that schools create behavior plans to improve students’ attendance, and offer counseling to address any underlying issues keeping them from attending school.

Donato’s amended bill received support from a wide array of groups, including the Indiana Teachers Association, the Indiana School Social Workers Association, and the Indiana School Boards Association. They said they would have opposed the bill as originally written.

“This is an issue that goes far beyond what any one bill could possibly fix,” said Joel Hand, representing the School Social Workers Association. “But this is a step in the right direction.”

You can track SB 282 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Bills on literacy, cell phones, sex ed, and civics are advancing in the Indiana Statehouse

2024-02-07T20:27:55+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

The first half of the 2024 legislative session in Indiana has come to a close, and the dust is settling on the bills that cleared their original chamber.

Bills prioritizing reading instruction are again the top of lawmakers’ agenda and will likely become law, as the state tries to address stagnating reading scores. They build on lawmakers’ efforts last year to require instruction based on the science of reading in schools.

A bill allowing schools to ban cell phones from K-12 classrooms also advanced. But as the session has progressed, lawmakers have significantly altered other bills tackling absenteeism and behavior issues in schools, admitting these are tricky problems to solve.

Lawmakers have largely steered clear of controversial social-issue legislation that marked the last two legislative sessions. But bills on publicizing sex ed curriculum and further blurring the lines between public schools and religious instruction drew concerns.

The bills now head to the opposite chamber where they may have further amendments. The 2024 session must end by March 14.

Here are some of the key bills to watch in the second half of the session.

2024 bills addressing Indiana curriculum and instruction

Senate Bill 1 would tighten the state’s policy for holding back and remediating young children who don’t demonstrate reading skills. The most recent amendments to the bill would create a policy for parents to appeal a remediation recommendation. Meanwhile, Senate Bill 6 requires the Indiana Department of Education to identify older students who don’t read proficiently.

Senate Bill 50 would permit chaplains to serve in public schools as counselors providing secular support. An amendment to the bill allows them only to provide religious support if a parent or emancipated minor gives permission. House Bill 1137, meanwhile, requires principals to allow a student to leave for off-campus religious instruction at their parents’ request.

Senate Bill 287 would require schools to teach cursive, and directs the state department of education to develop an internet safety curriculum, while House Bill 1243 would establish a computer science curriculum requirement.

Senate Bill 128 would require schools to seek school board approval for their sex ed curriculum, and publicize the materials plus information about who teaches the courses and when.

House Bill 1137, along with Senate Bill 211, would establish a civics seal and expand civics education to the youngest grades.

House Bill 1073 would require schools to install video cameras in special education classrooms, and allow parents to review recordings in certain situations.

These bills target cell phones, mental health, intruders

Senate Bill 211, along with House Bill 1380, would define charter school corporations as a collection of charter schools operated by a single organizer — a change that raised concerns about financial transparency following last month’s federal indictment of former virtual charter officials.

Senate Bill 185 would allow schools to adopt policies banning cell phones from the classroom, though the policies must include exceptions for emergencies, health needs, and cell phone use at the direction of a teacher or under an individualized education program.

Senate Bill 282 originally laid out preventive and punitive measures schools could use to address truancy, but the bill was amended to focus only on preventive measures in elementary schools while a summer study committee considers how to improve older students’ attendance.

Senate Bill 214 would require schools to post links to mental health resources for students, and Senate Bill 141 would require counselors to spend a certain amount of time providing services to students.

House Bill 1104 lays out requirements for schools’ armed intruder drills, including that students can’t be subject to drills that include sensory components.

Funding bills could affect referendum revenue

Though 2024 is not a budget year, several bills moved forward that could affect funding for schools and students.

House Bill 1001 would allow students to use Career Scholarship Accounts to obtain their drivers’ licenses. It will also expand the uses for two kinds of college scholarships, allowing students to put them toward career training.

House Bill 1376 restricts school referendums to general elections or municipal elections only.

House Bill 1380 includes a number of potential funding changes.

It would prohibit schools from charging a fee for transfer students.
It would expand the Indiana Learns program that gives students up to $1,000 for tutoring beyond 2026.
It would require that Innovation Network schools receive 100% of their state tuition support dollars and prohibits school districts from charging them for goods and services if that amount is more than the charter receives in revenue from non-referendum operating fund property taxes.

Senate Bill 270 would clarify that schools must close underutilized buildings and make them available to charter schools for $1.

Some higher education bills take aim at Indiana’s universities

Many of the bills aimed at higher education this year would assert more legislative control over the state’s colleges and universities.

Senate Bill 48 originally would have required colleges to compile information about jobs and pay related to their degrees. But when colleges reported that they already have much of this information, lawmakers amended the bill to require schools to prominently post links to it instead.

Senate Bill 8 would require all high schools to offer the College Core. It would also require colleges and universities to explore the possibilities of conferring associate degrees and offering three-year degree programs.

Senate Bill 202 includes many changes to colleges’ boards, tenure, and diversity policies.

It would prohibit colleges from offering tenure to faculty who have failed to support a culture of “free inquiry,” and create complaint procedures aimed at faculty who have shared political opinions unrelated to their academic discipline.

House Bill 1002 codifies a definition of antisemitism and prohibits religious discrimination at the state’s schools.

Deregulation bills focus on child care, youth employment

Senate Bill 2 removes several child care regulations and makes employees of childcare centers eligible for childcare subsidies.

Senate Bill 147 also offers tax exemptions for for-profit childcare operators, as well as businesses that provide on-site childcare to employees.

House Bill 1093 is not strictly an education bill, but would relax regulations on when teenagers are allowed to work.

The 2024 bills that didn’t make it, but might in 2025

Several bills that didn’t pass this year offer a clue into what lawmakers might tackle during next year’s budget session and during summer study committees.

House Bill 1219 sought to create a mastery-based education pilot program, and along with Senate Bill 165, measure the educational time that students must receive in minutes instead of days.

Senate Bill 255 would have dramatically expanded Indiana’s choice program and allow families to choose where they would spend state dollars to create customized programs. The bill was heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee, with chair Sen. Ryan Mishler saying it would return next year.

House Bill 1262 originally laid out several punitive measures schools could take to address student behavior. The bill passed the House education committee with lawmakers promising to amend the bill to send the issue for further study instead. But it died on the House floor after a disagreement over what kind of committee should study the issue.

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that charter schools would not be charged for goods and services if the cost exceeds the amount they receive in non-referendum operating fund property taxes in House Bill 1380.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Civics education to come to the earliest grades under Indiana proposal

2024-02-12T17:51:41+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

In Heather Veatch’s fourth grade class at East Washington Academy in Muncie, students run for office at the beginning of the year.

Despite their nerves, they each give a speech to their peers introducing themselves and their ideas and then vote for president, vice president, senators, and representatives. Veatch’s students bring issues to their elected leaders, who work to address them.

This year, they campaigned for and successfully passed a proposal for a new sensory space, which Veatch then granted.

While those who don’t win the class elections are often disappointed, Veatch tells them that they’re now occupying the most important role of all — citizen.

“Kids at a young age need to know they’re part of a bigger picture,” she said. “They’re not just them alone. But they alone can have a big impact on the bigger picture.”

This is the kind of civics education that Indiana leaders hope to see more of under new bills that would reward students, educators, and schools for engaging the next generation of Hoosier voters.

While Indiana has made progress in civics education through new standards requiring a semester of civics in sixth grade, advocates say there’s still work to be done, especially as the state faces a “concerning” drop in voter participation, according to one report.

House Bill 1137 and Senate Bill 211 would each establish a civics seal to recognize students, teachers, and schools for excellence in civics education — which could look like offering civics-minded lessons and field trips to students.

Students could receive the seal on their diplomas, while schools could earn a certification, similar to existing recognition for STEM education.

The bills also seek to increase access to civics material in the earliest grades as part of the state’s push to provide young students with high-quality reading curriculum. And by introducing basic concepts of citizenship and fairness early, advocates hope to build a foundation for improved civic engagement later in life.

“We don’t want to lose social studies standards in the push for science of reading,” said David Roof, a professor and director of the Center of Economic and Civic Learning at Ball State University. “The focus on literacy and the focus on civics don’t need to compete. They should be intertwined.”

While the civics provisions earned widespread approval, each bill also comes with less popular provisions.

Civics education to improve civic engagement

Civic engagement in Indiana has been persistently low, according to the Indiana Civic Health Index, a report compiled by the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence at Indiana University Northwest.

The center’s 2023 survey found Indiana ranked second to last in voter turnout in the 2022 midterm election, with around 42% of voters voting. While turnout nationally is the highest it’s been since the 1980s, Indiana’s rate has dropped nearly 15 percentage points during that time, the report notes.

Common theories about this drop include the absence of contested elections in the state, according to the report, as well a lack of accessible voting policies common in states with high turnout, like unrestricted absentee voting and same-day voter registration.

A foundation in civics education in K-12 schools will also help address the particularly low voter turnout of young voters, said Roof.

“Improving civic education will improve civic engagement,” said Charles Dunlap, president and CEO of the Indiana Bar Foundation. “It’s a long game.”

The bills would direct the Indiana Department of Education to help provide families and schools with affordable, civics-based reading instruction and materials — with the aim of infusing elementary reading instruction with material about U.S. history and government, Dunlap said.

They would also establish recommendations for a civics seal, which students could earn as an endorsement on their diplomas, Dunlap said. To do this, they might go to school board meetings, or receive certain grades in their government classes.

Many schools in Indiana already offer civics education that could form the basis of a civics seal.

Muncie schools, operated by Ball State University, received a $1.3 million federal grant to revitalize its civics curriculum. Students take field trips to the Indiana Statehouse, and Washington D.C. and participate in classroom-level government exercises. Bills include controversial policies about religion, charters

Both bills have passed their chambers of origin.

And while the civics education proposals received unanimous support from lawmakers and members of the public, each bill includes other proposals that raised concerns.

HB 1137, for example, changes existing Indiana policy to require principals to release students for religious instruction during the school day at their parents’ request. Critics said this proposal could cause disruptions to the school day, and open schools up to legal liability.

SB 211, meanwhile, drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers for its definition of “charter school corporations. Critics argued the change removed a layer of financial transparency from reporting requirements.

Tying less popular provisions to a fairly neutral topic like civics education may help those provisions pass with hesitant lawmakers, said Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis.

Roof, Dunlap, and other advocates for civics emphasized that their support is limited to the civics portions of the bills. It’s not uncommon for lawmakers to consolidate topics, Dunlap noted.

“In moving out of the Committee, perhaps we will see a more focused consideration of the topics on their own,” Roof said.

You can track House Bill 1137 and Senate Bill 211 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How the reading retention bill moving through Indiana Statehouse impacts English learners

2024-02-23T17:30:22+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

A bill that would hold back more third graders in Indiana has raised alarms among teachers of English language learners, who say the retention mandate ignores research on language acquisition, and could violate federal law.

Senate Bill 1 — a priority bill for GOP lawmakers this year — requires schools to remediate young students who don’t demonstrate reading skills and retain most third graders who don’t pass the state reading test, the IREAD3. It’s part of a legislative effort to address the state’s literacy scores, which have declined for more than a decade.

The bill has passed the Senate and is heading for a full vote in the House with support from the Indiana Department of Education.

The bill includes “good cause” exemptions to retention for several groups of students, including English learners who have received services for less than two years and whose teachers and parents agree that promotion is appropriate.

But advocates for English learners say that the exemption for this population doesn’t align with what research says about how long it takes for students to learn a new language.

With a growing population of 93,000 English learners in Indiana, and a history of shortages of educators licensed to teach language learners, advocates worry that English learners will be denied an appropriate education if they’re retained. The state also has an increasing number of immigrant students, some of whom will need language services.

Advocates also say the provision conflicts with the state’s implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which gives students six years to demonstrate proficiency in English before their schools face a penalty. Federal law also states that English learners should not be retained solely on the basis of their English language proficiency and that they are entitled to age-appropriate curriculum and participation in school programs.

State officials who support the bill, however, say it does not conflict with federal law or state rules.

Sen. Linda Rogers, the bill’s co-author, said in a statement that the language conforms with federal guidance, and that the bill’s authors “worked to ensure that was the case as the legislation was being written.”

And the Indiana Department of Education said in a statement that federal guidance requires school districts to help students become English proficient and participate in regular classes “within a reasonable period of time.”

Per the bill, that reasonable amount of time is two years to make sure EL students aren’t retained only because of “their lack of English proficiency and before they have been provided with meaningful opportunity and academic instruction,” the IDOE statement said.

But learning a new language can take anywhere from five to 14 years, said Patricia Morita-Mullaney, a professor of language and literacy at Purdue University and past president of the Indiana Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, or INTESOL.

English learners who are retained under the provisions of Senate Bill 1 could sue the state for failing to meet federal requirements, Morita-Mullaney said.

“Indiana is setting itself up for an enormous class action lawsuit,” Morita-Mullaney said.

Meeting the needs of English learners

Historically, most of Indiana’s young English learners were U.S. citizens who had attended American schools since kindergarten, Morita-Mullaney said. A large percentage then could become eligible for retention in third grade, when they are in their fourth year of receiving English language services — an insufficient amount of time, she said.

The effect would be a penalty for the child, instead of the school as currently outlined by ESSA, she said.

Current Indiana law exempts English learners from retention.

In addition to concerns about violating federal law, holding students back based on their English proficiency has a negative impact on their content knowledge, said Donna Albrecht, a professor of ENL/ESL at Indiana University Southeast and a member of the advocacy team at INTESOL. Instead, teachers should be trained in methods that teach content and language at the same time.

“It’s not that they weren’t taught to read; they’re learning two languages. It takes more time,” Albrecht said. “By the time they reach fourth and fifth grade, they’re surpassing their monolingual peers.”

Of the 2,819 English learner students who failed the IREAD-3 statewide in 2023, 1,922 received a good cause exemption from retention, while 897 did not. Most of the latter — 868 students — were promoted to fourth grade anyway. Such “social promotion” has increased in Indiana schools over the last decade.

Retaining hundreds more students will affect both urban districts like Indianapolis Public Schools, which has a large population of English learners, as well as small, rural districts where these students make up a large share of the population, Morita-Mullaney said.

In both cases, schools will need to staff additional third grade classrooms with teachers who are prepared to teach English learners, Morita-Mullaney said. Indiana schools have struggled to find enough qualified teachers for English learners — another federal requirement.

“They’ll move teachers to third grade, or they’ll bring in new people who have never been in high-stakes testing environments before,” Morita-Mullaney said.

Improving Senate Bill 1 for English learners

There are 93,625 English learners in all grades statewide in 2023-24, according to Indiana Department of Education data.

To improve the bill for English learners, INTESOL recommends changing the exemption language to reference scores on Indiana’s assessment for English learners — WIDA.

Under the organization’s proposed language, students who score less than a 5.0 proficiency level on WIDA, the score needed to exit the English learner programs and join the general student body, would be eligible for an exemption if they fail IREAD3.

On average, students gain half a level of proficiency per year on the assessment, said Albrecht. But even students who gain a full level of proficiency each year may not be ready to pass the IREAD-3 in third grade if they started learning English in kindergarten.

It’s not clear from available state data at what WIDA level students can typically pass the IREAD-3, Albrecht added. Comparing data has been challenging due to years of changes in state and federal testing, Morita-Mullaney said.

The state Department of Education said WIDA measures English language proficiency at grade level, as mandated by ESSA, while IREAD3 measures reading proficiency overall.

Advocates pushed back on this interpretation saying WIDA focuses on all parts of language, but IREAD is designed to test reading for native speakers.

Bill author Rogers also said that retention would not conflict with Indiana’s ESSA plan.

“The legislation highlights early identification of students that may not be reading proficient by the end of third grade. These students will be provided remediation and summer school aligned with the Science of Reading,” Rogers’ statement said. “The goal is not to retain anyone that doesn’t have a good cause exemption and ensure that ‘Every Child Learns to Read.’”

Previously, proponents said that retention will remain a last resort for students after they have more intervention and multiple attempts to pass the test. Still, retention is a necessary step in some cases, they said, giving students another year to develop literacy skills.

Both Rogers and Secretary of Education Katie Jenner have said they don’t believe very many students will be retained after receiving increased intervention.

“This is a crisis for our state right now and we have no time to waste,” Jenner said at a Wednesday meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The bill is scheduled for a second reading in the House on Monday.

You can track Senate Bill 1 on the General Assembly website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How an Indiana bill to recognize great civics education became a bill to allow chaplains in school

2024-02-26T23:22:02+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Lawmakers have altered bills originally designed to recognize Indiana schools and students for civic education to instead cover chaplains in schools, internet safety, and student discipline.

Previous versions of Senate Bill 211 and House Bill 1137 included a requirement for Indiana to establish a civics seal recognizing schools, students, and teachers for excellence in civics at a time when Indiana’s civic participation is declining. The bills would have also brought civic education to the earliest grades through reading materials.

But lawmakers have dramatically rewritten the bills during the legislative process, which is nearing its end on March 14.

House Bill 1137 began as a bill to require schools to release students for religious instruction at their parents’ request, which House lawmakers amended early in the session to include a new civic seal recognition.

But after the bill passed the House, lawmakers on the Senate Education Committee stripped the bill of language related to civics, and added instead a provision to allow chaplains to serve in schools. Senate Bill 50, which passed the Senate but has yet to be heard in the House, includes similar language about chaplains.

The House bill’s provision on chaplains has also been changed by senators to address concerns that it allowed children to receive religious guidance without their parents’ knowledge. In the most up-to-date language, only emancipated minors and parents of unemancipated minors could give permission for religious instruction. Chaplains would otherwise have to provide secular guidance only.

Another amendment to House Bill 1137 adopted by senators would require chaplains to disclose to parents any communication with their students, at parents’ request.

But critics, including the ACLU and Democratic Sen. J.D. Ford, still say school corporations that employ chaplains could run the risk of violating the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause.

Meanwhile, House lawmakers changed Senate Bill 211 to remove the civic seal language. Instead, they added a provision to require the Indiana Department of Education to establish a civics proficiency designation for schools “to further develop student understanding of civil society, constitutional government, and the democratic process.”

The House has also amended the bill to require the Department of Education to approve an internet safety curriculum on cyberbullying and dangerous online behavior. Another amendment would allow school personnel to remove disruptive students and bar them from returning to the classroom.

A House amendment by Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, on Monday would have banned Attorney General Todd Rokita from operating the Eyes on Education portal — a website for parents and others to file complaints against teachers and schools over lessons on politics, race, gender, and sexuality.

Another amendment by Democratic Rep. Carey Hamilton from Indianapolis would have required members of the General Assembly to spend time shadowing public school teachers.

These amendments from DeLaney and Hamilton were rejected for not being germane to the bill.

“Every session, we pass new laws, requirements, and restrictions that impact teachers in their work with students and I think it’s incredibly important for us to be informed about what their work looks like,” Hamilton said.

House Bill 1137 and Senate Bill 211 are advancing to a final reading in their respective chambers. If they pass, they’ll head to the governor’s desk. You can track each bill on the General Assembly website.

Correction: Feb. 27, 2024: A previous version of this story referred to J.D. Ford as a state representative. Ford is a state senator.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

How a revised Indiana absenteeism bill could affect students and parents

2024-02-27T17:44:17+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana House lawmakers have amended a Senate bill focused on chronic absenteeism to require school districts to prohibit habitually truant students from participating in extracurricular activities.

They also altered Senate Bill 282 to add instructions that school officials must report habitually truant students to the prosecutors’ office, and that prosecutors must notify parents that they’ve filed affidavits related to their students’ absenteeism.

But in a policy change not directly related to absenteeism, legislators also amended the bill on Tuesday to provide new protections for teachers who are targeted by unsubstantiated complaints from parents.

Policymakers signaled before the start of this session, which ends March 14, that they wanted to address high rates of chronic absenteeism in Indiana schools. But lawmakers have struggled to articulate how they want to address the issue comprehensively.

The Senate bill primarily deals with student absenteeism. It would require schools to meet with parents and offer wraparound services to address elementary students’ absenteeism.

But an amendment by Democratic Rep. Tonya Pfaff in the last House education committee meeting of the 2024 session added protections for school employees facing unsubstantiated complaints of misconduct.

If an allegation were dismissed or found to be unsubstantiated, a principal would have to inform the school employee and the student and their parent of this decision in writing.

Furthermore, principals would have to inform the parent or student making the allegation that a second unsubstantiated complaint within a year could result in the student being moved to another classroom, or the parent being barred from after-school activities for up to six months.

Pfaff’s amendment passed with bipartisan support.

The changes are similar to an amendment in another bill this session that would allow school employees to remove disruptive students from the classroom and prohibit them from returning.

Lawmakers scuttle plan to study older students’ absenteeism

House lawmakers also removed language from SB 282 that would have asked lawmakers to study the issue of absenteeism over the summer. The bill’s author, GOP Sen. Stacy Donato, said the purpose of this study was to find solutions for truancy among older students.

But Rep. Bob Behning, the Republican chair of the House education committee, said House Speaker Todd Huston requested that bills not contain summer study committee language. Legislative leadership could still decide to study the issue further.

Lawmakers also removed nonpublic schools from the provisions of the bill, and added language that parents can ask a representative — like a doctor or therapist — to provide input at an attendance meeting with their student’s school.

SB 282 is moving forward to a full House vote as the 2024 session quickly draws to a close.

Notably, the House committee did not hear Senate Bill 128, which would have required schools to seek approval from their school boards for sex education material, and then publish the information online. The committee’s decision effectively killed the bill.

You can track SB 282 on the General Assembly’s website.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers drop proposal to allow chaplains in public schools

2024-03-07T17:43:27+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

Indiana lawmakers have cut a proposal that would have permitted chaplains to work in public schools — part of a compromise on a bill allowing students to leave school for religious instruction at their parents’ request.

They returned House Bill 1137 to its original form, which requires principals to allow students to attend off-campus religious instruction if parents request it. Indiana law currently leaves the decision to principals’ discretion.

The controversial language in House Bill 1137 would have allowed chaplains to serve as counselors offering only secular support to students, unless the students’ parents gave permission for nonsecular guidance.

Proponents said it would put willing members of the community in schools to counsel students on a volunteer or paid basis. But critics said the proposal would have violated the establishment clause in the First Amendment, which forbids the government from establishing a religion or favoring one religion over another. Some also said that chaplains didn’t necessarily have the training to work in schools.

Multiple changes to the bill prompted it to go to a bipartisan, bicameral conference committee, which cut the language in the final days of the 2024 legislative session as a compromise to pass the bill through both chambers.

House Bill 1137 briefly featured an amendment to recognize excellent civics education, which was later removed by Senate lawmakers. They instead added a provision to allow chaplains to serve in public schools after their bill containing the language, Senate Bill 50, failed to move forward in the House.

Both chambers must now accept the conference committee’s report. If they don’t, the bill dies.

Lawmakers could still insert the language on chaplains into other bills, as several remain in progress in conference committees.

The 2024 session must adjourn by March 14, but could end sooner.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Educators ask Michigan to invest in attracting and retaining school mental health workers

2024-03-12T14:07:13+00:00

Though Michigan schools have hired more counselors, psychologists, and social workers in recent years, educators say there still aren’t enough staff to address the state’s student mental health crisis.

School administrators and mental health professionals asked legislators to invest in programs to attract and retain staff in hard-to-fill positions to address students’ social and emotional needs Monday night at a House Education Committee hearing at Sterling Heights High School. They say that by hiring more staff to focus on student mental health, schools will be safer and academic outcomes will improve. They also asked legislators to extend funding for existing programs such as the student mental health apprenticeship program for training and retention and add more funding for training programs with distance learning options.

Since 2018, legislators have allocated funds to hire more school mental health workers with targeted funding. The state’s schools added 1,300 mental health professionals to its schools in the last five years.

The 2021 school aid budget included a onetime investment of $240 million to add more school staff to address student mental health. In 2023, the state allocated $150 million to improve student mental health, and $328 million has been allocated for 2024.

“It’s a great start,” said Diana Wheatley, a school social worker at New Haven Community Schools in Macomb County, at the hearing. “Let’s keep it going so we can meet the needs of all students.”

Michigan had the third highest ratio of counselors to students in the U.S. at one counselor for every 615 students during the 2021-22 school year, according to the American School Counselor Association, falling short of the ASCA’s recommendation of 250 students per counselor.

Rep. Matt Koleszar, right, a Democrat representing Northville, Plymouth, and parts of Livonia, asks educators questions during the House Education Committee hearing on March 11, 2024 in Sterling Heights.

“That’s startling,” said Rep. Matt Koleszar, a Democrat representing Northville, Plymouth, and parts of Livonia, of the ratios during the hearing.

The ratios of school psychologists and social workers for every student in Michigan for 2021-22 were also higher than are recommended by professional associations, according to the most recently available data.

The state had a ratio of one school psychologist to every 1,445 students. The recommended ratio is one psychologist to 500 students. The ratio of school social workers to students was one to 1,051. The recommended ratio is one social worker for every 250 students.

Michigan is not the only state facing an ongoing shortage of mental health professionals who serve youth.

Since the pandemic, students’ needs have grown, said Lauren Mangus, president of the Michigan Association of School Psychologists, during the hearing.

“Before the pandemic, there was already a mental health crisis,” said Mangus. “During the pandemic, youth depression and anxiety doubled.”

In 2021, an estimated 15% of U.S. youth ages 12 to 17 had experienced a period of at least two weeks of symptoms of major depression, such as thoughts of suicide or feelings of hopelessness, according to the most recently compiled data by the National Institutes of Mental Health.

A 2021 report from the Centers for Disease Control found more than 20% of teens have had suicidal ideation, or serious thoughts of suicide.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

University of Memphis could become its own K-12 school district under new legislation

2024-03-11T23:26:06+00:00

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The University of Memphis, which operates three high-performing schools for K-12 students on its campus, could become its own school district under new legislation from two Republican lawmakers from Memphis.

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor want the elementary, middle, and high schools on the college campus to come under the supervision of a university-led district and shift out of the purview of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school system.

Under their proposal, the university also could create more schools, including using charter operators, without having to go through MSCS, with which the university has a contractual arrangement. Those new schools could be located throughout Greater Memphis.

White, who plans to introduce the proposal Tuesday in the House K-12 education subcommittee, said he wants to give the university authority to replicate school models that are generating some of the best academic results in Tennessee. While none of the schools have an academic requirement for entry, all three recently received A grades and reward-school designations from the state for student growth.

But a statement Monday from Memphis-Shelby County Schools suggested the district wants to keep its current arrangement.

“We value our longstanding partnership with the University of Memphis and believe Campus School, University Middle School, and University High School are important parts of the district’s educational options,” the statement said. “We look forward to continuing our partnership.”

Proposal envisions a new university-led governance system

The legislation, called the Innovative School District Act, seeks to introduce a new school governance model using public universities to scale up proven innovations in K-12 teaching and learning. The new pathway would remove oversight by traditionally elected school board members who represent the community’s voice in public education. The measure could have statewide implications if other universities pursue the same track.

Under the legislation, Tennessee’s education commissioner could approve a university-based K-12 school system. School governance would be handled by the university’s board of trustees, which also could appoint several of its members as a committee to perform the functions of a school board.

Not just any higher education institution could seek to become a school district, though. The university would be required to have a comprehensive doctoral program and operate a collection of training schools that offer clinical teaching experiences and mentoring for future educators beginning with pre-kindergarten. Such institutions also typically conduct and publish research on effective teaching techniques.

Currently, the University of Memphis, which serves students from pre-K through high school, is the state’s only public university that meets that standard. In addition to its three campus schools, the university partners with Porter-Leath, one of the city’s largest providers of preschool services, to operate an early childhood academy in the city’s Orange Mound neighborhood. Several other Tennessee universities operate training or laboratory schools, but do not serve the full continuum of students from pre-K through graduation.

White, who chairs the House Education Administration Committee, has talked for years with leaders at the University of Memphis about ways to expand its K-12 work. After opening a high school in the fall of 2022, the university warmed to the idea.

“We did not pursue this legislation,” said Sally Parish, the university’s associate vice president for educational initiatives. “Chairman White approached us about scaling our academic model and our academic success to serve more children. We now have a full compendium of pre-K through 12th grade, and the timing feels right.”

Students concentrate on their classwork at Campus Elementary School, one of three schools operated by the University of Memphis on its campus near midtown Memphis.

Why the shift would matter for MSCS

If the legislation becomes law, the shift to a university-based school system would not be immediately noticeable. While Memphis-Shelby County Schools is their district of record, campus schools already contractually operate under the oversight of the university’s board of trustees. The university has its own policies and procedures, employs all of the schools’ teachers and staff, and provides classroom facilities.

But Memphis-Shelby County Schools, one of Tennessee’s lower-performing districts, would not be able to report the high-achieving campus schools’ scores as part of its own academic data.

Eventually, the university wants to expand beyond its ZIP code.

“One of our challenges is that we have more children on our waitlist than we have in our schools,” said Parish, who oversees the university’s campus schools. “We know there’s a local demand; we just haven’t been allowed to meet it. Our contract with the district caps enrollment at 1,050 students.”

The enrollment cap was part of the contract approved by Memphis’ school board in 2021 to allow the university to open a high school recently on campus to prepare students for college and career. The university’s elementary school opened in 1912 and serves over 400 students. University Middle was founded in 2019 as a project-based STEAM school and serves about 270 students.

School leader sees a chance to diversify enrollment

Campus school programs have faced criticism for not reflecting the diversity of Memphis, where 64% of residents are Black, and nearly a fourth are deemed impoverished. The student population of Memphis-Shelby County Schools is 93% Black and 57% economically disadvantaged.

According to the latest state data, Campus Elementary School’s student population is 24% Black and 7% economically disadvantaged, while students at University Middle School are 48% Black and 10% economically disadvantaged. The state’s demographic data is not yet available for University High School.

Parish believes that with more autonomy and the ability to recruit charter operators to open schools in other parts of the city, the university can diversify its K-12 population and create academic tracks that are more responsive to local workforce needs.

Currently, she said, about 20% of the schools’ students are the children of university faculty and staff; 30% are from families who live within a 2-mile radius of the university; and the rest from the larger Memphis community.

“We’re not shying away from serving a diverse community,” Parish said. “We serve children in every single local ZIP code, but we don’t provide transportation to get to the university, and that’s a barrier that we want to eliminate. Currently, we’re limited in how we can serve students based on what the district allows.”

Having the ability to authorize charter schools would help the university expand to other parts of Greater Memphis, she added.

Tennessee now has 141 traditional school systems operated as city, county, or special school districts. Any of them can authorize a charter school under a 2019 law that created the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

The Tennessee Charter School Center, which advocates for charters, is not the driving force behind the new legislation but is consulting with its sponsors.

“What’s most important to TCSC is ensuring that any authorizer in Tennessee is high quality, follows national best practices, and is evaluated by the Tennessee State Board of Education,” said Elizabeth Fiveash, the group’s chief policy officer. “We are working with the sponsors to make sure that is reflected in their proposed language.”

You can track the legislation on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

El programa de preescolar universal de Colorado podría prohibir la enseñanza religiosa el próximo año

2023-12-11T23:49:26+00:00

Read in English.

Cuando la maestra Corrie Haynes les preguntó a los estudiantes de preescolar sentados sobre la alfombra verde frente a ella lo que era un pecado, un niño pequeño contestó muy seguro: “Todas las cosas malas que hacemos”.

“Muy bien”, Haynes contestó.

Luego, los 13 niños, la mayoría de ellos vestidos con una camisa tipo polo de color rojo granate o azul y faldas o pantalones oscuros, aprendieron que todos pecamos—hasta los maestros, las mamás y los papás y el pastor de la iglesia—y que aunque Dios odia el pecado, no odia a las personas que cometen pecados.

“Él nos sigue queriendo mucho, hasta cuando pecamos”, Haynes dijo.

Un minuto después, Haynes guio a los niños de 4 años para que cantaran una canción sobre los modales: “Siempre digan ‘gracias’, siempre digan ‘por favor’. Cuando no somos agradecidos, Dios no queda complacido”.

Este tipo de contenido religioso por mucho tiempo se ha integrado en las lecciones de Landmark Preschool, un programa de educación preescolar ubicado en la Iglesia Bautista Landmark en la ciudad de Grand Junction en el oeste de Colorado. Lo que es diferente este año es que las personas que pagan impuestos en el estado están cubriendo los costos—más de $100,000—para que 20 estudiantes en edad preescolar asistan a este programa.

Colorado invitó explícitamente a los preescolares religiosos para que participaran en su nuevo programa de preescolar universal valuado en $322 millones, el cual, a pesar de tener un lanzamiento dificultoso ha sido popular entre las familias. Pero los representantes estatales han enviado mensajes confusos sobre si los preescolares pueden ofrecer una enseñanza religiosa durante el horario de clases financiado por el estado. Antes del lanzamiento, dijeron que se prohibía. Ahora dicen que no, pero que el próximo año quizás se prohíba.

Debates sobre si usar o no fondos públicos para financiar la educación religiosa surgen en un entorno en el que hay presiones conservadoras para desarmar ideas históricas sobre la separación de la iglesia y el estado.

Para participar en el programa preescolar universal de Colorado, los centros preescolares, incluido Landmark, tuvieron que firmar un contrato aceptando cumplir varios requisitos, como que no discriminarían debido a la orientación sexual ni la identidad de género. Ese requisito ahora está sujeto a dos demandas legales—uno de una escuela preescolar cristiana en el Condado de Chaffee y el otro de dos parroquias católicas que administran programas preescolares cerca de Denver.

El contrato que los proveedores firmaron no mencionó la enseñanza religiosa.

Lauren Weber, la directora de Landmark Preschool, dijo que esa enseñanza se “incluye en casi todo lo que hacemos”.

Pero algunos expertos dicen que mezclar el dinero público y la educación religiosa va en contra de los cimientos históricos del país.

“Si el dinero de nuestros contribuyentes está financiando el ejercicio religioso … entonces nos estamos poniendo en una posición [en la que] el estado y la iglesia se enredan de tal forma que los fundadores estaban tratando de evitar”, dijo Kevin Welner, director del Centro Nacional de Políticas Educativas en la Universidad de Colorado en Boulder.

El estado planea limitar las lecciones religiosas en el preescolar universal

Los funcionarios dedicados a la infancia temprana en Colorado propusieron prohibir la enseñanza religiosa en una serie de reglas que planean aprobar la próxima primavera. No se sabe bien en qué situación eso deje a los programas como el de Landmark, en el cual los líderes esperan abrir dos salones más para la enseñanza preescolar universal el año que viene.

Históricamente, los jueces en Estados Unidos han mantenido una separación entre la iglesia y el estado, pero la actual Suprema Corte de EE. UU. emitió un fallo el año pasado diciendo que el estado de Maine no puede excluir a escuelas que ofrecen enseñanza religiosa de un programa estatal que paga por la educación privada.

Michael Bindas, un abogado principal con el Instituto para la Justicia, un despacho legal libertario de interés público, representó a los demandantes en el caso de Maine. Bindas dijo que ese fallo deja en claro que pedirles a las escuelas religiosas que eliminen la enseñanza religiosa durante el horario de clases financiado por el estado equivale a discriminación religiosa.

Si Colorado adopta las reglas propuestas que prohíben la enseñanza religiosa durante el horario de preescolar financiado por el estado, dijo, “sospecho que quedará atrapado en años de litigación”.

A Welner le preocupa que algunas enseñanzas religiosas en programas preescolares estén enviando mensajes dañinos a los niños, como por ejemplo si un niño que está cuestionando su identidad de género asiste a un preescolar religioso.

“Existe algo inquietante, por lo menos para mí, sobre el uso de dinero de los contribuyentes para subsidiar la educación de un niño en un entorno que esencialmente está atacando la identidad de ese niño”, dijo.

Parte de la visión del preescolar universal era que los padres eligieran

Desde el principio, los líderes estatales planearon ofrecer preescolar universal en todo tipo de entornos—en escuelas públicas, en centros religiosos y en hogares autorizados por el estado. La idea era darles a los padres muchas opciones, más de las que se ofrecían en programas estatales anteriores.

Casi 50,000 niños en Colorado, la mayoría de 4 años de edad, están obteniendo una educación preescolar gratis a través del programa de preescolar universal. De los más de 1,900 preescolares que se unieron al programa universal, 39 son religiosos, según datos del estado. En conjunto, atienden a alrededor de 930 niños.

Muchos programas preescolares financiados con fondos públicos permiten que los preescolares religiosos participen siempre y cuando la enseñanza religiosa ocurra durante el horario cubierto por mensualidades privadas.

Colorado también planeó tener ese requisito—pero nunca puso las reglas que limitan la enseñanza religiosa por escrito.

Landmark Preschool en Grand Junction, Colorado.

¿Se usará este plan de estudios cristiano en preescolares el próximo año?

Landmark Preschool abrió sus puertas en 2012 y atiende a niños desde bebés hasta en edad preescolar. Cerca de la mitad de ellos son niños con familias de bajos ingresos. Tiene la segunda calificación más alta por la calidad de sus cuidados infantiles según el sistema estatal de cinco niveles.

El programa cuenta con dos salones de preescolar universal, uno que se basa en el juego y otro que es más estructurado, donde enseñan habilidades como la escritura en letra cursiva. Ambos salones usan el plan de estudios Abeka, un plan popular entre las escuelas cristianas y familias que educan a sus hijos en el hogar y que describe a la Biblia como la base de todo aprendizaje.

Actualmente, no hay reglas estatales que rijan los planes de estudios en el preescolar universal, pero representantes estatales planean crear una lista de planes aceptables antes que empiece el segundo año del programa. No se sabe bien cuáles serán los parámetros o si los planes como el de Abeka cumplirán con los requisitos.

Weber, la directora del centro, y Christy Barrows, una administradora en la escuela de kindergarten a 12º grado adyacente a Landmark, dicen que recibieron confirmaciones repetidas de representantes locales del preescolar universal diciendo que su programa y el plan de estudios son aceptables.

“Somos muy abiertos sobre quiénes somos y lo que enseñamos”, Weber dijo. “Les digo a todos [los participantes] de visitas guiadas: ‘Encuentren lo que mejor se adapte a ustedes, y si no es [aquí], está bien‘”.

El centro preescolar acepta a todos los niños, incluidos aquellos con familias LGBTQ, dijo. Pero las decisiones de contratación no son igual de sencillas.

“Tenemos los valores cristianos y la moral y las creencias”, Weber dijo. “Esa [persona contratada] quizás no encaje bien en nuestro centro, porque estaremos enseñando estos valores y si no crees en estos valores, es muy difícil que te contratemos”.

En Landmark Preschool, lecciones sobre la Biblia influyen en la hora de cuentacuentos

Adentro del salón preescolar de Haynes, llegó la hora de contar una historia bíblica sobre la obediencia—específicamente, la obediencia a Dios. Entre pausas para que niños ansiosos se calmaran, Haynes contó la historia de una pequeña niña a quien la robaron de su familia y obligaron a trabajar para el poderoso general Naaman, quien tenía lepra.

“Había enormes llagas por toda la piel de Naaman, y todas estas llagas seguía empeorando y empeorando”, Haynes explicó. Pero la niña intervino para ayudar, sugiriéndole a Naaman que visitara a un profeta.

“La pequeña niña pudo haber dicho: ‘Naaman se merece tener lepra. A mí me robaron de mi hogar y me obligan a trabajar como sirvienta’”, Haynes dijo.

En lugar de eso, “la niña eligió hacer lo correcto y perdonar aunque nadie le dijera que lo hiciera”.

Weber, sentada observando la clase de cerca, está esperando ver qué nuevas reglas los líderes del preescolar universal impondrán y si Abeka formará parte de la lista de planes de estudios aprobados.

“En este momento, está funcionando bien, pero en el futuro, ¿cómo será?” dijo. “Vamos a proceder año con año y ver lo que hacemos”.

Ann Schimke es una reportera principal para Chalkbeat, cubriendo temas sobre la primera infancia y lectoescritura temprana. Comunícate con Ann por correo electrónico a aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Traducido por Alejandra X. Castañeda

Biden education budget proposal includes $8 billion to extend pandemic recovery work like tutoring

2024-03-11T21:56:58+00:00

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With a deadline looming to spend pandemic education dollars, the Biden administration has proposed making another $8 billion available to states and school districts to encourage better attendance and support academic recovery through tutoring and summer school.

The idea is a key component of President Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the U.S. Department of Education for fiscal year 2025, and represents an acknowledgment that schools still have a lot of work to do to recover from pandemic learning disruptions. The proposal comes a few months after the Biden administration called on schools to prioritize spending remaining COVID relief funding in these same areas.

The president’s budget proposal, announced Monday, also calls for modest increases to federal programs supporting high-poverty schools, students learning English as a second language, and students with disabilities. The administration also wants more money to support the Office for Civil Rights, and a $750 increase in the maximum Pell Grant award to help make college more affordable.

The White House budget plan will almost certainly not be adopted as written. It heads to a dysfunctional Congress that has careened between threats of government shutdown and short-term spending resolutions. The Republicans who control the House have been particularly hostile to Biden’s efforts to increase spending in several areas , including the Title I program that supports high-poverty schools.

Overall the budget proposal calls for more than $82 billion in discretionary spending for the education department, a 4% increase from this year.

Officials emphasized that this budget proposal complies with spending caps agreed to in last year’s bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, while still investing in initiatives they hope will improve student success.

“When it comes to education, this budget is about raising the bar,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a call with reporters. “There are historic investments promised on top of historic investments delivered.”

Budget offers way to continue tutoring, attendance outreach

American schools received a combined $190 billion in assistance across three pandemic aid packages and have until September to spend any remaining money. Many schools have come to rely on their tutoring programs and want to keep them going after the pandemic aid expires.

But how they’ll fund them has been a big question. Some states have pledged added tutoring funds, but many districts would likely struggle to keep providing intensive help to students without making cuts elsewhere in their budget.

Similarly, the rate at which students are missing lots of school remains well above pre-pandemic levels in many parts of the country. Many schools launched home visit programs or hired staff specifically to work with kids who aren’t attending regularly, but school leaders say it will take additional time and investment to re-engage students and continue to boost attendance rates.

Expanded summer school programs were a popular investment during the pandemic, though they’ve been only moderately successful in helping students catch up. They’ve also been a common place school leaders have scaled back as COVID relief funding has wound down.

The proposed $8 billion in new money isn’t intended to replace pandemic assistance but would supplement current efforts. Officials envision a competitive grant program that would prioritize high-poverty schools, schools in communities especially hard-hit by COVID, and schools identified as needing academic improvement under federal accountability rules.

More money for English learners, civil rights investigations

Biden’s budget proposal calls for a 1.1% increase, or $200 million, to local grants in the Title I program, which provides money to low-income schools. Earlier in his administration, Biden called on Congress to double spending on Title I, but that hasn’t come to fruition. Congressional Republicans have questioned whether schools need more money after the pandemic stimulus, and last year, they sought to significantly cut Title I spending.

Cardona characterized this budget as defending public education from a “slash-and-burn” approach that would endanger the futures of American students.

Similarly, the White House is proposing a 1.4% increase in spending to support K-12 special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, as well as additional money for infants, toddlers, and preschool students with disabilities and grants to recruit special education teachers. Advocates have long called for the federal government to increase special education funding. Federal law lays out disabled students’ educational rights but leaves most of the costs to states and school districts.

The budget proposal calls for a roughly 5% increase or $50 million in new spending for Title III, which supports English learners.

Biden’s budget proposal also includes an extra $22 million, a 16% increase, for the Office for Civil Rights, which conducts investigations into allegations of discrimination in schools. Recently, the department announced it is looking into several incidents involving antisemitism or anti-Muslim discrimination at colleges and K-12 schools since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October.

The budget also calls for increased funding for preschool, student mental health, and community schools, which provide a wide range of services to support students and their families, as well as programs to encourage diverse candidates to enter the teaching profession.

The budget proposal includes a few cuts as well, including a 9% or $40 million reduction in a program that supports new charter schools and the replication of high-quality charter models.

Budget seeks to mitigate college costs

Biden’s budget blueprint would also increase the maximum Pell Grant award to $8,145, a 10% increase from current levels. Pell grants are available to college students from low-income families, and unlike loans, do not need to be repaid.

Budget analysts have warned of a looming shortfall in the Pell program after Congress expanded eligibility at the same time more students are heading back to college. The most recent continuing resolution to keep the federal government open walks back some of that recent expansion.

Advocates have argued that the maximum Pell award should be closer to $13,000 to keep pace with tuition increases and keep the door open to college for students of modest means.

The budget would increase funding for programs that allow high school students to earn college credit before graduating and for grants that help colleges support first-generation students and increase graduation rates.

The budget also calls for partnerships with states and tribes to make two years of community college free for students going to college for the first time and workers looking to change careers. Free community college was one of several education proposals that Biden ran on in 2020 that hasn’t gotten traction.

And the budget calls for more investment in the Office of Federal Student Aid amid a rocky rollout of a new federal financial aid form.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Who will be on the Philadelphia Board of Education?

2024-03-11T20:21:35+00:00

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This week, Philadelphia residents will get their first glimpse at whom Mayor Cherelle Parker could name to the Board of Education.

The 13-member Education Nominating Panel is expected to release its list of 27 potential candidates at a public meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.

Philly’s school board is appointed, not elected, meaning Parker has the power to remake the entire board if she chooses.

Her picks will have the power to approve new charter schools, oversee the district superintendent, vote on contracts and major spending items for the district, and drive the conversation around local education issues. Tuesday’s panel meeting will be residents’ first look at whom Parker trusts to sit on the board.

The panel will recommend 27 candidates to Parker for consideration for appointment — three names for each of the nine board seats. It’s unclear if any of the current board members have reapplied for their positions. Sharon Ward, Philadelphia’s new deputy chief education officer, declined to say Monday whether any current board members are on the list.

Though the panel has been meeting quietly and mostly in executive session since convening on Feb. 1, there have already been some signals that big change is coming. Last week, longtime board member and Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez unexpectedly announced her resignation, citing a medical procedure and the time demands of the position.

According to a statement from Parker’s office announcing the upcoming meeting, the panel received applications from 121 people.

The panel considered those applications and conducted more than 60 interviews, Ward said. Parker will consider each one and make nine appointments with the advice and consent of City Council members following a public hearing.

Each board member’s term is four years and runs concurrent to the mayor’s. Once chosen, any new members will start in their role on May 1. Board members are only allowed to serve three full terms.

In these early days of Parker’s tenure, critics and advocates have paid close attention to her commitment to transparency in government. Her handling of the school board nomination process has been sharply critiqued by individuals including Lisa Haver, cofounder of the education advocacy group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools and an outspoken advocate for deeper public inclusion in city government.

Haver told Chalkbeat the “whole [nominating] process was a sham,” and said Parker’s administration has not sufficiently included the public in the consideration of new board members.

“This is a completely closed process in which the public has absolutely no say,” Haver said. She pointed out unlike other school boards in the state, Philadelphia’s board is not elected meaning “constituents are already disenfranchised here.”

“Given that, the mayor should be doing everything she can to make this as open a process as possible,” Haver said.

In response to Chalkbeat’s questions about transparency, Ward said the Parker administration has been following the process established in the city’s Home Rule Charter, which she said is “very prescribed.”

“We have encouraged folks to speak out and to talk a little bit about what they want to see in a school board panel and what they would like to see in the school district,” Ward said. She said members of the public who want to add their thoughts should do so at the meeting tomorrow or online.

How to get involved

If you want to give feedback on the candidates for new school board members, the city has opened a public comment period which runs from March 5 to May 1.

People can sign up to speak at tomorrow’s public meeting or submit written comments.

The board is also currently looking for new, nonvoting student representatives for the 2024-25 school year. Current ninth and 10th grade students who are interested in applying or learning more can find information about the application process here.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois lawmakers challenge Chicago school board’s plans to remove police, rethink choice policy

2024-03-11T20:07:43+00:00

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Illinois state lawmakers filed two bills last week aimed at reversing the Chicago Board of Education’s decisions to rethink school choice policies and remove school resource officers from campuses.

The bills focus on board moves that have drawn both support and sharp pushback in recent months from school communities and elected officials. Those decisions include a plan to reconsider the district’s system of school choice — including charter, selective enrollment, magnet, and gifted schools — and to create a new school safety plan that bans the use of school resource officers, or on-campus police.

The new state bills would significantly curtail both board decisions. One bill would prevent the closure of selective-enrollment schools and any changes to admissions policies at those schools for the next three years. The other would let local school councils retain the power to decide whether they want on-campus police — a right they would lose by next school year under a new safety plan.

Both bills have gathered support from other Chicago-based state lawmakers and powerful allies, including House Speaker Chris Welch.

The legislation is an example of lawmakers seeking to use state power to override Chicago’s authority over its schools. It comes just days after the Illinois House and Senate passed a bill governing elections for Chicago’s first-ever elected school board.

That power dynamic drew criticism from Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, who has supported the board’s moves around school choice and resource officers.

“I remember being told by (Illinois General Assembly) members that they would *not* circumvent local control of CPS BOE,” Davis Gates tweeted in response to a tweet about the resource officer legislation. “That was in 2013 when Rahm Emanuel closed down 50 Black schools impacting nearly 20K Black children. Can anyone help me define irony?”

Dwayne Truss, a longtime activist on the West Side who has opposed the board’s decision on school resource officers, felt state lawmakers took an important step.

It’s the state’s attempt, Truss said, to “say, ‘Hey, if this is what they want, and it’s fair and it’s reasonable, then we have to protect those rights.’”

Some local school councils want to keep police officers

One of the state bills, House Bill 5008, would allow local school councils to contract with the Chicago Police Department for school resource officers. It would counteract a board vote two weeks ago to create a new school safety policy by June 27 that would end the use of school resource officers, effectively removing officers from 39 schools that currently have them, by next year.

“Local school councils are designed to make the best decision for their school,” said Rep. Mary Gill, a Democrat who represents neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs, and is a key sponsor of HB 5008. “This is about keeping the power local to be able to decide if a (school resource officer) is needed, and from my research, 39 high schools would like to keep them. I think that’s enough.”

This bill passed the House’s Police and Fire committee last week, 13-0, and is headed to the House floor.

The safety plan board members called for in their vote two weeks ago would focus on more “holistic” approaches to discipline, such as restorative justice practices, which emphasize conflict resolution.

In steering away from on-campus police officers, the board cited data showing that Black students and those with disabilities were disciplined and arrested at school at disproportionately higher rates than their peers.

Schools that implemented restorative justice saw a drop in student arrests, according to a recent study.

The board decision drew substantial support, including from organizations that had pushed for years to get rid of on-campus police officers and use the money on other resources, such as more social workers or alternative discipline practices.

But it also triggered a backlash from community members and elected officials who want local councils — not the board — to decide whether their schools should have school resource officers.

Froy Jimenez, member of the district’s Local School Council Advisory Board, said Rep. Gill is “doing the city a big favor” by letting councils make the decision. Many parents, students and staff will be happy if the bill passes, said Jimenez, who is also a teacher at Hancock College Preparatory High School, which voted to remove its resource officers.

“Some will choose not to, and having that ability is crucial,” he said.

CPS spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said in a statement that the district “follows the policies and procedures set by the Board of Education and the Illinois State Board of Education” and that the district “remains committed to working with our leaders, administrators, and school staff toward improving efforts to bolster student safety and protection.”

Lawmakers say ‘hands off’ selective enrollment schools

The second bill, House Bill 5766, would prevent the closure of any school with selective admissions criteria — such as the city’s 11 selective high schools — until Feb. 1, 2027. The bill also calls for a halt to any changes to admissions criteria for selective schools or any decrease in funding to selective schools until 2027.

The bill is a response to the board resolution stating that it would rethink the school choice system and invest more resources in neighborhood schools. The resolution criticized admissions policies at selective enrollment and other “choice” schools, which were originally created to desegregate the school system but have in recent years led to segregation along the lines of student race and income.

Rep. Margaret Croke, a Democrat serving neighborhoods on the city’s northern lakefront who is sponsoring the bill, said her constituents were concerned about changes to selective enrollment schools under a majority appointed school board. They would rather wait for changes to be made after the Chicago Board of Education is fully elected during 2026, she said.

“If an elected school board that has been elected by the city of Chicago decides to take a position or action as it pertains to selective enrollment schools, I may not agree with it, but they were elected by the constituents and the voters of the city of Chicago,” said Croke.

Croke said she believes the current board is trying to change the funding formula to provide less money to selective enrollment and give more to neighborhood schools. The board’s resolution states that it wants to “ensure equitable funding and resources across schools within the District using an equity lens.”

Board members have expressed a desire to scrutinize charter schools more closely. They also want the district to provide more resources to neighborhood schools, or a child’s zoned school, in order to support “students furthest away from opportunity and ensure that all students have access to a world-class public pre-K through 12th-grade education,” officials said.

The board’s resolution did not include any language about closing schools, and board members have stated they don’t plan to close selective-enrollment schools. Written into the compromise hybrid school board bill in 2021 was a moratorium on school Chicago closures until after Jan. 15, 2025.

The resolution didn’t call for specific changes; board members said they want to hear from the public on what the district should do. The resulting plan will be part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, which the board is expected to vote on this summer.

Community groups call for better engagement

The pushback in Springfield comes after a coalition of community groups in Chicago sent a letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson urging him to push his hand-picked school board to do more — and better — community engagement.

The letter, which was sent to other elected officials, city staff, district officials, and school board members, also asked that the resolution on rethinking school choice policies, among other things, be repealed because it “was crafted with no input from the communities it will impact” and was published and approved during the final week of classes before winter break.

“There wasn’t a public comment opportunity when the resolution was announced. And then it just kind of passed,” said Daniel Anello, executive director of Kids First Chicago, a parent advocacy organization that helped create the letter.

In December, district officials said they would hold community engagement sessions in February. A Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said last week that the district now plans to hold community engagement sessions around the next five-year strategic plan after spring break, which is the last week of March.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado backs off proposed ban on religious instruction in state-funded preschool

2024-01-05T00:38:08+00:00

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Colorado officials leading the state’s new universal preschool program originally planned to ban religious lessons and activities during state-funded class time. Not anymore.

In the latest round of proposed state rules posted publicly on Wednesday, they have removed an explicit ban on religious instruction during universal preschool hours. The rules, which would take effect next summer, are set to be considered by a state advisory committee on Jan. 11 and adopted in February.

The new draft rules mark the latest in a series of flip-flops by state officials on the subject of religious education in its new $322 million preschool program. The state’s shifting approach stems partly from the program’s rushed rollout, and partly from a new legal landscape shaped by recent U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions permitting the use of public funds for religious education.

Practically speaking, the state’s decision to remove the ban on religious instruction could attract more faith-based preschools to the universal preschool program, which provides tuition-free classes to more than 60% of the state’s 4-year-olds this year. Currently, there are 40 faith-based preschools among more than 1,900 preschools in the program. Because of mixed messages about whether religious instruction was allowed, some faith-based preschools may have decided not to participate this year.

State officials declined to comment Thursday about why they eliminated the ban on religious instruction in the proposed preschool rules. Ian McKenzie, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, said the department will comment following the conclusion of a trial in a federal lawsuit brought by two Catholic preschools challenging the universal preschool program’s nondiscrimination rules.

“We’re just letting the trial finish before any comments on any of its content,” he said Thursday.

The trial centers not on religious instruction, but on whether religious preschools in the universal preschool program have to accept students from LGBTQ families. It began Tuesday and is expected to finish late this week or early next week.

Colorado always planned to offer universal preschool classes in a variety of settings, including public school classrooms, private child care centers, and faith-based preschools. They never planned to let faith-based preschools teach religion during state-funded classes.

But state officials at the early childhood department ran out of time to make rules on the topic before the program launched in August. There was a widely distributed fact sheet that talked about religious instruction being prohibited, but no official rules. That allowed faith-based preschools participating in the program to incorporate religious stories, songs, and prayers however they wished this year.

In October, the state proposed rules that would do what officials had intended all along: ban religious instruction in universal preschool. But in December, the conservative group Advance Colorado threatened to sue if the state followed through with the proposed ban. With the state’s latest draft rules, it appears the state has shelved its plan for now.

Faith-based preschools participating in the universal program differ widely in how much religion they incorporate into their preschool classes.

Leaders at Grand Junction’s Landmark Preschool, which is housed in a Baptist church, say religion is incorporated into everything they do, including math and reading. One morning last fall, a class of 4-year-old preschoolers recited Bible verses with their teacher.

“OK, here we go,” said teacher Corrie Haynes to the 13 children sitting in front of her on a green rug. “Philippians 4:19. My God shall supply all your needs,” they said together. Next, they sang songs about God and talked about sin and forgiveness.

At King Baptist Child Development Center and Preschool in Denver, preschool classes look much different. The school, which is owned by the adjacent church, uses a secular curriculum and doesn’t incorporate religious content during the school day.

Telaya Purchase, assistant director of the center, said during an interview with Chalkbeat earlier this school year that children can participate in what’s called a devotional before school starts at 9 a.m. That includes the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer, and the song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” She also said children say grace at meals, but can skip it if they choose.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Proposed ban on religious instruction in Colorado’s state-funded preschools may spark legal fight

2023-11-28T23:24:42+00:00

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When teacher Corrie Haynes asked the preschoolers gathered on the green rug in front of her what sin is, a little boy answered confidently: “All the bad things we do.”

“Very good,” she said.

Next, the 13 children, most wearing maroon or blue polo shirts and dark skirts or pants, learned that everybody sins — even teachers, moms and dads, and the church pastor — and that although God hates sin, he doesn’t hate people who sin.

“He still loves us very much even when we sin,” Haynes said.

A minute later, Haynes led the 4-year-olds in a song about manners: “Always say thank you, always say please. When we’re ungrateful, God is not pleased.”

Such religious content has long been woven through the lessons at Landmark Preschool, which is nestled inside Landmark Baptist Church in the western Colorado city of Grand Junction. What’s different this year is that state taxpayers are covering the bill — more than $100,000 — for 20 preschoolers to attend classes there.

Colorado explicitly invited faith-based preschools to participate in its new $322 million universal preschool program, which despite a rocky rollout has proven popular with families. But state officials have sent mixed messages about whether preschools can offer religious instruction during state-funded class time. Prior to the launch, they said it was forbidden. Now, they say it’s not, but that next year it could be.

Debates about public funding for religious education come amid an ongoing conservative push to break down long-held ideas about the separation of church and state, including in a lawsuit underway now over a religious charter school in Oklahoma. Colorado’s Constitution, like those in many other states, prohibits using public money for religious purposes. But a series of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions has hollowed out such provisions.

In order to participate in Colorado’s universal preschool program, preschools, including Landmark, had to sign a contract agreeing to a variety of conditions, including that they would not discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity. That requirement is now the subject of two lawsuits — one by a Christian preschool in Chaffee County and the other by two Catholic parishes that run preschools near Denver. The contract that providers signed did not mention religious instruction.

Lauren Weber, the director of Landmark Preschool, said such instruction is “built into pretty much everything we do.”

But some experts say mixing public dollars and religious education clashes with the nation’s historical underpinnings.

“If our taxpayer money is funding religious exercise … then we are putting ourselves in a position of the state and the church getting entangled in a way that the founders were trying to avoid,” said Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

State plans to restrict religious lessons in universal preschool

Colorado early childhood officials have proposed a ban on religious instruction in a set of rules they plan to approve next spring. It’s not clear where that would leave programs like Landmark, where leaders hope to open two additional universal preschool classrooms next year.

Such questions are playing out amid a rapidly changing legal landscape. The latest shift came in June 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in a Maine voucher case called Carson v. Makin. The court ruled that Maine could not exclude schools that offer religious instruction from a state-funded program open to secular private schools. The ruling built on a series of decisions in which the high court has grown more sympathetic to the idea of using public money for religious purposes, including religious education.

Steven Green, a law professor at Willamette University who specializes in church and state issues, said the shift has come as the share of Christians in the United States shrinks and the share of people without a religious affiliation grows.

Amid these demographic changes, “We’re seeing a kind of circling of the wagons and a feeling of being dispossessed of privilege, particularly white, conservative Christians,” he said.

That narrative has created growing support for measures that allow or inject religion into public life, he said.

Green said that five or six years ago, Colorado could have banned religious instruction during state-funded preschool classes fairly easily. But the U.S. Supreme Court has mostly invalidated state constitutional provisions that prohibit public funds for religious purposes. Now, such provisions — often referred to as Blaine amendments — are “pretty much unenforceable,” he said.

Michael Bindas, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, agreed. He also said the ruling in the Carson case, which he argued on behalf of the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court, makes clear that asking faith-based schools to eliminate religious instruction during state-funded class time amounts to religious discrimination.

If Colorado adopts the proposed rules banning religious instruction during state-funded preschool hours, he said, “I suspect it will be tied up in years of litigation.”

Welner worries that some preschools’ religious teachings could send damaging messages to children. He raised the possibility of a young transgender child attending universal preschool in a faith-based program that’s intolerant of transgender people.

“There is something disturbing, to me at least, about using taxpayer money to subsidize the education of a child in an environment that is essentially attacking the kid’s identity,” he said.

Parent choice was part of the universal preschool vision

Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, has championed state-funded preschool for all since hitting the gubernatorial campaign trail in 2017. Two years later, during his first term, voters approved a nicotine tax to help pay for the program.

Parents began applying last winter, using an online form to choose up to five preschools they liked. The state matching system then assigned their child to a spot at one of them. Despite some confusion about the application process, families flocked to join, and enrollment quickly exceeded the state’s projections. Today, nearly 50,000 children are getting tuition-free preschool through the program, most of them 4-year-olds.

From the beginning, state leaders planned to offer universal preschool in all kinds of settings — in public schools, faith-based centers, and homes licensed by the state. The idea was to give parents lots of choices, more than were offered under the state’s previous smaller preschool program for children with risk factors. That was mostly offered in public school classrooms.

Of the more than 1,900 preschools that joined the universal program, 39 are faith-based, according to state data. Together, they serve about 930 children.

Allowing faith-based preschools to participate in publicly funded early childhood programs is nothing new. The federal Head Start preschool program, plus a number of states and cities, have done it for years. But unlike Colorado’s universal program, those programs — including Denver’s long-running taxpayer-funded preschool tuition assistance program — generally prohibit religious instruction during the government-funded portion of the day.

Such a restriction was on Colorado’s radar, too. An open records request found that in October 2022, the state’s universal preschool director sent a fact sheet to more than 50 local universal preschool officials stating that faith-based preschools could participate, as long as they didn’t use state funds for religious programming. Some of those local officials posted that condition on their websites.

But somehow, amid the chaos leading up to the launch, the issue got lost. Last spring, the state ran out of time to create rules on things like class size, curriculum, and teacher training, so it told participating preschools to “keep doing what you’re doing.” State leaders pledged to come up with rules by the start of the second year in August 2024 and are in that process now.

In October, state officials told Chalkbeat by email that there’s nothing in writing prohibiting religious instruction in universal preschool. A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Early Childhood declined to comment about why the department didn’t establish rules on the issue from the outset.

Will this Christian curriculum be used in preschools next year?

Landmark Preschool opened in 2012 and serves children from infancy through preschool, about half of them from low-income families. It has the second highest rating on the state’s five-level scale for child care quality.

Landmark Preschool in Grand Junction, Colorado.

The school has two universal preschool classrooms, one that is play-based and one that is more structured, teaching skills like cursive writing. Both use the Abeka curriculum, a program popular with Christian schools and homeschooling families that describes the Bible as the foundation for all learning.

Currently, there are no state rules governing curriculum in universal preschool, but state officials plan to create a list of acceptable curriculums before the second year of the program starts. It’s not clear what the criteria will be or whether programs like Abeka will pass muster.

Weber, the center’s director, and Christy Barrows, an administrator at Landmark’s adjoining K-12 school, say they received repeated reassurances from local universal preschool officials that their program and curriculum would be acceptable.

“We’re very open about who we are and what we teach,” said Weber. “I tell all my tours, ‘Find the right fit for you, and if it’s not (here), that’s OK.’”

The preschool welcomes all children, including those from LGBTQ families, she said. But hiring decisions are not as simple.

“We have the Christian values and morals and beliefs,” Weber said. “That hire may not be a good fit for our center, because we will be teaching these values, and if you don’t believe in these values, that’s really hard to be hired.”

Bible lessons shape storytime at Landmark Preschool

Inside Haynes’ preschool classroom, it was time for a Bible story on obedience — specifically obedience to God. Between pauses to settle antsy children, Haynes told about a young girl who was stolen from her family and forced to work for the powerful general Naaman, who had leprosy.

“There were huge sores all over Naaman’s skin, and all these sores would keep getting worse and worse,” Haynes explained. But the girl stepped in to help, suggesting Naaman should visit a prophet.

“The little girl could have said, ‘It serves Naaman right to have leprosy. I’ve been taken away from my home and made to work as a servant,’” Haynes said.

Instead, “the girl chose to do what was right and forgive even though no one had told her to do it.”

Weber, who sat nearby observing the class, is waiting to see what new rules universal preschool leaders put in place and whether Abeka will make the approved curriculum list.

“Right now, it’s working out just fine, but in the future what does it look like?” she said. “We’re just going to take it year by year and see what we do.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado abandona el plan de prohibir la educación religiosa en preescolar financiado por el estado

2024-03-11T13:39:40+00:00

Read in English.

Los funcionarios de Colorado que lideran el nuevo programa de preescolar universal en el estado originalmente planeaban prohibir las lecciones y actividades religiosas durante el horario de clases financiado por el estado.

Pero ya no.

En la última ronda de reglas estatales propuestas que se compartieron públicamente, eliminaron una prohibición explícita de la enseñanza religiosa durante el horario de preescolar universal. Se espera que las reglas, las cuales entrarían en vigor el próximo verano, se adopten a finales de marzo.

Las nuevas reglas borrador marcan las más recientes en una serie de decisiones cambiantes que los funcionarios estatales han tomado en relación con el tema de la educación religiosa en su nuevo programa de preescolar valuado en $322 millones. El método cambiante del estado se debe en parte a la implementación apresurada del programa, y en parte también a un nuevo entorno legal influido por recientes decisiones de la Corte Suprema de EE. UU. las cuales permiten el uso de fondos públicos para la educación religiosa.

Solicitud para el preescolar gratis de Colorado en 2024: lo que los padres necesitan saber

Prácticamente hablando, la decisión del estado de eliminar la prohibición de la enseñanza religiosa quizás atraiga a más centros preescolares religiosos al programa de preescolar universal, el cual está proporcionando clases sin cobrar colegiatura a más del 60 por ciento de los niños de cuatro años de edad en el estado este año. Actualmente, hay 40 preescolares religiosos entre los más de 1,900 preescolares que participan en el programa. Debido a mensajes confusos sobre si la enseñanza religiosa se permitía o no, algunos preescolares religiosos quizás decidieron no participar este año.

Un vocero con el Departamento de Colorado de la Primera Infancia dijo que la prohibición de la enseñanza religiosa se eliminó de las reglas propuestas porque no disminuyó las inquietudes de “ciertos proveedores de que sus derechos legales estarían protegidos, ni reflejaba el entorno legal cambiante relacionado con estos temas”.

El estado está esperando una decisión de la Corte Suprema de Colorado en una demanda presentada por dos preescolares católicos. El resultado de esa demanda no afectaría las reglas sobre lo que se puede enseñar en los preescolares financiados por el estado, pero abordaría las reglas antidiscriminación que afectan a las familias LGBTQ.

Colorado siempre tuvo planes de ofrecer clases de preescolar universal en una variedad de entornos, incluidos salones de escuelas públicas, centros de atención infantil privados y preescolares religiosos. Nunca planeó dejar que los preescolares religiosos enseñaran religión durante las clases financiadas por el estado.

Pero los funcionarios estatales en el departamento de la primera infancia no tuvieron suficiente tiempo para establecer reglas sobre el tema antes de lanzar el programa en agosto. Eso permitió que este año los preescolares religiosos que participan en el programa incorporaran historias, canciones y oraciones religiosas como quisieran.

El programa de preescolar universal de Colorado podría prohibir la enseñanza religiosa el próximo año

En octubre, el estado propuso reglas que harían lo que los funcionarios tenían planeado hacer desde el principio: prohibir la enseñanza religiosa en el programa de preescolar universal. Pero en Diciembre, el grupo conservador Advance Colorado amenazó con demandar si el estado implementaba la prohibición. Con las reglas borrador más recientes, parece ser que el estado ha decidido abandonar su plan por ahora.

Los preescolares religiosos que están participando en el programa universal varían mucho con respecto a cuánta religión incorporan a sus clases de preescolar.

Líderes en el programa de Landmark Preschool en Grand Junction, el cual funciona adentro de una iglesia bautista, dicen que la religión se incorpora a todo lo que hacen, incluyendo las matemáticas y la lectura. Una mañana el otoño pasado, los estudiantes de 4 años de edad en salón de preescolar recitaron versos bíblicos con su maestra.

“Muy bien, aquí vamos”, dijo la maestra Corrie Haynes a los 13 niños sentados frente a ella sobre una alfombra verde. “Filipenses 4:19. Mi Dios proveerá de todas tus necesidades”, dijeron juntos. A continuación, cantaron canciones sobre Dios y hablaron sobre el pecado y el perdón.

En el Centro Rey Bautista de Desarrollo Infantil y Preescolar en Denver, las clases de preescolar son muy diferentes. La escuela, propiedad de la iglesia adyacente, usa un plan de estudios laico y no incorpora contenido religioso durante el día escolar.

Telaya Purchase, subdirectora del centro, dijo durante una entrevista con Chalkbeat a principios de este año escolar que los niños pueden participar en lo que se llama un oficio breve (devotional, en inglés) antes que empiece el día escolar a las 9 de la mañana. Ese oficio incluye el juramento a la patria, el padrenuestro y la canción “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”. También dijo que los niños bendicen la mesa durante las comidas, pero pueden no hacerlo si eso eligen.

Ann Schimke es reportera senior de Chalkbeat y cubre temas relacionados con la educación en la niñez temprana y la alfabetización temprana. Para comunicarte con Ann, envíale un email a aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Traducido por Alejandra X. Castañeda

Here are the education bills approved by the 2024 Indiana legislature

2024-03-09T03:00:58+00:00

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Stricter rules on school attendance, reading proficiency, and cellphone use in the classroom will affect Indiana students and schools beginning next year under legislation passed in the General Assembly’s 2024 session.

Lawmakers wrapped the session late Friday, nearly a week earlier than their deadline, after spending hours negotiating bills in bipartisan, bicameral conference committees charged with hashing out versions of bills agreeable to both chambers.

Lawmakers hinted that a dramatic overhaul of school voucher funding may be coming next year, when they take up budget proposals. They took a step in that direction this year by expanding access to Education Savings Accounts — a type of voucher funding for students with disabilities — to the siblings of students who have the accounts.

And while some lawmakers hoped for a session free of controversial social issues, the legislature passed a bill aimed at universities’ diversity practices that sparked anger among students and faculty.

Gov. Eric Holcomb has seven days to sign legislation once it lands on his desk. If he does not sign a bill, it still passes into law. If he vetoes a piece of legislation, the legislature can override the veto with a majority vote in both houses.

Here are the bills that passed the statehouse this year and now await action by the governor:

Bills address reading, cellphone bans, and college tenure

Senate Bill 1 tightens the state’s policy for holding back and remediating young children who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency by third grade, unless they meet one of a few exceptions. Amendments to the bill created a policy for parents to appeal a remediation recommendation.

Addressing students’ declining reading skills was the top priority of the GOP supermajority. While proponents of the bill hope that few students are held back, schools are bracing for more students in third grade classrooms. Advocates for English learners warn that the state could run afoul of federal law by retaining students only for a lack of English proficiency.

Meanwhile, Senate Bill 6, a companion bill, would require the Indiana Department of Education to identify older students who don’t read proficiently.

Senate Bill 185 requires school districts to adopt policies banning communication devices like cellphones from the classroom. The policies must include exceptions for emergencies, health needs, and cellphone use at the direction of a teacher or under an individualized education program.

Senate Bill 202, the most controversial bill of the 2024 session, makes many changes to colleges’ tenure, promotion, and diversity policies.

It would prohibit colleges from offering tenure to or promoting faculty who have failed to expose students to a variety of political or ideological frameworks, and create complaint procedures aimed at professors who have shared political opinions unrelated to their academic discipline. It would also compel colleges to consider “intellectual diversity” in policies alongside cultural diversity. An amendment removed part of the bill that changed the makeup of university boards.

The bill’s author, Sen. Spencer Deery, said it would help more conservative students feel comfortable on university campuses, pointing to Indiana’s declining college-going rate as one measure that they currently do not.

Critics said the bill would stifle classroom discussion and force professors to teach false information in order to comply, and ultimately lead to a brain drain in the state as faculty leave Indiana or refuse to teach here.

Education-related bills significantly changed during session

Several education-related bills passed after going through multiple changes as they moved through the legislature, though some reverted to their original language after negotiations in conference committees. Among them:

House Bill 1002 codifies a definition of antisemitism and prohibits religious discrimination at the state’s schools. The bill passed the House with a definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which the Senate removed. In a compromise, the conference committee kept the definition but left out the contemporary examples of antisemitism that the alliance includes.

House Bill 1137 requires principals to allow a student to leave for off-campus religious instruction. The bill saw many changes throughout session, including a House amendment that would have recognized Indiana students and schools for civic excellence. The Senate removed that amendment and instead added language allowing chaplains to work in public schools. A conference committee removed the chaplains provision, returning the bill to its original form.

Senate Bill 211 establishes an excellence in civics education designation for students and schools. A conference committee removed several House amendments that would have subjected charter schools to open-records law, established an internet safety curriculum, and allowed school employees to remove disruptive students from the classroom.

House Bill 1001 allows siblings of students who have Education Scholarship Accounts — a type of school choice program for students with disabilities — to qualify for their own ESA. The bill, originally intended to modify last year’s law on Career Scholarship Accounts, also allows students to use Career Scholarship Accounts to obtain their driver’s licenses.

Senate Bill 282 establishes truancy prevention policies requiring schools to meet with parents of chronically absent students in kindergarten through sixth grade, and establish plans and wraparound services to improve attendance. The bill also requires school officials to report truant students to the prosecutor’s office, and requires prosecutors to take legal action against parents of students who are habitually truant.

House lawmakers removed a provision to study chronic absenteeism among older students in a summer committee.

They also amended the bill to include a provision that truant students couldn’t participate in extracurricular activities, and one allowing schools to bar parents from campuses for making multiple unsubstantiated claims against teachers. But those changes were removed by a conference committee.

Bills that make smaller changes to education with big impacts

House Bill 1104 lays out requirements for schools’ armed intruder drills, including that students can’t be subject to drills that include sensory components, like simulations of gunfire.

House Bill 1243 enacts numerous education policy changes, including:

Requiring the State Board of Education to establish a new standard Indiana diploma to replace the existing ones by October 2028.
Establishing curriculum requirements for computer science and compelling the Department of Education to approve curriculum for internet safety.
Extending the personal finance curriculum to 8th graders.
Requiring school districts to adopt a policy on habitually truant students participating in extracurricular activities, though the bill doesn’t specify what those policies should be.
Specifying that literacy achievement grants are not subject to collective bargaining.
Creating professional development and curricular resources for mathematics.

House Bill 1380 also includes a number of policy changes:

Prohibiting schools from charging a fee for out-of-district transfer students.
Expanding the Indiana Learns program that gives students up to $1,000 for tutoring beyond 2026.
Requiring that Innovation Network schools receive 100% of their state tuition support dollars, and prohibiting school districts from charging them above a certain amount for goods and services.
Directing the Department of Education to establish pilot programs on student transportation and school facilities.
Requiring universities to publicize information about hazing incidents.
Requiring the Commission on Seclusion and Restraint to meet twice a year and adopt a policy requiring schools to minimize or eliminate the use of time-outs.

Senate Bill 270 would clarify that school districts must close underutilized buildings and make them available to charter schools for $1.

Senate Bill 48 originally would have required colleges to compile information about jobs and pay related to the degrees they offer. But when colleges reported that they already have much of this information, lawmakers amended the bill to require schools to prominently post links to it instead.

Senate Bill 8 would require all high schools to offer the College Core, a certificate earned by completing a set of coursework that’s recognized by all Indiana public colleges. It would also require colleges and universities to explore the possibilities of conferring associate degrees and offering three-year degree programs.

School-related bills that didn’t pass

Several bills passed one chamber of the legislature but didn’t make it through the other.

Senate Bill 128 would’ve required schools to seek school board approval for their sex education curriculum, and publicize the materials, plus information about who teaches the courses and when.

Senate Bill 287 would’ve required schools to teach cursive writing.

Senate Bill 50 would’ve permitted chaplains to serve in public schools as counselors.

Senate Bill 214 would’ve required schools to post links to mental health resources for students, and Senate Bill 141 would’ve required counselors to spend a certain amount of time providing services to students.

House Bill 1073 would’ve required schools to install video cameras in special education classrooms, and allowed parents to review recordings in certain situations. Some provisions of this bill regarding seclusion and restraint were added to House Bill 1380.

House Bill 1304 would’ve created a mastery-based education program, along with a number of other policy changes that were inserted into House Bill 1243.

House Bill 1376 would’ve restricted school referendums to general elections or municipal elections only.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Los Angeles students get free instruments. An Oscar-winning film shows who keeps them working.

2024-03-11T13:26:56+00:00

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In the opening scene of “The Last Repair Shop,” a young girl with beads in her braids smiles at the camera. “I love the violin. … If I didn’t have my violin from school, I would probably, I don’t know what I’d do. Don’t even jinx me with that.”

The next scene takes us inside a violin, as a tool carefully moves along the wooden curves and an eye peers inside.

The Oscar-winning short documentary, directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, tells the story of the technicians who clean and repair more than 100,000 instruments for the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school district serving more than 400,000 students aims to have a music teacher in every elementary school, provides free instruments to all students enrolled in music programs, and operates its own repair shop. It’s one of the last operations of its kind in the country.

Bowers is a composer who has scored films such as “The Green Book” and “King Richard.” He’s also a graduate of LAUSD. He was exposed to music early and started playing the keyboard before he even entered elementary school. But the piano in the school auditorium was still important.

“I just remember during recess or lunch, if there was a moment that I had free, more often than not, I would find that piano and try out new ideas or things that I was learning,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about who fixed those instruments when I was a kid. I just showed up and the piano was in tune.”

The 40-minute documentary features interviews with young musicians talking about their instruments and technicians from each of the four shops — brass, string, woodwind, and piano — sharing their life stories, mixed with close-up shots of the instruments and the repair work bathed in golden light.

Chalkbeat spoke to Bowers and Paty Moreno, who repairs brass instruments, about the work, the instruments, the music, the students who make it, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

In the film we see the stories of the people who work in the repair shop interspersed with kids talking about what their instruments mean to them. We don’t get a lot of exposition about the program, how it works, how it might be unique. What was driving that choice to present the story that way?

Bowers: Starting with the people first and foremost and having that be the core of the story was a big North Star for us. As soon as we have these individuals being open and vulnerable enough with us to share their lives and share their stories, that’s going to be the thing that draws people in.

This job is about catalyzing the conversation, right? Our hope is that this film touches people on such a deep emotional level, that they’re then driven to walk away from the film and say, “How does that work? Where is this? Does my city have this? What happened?”

I think that putting too much of the explanatory context of how this system works would take away from the immediacy of the emotional connection we have with these people.

What were you trying to evoke with the title, The Last Repair Shop?

Bowers: All of these major cities that have billions of kids and even cities that are known for music, they don’t have a program like this. It felt like not only something to be really proud of, but also at the same time a call to action that this can’t be the last one. There’s a feeling of concern for the scarcity of this type of program.

Paty, one thing that’s really delightful in the movie is your treasure jar. Tell us a little more about the types of things that you find inside instruments and why you decided to keep them.

Moreno: I was working in the private sector in a music store for seven years, and it never occurred to me that the kids can put objects inside the instruments. And when I started working for LAUSD, I noticed that the instruments were coming in, and they were saying, “It doesn’t make any sound.” And then when I would start checking the instrument, they were having different objects inside, even pencils in the leadpipes or erasers, toys, batteries. I found a little rock inside a piston.

For me it was like, “OK, you send me an instrument like that as a challenge. I will try to fix it.”

I just started with a very small jar. And I started putting whatever I was finding in it. And it got to be more and more because I’ve worked downtown 19, 20 years. When I retire I’m going to keep them and I take them as my trophy, as my treasures, so that’s why I started calling them the treasure jar.

Sometimes we hear this as a reason we can’t give kids instruments for free or that we can’t let them take instruments home. When you’re working on an instrument where maybe a child was not as careful as they should have been, what are you thinking about when you’re repairing that instrument?

Moreno: It’s not for me to judge the kid. A lot of times we have these moments in our lives where we get frustrated, and we don’t know what the feeling is for a kid. I don’t know what’s going on in their lives.

So yeah, when an instrument comes to me and I can see that it has been abused, I just try to do my best to repair it and put it back together and hopefully the instrument has a little bit more care and tenderness next time.

One of the other things that you talk about in the film is how much you struggled when your kids were younger. It made me think about the role that school districts play as employers in communities. How did your life change when you came to work in the repair shop?

Moreno: I don’t live in L.A., and the school district where my kids went to school, the music program and everything [needed] to be paid for. So that’s the reason why unfortunately, when my kid asked me if he could join music, I [said], ‘No, you can’t,’ because I [didn’t have] the means to do it. When you have only one income and when you make less than minimum wage, it’s very difficult.

And when I started working for the school district, that changed, because they give me a full time [job], they give me benefits, they give me more flexibility. I was able to stay home and take care of my sick kid, which some other places where I didn’t have those benefits, I couldn’t do it.

But I want people to know that everything we do is for the love of our kids, not only my kids now, but for the love of the kids that play the instruments. We do everything based on hopefully they grew up to have a better chance than what I have.

Paty Moreno works on a tuba. Participating in the film "The Last Repair Shop" was an emotional experience, she said, knowing that instruments she worked on changed students' lives.

There’s an incredible performance at the end, where you have kids who are students currently in the program, and you have people who graduated decades ago and have made their living in the music industry. What was involved in putting that together?

Bowers: One of the things we were so struck by is this separation between these amazing craftspeople and the students that they’re impacting. We talked pretty early on about the idea of filling a room with generations of humans who have benefited from this repair shop.

Ben and I went to work on the piece of music, which was a lot of fun in our collaboration. I wrote a [first] pass of the piece of music, and then we listened to it and we visualized what we wanted the film to look and feel like. OK, the opening notes should be a little bit longer because we want a pullback shot.

The continuation of this outpouring of love was so emotional. All of these incredible musicians talking about the fact that they were going to donate their time, and making connections that this person went to the same school as this person, 10 years apart, and to have a young, middle school cellist sitting next to someone that played on half of the films that came out this year or someone that played on “Jaws” ... it was just an amazing day to be part of.

What was it like to see the shop and yourself and your colleagues on film and to see just a few of the kids whose lives you’ve touched?

Moreno: I always work with the instruments, I don’t have much interaction either with band directors or with the students at all. I feel very honored now that I met some of the kids. They helped me to raise a family myself.

I have seen those kids and how well they play and how professional the band directors are when they do the performances. I’m proud thinking how many kids really make it with music for their own passion, for their own life or their own living. I feel very proud to see how successful the kids are in the school district.

Editor’s note: This story and headlines have been updated to reflect that “The Last Repair Shop” won best short documentary at the Academy Awards Sunday.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Davis Aerospace school’s move back to City Airport remains in a holding pattern

2024-03-11T10:50:12+00:00

Detroit’s school district needs nearly $10 million to return the Davis Aerospace Technical High School to the grounds of the Coleman A. Young International Airport.

Detroit Public Schools Community District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told BridgeDetroit that the district is looking to privately raise $9.6 million with support from the DPSCD Foundation or to obtain a one-time earmark in this year’s state budget.

Relocating Davis Aerospace to the airport on the city’s east side will also require the district to convert one of the terminals into a school building. That would require removing escalators and luggage conveyor belts, installing a fire suppression system and alarm, adding newer mechanical equipment, and replacing the roofing system, he said.

DPSCD does not yet have any leads or funding commitments. But the project remains a priority for the district, which is aiming to have the move take place during the 2026-27 school year, Vitti said.

“The school board and I are fully committed to making the relocation happen,” Vitti said. “So if private funding or separate state funding is not provided, then we will prioritize this commitment in future district budgets.”

The continued push to relocate the aviation school comes amid forecasts that the industry faces a national shortage of pilots, maintenance technicians, and cabin crew members. Advocates say Davis Aerospace — one of few training centers for student pilots in Michigan — is a critical component of helping to fill the void.

In 2019, DPSCD decided that ninth-graders participating in the aviation program would be bused to the airport for afternoon classes. While the aviation school is still offering afternoon classes for its 100 students, the long-term goal of fully operating Davis Aerospace at the facility has stalled, with airport advocates and community members wondering what happened.

The delay was discussed at a January school board meeting by Keith Hines, a 1973 graduate and former electrical inspector for the city. He asked why the district hasn’t valued the importance of aviation education and the school, noting that Davis Aerospace has supplied numerous qualified mechanics for the aviation industry for years.

“Why can’t $50 million be set aside from the $700 million (facility master plan) for aviation education, technology skills and advancement since the demand is growing?” Hines said. “We need to see the stamped, finalized, approved plans for the Davis relocation project.”

The school was relocated from the airfield, better known as City Airport, to Golightly Career and Technical Center in 2013 while the district was under state-appointed emergency manager Roy Roberts. Without access to the airport, the school could no longer help students obtain the federal certification in aviation mechanics that would give them an inside track to steady, high-paying jobs.

“We did place $5 million in the (facility master plan) for the Davis move to the airport,” Vitti said. “However, we learned that the city could not use grant funds to support the facility work needed for the school, and costs of the facility increased due to flooding damage to the terminal. In addition, code costs were higher than expected from initial walkthroughs.”

A Tuskegee Airmen monument sits at the entrance of the Coleman A. Young International Airport. The Detroit school district is looking for philanthropic dollars to cover the nearly $10 million it will cost to make repairs needed to move Davis Aerospace Technical High School to the airport.

There are several aviation and aerospace high schools across the country, but Davis Aerospace is the only school of its kind in Detroit and one of few in Michigan. The most well-known school outside of Detroit is West Michigan Aviation Academy in Grand Rapids.

Beverly Kindle-Walker, executive director of Friends of Detroit City Airport, doesn’t understand why DPSCD needs $9.6 million to relocate and rehab Davis Aerospace. The nonprofit was founded in 1990 to expose young people to the fields of aerospace, aviation, and STEM.

“Just to inhabit it as a classroom structure, there’s no way it’s going to cost that much money, so we’re wondering where they’re basing it from,” Kindle-Walker said. “If they’re going to go into the private sector to raise money, I don’t know why they’re not making an effort to work on that. There are many people in the aviation field who are looking for pilots and mechanics, avionics, and all sorts of people who will be willing to partner with the public school system to help train their workforce.”

School fills ‘a critical need’ in developing aviation talent

Keith Newell, a former member of the Coleman A. Young International Airport Education Association, said that Davis Aerospace provides Detroit kids with career exploration and preparation for the aviation industry. And the need for new talent is critical, he said, especially with the aviation industry experiencing a shortage of pilots and mechanics.

In Boeing’s 2023 Pilot and Technician Outlook, the company projects that commercial carriers will need significant personnel through 2042 to support the global commercial fleet, including 649,000 pilots, 690,000 maintenance technicians, and 938,000 cabin crew members. This comes as domestic air travel has fully recovered from the pandemic, and international traffic is near pre-pandemic levels, the aircraft maker said.

In addition, pilots and mechanics are aging out of the industry, said Newell, who is now the manager at Wexford County Airport in Cadillac. Commercial airline pilots are required to retire at age 65, and air traffic controllers at 56 years old.

“Davis Aerospace fills a critical need in pipeline management,” he said. “They’re training kids on the skills that they’re going to need in those careers and then, depending if they become pilots or mechanics, some might require some college, some might not. But there are definitely paths to continue going to get into those careers.”

Detroiter Bin Userkaf graduated from Davis Aerospace in 2020 and had a positive experience at the school. While he mostly studied graphics and printing technology at Golightly, he still participated in aviation classes.

“After middle school, I realized I was not going to high school to make friends,” said Userkaf, now 21. “I really wanted to feel like I was ready to take on the world and a career in the field that I wanted to go into, and Davis had that. They just had great programs for people who actually wanted to do professional work.”

However, he remembered visiting an airport only once, and that was Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus. During his sophomore year, Userkaf said, there was an aviation class he took where students worked on the frames of cars. He said it would’ve been more fun if they had the opportunity to work on planes.

“I feel like it’s a disadvantage, because it’s a school that’s called Davis Aerospace and it’s down the street from City Airport,” Userkaf said. “By not having that as an avenue, it’s cutting off an entire part of what could be a really cool curriculum, even for people who might not be into aviation. It can just be a cool thing to learn, because you never know, it could ignite someone who was not initially interested into feeling like, ‘Wow, I feel like I want to pursue aviation.’

“People who find the school should be given a full experience of what Davis specifically has to offer instead of a generalized experience of flight,” he added.

Brian Smith, president of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum, also wants to see Davis Aerospace back at the airport. His organization, which hosts various programs and classes for children, teens, and young adults, is helping to fill a void for areas the school doesn’t have the capacity to teach, such as a flight academy and a full maintenance program, he said.

Roy Roberts “just took the teeth right out of what Davis was offering, which was a pathway to the middle class without college for our inner-city kids, the ones under-represented,” Smith said.

Sometimes, Smith gets asked whether he will open an aviation school. But his response is no, saying Davis Aerospace is still the best option for teens who want to pursue a career in the aviation industry.

“I want the school to be at the airport. I want it to succeed,” Smith said. “And I’ll go back to the role I had before the school at the airport was shut down, which was to take those students who could not attend Davis and give them the opportunity for flight.”

Leonard Shirley is one of the students enrolled in the Tuskegee Airmen’s flight academy. The 16-year-old is a 10th grader at Davis Aerospace and wants to become an airplane pilot. Shirley said he joined the Tuskegee Airmen program a few weeks ago to receive additional aviation instruction after school.

He said his class doesn’t come to City Airport often, and he believes he would have a better experience at school if Davis Aerospace was on site full-time.

“If someone is into being a pilot, they can actually take a test flight with an instructor,” Shirley said. “They’ve also got good mechanics and drone pilots, and we will actually be able to see the planes in front of us.”

Airport remains active, even after loss of a runway

David Tarrant has also advocated for the airport and aviation school.

Tarrant is the former executive director of the Coleman A. Young International Airport Education Association, a nonprofit made up of community advocates formed in 2017 when the airport was at risk of being shut down. But after the city announced its layout plan for City Airport in 2022, Tarrant stepped down as director, and the association has since become more of an informal organization, he said.

Coleman A. Young International Airport, as seen from French Street in Detroit in August 2023. The airport could soon house Davis Aerospace Technical High School, which was moved out of the facility in 2013.

One of the issues the association was fighting for was to keep the use of a smaller, crosswind runway used during windy conditions and for inexperienced pilots. However, the Federal Aviation Administration approved the decommissioning of the runway in 2022, freeing up 80 acres of land for new development.

Tarrant said the crosswinds runway was important for training pilots, such as the students at Davis Aerospace.

“Student pilots have a lot of wind restrictions … and if you take the other runway away, it limits training,” he said. We won the strategic battle; we kept the airport, but we lost the tactical battle, which was to keep that runway.”

Today, the airport is used by private fliers, with hangar space leased to private and corporate planes. Kindle-Walker said even though commercial services ended more than 20 years ago, City Airport is still active with general aviation and medical transit.

The next generation of pilots and mechanics can help the airport overall and bring in revenue to the city, Tarrant said.

“There are so many bright, young minds that are being wasted if you don’t have a way to take the next steps,” he said. “There’s a crying need to give young people inside Detroit a way to give back.”

Kindle-Walker said Davis Aerospace students deserve to be in the atmosphere of an airport and receive hands-on training. It’s part of the school’s history since its inception in 1943.

“People don’t recognize the benefit of that school in the Detroit area,” she said. “We have people from all over: alumni who have gone into the military or the private sector who have an education that’s untouched coming from Detroit Public Schools. We want to get back to that but sometimes, they (the school board) seem to be reluctant to do just that.”

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Child care aid: Colorado lawmakers want more parents to get it — and more providers to accept it

2024-03-08T22:19:00+00:00

Colorado helps about 17,000 lower-income families pay for child care each year through its child care subsidy program. That’s only a fraction of the families eligible for assistance, and yet there are millions of dollars left on the table every year.

Theresa Ramirez, a single mother in Fort Collins, can attest to one reason why. Although she submitted her annual renewal paperwork early, a lag in getting it processed forced her to quit working for weeks after her baby’s subsidy was canceled.

Now, lawmakers are considering a bill that would overhaul the program, making it easier for families to access, boosting aid for some families, and making it more attractive for providers who accept subsidies. The bill would also cover full tuition for child care employees with kids in child care regardless of family income — a major benefit given the industry’s chronically low wages.

House Bill 24-1223, sponsored by three Denver area Democrats, will be heard in the House Health and Human Services Committee on March 12.

The proposed improvements to Colorado’s subsidy program — officially called the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program or CCCAP — come at a time when many families are struggling with the cost of living and some child care providers are raising tuition to cover their expanding costs. While lawmakers and advocates say it’s high time for fixes that allow more families to get subsidies and entice more child care providers to accept them, one of the bill’s co-sponsors said the price tag could be large. State legislative staff have not yet released the bill’s fiscal note, a detailed analysis of how much it will cost.

Kyle Piccola, vice president of communications and advocacy at Healthier Colorado, said he’s pleased the state is taking a “big holistic approach” to the child care subsidy bill.

“It’s a program that definitely needs improvement,” he said.

Rep. Lorena Garcia, a co-sponsor of the bill, said she’s encountered no opposition to the spirit of the bill, but acknowledged the cost could be a stumbling block for some lawmakers.

“I’m confident we’ll get it to a place where we’ll get it done,” she said.

Colorado’s $156 million child care subsidy program is funded by the federal government, the state, and counties. It’s available to homeless families as well as lower-income families in which parents are working, looking for work, or going to school. Most families who qualify for subsidies still pay a portion of child care costs in the form of a co-pay.

Several advocates and providers interviewed said the subsidy application, which is different in every county, can be invasive and intimidating. That can lead parents to skip it even if they need the help.

Nearly two-thirds of the state’s 64 counties use less than 75% of their subsidy dollars annually and this year, the program is on track to have up to $7 million in leftover funding, according to the Colorado Department of Early Childhood.

“It’s underutilized,” Garcia said.

More aid for families and incentives for child care providers

The bill would make a number of changes required by newly released federal rules aimed at reducing the cost of child care and some changes that are Colorado specific. Key provisions of the bill include:

Limiting parent co-pays to no more than 7% of family income, down from the current cap of 14%.
Creating a uniform statewide application that doesn’t ask for extraneous information, such as custody agreements or child immunization records.
Allowing families to get or continue receiving child care aid for 90 days while their application or renewal paperwork is being reviewed, a provision that will help parents start working immediately and keep children in care.
Paying child care providers who accept subsidies based on the number of subsidized children enrolled, not on the number of days those children attend. Currently, providers can lose money for days the child is absent above the number allowed by their county.
Making child care employees eligible for full subsidies regardless of their family income.

Overall, the bill aims to better serve families that currently receive subsidies, attract new ones, and incentivize more child care providers to accept subsidies.

This year, nearly 26,000 Colorado children get subsidized care through the program, only about 11% of eligible children, according to estimates from Healthier Colorado. Just over 2,000 child care providers accept state subsidies, fewer than half of the state’s providers.

What parents and providers are saying

Ramirez, who lives with her four children in Fort Collins, described CCCAP subsidies as a lifeline that allowed her to work starting when her youngest child, 13-month-old Sarai, was six weeks old.

Ramirez brings home about $1,300 a month from her work cleaning houses. Her co-pay is $4 a month at The Family Center/La Familia, a family resource center that runs a highly rated child care program in the northern Colorado city. Her daughter loves it there, she said.

But when Ramirez lost her subsidy for a few weeks after her renewal application stalled, she had no choice but to bring Sarai home and decline all cleaning jobs. It’s the kind of wrinkle the subsidy bill could help fix.

Under the bill, such cancellations would be averted by giving families what’s called “presumptive eligibility,” essentially a 90-day grace period in which subsidies would start or continue while officials review applications or renewals.

Ramirez said anything in the bill that streamlines and strengthens the application and renewal process will make a difference for families like hers.

Corinne Bernhardt, executive director of Young Peoples Learning Center in Fort Collins, said the plan to give full subsidies to employees will help about a quarter of her 25 staff members. It will also make it easier to hire new employees amid industry-wide labor shortages.

The center’s current staff discount for child care isn’t always enough to get qualified candidates with young children in the door, she said.

“To have to say, ‘Well, we can give you a 50%-off discount, but it’s still going to cost you $1,500 a month to bring your kid here, but we’re only going to pay you $17 an hour,’ a lot of people are like, ‘OK, I guess I’m just going to stay home,’” she said.

Bernhardt said she also likes the provision requiring that providers be reimbursed based on enrollment instead of attendance because it will reduce administrative hassles for her staff.

Overall, she believes by making much needed improvements to the state’s subsidy program, the bill will help Colorado’s economy.

“Parents can’t go into the workforce, if they can’t find child care,” she said.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Match day: High school offers bring excitement and anxiety to NYC’s eighth graders

2024-03-07T23:57:34+00:00

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For years, Anthony Block De Jesus, an eighth grader at the School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Brooklyn, has been dreaming of a career on Broadway.

He’s hopeful that he’s on his way: He learned on Thursday he’d been admitted to the vocal performance program at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, as well as the theater program at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn — two of his top ranked choices in the application process.

“The two choices are so strong, and so good, and have so much promise for a kid that wants to do Broadway, so he cannot go wrong,” said Monica De Jesus, his mother. “It’s a real blessing to us.”

Anthony was one of the thousands of eighth grade students across the five boroughs anxiously awaiting their high school placement on Thursday — one of the final steps in the city’s notoriously complex admissions process.

High school matches came months after eighth graders had narrowed down the city’s more than 400 high schools with 700 programs to roughly a dozen top choices. Some schools have extra hurdles for admissions such as essays or portfolios. And then there are the eight specialized high schools where a test is the sole basis for admissions, and LaGuardia, the famed performing arts school whose audition and application process is separate from other arts schools.

Families often describe the admissions process as stressful and confusing to navigate. It can also feel inequitable, as those with more resources can afford to hire consultants and tutors, while devoting more time to touring and evaluating the many options.

Still, the results can be exciting as students look ahead to their time in high school.

Marcia Abrams said she and her daughter Nomarra, an eighth grader at the Brooklyn Green School, were “happy and confused” after receiving their offer. They immigrated to the city about two years ago from Guyana, and it’s been difficult to make sense of the city’s many schools, Abrams said.

Nomarra, who wants to be a lawyer, said she was nervous throughout the admissions process. But she was thrilled to learn she’d been admitted to both of her top choices: Brooklyn Technical High School and Midwood High School.

“It’s hard to choose between the two,” Nomarra added.

NYC’s high school admissions process is notoriously complicated

There are a host of factors that come into play for admissions. Students receive a random number, often referred to as a lottery number, which admissions experts say is used as a sort of “tiebreaker” if there are too many eligible students vying for the same seat. For selective schools, the city also uses seventh grade GPAs to sort students into different tiers for admissions priority.

More than 40 high school programs also participate in the city’s “diversity in admissions” program, setting aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance. Students with disabilities are also admitted through a different round than general education students.

The city’s Education Department did not immediately share the percentage of students who were admitted to their top choice schools, nor did they release demographic data on students admitted to competitive screened schools or the highly selective specialized high schools.

Last year, of the roughly 73,000 high school applicants, nearly half were admitted to their top choice school, while about 75% were admitted to one of their top three picks. About 95% of applicants were admitted to one of the 12 schools they ranked in their application, according to city data.

About 26,000 of last year’s eighth graders took the exam for the city’s specialized high schools, with roughly 4,000 of them getting offers based on the test, and once again the number of Black and Latino students remained small. Just 3% of the offers last year went to Black students, and 6.7% went to Latino students despite those students making up about 65% of the city’s school system.

Mixed emotions on match day

For families across the city, Thursday’s news brought a mix of tears and excitement. Many have already turned to waitlists — which students are automatically added to for all programs they ranked higher than the one they received an offer to — as “beacons of hope,” said Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs High School 411.

But she added it’s often a “long shot” to receive an offer through the waitlist.

Some families also found a sense of relief in knowing the outcomes. In anticipation of their offer letters, some parents commiserated in social media groups the night before over the immense stress— sharing clips of songs that expressed the overwhelming trepidation, like “Tomorrow” from Annie or “One Day More” from Les Misérables.

Anthony felt increasingly nervous as Thursday approached, worrying he’d be rejected from LaGuardia, De Jesus said. She decided to pull him and his brothers out of school on match day, distracting him with board games and other activities in an attempt to deflate the tension.

“I said, ‘Listen, even if you don’t get in, everything is going to be okay, and you are going to do great things,’” De Jesus said. “We just tried to make an environment like: This is just another day. We’re gonna take it as it comes.

“But we’re very excited for him,” she added.

One Queens family, though, hardly felt the match day jitters. Dennis Kelly said his son, William, didn’t have much of a reaction to learning he’d been admitted to the University Scholars program at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows.

“We really haven’t talked about it a lot,” Kelly said. “He came home, we got the letter, and then he ran back out” for his crew team practice in Port Washington, Long Island.

William had also been accepted to Brooklyn Tech, but it wasn’t an option they were considering, Kelly said. Instead, they’ll choose between Francis Lewis and a few Catholic schools that William had been accepted to, including one on Long Island.

“We know people that are pressuring their kids like, ‘If you don’t get into Stuyvesant, your life is over,’ and we’ve never felt that,” he said. “It is what it is. He’ll be fine. He’s always done well.”

Still, Kelly was glad to be nearing the end of the admissions process.

“There’s so many options, and everybody gets so crazy,” he said. “I almost feel like there’s too many choices. How am I supposed to look at 400 high schools and decide which one my kid should go to?”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

New, returning candidates to face off in Newark’s school board race this year

2024-03-07T11:00:00+00:00

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Newark voters will see a mix of new and returning contenders in April’s school board election, where they will choose representatives for four seats on the nine-member Board of Education.

Among the 10 candidates, four are incumbents running to keep their board seats, four are returning candidates, and two are newcomers. Typically, residents also cast their vote for next school year’s budget but a new state law eliminated that requirement for the first time this year.

The candidates who win a spot in April will be tasked with deciding policies in New Jersey’s largest school system, which is home to roughly 40,000 students. The board is also tasked with holding the superintendent accountable and, last year, approved a $1.3 billion budget.

The winning candidates will have to address the public school’s most pressing issues such as academic recovery efforts, support for the city’s growing population of English language learners and students with disabilities, district expansions, and new schools, among other topics.

The board has recently faced criticism from the community over transparency in the district’s decision to remove a young adult novel about a Palestinian boy and faces demands to release a report on the cultural dynamics at a magnet high school.

Three winning candidates will serve three-year terms and one will complete an unfinished one-year term left by former board president Asia Norton.

The order of names appearing on the April ballot was chosen in a drawing on Wednesday and is subject to final approval by the Essex County Clerk’s office this week. The candidate running for the one-year term will be included on the ballot in April, said business administrator Valerie Wilson during the ballot drawing.

Co-vice presidents Dawn Haynes and Vereliz Santana are running for reelection, along with newly appointed board member Helena Vinhas, on the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” slate. When they were elected to the board in 2018 and 2021 respectively, Haynes and Santana ran on that slate. Vinhas was appointed to the board earlier this year along with Kanileah Anderson, who is running individually on the “Newark Schools Forward” platform.

Historically, the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” slate has won every election since 2016 and seven current board members formed part of that group during their elections. The slate garners support from state and local politicians, including Mayor Ras Baraka and state Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz every year.

Returning candidate Che J.T. Colter is running alongside newcomer Muta El-amin on the “It Takes a Village” slate, a duo of community advocates. Latoya Jackson, Sheila Montague, and Jimmie White are also running again. They are joined by first-time candidate Debra Salters who ran in the 2021 general election for New Jersey General Assembly District 29.

City leaders have long raised concerns about voter turnout in the annual school board election that historically has seen around 3% to 4% of registered voters participating. Newark anticipated a new wave of voters this year after the city council unanimously approved an ordinance in January to lower the voting age to 16 for school board elections. But those voters will participate in next year’s election due to state and county delays in getting voter registration machines ready by April.

Advocates say they plan to use the extra time to civically engage and educate city youth who are already interested in the election and reach those who are not yet.

Haynes, a long-time community advocate, was elected in 2018 and is one of the longest-serving board members. Vereliz, the director of lawmaker engagement at the bipartisan organization The States Project, joined the board in 2021 to replace a board member who died suddenly the prior year.

Newly appointed members Anderson, a community advocate, and Vinhas, a jewelry store owner and mother of Science Park High School students, were sworn in at a ceremony during January’s school board meeting. They filled two vacancies on the board left by former president Norton, who abruptly resigned at the beginning of the school, and former member A’Dorian Murray-Thomas, who won a seat on the Essex County Board of Commissioners in November. Their appointments came after the Board of Education refused to swear in a charter school teacher chosen to fill one of the empty seats.

Jackson, a first-time candidate last year, says she feels excited to run again now that she has a better understanding of the election process. She is a beauty salon owner and mother of a Newark Public School student and is focused on special education issues and empowering parents.

Colter, who ran for school board in 2018 and Essex County Commissioner in 2017 said he is running because he also wants to see more parent involvement in district decisions. Board members make financial decisions for the district, which Colter says, is important for parents to be involved in. He is joined by El-amin, a first-time school board candidate. Colter and El-amin are running against Montague, a three-time school board candidate and former mayoral candidate, on the “Open the Door” platform.

White, a two-time school board candidate, says he wants to reach more people in the community. Salters, a community advocate, will also appear on the April ballot under the “Saving Our Children” platform.

Newark and Irvington are the only districts in Essex County participating in the April school board election. Earlier this year, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill that removed the vote for school budgets for districts participating in the April election. The district could call for a special election if it proposes more than a 2% change in the city’s tax levy.

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Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of Philadelphia students are owed special education services from the pandemic

2024-03-07T23:26:49+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district has fallen way behind schedule in providing thousands of students in special education with extra services they did not receive during the pandemic, according to state officials.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education first directed the district to provide compensatory services to students in June after receiving a complaint from the Education Law Center on behalf of families.

According to the complaint, some parents and guardians were still unaware their children were entitled to extra help more than a year after students returned to in-person instruction. Families and advocates fear that many of these students may have suffered lasting damage.

“These are students who were most harmed by 15 to 18 months out of school,” said Margie Wakelin, senior attorney at the law center.

Wakelin said students didn’t receive the math tutoring, speech therapy, intensive phonics instruction, emotional support services, or other interventions that their education plans require.

In a review dated February 23 responding to the complaint, state officials found that the district has for the most part identified the students who need to be evaluated for compensatory services, but likely made decisions about what they were entitled to without properly consulting parents as required.

After analyzing 50 randomly chosen cases from four elementary schools in one of the district’s 16 learning networks, the state found only four in which the required meetings with families had occurred – yet the district made eligibility determinations in 44 of the cases.

“Not everybody is necessarily eligible, but meetings are supposed to happen to determine whether they are entitled to services,” Wakelin said.

The state ordered the district to submit evidence by April 5 that they have followed all the requirements for determining need and are providing appropriate services.

District says they face shortage of special education teachers

The closure of in-person school between March 2020 and September 2021 most severely affected students with disabilities who have either individualized education plans or 504 plans, according to the law center’s complaint. Individualized education plans, which are created by a team of school officials and parents, spell out services to which students are entitled, while 504 plans guarantee accommodations for students with conditions that could interfere with their learning.

The complaint relied on guidance from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on what districts must do to ensure that all children, regardless of disability, receive a “free and appropriate public education.”

The district received about $528 million in federal COVID relief funding, which was meant to help address learning loss, but budget materials for this fiscal year don’t mention compensatory services as a priority. District officials did estimate in one undated request for proposal that they would need to provide services to as many as 40% of the roughly 22,000 students with disabilities who were eligible. They expected to provide the services between January 2022 and June 2024.

In a statement issued Wednesday, district officials said that they are “working to remediate educational learning loss” from the pandemic, despite a “national shortage of qualified special education teachers and related service providers.” The district opened the school year with 200 teacher vacancies.

The statement also noted that Nathalie Nérée, who has experience in several other large districts including Chicago and Broward County, Florida, became chief of special education and diverse learners at the beginning of this school year.

Under her leadership, the district “is looking forward to building transparent, collaborative and positive relationships with our families, community partners and advocacy groups as we reimagine special education for students in Philadelphia.”

Families have found it difficult to get services

Many families in the school district have found the process to get compensatory services frustrating and have sought help from the Education Law Center.

Yolanda Workman said she and her daughter met with school officials in January on Zoom to discuss services for her grandson, a fifth grader at Emlen Elementary School in Mount Airy who has been diagnosed with a learning disability. The school’s special education liaison didn’t give them much of a chance to speak, she said, and then told them that the child was not entitled to extra services. The liaison also urged them to sign a legal document confirming that.

Workman said they refused to sign and told the liaison they planned to contact an attorney. A few weeks later, they received notice that her grandson was entitled to 75 hours of compensatory services.

But neither Workman nor her daughter could say whether he was receiving the services, or what form they were taking.

Colleen Gibbons-Brown, a special education teacher for ninth and 10th graders at Strawberry Mansion High School, said that she has not seen much evidence that students are getting extra services, or that parents and caregivers have been consulted about what students need and how best to provide it.

“From what I have seen, decisions are not made as a team, but by network case managers and some administrators,” she said. “They are making a call, then informing the parents, [thus] removing parents, teachers and even students from that decision.”

At her school, she said the process for deciding whether a student qualified for extra services was hasty and flawed. For instance, invitation letters for parents to meetings about their child were generated the same day that some of the meetings were scheduled. “I’m listed as being part of the team, and I know I wasn’t attending the meetings,” she said.

One of Gibbons-Brown’s colleagues, who is also the mother of a student with disabilities, said she had no idea that compensatory services were available, even though she works in the district. The child, now 10, had not learned to read and exhibited serious behavioral issues that were exacerbated during the pandemic.

“I never heard about compensatory services,” said the teacher, who asked not to be identified to protect her child’s privacy.

She contacted a lawyer, who helped her enroll her child in an approved private school, a common alternative for students whose education plans cannot be fulfilled within the district.

Wakelin said that the law center’s goal is to compel district officials to focus on alternatives to private services, which are expensive and tend to favor parents who are savvy in navigating the system.

Meeting this mandate also falls disproportionately on some public schools. For instance, at Strawberry Mansion, a neighborhood school in impoverished North Philadelphia, 43% of its 250 students are classified as needing special education. The citywide figure is 19%.

Determining services for students is complex

Calculating what is owed to each student and then providing services is a daunting task, Gibbons-Brown said. Still, she said her school’s process didn’t consider what progress students might have made if not for the pandemic’s disruption.

If a student had not regressed beyond what they had scored pre-COVID, it was decided they didn’t need services, she said. But that doesn’t take into account any progress they should have made since.

“Analyzing the impact of COVID is more nuanced than that quick comparison,” she said. “I have students, based on one data point now and for 2019, that may look like there is no regression. Maybe not, but their progress has stalled.”

Wakelin said the process is “now in the do-over period and we’re trying to get the word out to families so they know that their children have this right.”

As complex as the task is, “it’s not like there aren’t other large urban districts that have grappled with this and come up with solutions compliant with the law,” she said.

Wakelin said the district still has not taken basic steps to reach families, saying “there’s nothing on the website, no fact sheets for parents, and minimal information provided to teachers.

“We want kids to get services, not just a ruling that this child is eligible for 50 hours they are not able to use.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Para el 2025, las escuelas de Newark recibirían $1,250 millones en ayuda según el plan presupuestario del Gobernador Phil Murphy

2024-03-08T16:32:17+00:00

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Durante décadas, las Escuelas Públicas de Newark no han recibido la cantidad total de fondos estatales que Nueva Jersey les debe para brindar una “educación exhaustiva y eficiente” a todos los estudiantes, como lo exige la constitución estatal.

Pero eso podría cambiar en 2025, con una cifra récord de $1,250 millones en ayuda destinada al distrito escolar más grande del estado en el presupuesto propuesto por el gobernador Phil Murphy para el año fiscal que comienza el 1 de julio. La semana pasada, Murphy anunció que este plan presupuestario podría financiar completamente los distritos K-12 del estado.

La oficina del gobernador publicó el jueves 29 de febrero estimaciones de asignación de ayuda estatal para cada distrito, que mostraron que Newark obtendría un aumento del 8.8% en la ayuda durante el año en curso.

La semana pasada, Murphy destacó una inversión de $11.6 mil millones para las escuelas públicas el próximo año. La ayuda estatal propuesta, un aumento de $908 millones con respecto a este año, sería el pago final de Murphy al plan de siete años estipulado en la legislación promulgada en 2018 que tenía como objetivo corregir las desigualdades con la fórmula de financiamiento escolar del estado y redirigir el dinero a distritos con fondos insuficientes, incluido Newark.

El plan de gastos propuesto por Murphy de $55.9 mil millones pasará por negociaciones con los legisladores, en foros públicos y en privado, antes de finalizarse antes de la fecha límite del 30 de junio.

Durante una conferencia de prensa el jueves 29 de febrero en la escuela primaria Charles and Anna Booker en Plainfield para promocionar la ayuda escolar propuesta, Murphy insinuó que los fondos reservados para las escuelas podrían permanecer seguros durante los próximos meses de negociaciones.

El presupuesto propuesto se encuentra en un “muy buen punto de partida”, señaló Murphy. “Las cosas siempre cambian entre ahora y el 30 de junio, pero un par de cosas no cambiarán —puedo decir esto con confianza— la financiación total de K-12 y la expansión de pre-K están ahí y están en cemento”.

Su plan de gastos incluye $124 millones para ayuda preescolar, así como financiamiento para otras iniciativas relacionadas con la educación, como expandir el programa de comidas escolares gratuitas, asignar $2.5 millones para un programa de subvenciones para evaluación de alfabetización y proporcionar dinero adicional para estipendios de estudiantes y maestros.

Según la Ley de Reforma de Financiamiento Escolar de 2008, el estado ha utilizado una fórmula estudiantil ponderada para brindar a los distritos apoyo financiero además de los impuestos locales para abordar las desigualdades en la educación observadas en todo el estado. Ese cálculo cambia año tras año considerando los cambios de inscripción y otros factores. En los 15 años transcurridos desde que se estableció la fórmula de financiación escolar, el estado no ha proporcionado el monto total adeudado a los distritos con fondos insuficientes.

En los últimos años, la administración Murphy ha aumentado gradualmente la ayuda estatal de Newark, siendo esta financiación propuesta la más alta. Este año, el distrito recibió $1.15 mil millones en ayuda estatal, en comparación con 2023, cuando el distrito recibió $1,000 millones, y el año anterior, cuando el distrito recibió $915 millones.

El presidente del Sindicato de Maestros de Newark, John Abeigon, manifestó en un comunicado el jueves por la noche que espera que el aumento propuesto en la ayuda estatal para el distrito contribuya “en gran medida a ayudar al distrito a responder de manera significativa” a la contratación y retención de maestros. El sindicato de docentes y el distrito han estado negociando un nuevo contrato ya que el actual expira en junio.

La ayuda estatal para el próximo año incluiría $8.5 millones reservados para transporte y $66 millones reservados para educación especial. Valerie Wilson, administradora de negocios escolares del distrito, señaló en marzo pasado que el aumento en la ayuda estatal para 2024 todavía estaba $27.7 millones por debajo de la cantidad que se le debía al distrito según la fórmula de financiamiento escolar. Aproximadamente el 86% del presupuesto del distrito para el año escolar 2023-24 provino de ayuda estatal.

Está previsto que el distrito presente su propio presupuesto a la comunidad el 27 de marzo. La ayuda estatal propuesta, un nivel históricamente alto, se produciría cuando el distrito enfrenta el fin de su ayuda federal de ayuda por COVID y enfrenta demandas costosas en 2025, como un nuevo contrato para el sindicato de maestros e infraestructura obsoleta.

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por El Latino Newspaper, en asociación con el Centro de Medios Cooperativos de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair, y cuenta con el apoyo financiero del Consorcio de Información Cívica de NJ. La historia fue escrita originalmente en inglés por Chalkbeat Newark y se vuelve a publicar en virtud de un acuerdo especial para compartir contenido a través del Servicio de noticias de traducción al español de NJ News Commons.

This translation was provided by El Latino Newspaper, in association with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and is financially supported by the NJ Civic Information Consortium. The story was originally written in English by Chalkbeat Newark and is republished under a special content sharing agreement through the NJ News Commons Spanish Translation News Service.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Reach Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools plans new approach to teaching English learners

2024-03-08T12:00:00+00:00

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At Lew Wallace School 107, principal Arthur Hinton sees students come from all over the world.

The sounds of Spanish, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and Arabic can fill the halls of the K-6 school on the west side of Indianapolis, near the “international marketplace” neighborhood. In recent years, the school has attracted more students whose families hail from Haiti, speaking French or Creole.

Roughly 70% of the 509 students are classified as English language learners, a population that has only increased since Hinton arrived in 2020.

“Don’t blink again,” he joked. It might grow even more.

Lew Wallace is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse schools in the district. But its growing share of English language learners is emblematic of a trend that’s appearing across Indianapolis Public Schools.

More than a quarter of the district’s students are now classified as English language learners — over 6,700 as of late February, an increase of over 2,000 students since 2017-18. As in many other districts, staffing up for those levels has been a challenge. At the end of February, the district had eight vacancies for English as a New Language teachers, out of 110 positions total. Bilingual assistants can be even harder to come by: The district had 24 vacancies as of that date for its 76 positions.

Amid a larger push for equity in its Rebuilding Stronger reorganization, the district now plans to reimagine how it serves English language learners. Officials say instruction for these students should be more consistent across school buildings, and allow students to learn alongside their native English-speaking peers. Students learning English, they say, should not be restricted from classes such as music or art because they are pulled away for separate English language learner instruction.

The plan includes assigning each school at least one leading English as a New Language “teacher of record,” responsible for overseeing the school’s English language learner program. It also involves more incentives for staff — including a $2,000 stipend for lead teachers and reimbursement for some English as a New Language teachers who also train to become certified to teach English language arts.

The plan is one of the district’s budget priorities for the 2024-25 school year.

“It’s going to be hard, without a doubt,” said Arturo Rodriguez, the district’s director for English as a New Language. “We’re up to the challenge.”

IPS plan encourages more co-teaching, less separation

In a sixth grade classroom at Lew Wallace, Ana Gonzalez sits with a small group of six students, alternating between Spanish and English as she teaches the concept of claims, evidence, and reasoning in language arts.

Just a few feet away, the main classroom teacher is reviewing the same topics with the other students. At Gonzalez’s table, though, the focus is on the English learners.

“You guys in class have been working on claims — finding a claim and finding evidence,” Gonzalez tells her students. “Tener, como, un reclamo y evidencia.”

The school uses a form of co-teaching, where English language learners are in the same classroom as their native-speaking peers, and learning the same things at the same time.

Ana Gonzalez, who teaches English as a new language, sits with sixth-graders in a small group to review the classroom lesson for the day. Gonzalez switches between English and Spanish while teaching amid the larger class of native English speakers.

This is the type of model that the district hopes all schools will embrace.

Right now, instruction for English language learners varies from school to school. Only some IPS elementary schools offer co-teaching, while others don’t have enough staff. Sometimes teachers are used as interventionists — staff who pull students away from class to work directly with them on their specific needs — rather than as co-teachers.

At the middle and high school levels, some English language learners do not have access to electives, because their English as a new language instruction is held during those times.

The district’s plans would mean less separation, and more exposure to the mainstream classroom as students learn English.

The philosophy: Everyone is an English as a New Language teacher.

An English as a New Language teacher “is supposed to help support language development, not necessarily spending their whole day doing intervention,” Rodriguez said. “There are some places where more than 80% of the day, that’s all they’re doing.”

At each school, a lead teacher of record will be responsible for the battery of tests that English language learner students must take to ensure that they pass the language proficiency test known as WIDA ACCESS.

That will free up the school’s other English as a New Language teachers to teach more throughout the day, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez is also hoping those lead teachers will monitor proficiency on state exams for English learners, which dropped after the pandemic, as it did for other student subgroups.

Last year, 47.9% of these students passed the third-grade IREAD exam, while 3.2% reached proficiency on both English and math sections on the ILEARN in grades 3-8, according to state data. (The figures do not include charter schools in the district’s autonomous Innovation Network.)

The district hopes to train English as a New Language teachers and main classroom teachers on the new changes.

Staffing poses a challenge

At Lew Wallace, Hinton acknowledges that he’s blessed to have five English as a New Language teachers. The school also has four bilingual assistants speaking Spanish and Arabic.

But at other schools in the district, filling those roles may be more challenging.

As of early March, the district anticipated the need to fill about one dozen English as a New Language teaching positions for the next school year.

Bilingual assistants, Rodriguez said, are particularly difficult to find amid stiff competition among districts. The district urgently needs candidates who speak Swahili, Kinyarwanda, French, and Haitian Creole, he said.

IPS hopes a few initiatives can help with the staffing needs.

The district is beginning to reach out to local universities to build a pipeline of bilingual assistants who can eventually transition into certified teaching positions, Rodriguez said.

The latest contract with the teacher’s union approved in November also offers base-pay increases for English as a New Language teachers and other in-demand positions.

And IPS also plans to offer English as a New Language teachers in middle and high school incentives to become dually certified to teach English language arts. That could reduce the number of staff needed to teach both topics.

The district would reimburse teachers for the cost of taking the Praxis certification exam for English language arts, which is over $100.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Social media: Denver school board considering policy about when members can block people

2024-03-08T03:25:56+00:00

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Amid ongoing court cases about public officials’ use of social media, the Denver school board is considering a policy about when board members can and cannot delete comments or block people from commenting on their posts.

The proposed policy says Denver school board members who want to discuss Denver Public Schools business on social media should do so on an official account — that is, an account that is “maintained or operated … in their official capacity” — rather than on a personal account.

“School District Board Members may not speak as a representative of the School District in the course of their personal use of social media,” the proposed policy says.

Board members cannot block anyone from posting comments on their official social media pages based upon the viewpoint that the person expressed, nor can they delete anyone’s comments for the same reason, the proposal says.

However, board members can disable commenting altogether or delete comments that are not protected by the First Amendment, including “threats, obscenity, and defamation,” it says.

The proposal comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a pair of related cases, including one involving school board members in California who blocked parents from their Twitter and Facebook accounts. It also comes on the heels of a first-of-its-kind state law passed last year that allows Colorado elected officials to ban people from their personal social media accounts.

A DPS parent sued former school board member Auon’tai Anderson in September in a test of that new state law after he blocked the parent on Facebook. Anderson, a prolific social media user, served a four-year term on the board from 2019 to 2023 but did not run for re-election this past November.

Current board members didn’t quibble with the gist of the policy during a discussion Thursday.

Derigan Silver, chair of the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies at the University of Denver, said in an interview that the Denver board is smart to address this issue.

He summarized the proposed policy like this: “This is like saying, ‘We are going to give you a government cell phone, and you can have a personal cell phone if you want to, but do not do government business on your personal cell phone.’”

The policy also makes clear that board members can’t ban people from their official accounts for criticizing them, he said: “You have to take your slings and arrows as a government official.”

During Thursday’s meeting, board members made some edits to the proposal, cutting phrases they felt were unnecessary. Some asked school district attorney Aaron Thompson clarifying questions, including whether posting about DPS business on their private social media accounts would convert the accounts to official — Thompson said yes — and whether members would still be able to express opinions on social media — again, Thompson said yes.

“The main concern is not about what you’re saying, but what you limit others to say,” Thompson said.

The board is set to vote on the policy later this month.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado lawmakers hope these nine bills will bolster workforce education

2024-03-08T01:07:06+00:00

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Colorado lawmakers hope a package of bills this year will help connect more residents to training that helps them land in-demand jobs with good wages.

Lawmakers believe the nine bills, once they’re all filed, will improve the state’s disjointed workforce education system. They also hope the proposals will help get more residents job training at little to no cost.

The proposals include the continuation of a statewide workforce training grant program; a study to analyze how well the state’s various career programs serve students; an expansion of Colorado’s apprenticeship program; and funding for workforce grant programs, such as paying for businesses to start workforce training programs.

Gov. Jared Polis said during a news conference Thursday that the proposals address the state’s need for more skilled workers, and noted that there are nearly two job openings for every unemployed person.

“There’s often a mismatch between unemployed Coloradans and the jobs that are open today and pay well,” Polis said. “And that’s really what the strategic approach of bipartisan pieces of legislation will help close.”

To a certain extent, the bills follow the recommendations in a report released this year on improving workforce education in Colorado. One overarching theme of the report (which state lawmakers commissioned in 2023) is the importance of making the end of high school and the beginning of college seamless enough that students leave with skills relevant to careers. This concept is known as the “Big Blur.”

Polis wants Colorado to be a leader in offering students this type of education, especially since most Colorado jobs that offer high pay and salary growth require some sort of training beyond high school.

Polis said the bills will be funded through a combination of state and federal money.

In particular, a statewide analysis of workforce programs would be helpful to see where the gaps and opportunities are in the state, including ensuring students in rural and remote areas have the ability to take advantage of these programs, said House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat.

“We are laying the groundwork to set Colorado learners on a path to success by improving access to these programs,” she said.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers have already filed some of the bills, while they were expected to file others on Thursday. Here’s more on what the proposals would do:

Lawmakers want to provide a final round of $3.8 million in funding for the Opportunity Now grant program that’s specifically focused on building and construction trades. Opportunity Now is an $85 million grant program funded by federal pandemic relief dollars. The goal has been to offer communities funding to come up with local solutions to get residents college education and workforce skills that translate to jobs. The bill also would create an annual $15 million tax credit to improve training.
Through a new study, Colorado lawmakers plan to explore the effectiveness of the state’s workforce programs, such as high schools with a fifth-year option, technical programs, and early college.
Lawmakers want to expand apprenticeship programs. The state would use $2 million to help businesses start or expand opportunities, $2 million for those who help support the administration of apprenticeship programs, and $30 million in annual, refundable tax credits to offset apprentices’ wages.
Senate Bill 104 would align high school career education programs with what the state offers in apprenticeship programs.
House Bill 1097 would make it easier for members of military families to get licensed in fields such as teaching or health care if they have credentials in another state.
Senate Bill 50 would create a pilot program that helps pay for the creation of business and nonprofit workforce training programs.
Senate Bill 143 would evaluate whether workforce programs, such as industry apprenticeships, meet an education standard and require programs to have a standard.
House Bill 1264 would create an online portal to assist K-12 teachers with career incentives, job postings, and applications. Lawmakers have filed similar legislation in recent years to help teachers, especially because of shortages statewide.
House Bill 1231 would provide money for the construction of three new colleges focused on health and veterinary care. The state is facing worker shortages in those areas. The bill would also provide money to help renovations at Trinidad State College.

Philadelphia teachers will get bonuses, 5% raises in approved contract extension

2024-03-08T00:30:00+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted to approve a one-year contract extension for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers that includes raises, retention bonuses, and more.

The contract was approved unanimously at a meeting Thursday night. The extension “reflects the deep respect we have for all of our PFT members,” Superintendent Tony Watlington said before the board vote.

Watlington emphasized that the extension was agreed to well before the contract expiration date of Aug. 31 and represents a “good faith partnership” with the union. It’s a significant departure for a union and district known for down-to-the-wire negotiations.

He said he expected that collaborative spirit to help with his reform blueprint for the district known as Accelerate Philly.

The district and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on the contract extension late last month.

District Chief Financial Officer Mike Herbsman said he hoped the contract, which includes a raise and bonuses designed to attract job candidates, would “have a significant and meaningful impact on our ability to recruit and retain teachers.” The district opened the school year with 200 vacancies.

Union membership voted overwhelmingly to ratify the contract Wednesday evening; 84% of those present, or 2,096 people, voted yes, while 16%, or 399 members, voted no. Those who voted against the contract, including Building 21 teacher Eric Hitchner, said the contract didn’t go far enough to secure improved working conditions for teachers.

The contract will cover more than 14,000 district employees, according to Grant-Skinner.

Notably absent from the agreement is anything altering the current sick leave policy, which detractors say punishes teachers for taking their allotted 10 sick days.

Here’s what’s in the new contract extension:

All PFT-represented employees — including teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, and others — will receive a 5% salary increase in September 2024.
Employees eligible for “step” increases (raises based on years of experience) will still get those.
PFT-represented employees will also receive a “retention and re-engagement bonus” of $1,200 paid by June 2024.
The Designated Schools Program — which provides $2,500 bonuses to teachers who work in schools with staffing challenges — will be extended to run through Aug. 30, 2025.
Watlington (or another district leader) and a union representative will meet regularly to discuss the superintendent’s five-year strategic plan.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Advocates ask Michigan legislators to invest in retaining teachers of color

2024-03-06T19:12:54+00:00

With an ongoing educator shortage, Michigan has invested nearly $1 billion in the last two years in recruiting more teachers.

Now, advocates and parents say lawmakers must do more to retain and support teachers of color who work in communities experiencing high rates of poverty.

Among the suggestions made by those who spoke Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on PreK-12 were higher pay, culturally responsive support, and stipends for teachers in districts that have difficulty retaining staff.

Overall, Michigan had a teacher retention rate of 73% during the 2021-22 school year, according to the most recently available data compiled by the state. For Black teachers, the retention rate that year was 59%.

Renee Morse, director of government affairs and strategic operations for the nonprofit advocacy organization Launch Michigan, said during the hearing that the state has largely invested in educating and recruiting future teachers. A small percentage of funding has gone toward efforts to retain educators.

“Of the $1 billion investments in the teacher workforce the past two fiscal years, approximately 9.8% has been focused on teacher retention,” she said.

Among those investments were $25 million in scholarships for teachers in training who commit to working in Michigan, $175 million for Grow Your Own programs that allow support staff a free pathway to becoming a teacher in the district they work in, and $50 million for stipends for future teachers getting on-the-job training.

Other speakers told the committee that programs designed to support Black teachers and keep them in the profession would help reduce the achievement gaps in the state.

Data shows Black students in Michigan have lower rates of reading and math proficiency in all grade levels as well as high school graduation compared to their white peers. They are also more likely to be suspended and placed in special education.

“These facts are not indicative of Black students’ abilities or potential,” said Autumn Butler, co-executive director of nonprofit community group Oakland Forward. “But, it is evidence of a system that does not work for the majority of Black students here in Michigan.”

Years of research suggests that all students perform better in schools with a racially diverse teaching staff. Students of color, in particular, have improved attendance, behavioral outcomes, academic achievement, high school graduation rates, and likelihood of enrolling in college when taught by diverse educators.

“Having teachers immersed in the culture of their students means that it is more likely that the teachers have greater sense of cultural competency through their own lived experiences and may have greater sense of connection because often they come from the same communities in which their students live,” said Butler.

Elnora Gavin, a mother and member of the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board, asked legislators during the hearing for equity in funding teacher shortage initiatives.

“Many funding initiatives have produced inconsistent results because they do not account for the structural barriers that Black and brown students and teachers face before they even step foot into the classroom,” she said.

Angela Wilson-Turnbull of the Michigan Education Justice Coalition asked the committee for $600,000 in funding for a research study on teacher retention and recruitment for Black and brown educators in districts with high concentrations of poverty. The MEJC also asked for $15 million to fund a “culturally responsive education toolkit” to address the racial disparities of Black students’ outcomes.

Armen Hratchian, executive director of Teach For America Detroit, which oversees Teach Michigan, a nonprofit that has received state funding to recruit and retain educators, proposed the state create and invest $100 million in programs to support 2,000 teachers and school leaders who are already in high-poverty Michigan schools.

“As you’ve made a nearly $1 billion bet on all those those pipelines and aspiring educators – that’s a good bet – this is the time to make sure these novice teachers have the mentors, the leaders, so that they stay and develop and that they don’t walk that $1 billion out of this profession in five years,” he said.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

March 7, 2024: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Armen Hratchian’s title. His title is executive director of Teach For America Detroit, which oversees Teach Michigan.

March 7, 2024: A previous version of this story incorrectly said Teach Michigan asked legislators for an additional $100 million. Armen Hratchian proposed the state create and invest $100 million in programs that would support teachers and school leaders already in high-poverty Michigan schools.

Illinois House passes plan for Chicago’s elected school board

2024-03-07T21:58:38+00:00

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The Illinois House has approved a Senate proposal that would allow Chicagoans to vote for 10 out of 21 school board members during the Nov. 5 election. The bill now heads to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s officer for final approval.

Senate Bill 15, which passed 75-31 on Thursday, includes boundaries for the districts that school board members will represent, ethics guidelines, and term limits.

November marks the first time Chicago voters will be able to elect school board members. Voters will elect 10 board members while Mayor Brandon Johnson will appoint 11, effectively keeping control until the end of his first term. In 2026, all 21 seats will be up for election, with 20 members elected from districts and the board president voted on by the entire city.

The House vote Thursday comes just two weeks before March 26, when school board candidates can start to gather signatures to get on the Nov. 5 ballot. According to the bill, candidates will need to collect at least 1,000 signatures by June 24 to get on the ballot.

Rep. Ann Williams, a Democrat representing neighborhoods on Chicago’s north side, said Thursday afternoon that if this debate had taken place a year ago, she would have pushed for a fully elected school board. However, with November only a few months away, she feels the plan to elect 10 instead of all 21 is the best way to move forward.

“CPS is a $9 billion dollar agency which serves over 325,000 students,” said Williams. “It feels irresponsible to completely turn over the governance of Chicago Public Schools in a matter of months without adequate time to plan.”

While House members praised the work Williams and other lawmakers have done to establish an elected school board, others expressed concerns the shift in governance could impact the district’s finances.

Rep. Fred Crespo, a Democrat representing suburbs northwest of Chicago, said he is still worried about the financial impacts of Chicago’s elected board on the state and city.

A 2022 report required by state law detailed costs the Chicago Board of Education might take on as the board transitions to an elected board. For example, the report said, the City of Chicago could begin to charge the school district for things such as water and rent in non-district public facilities.

Chicago’s school board has been appointed by the mayor since 1995. For years, community organizations and the Chicago Teachers Union lobbied state lawmakers and rallied local support to get a fully elected school board. The effort gained momentum after school closures in majority Black and Latino neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides.

In 2021, the general assembly passed a compromise bill that created a hybrid board in 2024, which drew protests from local advocates.

11 young people have been shot in Philadelphia this week

2024-03-07T15:17:34+00:00

Eleven Philadelphia students were shot at bus stops less than a mile from their schools this week in separate incidents that have sent shockwaves through schools across the city.

Eight of those students, all between the ages of 15 and 17, were injured by gunfire on Wednesday afternoon at the intersection of Rising Sun and Cottman avenues in Northeast Philadelphia at a SEPTA bus stop down the street from their school, Northeast High School, according to city police.

On Monday, Dayemen Taylor, a 17-year-old Imhotep Institute Charter High School student, was killed in a shooting that injured two other young people at a different SEPTA stop at Ogontz and Godfrey avenues.

The incidents were among four shootings this week on or around SEPTA buses, a setback coming as city data shows gun violence is declining overall in Philadelphia. Nearly 55,000 students use SEPTA to get to and from school every day.

Philadelphia School District Superintendent Tony Watlington announced in a statement Wednesday night that Northeast High, which educates over 3,200 students, would be going remote through the rest of the week. Watlington said an emergency crisis response team will be on-site at the school “to support our students with grief counseling and whatever emotional assistance they need.”

Watlington also dispatched counselors to Kennedy C. Crossan School, an elementary school across the street from Wednesday’s shooting.

Jayme Banks, the Philadelphia School District’s deputy chief of prevention, intervention, and trauma, told Chalkbeat on Thursday the emotional impact of the shootings has reverberated throughout multiple nearby schools and student populations. The district will be providing counseling services for four or five other schools this week in addition to Northeast High School, Banks said.

Some Crossan students were leaving their building and witnessed the shooting on Wednesday, Banks said. There were some George Washington High School students aboard one of the SEPTA buses who also saw the eight students shot.

“People are affected in many different ways, and it’s important that we give them the space and time to process all of it,” Banks said. She added that the “trauma is so pervasive that we have to pour our resources and supports into everyone. Every student, family, teacher and community member.”

In a press conference Wednesday night, Watlington said he was “just absolutely heartbroken and angry that innocent children walking home from school would be impacted by gun violence.”

He said his office is “absolutely committed” to “improving outcomes” for students so that “when parents send their children to school, they can expect them to return safely to them.”

Kevin Bethel, Philadelphia’s police commissioner who used to serve as the district’s chief of school safety, said Wednesday “it is hard to sit here and see, in three days, 11 juveniles shot, who were going and coming from school.”

Banks said as the district and city plan a broader response to gun violence, “the impact has to be greater than therapy alone. We really need to pour [support] into our community so that everyone can heal together.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools bring back chicken dumplings, French toast sticks, burritos after outcry

2024-03-07T18:45:35+00:00

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Facing mounting criticism over cuts to popular school lunch items, New York City officials are reversing course.

School cafeterias will once again feature French toast sticks, bean and cheese burritos, and chicken dumplings, an Education Department spokesperson confirmed Wednesday. Those items should reappear later this month or in early April. Officials eliminated the popular foods from school menus last month as part of a $60 million cut to the school food program, Chalkbeat first reported in January.

At a Thursday event honoring food workers, schools Chancellor David Banks said the decision to reinstate some items was due to backlash from students.

“We heard from the kids loud and clear,” he said. “I encourage every young person to continue to speak up about the changes that they hope to see in their schools.”

Still, some menu items won’t be returning yet, including bagel sticks, chicken drumsticks, guacamole, and cookies. Chris Tricarico, senior executive director of the Office of Food and Nutrition Services, said the city is “planning to look at the future menus” in the coming months to bring back additional food options.

A chorus of students, parents, and food advocates complained the cuts affected popular dishes — potentially leading students to avoid eating school lunches, or throw them in the trash.

Anayolene Denis, a school cook in Brooklyn, said there was a noticeable decrease in the number of students who ate lunch after popular items disappeared from the menu.

“I was mad,” she said. “The kids come in and don’t see what they used to like.”

The cuts also left some of the city’s food suppliers in limbo, with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of food languishing in storage. Some vendors warned of possible worker layoffs.

Food advocates were baffled by the cuts given Mayor Eric Adams’ focus on improving the city’s school food program, including overhauling some cafeterias to make them resemble food courts and expanding plant-based meals.

The reversal comes as city leaders have struggled to provide a clear rationale for the menu changes. Officials first suggested they were related to a series of budget cuts Adams has ordered across city agencies, including the Education Department. But the city’s top budget official on Monday offered a different explanation: The menu cuts were necessary because school lunches were growing more popular.

“They basically cut some of the items from the menu … because more kids are eating,” Jacques Jiha, director of the city’s Office of Management and Budget, said during a City Council hearing.

Those comments earned a fresh round of criticism and confusion, as some of the mayor’s food initiatives were specifically designed to encourage more students to eat. Just two days later, the Education Department backtracked.

Melany Martinez, a school cook at P.S. 84 in Manhattan, said students grumbled about the changes, but she didn’t see much of a dropoff in student meal participation at her school. Nonetheless, she anticipates her students will celebrate the return of one item in particular.

“They love bean burritos,” she said.

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed to this story.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

The SAT is going digital. Here’s what to know.

2024-03-06T21:31:36+00:00

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No more No. 2 pencils. No more bubble sheets. The SAT this year is entirely digital. And that’s not the only change for the test.

The new SAT is shorter — just over two hours compared with the roughly three hours for the previous SAT and its main competitor, the ACT. It’s adaptive, meaning students who score relatively low on the first half of the test will get easier questions in the second half. There are fewer questions. And students have more time to answer each question.

The College Board, which oversees the test, made all of these changes with the hope of creating a less stressful experience. But the SAT’s status is in flux.

The first U.S. students are taking the new SAT this week; the digital SAT launched internationally last year. The College Board is rolling out the digital test after hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities ditched test score requirements for admissions in recent years. More than 1,800 colleges, including large state systems in Texas and California, won’t require applicants to submit test scores for the fall of 2025, according to data tracked by FairTest, a research and advocacy group. At the same time, some of the country’s most elite institutions are bringing them back.

The test optional movement, as much as the spread of technology during the pandemic, shaped the College Board’s thought process.

“If we’re launching a test that is largely optional, how do we make it the most attractive option possible?” said Priscilla Rodriguez, the College Board’s senior vice president of college readiness assessments. “If students are deciding to take a test, how do we make the SAT the one they want to take?”

Rodriguez said the College Board feels confident that a score of 900 or a 1300 will tell the same story about a student that it did a year ago.

But critics of the test remain skeptical. They question how the SAT can purport to provide objective information about students while changing the test so much from previous years and giving different students different tests. They worry the College Board is essentially conducting an experiment.

“The College Board gets to do what they want, and we have to trust fall into it,” said Jennifer Jessie, an independent college counselor and tutor based in northern Virginia who is steering her students away from the SAT this year.

Digital SAT is shorter — but that’s not all

Rodriguez said the pandemic pushed the College Board to create a digital SAT after several years of internal discussion. Most students have school-issued devices, and they’re used to working on a computer, she said.

“We were hearing that this was the last high-stakes test students took on paper, and it wasn’t natural, and getting those bubble sheets was more stressful,” she said.

The digital test is not just the old test moved to a computer, though.

Reading passages are much shorter — a single paragraph — because the longer passages didn’t render well on the screen.
Students will read more than 50 short reading passages with a single question each, instead of nine long passages with multiple questions.
Students can use a built-in graphing calculator on the entire test rather than having separate calculator and non-calculator sections.
The test is adaptive. Based on their performance on the first section, students will get an easier or a harder second section.

Making the test adaptive is what allows the test to be shorter, Rodriguez said. Because it changes based on how students answer early questions, the test can hone in more efficiently on what students can do.

Students who get the easier second section won’t be able to get the highest score of 1600. Rodriguez said that’s because students need to get a lot of questions wrong in the first half to end up with the easier second section.

“The mechanics itself does not preclude you from getting a certain score, but the student performance might,” she said.

Students can take the test on a school-issued or personal device, but they can’t take it at home and they can’t take it on a cell phone. Rodriguez said the College Board will provide laptops for students who indicate at registration they don’t have access to a device.

Students must download and take the test in the College Board’s Bluebook app. It requires minimal bandwidth and can go offline without disrupting the test, Rodriguez said. If a device loses its internet connection as a student is submitting their test, their work should be saved and re-encrypted until the connection is restored.

Students should get their results in a few days, instead of waiting weeks.

Rodriguez said in addition to wanting a better testing experience for students, the College Board wants a test that’s easier for schools to administer, now that two-thirds of students take the SAT during the school day rather than at a Saturday testing site.

In addition, teachers no longer need to store and protect boxes of paper tests or monitor calculator use. And the test takes up less of the school day.

The testing landscape is shifting

The SAT has evolved a number of times since its origins as an aptitude test closely related to IQ tests, said Derek Briggs, director of CADRE, the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation at the University of Colorado’s School of Education.

In the last decade, the College Board has pushed dual purposes for the SAT — as a predictor of college success and as a way for states to meet federal accountability requirements.

The ACT has also marketed itself that way. Now the SAT is notably shorter — and potentially less burdensome for schools to administer — than its chief rival.

“You can reframe all of these test changes in terms of this battle between these two companies,” said Sheila Akbar, president and chief operating officer of Signet Education, which provides test prep and college advising.

Briggs said a shorter, adaptive test makes sense when entire state populations of students, including those who aren’t thinking about going to college, are taking the test.

An option that includes easier questions might make for better testing experience, Briggs said, and “perhaps students who didn’t think they would go to college would think, ‘Oh, maybe I can’” after taking it.

But Jessie said she’s seen the other scenario as well, where a lower-than-expected score leaves a student feeling like they aren’t cut out for college when the reality is they could be successful at a lot of institutions.

The adaptive aspect of the test concerns skeptics like Akbar and Jessie. They worry students who take longer to warm up or who are prone to small mistakes on easy questions won’t get a chance to show they can answer harder questions correctly.

They’re encouraging students who have to provide a test score to take the ACT, which is available in both paper and digital formats and hasn’t changed much in recent years. They also feel more confident that ACT practice materials align with the test.

The College Board has said both versions of the SAT have a mix of easy, moderate, and hard questions, and there is significant overlap between the tests.

Students can take up to four practice SAT tests through the Bluebook app and get used to the interface before taking the test. Heather Waite, director of college admissions at Kaplan, a company that provides test prep services, said it’s important that students practice with up-to-date materials, not previous year’s prep books.

Waite said students have provided positive feedback about the shorter test.

College advisers expect more universities to bring back test score requirements, and a good score can boost an application at some test-optional schools.

“At Kaplan, our students are looking for an edge over other students, and submitting their scores is something that makes them more competitive,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee universal school voucher bill clears two more legislative hurdles after contentious debate

2024-03-07T03:30:14+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to create a statewide school voucher program easily cleared its first Senate hurdle Wednesday, but took a split vote and five-plus hours of often contentious debate to pass out of a House committee.

The legislation — the most ambitious and controversial education plan of Lee’s five-plus years in office — passed 7-1 out of the Senate Education Committee, with the panel’s lone Democrat casting the dissenting vote.

In the House Education Administration Committee, the measure advanced 12-7, including four Republicans voting against it in the GOP-controlled legislature. Passage came even as Maryville City Schools Director Mike Winstead, a 2018 finalist for National Superintendent of the Year, called vouchers “a bitter pill, maybe some would say a poison pill” that he believes will destabilize K-12 education across Tennessee in the long run.

“You can coat that with a lot of good things and make it go down a little easier,” Winstead testified before the panel. “But in the end, we’re being asked to ingest a poison pill.”

Meanwhile, supporters pounded on the theme of parental choice.

“This is about parents finding the best learning environment for their students,” said Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds.

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act must clear more committees in each chamber before it can be voted on by the full House and Senate. The House bill now heads to that chamber’s government operations committee, while the Senate bill will be heard next by its finance panel.

Both proposals would start a new voucher program this fall with up to 20,000 students who could use taxpayer funding to attend private schools. Lee wants the program opened up eventually for any K-12 student, regardless of their family income.

The pieces of legislation remain vastly different, however, both in cost and scope.

The Senate bill, starting this year at $95 million and jumping to $333 million in the program’s second year, requires voucher recipients to take some type of tests that can be used to compare and rank students, but not the same rigorous standards-based tests that public school students have to take under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP. The legislation also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House version, starting at $398 million and growing to $425 million in the program’s second year, has no testing requirement for voucher recipients. It includes a long list of enticements aimed at public school supporters, including reducing testing time for students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts an extra $75 per student — or about $73 million in all in the first year — to help with building costs.

Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican who voted against the bill, expressed concern that the public school measures could get “stripped out” of the final legislation if Senate and House negotiators head to a conference committee to work out their differences.

And Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican who sits on the House Finance Committee, worried about the proposal’s high cost. He noted that Tennessee’s government faces a $400 million shortfall in its current budget.

Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican, flagged the high cost of the House voucher bill during a committee meeting but eventually voted for the measure.

“I understand that we’re adding the additional sections to make the bill more enticing, maybe to sweeten the pot,” said Baum, who later voted for the measure. “But it seems like in order to pass a $140 million freedom accounts [voucher] bill, we’re spending an additional $350 million” for public schools.

Baum asked sponsors to consider separate bills to vote on the private school voucher and public school provisions based on their costs and merits. But Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Maury County Republican who is carrying the bill for House Majority Leader William Lamberth, declined.

The voucher proposal, Cepicky said, was the right “vehicle” to address long-standing challenges for public educators.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson balked at that statement though. The Memphis Democrat said lawmakers have the power any time to create legislation to address matters related to public education.

“For some reason, we’ve chosen to create a lemon,” said Parkinson, seizing on the same automotive analogy. “And that vehicle now has all of these great options that are in it, but is tied to four flat tires.”

The House debate waded into the potential for voucher money going to undocumented students or to private schools teaching atheist, Satanic, or Muslim curriculum.

Questions also were raised about whether federally required services for students with special needs would lead to new federal regulations on private schools that accept vouchers. There was little discussion, however, about whether voucher recipients with special needs would receive adequate services from private schools.

Chairman Mark White, a Republican from Memphis, also received complaints from several people who weren’t allowed to testify.

While two people each spoke for and against vouchers, pro-voucher voices included Robby Starbuck, a video director and conservative political activist, and Walter Blanks Jr., a spokesperson for the American Federation for Children advocacy group. White declined to hear testimony from voucher opponents Eric Welch, an elected school board member from Williamson County, and Matt Steinhauer, a Franklin pastor and parent.

In the other chamber, Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, questioned why the Senate bill doesn’t require voucher schools to be held to the same accountability standards as public schools, including TCAP tests, Tennessee’s third grade retention law, and the state’s new A-F designations for schools.

“If the majority of students in that [private] school who are taking these public dollars are performing poorly, will the school face any action based on what’s written in this legislation, where they can no longer accept students who have these vouchers?” Akbari asked.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, who drafted the Senate’s version, responded no.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee contributed to this report.

After technical snafu, NYC says staggered school start times may be necessary for remote snow days

2024-03-06T23:36:26+00:00

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After technical glitches prevented many families from logging in for remote learning during a snowstorm last month, officials on Wednesday presented a temporary fix: staggered start times.

The Education Department no longer cancels classes during inclement weather in part due to a growing number of school holidays and a state mandate to provide 180 days of school. As a snowstorm threatened to upend commutes on Feb. 13, city officials announced schools would operate remotely — the first citywide test of that strategy. But many families and educators encountered error messages when they tried to log in, drawing intense criticism.

During a City Council oversight hearing on Wednesday focused on the technical snafus, Education Department officials said the problem stemmed from too many users logging in at once. The city outsources the login process for its remote learning platforms to IBM, and both Education Department and IBM officials acknowledged the technical specifications in their contract did not guarantee everyone would be able to sign on during a short window.

The city is looking for a long-term solution to avoid spreading out start times, but Education Department officials said it will be necessary for now in the event of another pivot to remote learning.

“If we have a remote learning day tomorrow we should be working to stagger start times, which we agree is not ideal from a student and staff perspective,” Emma Vadehra, the department’s chief operating officer, told city lawmakers. “But it’s pretty important to us that we get it right if we do need to transition.”

Vedehra suggested that start times could be assigned by grade level and would need to be spread over a little more than one hour to ensure the sign-in process goes smoothly. Officials did not provide a timeline for coming up with a more permanent solution and some elected officials raised concerns about the approach.

“I think staggered times will be very confusing to people,” said Gale Brewer, a Manhattan city council member.

Wednesday’s hearing included the most detailed accounting yet of why families had trouble logging on for remote learning on Feb. 13. The core issue was that IBM was only contracted to handle up to 400 “transactions per second” — with one login attempt potentially using multiple “transactions,” said Scott Strickland, the education department’s deputy chief information officer. There are more than 1 million public school students and staff. (Strickland was the acting chief information officer on Feb. 13.)

In September, IBM bumped up the number of transactions per second to 1,400. As login issues mounted on Feb. 13, the day the city switched to remote learning, IBM increased the throughput to 3,000, which made the problem worse, Strickland said. The company ultimately landed on 2,000 transactions per second, which was still not enough to accommodate everyone who was trying to log in.

City officials said they did not have data on how many students and staff were unable to log in, though IBM officials said the system was “stable” by 10:15 a.m. and there were more than a million successful login attempts that day. The company has since recommended a more customized system, at an unspecified cost, that will automatically adjust based on demand.

In the aftermath of the tech glitches, city officials largely blamed IBM, a characterization the company pushed back against on Wednesday.

“We really had done everything we can to make sure that this technology was working above and beyond what it was contracted to do,” Vanessa Hunt, IBM’s senior state executive for New York, said Wednesday. “Hearing it be summarized as an IBM technology problem was, of course, frustrating.”

City officials had previously conducted practice sessions to make sure students could log in and prepared schools to distribute devices. But they did not involve IBM in those tests, Hunt said.

Hunt said she wished the city gave IBM more lead time to plan; city officials gave IBM a heads up that they planned to pivot to remote instruction at 1 p.m. the previous day, city officials said.

“Ideally, we would have been planning way before the day before,” Hunt said, adding the company now has a communication plan in place with the Education Department. “I think we would have been a part of the simulations, a part of the planning, and we would have been able to better advise the DOE on potentially staggering start times.”

Several City Council members expressed frustration that there hadn’t been more rigorous testing of IBM’s systems before the switch to remote instruction, with some casting blame on the city.

“If you have an elevator, and the elevator can only hold 1,000 pounds, and you put 7,000 pounds in the elevator, and the elevator gets stuck, is it fair to blame the elevator company in that situation?” said Queens City Council member Shekar Krishnan. “There seems to be a lot of blame, or at least passing the buck to IBM.”

At another point in the hearing, Intekhab Shakil, the Education Department’s chief information officer, seemed to acknowledge some responsibility for the technical problems. “We did not pay enough attention” to ensure that the company could quickly ramp up to meet demand during a sudden switch to remote learning, he said.

“We will work with IBM,” he added, “to ensure this does not happen again.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is in new era for negotiations with the CTU. What could it mean for schools?

2024-03-06T22:24:06+00:00

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When former Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey thinks about the dynamics between City Hall and the union, he flashes back to 2011. That’s when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel defended a decision to cancel pay raises for teachers by saying they got other types of salary boosts, while “our children got the shaft.”

The stinging quip illustrates how contentious contract negotiations and the relationship between the CTU and city officials were back then, ultimately leading to a weeklong teachers strike in 2012, said Sharkey, who currently sits on the union’s executive board.

After years of thorny relationships with district officials and mayors who did not align with the union on how to improve or support schools, the CTU is expected to begin bargaining this spring over a new contract with a district that now answers to Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher who rose to power as a CTU organizer.

“This is going to be a struggle because the culture in Chicago with the public schools and the teachers union is a culture of ‘No,’ and ‘Make me,’ and ‘OK,’” current CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said during a City Club speech Tuesday. “That’s different from what we are embarking on this time. We’re saying, ‘How might we?’ That’s a different question.”

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Damen Alexander said the district “looks forward to negotiating a fair contract that balances both the interests of the District’s hard-working educators and our duty to be fiscally responsible.”

A City Hall spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

The latest contract talks will come amid massive change for Chicago Public Schools. The first-ever school board elections will take place this fall and a 21-member partially elected board will take office next January. And bargaining will happen as the district attempts to fill a projected $391 million budget deficit for next year, after four years of being buoyed by $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief dollars that will soon run out.

Amid those challenges, the union has a strong ally in office.

The CTU was Johnson’s largest campaign donor, and Davis Gates introduced him at his victory party.

Before the union propelled one of its own into the mayor’s office, the teachers union regained some bargaining power in 2021 when state legislators passed a law that restored its right to bargain over a broader set of issues — such as class size or the length of the school day — which had been restricted since 1995.

Still, Johnson signaled on the campaign trail that he would face “tough decisions” as mayor in negotiations with the CTU and wouldn’t be able to meet all of the union’s demands.

“So who better to deliver bad news to friends than a friend?” he said during a mayoral forum last year.

But the Johnson administration has already overseen policy changes the union counts as victories, including expanded parental leave for CTU members, a promise to remove school resource officers by next school year, and a commitment to rethink school choice policies.

The union’s House of Delegates, made up of hundreds of educators across the city, is scheduled to vote Wednesday on proposals crafted by the union’s various committees and developed as a response to what CTU members said they wanted to see in the next contract, according to the union.

Those proposals include a wide range of ideas, from pay raises and housing assistance for teachers to providing affordable housing and support for homeless students and their families.

While union officials acknowledge that things are different this time around, they have also emphasized that Johnson does not “have a magic wand” and pushed back against the idea that the union will get everything it asks for.

“I think it is ridiculous for anyone to think that the Black man on the fifth floor who comes from the progressive movement has fairy dust to sprinkle to end this quickly,” Davis Gates said in an interview with Chalkbeat last month. “There is an entire bureaucracy that has been hired and trained to tell the Chicago Teachers Union, ‘No.’”

Joe Ferguson, president of Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said the mayor can’t meet all of the union’s demands because “the money isn’t there for it.” He said the public deserves to hear from the board and the mayor on where they’ll draw the line.

“Where those boundaries are, nobody can say,” Ferguson said.

Past tensions between CTU and City Hall prompted strikes

Over the past decade, contract negotiations between CPS and the CTU have resulted in two strikes that garnered national attention and inspired education labor fights around the country.

In 2012, after months of simmering disagreement and the city skipping a raise for teachers, the union went on strike for seven days at the start of the school year. Emanuel had pushed for a longer school day and embraced education reform ideas sweeping the country at the time, including a new way to evaluate teachers, which the union strongly opposed. He also refused to bargain over issues like class size, which at the time, state law did not require CPS to do.

An 11-day strike happened in 2019 under then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who the union had initially expected to align with more than Emanuel. The union was fighting for “common good” ideas that exceeded the scope of a teacher’s daily duties but were meant to improve students’ and families’ lives, such as ensuring that every school had a nurse, social worker, and librarian. The contract ultimately locked in some of those demands, as well as other wins, such as a $35 million fund to help reduce class sizes, but ultimately, the long strike left many teachers and families frustrated.

Those sour dynamics appear to be gone with Johnson’s election, said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who co-wrote a book about CTU’s 2012 strike.

“Both parties believe that the other party understands and would be respectful of each other’s perspectives, which certainly wasn’t the case with the two previous mayors or even the previous CEOs — and we’ve gone through a few of them in Chicago,” he said.

Sharkey noted that Johnson’s priorities include many ideas the union agrees with and gave rise to, such as creating more sustainable community schools that provide wraparound services to families. His campaign platform also closely mirrored a document CTU first put out in 2012 titled “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve,” which was updated in 2018 and most recently, in 2022.

In general, the union has found that working with the district has been easier and more receptive since Johnson has taken office, according to Sharkey and Davis Gates.

But Davis Gates said she expects plenty of disagreement because she still feels that the agency has a bureaucracy “that cannot collaborate, that does not say yes, and has a difficult time understanding how to partner with us.”

Union again pushing ‘common good’ demands

The union is expected to push for cost-of-living raises that keep up with or exceed inflation and a more uniform overtime pay policy, according to proposals leaked to conservative think tank Illinois Policy Institute, which a CTU spokesperson confirmed are real. The union also wants changes to the teacher evaluation process, including to codify that evaluations cannot be used for layoffs.

Proposals also include codifying health care policies, such as gender-affirming care, paid parental leave for employees, abortion coverage, and access to weight loss medical care, such as bariatric surgery.

In a more novel demand, the union will also push for housing assistance for its members, but the leaked proposal doesn’t include more details on how that would be done. Under Emanuel, the city offered assistance to police officers who wanted to buy homes in the areas they worked in, but few officers took advantage of the program.

In the classroom, the union is expected to renew a push to give elementary school teachers more preparation and collaboration time during the school day, Sharkey said. That was a major demand in the 2019 contract negotiations that largely did not come to fruition – and could again be difficult to secure this time around given the complicated logistics of tweaking a school day.

Union officials also expect proposals around bilingual services for students, including on attracting staff and expanding access to bilingual training for teachers, and retaining more special education staff. Both bilingual and special education are teacher shortage areas.

Davis Gates said they’ll continue demanding a librarian and nurse be staffed at every school.

Separately, union officials are expecting to push for more common good items, Davis Gates said. This will include creating a career and technical education program that would involve building houses for homeless students and their families, according to the leaked proposals.

Common good proposals will also include creating more sustainable community schools, Davis Gates said. The union is also interested in pushing for more “green” – or energy efficient – schools, such as by installing more solar panels. The district is already planning to purchase 50 electric school buses.

CPS’s budget deficit could complicate negotiations

Contract talks will begin as the district plans for its budget next year, which is projected to be $391 million in the hole. That could make costly union proposals a tough sell for the district.

District officials have for months publicized the budget deficit as federal COVID relief dollars run out. The district can either cut programming or find more money, which officials want to do by demanding more funding from the state.

Bruno, the labor expert, said it is a good sign the union agrees that Springfield should provide more money, because that means all negotiating parties agree on a solution to a significant problem.

However, Ferguson, from the Civic Federation, has little hope that more money is coming, in part because of what appears to be a “frayed” relationship between City Hall and Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office. Pritzker recently proposed a budget that provides the same increase to K-12 funding as last year. And because CPS’s deficit is driven by the loss of COVID relief dollars, this year’s negotiations are “a fairly unique stew,” he said.

“There have been deficits being faced in the past [and] constraints on funding sources, but none that have come in this particular context, where not only is there a question of, where is more money coming from, but it also comes at a moment when we all know that recent existing streams are going to end,” Ferguson said. “And it has also been made abundantly clear by Springfield, by the governor, that there is no money to be gotten from the state.”

Union officials said they don’t yet know the price tag of their proposals, and they don’t expect to propose “money-saving” ideas. But Sharkey said they’ll have ideas on how the district can fund their proposals “and would expect the board to try to work with us on that.”

Asked how the district’s financial picture will impact its approach to negotiations, a CPS spokesperson pointed to the district’s budget deficit and said the district must be “fiscally responsible.”

Even with financial challenges, Sharkey said he expects the union and the district to work out disagreements in a more timely manner, unlike past negotiations that were “unproductive for months.”

Davis Gates said CTU continues to see its contract as “leverage for the common good,” has “high expectations” for upcoming negotiations, and is hoping for more agreement that will finally deliver on the CTU’s push to get schools more resources.

At the City Club speech this week, in a room full of business leaders, educators, and philanthropists, Davis Gates said she expects people to be skeptical that the mayor is going to “give CTU everything it’s asking for.”

“I hope he does,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC Education Dept. sues state over order to pay for charter school’s ‘inflated’ rent

2024-03-06T21:13:07+00:00

New York City’s Education Department is accusing a Staten Island charter school of “artificially inflating” its rent costs to collect more reimbursement from the city – and it’s taking the state education commissioner to court for greenlighting the arrangement, according to legal filings.

In a lawsuit filed last week in Albany Supreme Court, city lawyers allege that Hellenic Classical Charter School took advantage of a state law that requires the city to either offer charter schools space in city-owned buildings or pay for their rent in outside facilities.

The school leased space from a church in Staten Island and then turned over the lease to an affiliated group, which subleased the space back to the school at a price three times as high as what the school originally agreed to pay the landlord. The school then asked the city to reimburse it at the inflated rate, the suit alleges.

New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa is the subject of a new lawsuit from the city Education Department over her ruling in a dispute over charter school rental reimbursement.

The extra rental income was used to subsidize the costs of constructing a brand-new building for the school on the premises, city lawyers claim. Such costs, they said, aren’t covered by the rental assistance law.

The arrangement amounts to “self-dealing…in which the School in effect pays itself an artificially inflated sub-rent and pockets the difference,” city lawyers said.

Lawyers for Hellenic conceded that the dramatic rise in rent was driven by the cost of “improvements” on the facility, according to court documents. But Hellenic’s lawyer, Kevin Quinn, argued that the city has no right under the law to “second guess” the price of a charter school’s rent, and that the reason for the increase is irrelevant.

State Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa largely agreed.

In an October ruling, she wrote that Hellenic’s financial arrangement was “certainly concerning,” but fell within the bounds of the law.

“That is the system the Legislature has created,” Rosa wrote. “Any change must come from that body.”

This instance, “is merely an exaggerated example of the goal of the rental assistance program: the public financing of New York City charter schools,” she added.

James Merriman, the director of the New York City Charter School Center, a group that advocates on behalf of charters, argued that, much in the way the public subsidizes the cost of public school construction, charters should be able to use rental assistance for the same purpose.

The Education Department’s lawsuit marks the first time the city has brought a legal challenge against the state Education Department over a charter rental dispute, according to a spokesperson from the city’s Law Department.

“There is no evidence that the Legislature intended” for the law to require the city to “cover what this charter school is seeking,” the spokesperson said.

Critics have flagged inflated rental costs for years

The city’s obligation to subsidize charter rents stems from a 2014 state law, passed as former Mayor Bill de Blasio took office. The legislation was meant to shore up protections for the publicly funded, privately run charter schools against a city executive viewed as more hostile toward charters than his predecessor, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The law compels the city to offer a new or expanding charter school space in a public school building or cover the cost of rent in an outside building up to a certain amount. If the rental costs are greater than 30% of what the city receives from the state for a charter school’s enrollment, the reimbursement from the city is capped at that level.

The state reimburses the city for 60% of what it pays for charter rental costs.

The city paid about $75 million for charter rental reimbursements in fiscal year 2023, after factoring in the state’s portion of the payments, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. Year-over-year growth in the city’s total outlay on charter rental reimbursements has begun to slow as the city nears the state-mandated cap limiting the number of charter schools in operation, the IBO said. But the subsidy will likely continue to tick up in future years as rental costs rise and enrollment at charters increases overall.

Critics have for years alleged that some charter schools are taking advantage of the law by overcharging the city on rent and “self dealing.”

A 2021 report from the group Class Size Matters, which advocates for lower class sizes, pointed out several instances of charters renting space from affiliated organizations with subsequent sharp increases in rental rates.

The report cited an example of two Success Academy charter schools in Hudson Yards subleasing space from the network. In that case, the rent jumped from less than $800,000 in the 2019 school year to $3.4 million the following year, allowing Success to collect more than $3 million from the city in rental subsidies. (The report said Success owned the space, but a spokesperson said they rented it and then sub-leased it to the schools.)

Success Academy spokesperson Jessica Siegel said that even with that increase, the network has lost money on the lease because “facilities reimbursement has covered far less than our total costs including rent and the cost of the necessary renovations we had to incur to make the space safe and functional for learning.” She added that Success asked the Education Department for space in a city-owned building but was denied.

In Hellenic’s case, the school originally agreed to pay the landlord roughly $660,000 in rent during the 2021-22 school year for its Staten Island space. But the school subsequently transferred the lease to an entity affiliated with the school called “Friends of Hellenic,” which then sub-leased it back to the school at a price of over $2 million a year.

Quinn, the school’s lawyer, said using a “Friends Of” entity is a “common practice.”

In response to the 2021 Class Size Matters report, state Sens. John Liu (D-Queens) and Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) and City Council member Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn) sent a letter to city Comptroller Brad Lander asking him to audit the Education Department’s charter rental reimbursement payments to ensure they’re based on fair market value.

A spokesperson for Lander said the comptroller’s office couldn’t comment on ongoing litigation.

Leonie Haimson, the founder and executive director of Class Size Matters, called Hellenic’s arrangement “outrageous” and urged the state legislature to amend the rental assistance law “to disallow any self-dealing and ensure that any rents charged to DOE by charter schools are no more than fair market value.”

Rental reimbursement law draws renewed scrutiny

The rental reimbursement law has recently come up in conversations about how the city plans to comply with a separate state law mandating lower class sizes in many schools.

At a town hall in Brooklyn on Monday night, some parents pushed schools Chancellor David Banks on the possibility of moving charters out of public school buildings to clear out more space for district schools to spread out and lower their class sizes.

But Banks warned such a move would ultimately drive up the city’s expenses because of the rental reimbursement law.

“If I take a charter school and move them out of your building so that now you have more space for class size, I now have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent for that charter school,” he said. “Guess where that money is going to come from ...The funding that we use to pay for your music program and your art program.”

New York City is the only city in the state required to reimburse charter schools for rental costs – a fact critics have long seized on in arguments to repeal the legislation.

But other state legislators want to move in the opposite direction: State Sen. Luis Sepulveda (D-Bronx) and Assembly member John Zaccaro Jr. (D-Bronx) recently introduced legislation to expand the charter rental reimbursement law so it will also apply to charter schools opened before 2014.

Advocates and educators previously told the Bronx Times that charter schools that don’t receive the rental reimbursement have to divert significant chunks of their budget to covering rent and away from teachers and programs benefiting kids.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

As we embrace the ‘science of reading,’ we can’t leave out older students

2023-03-06T13:00:00+00:00

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The day before my first day of teaching middle school in 2018, I decorated my Brooklyn public school classroom with quotes from famous people reflecting on the importance of reading. Hanging on cream-colored cardstock were the words of Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, C.S. Lewis, Barack Obama, Maya Angelou, and dozens of other writers and thinkers. I hoped to inspire my students to fall in love with reading. I didn’t think to hope that all my students could do the very thing I was asking them to love. I didn’t know that part of my job as a sixth grade Humanities teacher would be to teach students to read in the first place.

Shira Engel

There was a round table in the very back of my classroom that a group of five sixth-graders bee-lined to on day one. On day two, I asked one, then another, to read aloud to me. My request was met with silence, guessing, a fist slammed on the table, and a student storming out of the room. When those sixth grade students finally sat down for a reading assessment, their ability to decode print text was at a first or second grade level.

As a newly minted middle school English teacher, I was shocked by the number of students who entered my classroom unable to decode text. As I got to know them, I saw that herculean efforts to mask their reading disabilities revealed intelligence, determination, and traumatic relationships to school.

Since my first year of teaching, I have dedicated a lot of time to understanding why that happened. With the toxic combination of inaccurate reading assessments and a whole-word approach that encouraged guessing rather than decoding, the Matthew Effect (rich get richer, poor get poorer) has been in full swing in middle schools all around the country. The children who lived in text-rich environments and/or with families who could afford supplemental private tutoring got to “get it.” And those who didn’t? Many never acquired the literacy skills that are tied to power and privilege in this country.

Since my first day of teaching middle school, the “science of reading” — tying reading proficiency to explicit phonics instruction in addition to comprehension work — became a catchphrase for Facebook groups, professional development, and curricula. Lucy Calkins revised her popular but widely criticized “Units of Study” curriculum to include phonics-focused lessons. “Sold a Story,” a podcast series investigating reading instruction, became one of the top podcasts of the year. I also got trained in Wilson Reading Systems, an Orton-Gillingham and multisensory approach to teaching the basic phonics instruction many of my middle school students never received.

In my experience, conversations about the science of reading are happening primarily with elementary and early childhood educators. Those conversations are preventing further literacy injustice and disenfranchisement. But how are we addressing the ways that the system has failed our secondary students when they first learned to read? How can I, a middle school ELA teacher, support the students in my class who were passed along without receiving the literacy instruction they needed?

I am worried that secondary students and secondary education as a whole are being left out of the conversation on how children learn to read. It’s wonderful that (finally!) we are getting to the root of the issue, but what about the young people for whom Tier I instruction comes too late? What about students who, from here on out, will need intensive intervention in order to get on grade level?

I found hope in literacy intervention programs targeting adolescents who lacked key skills.

My former sixth graders are in high school now, preparing for college and careers, but the best preparation they can get is one that helps them, once and for all, become fluent readers. I am concerned that among the excitement of elementary curriculum overhauls, we will leave the children who’ve been wronged even further behind. I am afraid that we’ll do to them what this country has done to people who struggle with literacy since its inception: disenfranchise, hide, and erase.

During that first year of teaching middle school, when I was shocked by the students in my class that struggled to sound out single-syllable words, who guessed based on the first two letters rather than sound out, and who, upon hearing they’d do partner reading, developed looks of panic in their eyes, I found hope in literacy intervention programs targeting adolescents who lacked key skills.

I want more for these students. I want every secondary educator to be trained in not just teaching kids about reading; I want them to be trained to teach their students to read, should one or two or 10 sit down in the back of their class and not know how.

I believe in the power of restorative literacy. Every day, I work with adolescents and pre-adolescents who have slipped through the massive cracks of our education system. What I have witnessed during my five years working in vastly different types of schools is that learning, achievement, and opportunity gaps either dramatically widen or dramatically close in middle school. Passion for social justice within our education systems is insufficient; the actual work — the literacy work — that makes change possible needs to occur.

Shira Engel is a former New Yorker who both attended and taught in New York City public schools. She now lives and teaches seventh and eighth grade Humanities in New Haven, Connecticut, and works as a Wilson tutor for students with dyslexia after school. Shira documents her experiences teaching, reading, and learning on Instagram at @readteachjoy.

Colorado lawmakers reup effort to recognize colleges serving large share of 1st-generation students

2024-03-05T23:57:43+00:00

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Colorado lawmakers are once again pushing to create a designation for colleges and universities that enroll a higher-than-average proportion of students who are the first in their family to go to college.

House Bill 1082 would allow schools to qualify for the designation if their share of these “first-generation students” matches or exceeds a statewide average of these students enrolled in Colorado institutions. About 36% of students enrolled at Colorado’s public higher education schools in 2021 were the first in their family to go to college.

The bill doesn’t say how schools should support these students, and institutions of higher education that receive the designation wouldn’t receive additional state funding. But students who testified in favor of the bill said such a designation would tell them that certain colleges are particularly well-suited to help them succeed, given the diverse challenges they often face.

A similar proposal in the Colorado General Assembly failed last year. The sponsors of this year’s bill said it takes into account concerns they heard about last year’s legislation. For example, this year’s bill doesn’t just rely on how many students schools enroll, but also whether they’re working with national organizations to support students who have no family background in attending college.

Rep. Rick Taggart, a Grand Junction Republican and co-sponsor of the bill, said the state must focus on students who have the hardest time getting to graduation. And as an adjunct professor at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, he’s seen how college can help students who are the first in their family to attend, especially for those from rural parts of the state.

“First-generation students have great potential and they just need our help and guidance and mentoring to grow and prosper,” he said.

The bill cleared the House Education Committee last week. School leaders who were against the bill last year have dropped their opposition.

Colleges and universities would also qualify if they have a First Scholars Network designation from the Center for First-generation Student Success, or a similar group.

The center works with colleges and universities nationwide to provide training, data, and expertise on how to support first-generation students through things like early move-in days, mentors, or specific workshops for students. The center’s network includes 349 institutions nationwide, including Colorado State University Fort Collins and the University of Colorado Denver.

Colorado Mesa University student Liban Shongolo, whose family moved to Colorado from Kenya, said the school has provided academic and financial support to him as a first-generation student. He told state lawmakers that students in his position want to use their education to give back to the state.

“We’re going to great places in life and we’re bettering our communities,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

But while a designation is a way for students to understand their options, what matters most is how schools support them, said Diane Schorr, Center for First-generation Student Success director of first-generation advocacy and initiatives.

Different groups of first-generation students have various challenges that can’t be solved under an umbrella designation. Some are relatively old, or have kids, or are from certain racial groups underrepresented on college campuses. Schools should understand what’s best to help those students, she said.

Schorr also said Colorado would be one of the first states to create a designation. But she also pointed out that among other things, supporting students means providing more money for them.

“While it’s great that they acknowledge the work, there doesn’t seem to be additional funding to support the work,” Schorr said.

Last year, university leaders at schools with relatively low concentrations of first-generation students worried that such a designation would shift state money away from their schools. Like last year, this year’s bill does not affect their funding.

The state does provide funding for schools based on their total student enrollment, as well as their demographics, such as how many students of color or students from low-income backgrounds are enrolled and graduate. Yet that funding calculation hasn’t greatly shifted how much money individual schools get.

Illinois Senate approves plan for how Chicago would elect 10 of 21 school board members in 2024

2024-03-06T00:12:50+00:00

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Chicago voters would elect – for the first time – 10 school board members this November and all 21 members in 2026, according to a plan approved by Illinois senators Tuesday.

The vote on Senate Bill 15 firms up the districts that elected school board members would represent ahead of a looming April 1 deadline to draw a map lawmakers pushed back last spring. It also comes ahead of March 26, when candidates can begin circulating petitions to get on the Nov. 5 ballot. They would need to collect at least 1,000 but not more than 3,000 signatures by June 24 in order to run.

The bill now goes to the House, which must approve the measure before it can head to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk.

The Senate vote appears to resolve a disagreement between lawmakers that emerged last year over whether Chicago should go straight to electing all 21 school board members and skip having a hybrid school board. The original law passed in 2021 laid out a process to have 10 elected members and 11 appointed by the mayor.

Senate President Don Harmon said during the hearing that he filed an amendment to the bill that passed Tuesday because Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote a letter to him at the end of January requesting to stick with a hybrid school board.

“There has been much passion and frustration surrounding this effort, not for days or weeks or months, but for years and decades,” said Harmon during the Senate’s floor debate on Tuesday afternoon. “What we’re about to do today is one of the most consequential things we will do in our legislative careers. We are making a new democratic form of government from whole cloth and getting it across the finish line.”

Chicago’s Board of Education has been appointed by the mayor since 1995, when the state legislature gave control of Chicago Public Schools to then-Mayor Richard M. Daley. In 2021, the state legislature passed a law paving the way for a 21-member elected school board. The school board votes on the district’s annual multi-billion dollar budget, determines how schools are measured, authorizes contracts with vendors to bus students to and from school, clean classrooms and hallways, and even operate entire schools under charter agreements.

Senate majority leader Kimberly Lightford, who represents parts of Chicago’s West Side and western suburbs, said it is time to stop “playing politics” and represent the children who are attending Chicago Public Schools.

“We are here now, punting the ball back and forth from chamber to chamber – if the mayor wants it, if [Chicago Teachers Union] wants it — who cares?” Lightford said. “When are we willing to put politics aside and educate our children? I would love to see that happen before I retire.”

The district map approved by the Senate on Tuesday mirrors a third draft released during the veto session in November, but groups the 20 districts into pairs to create 10 districts for this year’s elections. That aligns with what the House passed last fall which was put forward by Rep. Ann Williams, who represents parts of the city’s North Side and chairs a special task force of House Democrats who worked on drawing school board districts.

There are three majority Black districts, three majority Latino districts, two majority white districts, and two districts with no majority, but a white plurality.

By creating 10 districts for 2024 and dividing them into 20 subdistricts in 2026, Senate Bill 15 would allow everyone in the city to vote for a school board member this November.

During the 2024 elections, if the winning candidate in District 1 lives in subdistrict 1a, the mayor would appoint someone who lives in 1b. In 2026, all 20 school board members would be elected from subdistricts to either a two-year or four-year term and the school board president would be elected citywide to a four-year term beginning Jan. 15, 2027.

Chicagoans who testified at multiple hearings last year raised concerns about the school board representing the students it will eventually serve. The district is 46% Latino, 36% Black, 11% white, and 4% Asian American. However, electoral districts must represent all voters. Chicago’s overall population is 33% white, 29% Latino, and 29% Black.

A Chalkbeat analysis of the demographics of the schools within the boundaries of each of the 10 districts indicates that in four districts, the racial majority of the population does not match the student demographics of the schools in that district.

There is also an imbalance of the number of CPS schools within each district. One district, which stretches from West Town to Austin, has 101 public schools in it, while the north lakefront district that includes Lakeview, Lincoln Park, and Uptown, has 34 CPS schools.

Kids First Chicago, a parent advocacy group, said in a statement it hopes Mayor Johnson will “leverage his appointments to ensure the elected school board reflects our student body’s diversity in 2025.”

Under the bill now headed to the House, the 10 districts would be divided for the 2026 elections, creating 20 districts, seven majority Black, six majority Latino, and five where the population is 50% or more white. Two districts are plurality white, with Latinos making up the second-largest population.

During the Senate’s executive committee hearing earlier on Tuesday, a large number of people were critical of Senate Bill 15. Some want to see a fully elected school board now, while others found the language in the bill confusing.

“Back in November, everybody could vote for the candidate of their choice. Anybody who wanted to run could run and it didn’t matter where they lived or who their neighbor was,” said Valerie Leonard, with Illinois African Americans for Equitable Redistricting, which also pushed for a committee that focuses on Black student achievement at Chicago Public Schools.

Leonard said the move to an elected school board under this plan is confusing. “If you ask 30 people what this bill is today, I guarantee you’re gonna get 30 different answers,” Leonard said. “That’s not good public policy.”

Sen. Robert Martwick, who sponsored the elected school board law that passed in 2021, said on the Senate floor Wednesday that bill also required compromise.

“That’s what the Senate passed. That’s what the House passed. That’s what the governor signed,” said Martwick. “Is it perfect? No. But when you figure out what the perfect form of democracy is, would you let me know?”

Martwick worked with some grassroots organizers and the CTU for several years to make an elected school board a reality in Chicago.

“People volunteered and worked for years and years before I got there,” he said. “We get the privilege of making their dreams of democracy become a reality.”

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois advocates of career and technical education want more funding as demand for programs increase

2024-03-04T23:35:01+00:00

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A decade ago, Latisa Kindred fought to bring back the electricity program at Simeon Career Academy, which had been shut down by the school’s principal due to low enrollment. The effort by Kindred, students, alumni, and elected officials paid off – and the program was reinstated.

Now, Simeon’s career and technical education program, where Kindred continues to teach electricity to high school students, is being held up as a model. Last week, Mayor Brandon Johnson toured the high school, visiting carpentry, electricity, and culinary arts classrooms – and even sampling a large breakfast of sausages, bacon, eggs, potatoes, and toast prepared by the high school’s chefs.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson tours Simeon Career Academy on Mon., Feb. 26, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

“CTE can provide introductions to industries that [students] never knew existed and exposure to opportunities that they never dreamed of,” said Kindred, who has been teaching for about 17 years.

Advocates for CTE programs such as the one at Simeon have praised such programs across the state for introducing students to the trades and helping them land jobs after high school graduation.

In February, Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposed a $10.3 million increase in funding for CTE programs. If the legislature approves his budget proposal at the end of session, the total amount of state funding for CTE programs would be $58 million in fiscal year 2025. Last year, CTE programs received around $48 million in state funding.

This school year, at monthly meetings and during fall budget hearings, CTE advocates asked for a funding increase of at least $10 million from the Illinois State Board of Education. They believe CTE programs can help students get into high-salary jobs right out of high school, grow the state’s workforce and economy, and allow students to start their lives without a large amount of student loan debt. However, data on student outcomes is still unclear, even as school districts like Chicago and across the country continue to invest in CTE programs.

Some school district leaders, educators, and economic developers say they are glad to see a major increase, but think even that might not be enough after years without additional state dollars – between fiscal years 2009 and 2023, state funding stayed mostly flat. They say more is needed due to a rise in demand from students who want to be in CTE programs and the need to expand current facilities and update equipment for classes.

A spokesperson from Pritzker’s office said the governor’s proposal “included a significant increase in CTE funding distributed from general state funds, as opposed to many other states who did not commit to CTE funding beyond the required amount given through Perkins federal dollars.”

Across the state, enrollment for career and technical education programs has gone from around 285,000 students during the 2019-20 school year to about 300,000 students last school year, a 5% increase. Some high school programs have had to turn away students due to lack of space, say school district leaders.

At the state board’s meeting in February, Brad Skertich, superintendent of Collinsville Community Unit School District 10, asked for more funding for CTE programs. In his district, high school juniors and seniors can take classes in fields such as cosmetology, dental assistance, and automotive repair at the Collinsville Area Vocational Center. The vocational center serves students from Collinsville and eight other high schools from districts in the surrounding area.

Skertich said companies are reaching out to his school district to see which students can work in the field after completing the two-year program.

“We have not seen those public-private partnerships before and they’re exploding each year. The demand is more and they’re looking to hire our students,” he said. “So we find ourselves in a unique time.”

The nine high schools connected to the Collinsville Area Vocational Center received about 700 requests from students to enroll in CTE programs during the 2024-25 school year. However, because the center’s maximum capacity is 500 students, it does not have the space to absorb so many students at once, according to Skertich. He said this has happened every year for the past three years and demand for classes continues to grow.

Adam Seaney has seen a similar trend at the Galesburg Vocational Center in Western Illinois. As vocational director of the center, Seaney has seen an increase in demand for programs such as automotive, construction, and nursing.

Seaney said the coalition will continue to “beat the drum” to ask the state for more funding to get more students into programs and to afford equipment.

“When you look at inflationary increases on the equipment that we use in our center and centers across the state. It’s expensive,” said Seaney. “They’re great programs to have and we’re excited to be able to have those programs but it’s expensive.”

Some advocates of career and technical education programs say the programs help increase the number of workers in fields that have shortages, such as nursing, and attract more business to Illinois to help the state’s economy.

For over a decade, said Ken Springer, president of the Knox County Area Partnership for Economic Development, he has heard companies say there were not enough workers in Western Illinois to meet their demands. Now, Springer and his organization work closely with CTE programs at high schools and community colleges to help students find jobs after graduation.

“The story of economic development in the 21st century is about talent. It’s about workforce skills. Every state is competing against each other,” said Springer. “If Illinois wants to continue to be at the head of the pack in terms of being able to attract companies across the state, CTE is one pathway to do that.”

With more Colorado students eating free meals at school, state may cut back the program

2024-03-06T00:22:37+00:00

In the first year that Colorado is paying districts to give students free meals at school, more kids are eating than expected.

That has left the program $56.1 million short this year. And lawmakers are working on how to close the funding gap.

Colorado voters in 2022 supported creating limits on tax deductions for the state’s highest earners as a way to fund free school meals for all students. Advocates at the time said that there were families in Colorado who, due to the state’s high cost of living, were struggling financially even though they didn’t qualify for subsidized meals under federal poverty guidelines.

In calculating the cost of the program, analysts expected that about 25% more children would eat a school meal, including students who would have qualified for free meals already and those who wouldn’t.

Instead, schools this year have seen a more than 35% increase in breakfast participation, and a more than 31% increase for lunch compared with last year.

The higher-than-expected participation — and program cost — is due largely to students who previously had to pay for a school meal. In most cases, the federal government doesn’t reimburse the districts for any part of those children’s meals, leaving the state to cover those costs alone.

In the Cherry Creek School District, district leaders said they are serving about 32,262 meals a day on average, up from 23,317 a day last year — a 38% increase.

The state legislature’s Joint Budget Committee this week agreed to fill the $56.1 million gap this year. About $31.5 million can be covered with additional revenue that has come in from the new tax provision, but the rest will likely need to come from the state’s general fund.

The committee is also providing $100,000 this year, and $150,000 next year, for the Colorado Department of Education to hire a consultant to help come up with solutions that might keep the program on budget next school year. That effort could involve figuring out how to maximize how much money districts get from the federal government.

But lawmakers said the state will consider all options. That includes cutting the program, changing the eligibility rules for free meals, or finding new ways to pay for it, such as pulling money from the education budget.

Committee lawmakers said that changing the eligibility rules would be a last resort.

“There are a lot of families that technically don’t qualify for free or reduced lunch, but man is it a huge help to them making rent,” said Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Democrat from Greenwood Village. “I would be really uncomfortable with anything that puts a means test back into this program.”

Bridges also said a goal of the program was to remove the stigma of eating free school meals by making them available to everyone, not just to students from low-income families.

Advocacy groups are also working on possible solutions. Anya Rose, director of public policy for Hunger Free Colorado, said the group is considering how to make the program more sustainable, including the possibility of a new ballot measure.

Without any changes to the meal program, state analysts predict Colorado will come up short by $27.8 million next year.

In addition to the universal free school meals, voters approved three grant programs that were supposed to be rolled out in the coming school years. The grants were meant to help districts with things like buying Colorado-grown food for meals, providing stipends for kitchen employees, and paying for training or equipment.

For now, those grant programs will be on hold.

Lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee debated this week over whether they had a responsibility to keep the voter-approved program going, regardless of the additional cost to the state.

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican, said that cost calculations have changed and the state has to deal with that.

“All of these warnings were given to us before, and we ignored them,” she said.

Before the plan was put to voters, lawmakers defeated a plan to offer free school meals to all, in part because of concerns about the cost.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Donald Trump falsely claims migrants are displacing NYC students. The city has empty seats.

2024-03-05T23:12:29+00:00

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Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed this week that migrant students are displacing other children from New York City’s schools.

In fact, the city’s public schools have struggled in recent years with the opposite problem: too many empty seats.

Enrollment has ticked up slightly this school year, thanks in part to an influx of migrant students, though still remains about 9% below pre-pandemic levels. Education Department officials have said boosting school rosters is a top priority, as lower enrollment can lead to smaller budgets, mergers, and closures.

In an interview with the Right Side Broadcasting Network on Monday, Trump claimed without evidence that “we have children that are no longer going to school” because of the influx of migrants.

“I’m not blaming them,” he said. “I’m saying they put the students in the place of our students like in New York City. We have these wonderful students who are going to school — all of a sudden they no longer have a seat.”

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request to elaborate on his comments. There is no evidence that any students have been left without a school seat due to the arrival of new migrants, and an Education Department spokesperson said the claims were false.

“We will continue to work with students, families, and partners to ensure that newcomer students have what they need in our public schools and that our schools are well equipped to support these needs,” Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein wrote in a statement.

Immigration advocates also blasted Trump’s comments.

“The idea that we somehow don’t have space or that children are being removed from schools is just completely unfounded,” said Liza Schwartzwald, director of economic justice and family empowerment at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president, has sought to make immigration a centerpiece of his reelection campaign and has escalated anti-immigrant rhetoric, promising to revive a ban from some Muslim-majority countries and refusing asylum claims. He has also swept discussion of education into some campaign stops, claiming at a Saturday rally in Virginia that New York schools are overwhelmed teaching students who speak languages “that nobody ever heard of.”

Since the summer of 2022, Republican governors of southern border states have sent busloads of migrants to cities with Democratic leaders, including New York. Over that period, about 36,000 children who live in temporary housing have enrolled in the city’s public schools — including 18,000 this school year — many of them migrants. (City officials do not ask for a student’s immigration status when they enroll.)

The city’s Education Department is required by law to provide a seat to any school-age child who needs one regardless of their immigration status. Many school communities have worked hard to welcome migrant students and provide appropriate instruction in English and their home language.

And while there is no evidence that migrants have displaced other students, some parent leaders and other groups have protested the new arrivals.

In January, Brooklyn’s James Madison High School pivoted to remote learning for one day after migrant families were temporarily housed there because severe wind threatened tent shelters at Floyd Bennett Field that housed newcomers. The episode generated vitriol from some families and morphed into a talking point for right-wing pundits. But several students and parents were perplexed by the outrage and noted the disruption was minor.

“The hostility towards the migrants was definitely uncalled for,” senior Zola Zephirin told Chalkbeat. “These are people, they have families, they come here and attempt to make a better life, just like many of the students at Madison.”

Schools have sometimes struggled to accommodate newcomers. The enrollment process has been bumpy for some migrant families as the city scrambled to keep up, and schools often can’t hire enough bilingual educators, a long-standing shortage area. At the same time, city officials have tweaked the school funding formula to funnel more dollars to schools with more students living in temporary housing — which benefits schools with more migrant children.

For his part, New York Mayor Eric Adams has sent mixed messages about the influx of migrants. Last year he claimed the influx of migrants would “destroy” the city, drawing outrage from immigrant groups, and has blamed them for cuts to city services. But he also celebrated the uptick in public school enrollment, fueled in part by new arrivals.

Some advocates, including Schwartzwald, see parallels between Trump and Adams’ rhetoric and worry about the climate it creates for asylum seekers, some of which has reverberated in schools. Some students at Newcomers High School, for instance, have sought a name change in part because they fear the label “puts a target on us.”

“When Mayor Adams uses rhetoric where he — just like Trump — tries to create an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ — what he’s saying is not all immigrants are New Yorkers,” Schwartzwald said. “Anyone who comes to New York to make a life is a New Yorker as far as we’re concerned.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

As concerns over antisemitism in schools continue, a new resource helps NYC teachers address questions

2024-03-05T20:01:15+00:00

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As New York City schools grapple with a rise in Islamophobic and antisemitic rhetoric — and high-profile incidents at some local schools have stirred fierce controversy — a new resource for teachers seeks to help address questions over antisemitism.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan has developed an FAQ on antisemitism tailored to educators — with questions pulled directly from what members of a school partnership program heard during their time in the classroom. The guide aims to help teachers across the city navigate discussions about the history of antisemitism and its connections to the current moment.

“All of it is coming from a curious place, and wanting to know more about the history,” Mallory Bubar, director of education and outreach at the museum, said of the questions students are raising in the classroom. “[The FAQ] is a reference point for teachers and something they can share with their students as well.”

The new resource comes as tensions have flared across the city over devastating violence occurring thousands of miles away. In October, Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 240 hostages, with about 130 still captive, according to reports. In response, Israel has conducted a deadly and destructive bombardment of Gaza, fueling a humanitarian crisis and killing over 30,000 Palestinians — including thousands of children — according to local health authorities.

In recent months, both Muslim and Jewish students have told Chalkbeat they’ve seen an increase in hurtful and derogatory comments on social media and at school. A November state review found Islamophobic and antisemitic rhetoric each rose by more than 400% on social media.

Several high-profile incidents at local schools have also garnered media attention, and responses from city officials. In one recent instance, a teacher at Origins High School in Brooklyn alleged the school had seen rampant antisemitism, with little response from administrators.

The city’s Education Department has fiercely refuted the claim. On Tuesday, First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said there were incidents in which students at the school said “inappropriate things,” but he added students were disciplined, and the principal created space to discuss difficult issues in the aftermath, including partnering with the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

“The central claim that was in the initial article about Origins — about students rampaging through the hallway, many of them chanting antisemitic slogans — we can find no evidence of that. None. Zero. Including from educators who were in the hallways on that day,” he said, adding it’s “not helpful to demonize and paint with a broad brush students at an incredibly diverse school.”

The city’s Education Department has taken some broad steps to address concerns across the school system. In January, schools Chancellor David Banks announced all middle and high school principals would receive training “focused on navigating difficult conversations,” while the city would also update its diversity training to more deeply address antisemitism and Islamophobia.

In a museum press release Tuesday, Banks noted the city would be sharing the resource with school communities.

“The need to educate the next generation about antisemitism feels more urgent now than ever, and we are proud and grateful to be longtime partners with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in this important work,” he said.

The FAQ includes information about the history of antisemitism, tracing its origins in antiquity to the Holocaust and to the present moment. It also identifies common antisemitic tropes.

“These tropes and these stereotypes that still exist are rooted deeply in history,” Bubar said. “The hope is that if we provide that historical background, there’s a better understanding of what people might be encountering today.”

The need for the FAQ became clear through the work of an existing partnership with the city’s schools, Bubar added. Last year, participants in the Holocaust Educator School Partnership — a museum program that trains local college students to provide a lesson on the Holocaust and antisemitism in public schools — began encountering questions about antisemitism that neither they nor the teachers felt equipped to answer, she said.

“That’s where these questions came from,” she said. “These were the questions that our interns were being asked in the classroom.”

The program is operating in 52 schools this academic year, working with more than 13,000 students, Bubar said. The museum also expects about 50,000 students to visit on class trips over the course of the year, she added.

Though the museum’s FAQ focuses on antisemitism, it notes in a statement that the organization “opposes antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of hatred, including hatred on the basis of ethnicity, religion, nationality, and other shared group identities.”

It also invites educators to contact the museum with feedback on the FAQ by emailing education@mjhnyc.org.

“We want the feedback: What’s working for teachers? What’s working for students? What else would they like to have included in there?” Bubar said. “Because this truly is being created from what teachers are encountering in their classrooms — and we want it to remain that way.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia district wants more school-based health clinics but state funding is an issue

2024-03-05T21:06:08+00:00

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For many Philadelphians like Mitata Gbondo who have young children, going to the dentist can be inconvenient, costly, and even scary.

So when a dental clinic opened at William D. Kelley Elementary School, which her son attends, Gbondo jumped at the chance to get a free teeth cleaning for herself and her son. She walked up to the third floor of the school at noon on a Thursday, and entered a fully functioning dental office with candy-colored walls and a picture of a smiling toothpaste mascot.

“This experience has been awesome,” Gbondo said.

School-based health clinics, like the dental office at William D. Kelley, are expanding rapidly across the country. Experts say students — especially those who live in low-income communities — who’ve had access to free and comprehensive checkups, screenings, and even behavioral therapy, do better academically and emotionally.

According to data from Education Plus Health, a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbies for more school-based health centers in Philadelphia, in 2022-23, three out of five students who attended a school with a center improved their attendance from the previous school year.

But these clinics are often underfunded, understaffed, and usually can’t operate without the financial support of a hospital, community health partner, or university.

Some 23 states have passed legislation to try to stabilize funding for school-based health centers by dedicating state dollars to the centers in their budgets every year. But Pennsylvania is not one of them.

“We don’t have a robust system of school-based health centers at all,” said Kendra McDow, the School District of Philadelphia’s medical officer.

The district is trying to change that. McDow said it is looking for health care partners to help start new school-based health centers in one or two district schools over the next three years. After that, they want the number to grow, McDow said.

The dental clinic at William D. Kelley Elementary School is staffed by students and faculty from Temple University's Kornberg School of Dentistry.

There are more than a dozen school-based health centers in Philadelphia and 30 in total across the state, according to Julie Cousler, executive director of the Pennsylvania School-Based Health Alliance and Education Plus Health advocacy groups. The majority of them are at private or charter schools. As with school-based health centers nationwide, the ones in Philadelphia schools are funded by a mix of federal aid, insurance reimbursements, philanthropic donations, and some one-time state grant money.

Only three Philadelphia district schools (Building 21, John B. Stetson Middle School, and Vaux Big Picture High School) have comprehensive school-based health centers with nurse practitioners. Edward Gideon Elementary School has a planned clinic that hasn’t opened yet, and Kelley has the dental clinic.

Meanwhile, New York state has 252 centers in schools (146 of those are in New York City), according to the state health department, and Delaware — the first state to mandate centers in every public high school — has more than 50. Newark, New Jersey just opened its first school-based health center in 2023. But recent funding cuts in New York and Delaware have put those centers in jeopardy.

Cousler and McDow said the centers are vital for Philadelphia students in particular because living in cities near several highways, industrial facilities, and other sources of pollution can trigger or exacerbate chronic health problems like asthma. Those chronic health issues can cause students to be frequently absent from school or make it difficult for them to concentrate in class, McDow said.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21% of children in Philadelphia have asthma — more than double the national rate.

“We have high rates of asthma, high rates of uncontrolled asthma, high rates of hospital visits because of asthma,” Cousler said. “We have high rates of mental health distress among kids and high rates of kids not getting the services they need. So we just have to start going to where the kids are.”

McDow said if Philadelphia officials want to make school-based health centers “really work for our city, we have to have funding.” And she said that would mean state-level legislation.

School-based health centers would not get a dedicated funding stream from the state in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s newest budget proposal.

“Right now, there really isn’t any support for school-based health centers and that’s why it’s hard to sustain them,” Cousler said.

The dental clinic is open to all public school students in kindergarten through eighth grade as well as their families regardless of insurance status.

‘A hub of what families would need’

In the early 1990s, under former governor Robert P. Casey, Pennsylvania received a series of grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch a network of school-based health centers in high-need areas, according to Cliff Deardorff, who was the first public health program administrator for the grant for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Between 1987 and 2001, the foundation spent $40 million nationwide on school-based health centers.

Deardorff said there was a lot of momentum around the new initiative.

“It was exciting. This was a new idea for Pennsylvania,” Deardorff said. “We were starting something that we hoped would make a difference.”

But when the grant funding ran out, nearly all of those centers closed. Today, Deardorff said, only one of those original school-based health centers exists.

Deardorff said building community trust around any kind of health center is crucial to keep patients coming back, staff employed, and insurance reimbursements flowing.

“To give somebody a chance to start something like this up, and then, poof, it goes away” was painful, Deardorff said.

But he said he’s hopeful state lawmakers, prompted by advocates like Cousler, might avoid the financial mistakes of the past.

Crystal Edwards, William D. Kelley Elementary’s principal, said it’s been an “honor” to have the dental clinic in her building. She said she’s seen firsthand the good it has done for her students, their families, and even her staff members who can all use the clinic’s services regardless of their insurance status.

“We try to be a hub of what families would need to make sure that their children are not just physically safe, and educationally safe, but psychologically safe and emotionally safe, and I’m just proud to be able to give that to the community,” Edwards said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board vice president resigns

2024-03-04T23:15:09+00:00

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Philadelphia Board of Education Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez has resigned, effective April 18, and has taken herself out of consideration for a future board appointment.

Fix-Lopez cited a planned medical procedure as the reason in a statement on Monday.

In an interview, Fix-Lopez said that with the turn of the new year she got “more concerned about the demand of time.” She has an 8-year-old attending Childs Elementary School in Point Breeze and a 4-year-old who will enter kindergarten there in the fall.

She said she initially applied to stay, but withdrew from the nominating process. “I had planned full steam ahead,” she said, but when she was filling out the kindergarten application, “I slowed down to reflect. The time is too much.”

This unexpected shakeup on the board — where the members are appointed by the mayor — could create an opening for what new Mayor Cherelle Parker intends for the future of the body. Parker has signaled she may be more open to expanding the charter school sector in the city than her predecessor, Jim Kenney, and she could be angling to appoint board members who share her perspective. The board has not approved a new charter school since 2018.

Fix-Lopez said that her resignation was unconnected to any future board appointments.

“I get the optics of the timing. But honestly it’s totally separate,” she told Chalkbeat.

The board serves as the sole charter school authorizer in the city and member terms run concurrent to the mayor’s. In the years when a new mayoral term begins, board terms start on May 1.

The process of naming a new board is underway but has been quiet. Until Fix-Lopez’s resignation announcement, the future of any board members’ positions has been uncertain and Parker’s office has repeatedly declined requests for comment about the process.

Parker has convened her Education Nominating Panel, which is interviewing 121 candidates who applied by the Feb. 1 deadline. The panel is charged with recommending 27 people, three for each of the nine seats. Parker, who took office in January, will make the final appointments, who then must be approved by City Council. The panel next meets on March 12, where it is expected to release their list of recommended candidates.

Parker has not indicated whether she intends to renominate any of the current members or remake the board entirely. Board President Reginald Streater has indicated that he would like to remain.

In a Monday statement, Parker offered “deep thanks” to Fix-Lopez for her service. Streater called her “an incredible educator … who has left an indelible mark on the board” by pushing it “to govern from a student-centered perspective with student achievement at its core.”

Fix-Lopez, who teaches English at Philadelphia Community College, was first appointed in 2018 by Kenney when the district was returned to local control by the state. At the time, a nine-member board replaced the School Reform Commission that had governed the district since 2001.

She was reappointed in 2020 and picked to serve as vice president in 2022 and 2023. Members elect the president and vice president each December.

In her time on the board, Fix-Lopez has been active in establishing and enforcing its Goals and Guardrails since they were approved in 2021 to monitor district progress around academics and set standards for creating welcoming school environments for all students. She took a special interest in district policy regarding transgender and gender-nonconforming students, and in expanding translation services for families who don’t speak English.

She also took the lead in evaluations for both Superintendent Tony Watlington and his predecessor, William Hite.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.