Posts Tagged ‘education’

Morning Read: 24 months to fix state education mandates?

May 17th, 2012 by Brian Mann

The Plattsburgh Press-Republican has a fascinating story in this morning's paper, pointing to the fact that schools in Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties used about $24.7 million dollars in cash reserves to pay for next year's budgets.

The problem is that those fund balances will be tapped out by the end of 2014 or, in the case of some schools, by 2015. The question, of course, is what happens then?  This from Ashleigh Livingston's article:

"If we continue to use $1.5 million in fund balance in 2013-14 and 2014-15, our unrestricted fund balance will be completely gone," said Business Administrator Timothy Whipple.

"The question will become, 'How do we deal with trying to find $1.5 million after the fund balance is all gone and you can only raise property taxes by 2 percent?' Basically, we are looking at three years until we will be facing a huge budget gap," he said.

The Press-Republican article makes an interesting point.  Schools are already being squeezed — schools in Clinton County alone will cut roughly 100 staff positions next year — but these fund balances may be disguising the magnitude of the problem.

Once they're tapped out, with the property tax cap in place, even bigger deficits could open up.

The bigger question, of course, is what New York state and local school boards will do in the meantime.  Mandate reform?  District mergers?

How do you think your district should plan for the next wave of austerity?

Did the property tax cap work in yesterday's school vote?

May 16th, 2012 by Brian Mann

The New York State School Board Association just issued a press release reporting that roughly 93% of the school districts in New York state stayed within the tax cap approved by the state legislature.

Of the 7% or so of schools that exceeded the cap, roughly 60% were approved by voters with a super majority. (Full press release below.)

So what do you think? Is this system working, imposing needed discipline on school districts and their boards of education?

Or does this vote reflect a financial squeeze on districts that will hurt education quality? A little of both? Comments welcome.

New York State voters approved 96.4 percent of school district budgets on Tuesday, May 15, according to an analysis by the New York State School Boards Association.

“Today’s results are a ringing endorsement by voters of their public schools and place an exclamation point on the fact that local school governance works,” said NYSSBA Executive Director Timothy G. Kremer.

Initial statewide results gathered by NYSSBA indicate voters have passed 651 of 675 school district budgets. The number of budgets defeated was 24.

This is the first year school districts have had to contend with a property tax cap. Six hundred twenty-three districts, or 92.8 percent, were at or below their maximum allowable tax levy increases under the cap, and required a simple majority to pass their budgets. Of those districts, 99.2 percent passed.

Forty-eight districts, or 7.2 percent, had budgets that exceeded the tax cap and required a 60 percent “supermajority” to pass. Of those districts, 60.4 percent passed their budgets.

Last year, taxpayers approved 93 percent of school district budgets. The average passage rate since 1969 is 84 percent. The average passage rate for the last five years leading up to this year’s vote is 94 percent.

“The voting public has once again shown its strong support for education. Voters recognized that school leaders did everything they could to comply with the spirit and intent of the property tax levy cap,” said Kremer. “They were responsive to their communities.”

“But keeping within the tax cap required sacrifices,” he said, adding that 99 percent of districts needed to use reserve funds to make ends meet. A majority of districts also cut teaching and non-teaching positions as well as programs and services.

The average statewide tax levy increase of 2.3 percent for 2012-13 is more than a full percentage point below the average of 3.4 percent in 2011-12.

The average proposed spending increase for the 2012-13 school year is 1.5 percent, compared to 1.3 percent in 2011-12, 1.4 percent in 2010-11, 2.3 percent in 2009-10, 5.3 percent in 2008-09, and 6.1 percent in 2007-08.

Kremer cautioned that with dwindling reserve funds, districts are going to need significant mandate relief from the state. While linking state aid to personal income growth sounds reasonable, he said, “we have to recognize that the cost of doing business in New York is simply higher than other states and that has repercussions for school districts. Moreover, outdated state laws such as the Triborough Amendment make it difficult for school districts to get long-term concessions.”

In school districts where the budget failed to pass, a second vote may be held on June 19. School boards may forgo a second vote and adopt a contingency budget. Under state law, a contingency budget requires zero percent growth in the district’s tax levy.

On Tuesday, voters also filled vacancies on their local school boards and voted on separate propositions to fund such needs as school construction or bus purchases.

“Congratulations to all of the newly elected school board members,” said Kremer. “Serving on a school board is one of the most significant and honorable ways to contribute in a local community.”

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About NYSSBA: The New York State School Boards Association represents more than 650 school boards and more than 5,000 school board members in New York. NYSSBA provides advocacy, training, and information to school boards in support of their mission to govern the state's public schools.

In defense of the Three A's

April 21st, 2012 by Brian Mann

Have your kids been introduced to this man?

Two events this past week got me thinking about North Country schools, and particularly a cluster of subjects — the visual arts, music, and foreign languages — that I'll call the Three A's.

First was the report in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise detailing job cuts in the Saranac Lake school district, where my son Nicholas is a High School sophomore.

Three of the positions that will go happen to fall in this area of cultural literacy:  an arts teacher, a foreign language teacher and a music teacher won't be replaced when they retire or move on.

The second event was a happier one.  My son Nicholas walked home from school and literally came shouting into the house that I had to hear a piece of music.

He jacked his I-pod-smart-phone thing into the stereo and cranked it up  and the sound that came booming out of the speakers was Gustav Holst's "The Planets," and in particular "Mars, the bringer of war."

His music teacher had not only introduced him to the piece.  Nicholas was turned on to it, engaged, passionate.

I think it's fair to say that this is — anywhere in America — exactly the kind of experience parents want their kids to have in public school.

But especially in rural places like the North Country, I think it's important, even essential, that educators, school boards, and taxpayers think long and hard about cultural literacy.

As they launch into life from our unique part of the world, our kids need not just the practical skills that will prepare them for a successful work life, but the much broader set of skills that will help them navigate our complex, fast-evolving society

I'm convinced that maintaining the Three A's in our schools is also an essential economic development tool, as the North Country tries to woo young families willing to settle or remain in our small towns.

Some communities offer a lot to people willing to step away from kinetic, urban America.  But if our schools don't offer children a rich, diverse, turned-on experience, parents won't even consider us.

None of this is a knock on the Saranac Lake school district, or on the other districts around the North Country that have made tough, brutal choices during this economic downturn.

In the final equation, very good things are going to be cut.  Everyone will see a sacred cow gored.

And obviously, we need to teach our kids the basics:  how to read and write fluently, a solid foundation in mathematics, a practical core understanding of science.

The people charged with making these choices are heroic.  They clearly have the best interests of our kids in mind.

What I am suggesting, however, is that the Three A's need to be ratcheted up two clicks on the scale of importance.

All too often, in this age of standardized tests, the arts are seen as expendable, and relatively "easy" things to let go.  We can't make that mistake.

That may mean taxpayers cracking open their wallets a little wider.  But I also think districts need to be far more creative about making cultural literacy happen, despite necessary economies.

Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake and Lake Placid are all cutting programs.  What if they partnered to create a single, shared foreign language department?

Taken together, even with fewer people on staff, the three districts might actually offer more language choices.

The same could be done for the visual arts and music.  By merging cultural literacy programs in small, underfunded districts, we might see a real flowering of creative thinking, and passionate public education.

The bottom line is that we can't give up on that fundamental experience, the thing more important than any specific skill, that public schools have to provide.

That is, the opening and energizing of young minds.

Morning Read: Lake Placid's vanishing principal

April 17th, 2012 by Brian Mann

It's been a tough year for Lake Placid's school district, with the Superintendent caught up in a scandal and a growing call for change on the local school board.

Now Chris Morris at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise has broken the story that the Middle-High School principal, Katherine Mulderig, has abruptly departed before the end of the year.

District Superintendent Randy Richards said in an email Friday that Mulderig "is on Personal Leave" and didn't say anything else. But a district employee says Mulderig told him/her that she has accepted a settlement offer from the district and won't return at all.

The employee spoke to the Enterprise on condition of anonymity out of fear of getting fired.

"She had all these boxes packed (in her office), so I asked her what she was doing," the employee said. "That's when we got into the conversation that she was leaving. She had had enough."

Mulderig was entangled in a scandal, in which she accused Richards of describing some female employees of the district as "bitchy" and said they needed a "bitchier" supervisor.  He later apologized.

In February, parents submitted a petition to the Lake Placid school board calling for Richards to be dismissed.  The petition included roughly 600 names.

In a public letter quoted in the Plattsburgh Press-Republican, Richards said, "I have every confidence that we will have a successful end of the school year."

Morning Read: Snail power!

March 19th, 2012 by Brian Mann

Who needs hydro dams and nuclear power plants!  Pah on those hydrofracking projects!  I say snails are the power source of the future.

Okay – actually this is serious stuff, an effort by Clarkson University to research tiny "biofuel cells" that could eventually power things like implanted medical devices.  This from the Watertown Daily Times.

A team of scientists at Clarkson University has developed technology to turn an ordinary snail into a living, moving battery.

The research was published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society with Evgeny Katz, Milton Kerker chaired professor of colloid science at Clarkson, as the lead author.

The technology involves tiny implants, called biofuel cells, charged by chemical reactions in the snail’s blood. Though a snail generates only a tiny amount of electrical charge, the electricity is accumulated in a device called a condenser, which can then power another small device if needed.

Read the full article here.

Buses on the road to Albany

February 29th, 2012 by Martha Foley

State Sen. Patty Ritchie was on hand at 5:30 this morning to see off bus-fulls of kids, parents and teachers on their way to lobby for more school aid.

State Sen. Patty Ritchie at Canton Central, 5:30 a.m. (Photo: Carol Pynchon)k

OK — not a great picture,  but it was dark, and just a cellphone shot.

See our story today…and

follow their progress with us on Twitter today.

Ritchie was soon on the road herself, to beat the buses to the Capitol.

Single moms and PTA dads

February 21st, 2012 by Sarah Harris

This weekend’s New York Times featured two stories that caught my eye: that the majority of women who give birth under the age of 30 are unmarried, and that PTAs across the country are seeing an influx of dads.

These developments, plus the raging debate over whether Catholic institutions are obligated to provide their employees with health care that includes birth control, are all part of how our culture is renegotiating changing ideas of gender and family.

According to the New York Times, that renegotiation has a lot to do with economics.

“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said. Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

And:

“Explanations for marital decline start with home economics: men are worth less than they used to be.”

What do you think? Are you a single parent, and do you see an increasing number of single parents where you live? Are changing rates of marriage different among different sorts of communities? What does it mean if dads are staying home and joining the PTA? Weigh in, North Country. And as always, keep it respectful.

Morning Read: Local school chief chides Cuomo for education hubris

January 6th, 2012 by Brian Mann

As Karen DeWitt reports this morning for NCPR, Governor Andrew Cuomo is taking on the state's public education system, calling for a more kid-focused approach.

Cuomo set up a potential fight with the education establishment during an otherwise mostly congenial State of the State speech, when he chided them for what he says is putting their own interests before those of school children.

He told the crowd that superintendents, principles, teachers, and janitors have their own lobbyists.

“Even the bus drivers have lobbyists,” said Cuomo. “The only group without lobbyists are the students.”

But not everyone appreciated the governor's claim that he would serve as the chief advocate for New York school kids.

The President of the teachers unions does take issue with Cuomo’s claim that the governor is the only true lobbyist for the school children.

“Students have lobbyists in their parents, they have lobbyists in terms of their teachers who see them every day,” said [Richard] Iannuzzi. “And they could use a lobbyist in government, so we welcome the governor to join us.”

Tupper Lake school superintendent Seth McGowan went a step farther, according to the Plattsburgh Press Republican, chiding the governor for his hubris on the issue.

Seth McGowan, who heads Tupper Lake Central School District, was insulted by that part of the State of the State address on Wednesday.

"What gives him the credentials to be a lobbyist for the kids?" McGowan told the Press-Republican. "Does he have any experience or knowledge of public education in New York state? He has no knowledge for understanding how schools work."

So what do you think?  Is Cuomo's aggressive stance on public school reform welcome — or his rhetoric counterproductive?

Morning Read: Saratoga Springs-based Planned Parenthood booted out of schools

January 4th, 2012 by Brian Mann

The Albany Times Union is reporting that a school district in Clifton Park has severed ties with educators from Planned Parenthood, following complaints from parents affiliated with the local Roman Catholic church.

Maureen Shifler, a district parent, was among those who pushed the school to cut its ties to Planned Parenthood. She recruited supporters to her effort through the bulletin at Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church in Clifton Park.

Shifler said a primary concern among the two dozen parents allied to her cause centered around the way abstinence was presented to children and that some parents were not given proper notification about their right to opt out of the coursework. She said that children were being lulled into a false sense of security and that they could still be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases.

"There's a difference between teaching something and promoting something," she said.

Planned Parenthood had been teaching in the district, offering regular seminars on safe sex, abstinence and other reproductive health issues, for twenty years.  Read the full article here.

Morning Read: UVM fraternity asks members who they would choose as rape victim

December 14th, 2011 by Brian Mann

The Burlington Free Press is reporting that a University of Vermont fraternity has been suspended after members allegedly distributed a survey asking, apparently in an effort at humor, about their preferred rape victim.

The Sigma Phi Epsilon survey question was: “If you could rape someone, who would it be?” according to an email from the organization FedUp Vermont and several online blogs. Other blogs listed slightly different wording.

Members of the Burlington fraternity, often called Sig Ep, would not comment. A woman inside the fraternity house was overheard several times telling members, “Don’t answer the door.” Members looked outside at a reporter but did not respond Tuesday night.

Fraternity members did not respond to emails seeking comment, and a phone number was not in service.

Investigations are underway to determine disciplinary action, and to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.  Read the full article here.