Good afternoon. This has been an important week for
The Rural Bond Bank Survey, referred to in the second
topic, is appended following my signature.
State
Board Meeting,
The State Board of Education will meet Wednesday, March
19, and Thursday, March 20, in the
As announced in the mailing I sent on
Monday, March 10, the new financial profile for all school districts, including
the new watch and early warning lists, will be made public at next week’s
meeting.
News
Conference Emphasizes Need to Pay 23rd & 24th GSA
Payments in June
Senate President Emil Jones and members of the downstate
caucus held a news conference this week to emphasize the need for the Governor
to continue the practice of accelerating the final two General State Aid
payments into June, to enable schools to get the money in this fiscal year. The
group was responding to rumors that the governor might have to pay the last two
payments as scheduled in July because of the state’s budgetary problems. I was
asked to be at the news conference, as were a number of other educators, to
reinforce the need for the funds and the supplemental needed to fully fund the
final payment. Senate Bill 1, sponsored by the Senate President, will be amended
to move to 22 GSA payments to be paid August through June each year. It also
includes a continuing appropriation that would ensure that schools could count
on full foundation funding, even if such an appropriation is not passed by the
legislature.
Governor Blagojevich has continually emphasized his high
priority on education and exempted grants for elementary and secondary schools
from his call for state agencies to cut spending for the remainder of the fiscal
year. However, he had not yet committed to speeding up the July payments into
June. In reports on the news conference, news stories quote the governor’s
spokesman as saying “the governor has made education one of his top priorities
and he has made it very clear he intends to get the payments out on time.”
The Illinois Rural Bond Bank, with assistance from the
Office of the Lieutenant Governor, and support from the State Board of Education
is developing a pooled tax anticipation warrant program to provide short-term
finance solutions for
For further information about the Illinois Rural Bond
Bank, visit their Web site www.irbb.org.
Qualified
Paraprofessionals under the No Child Left Behind Act of
2001
Because so many districts are engaged in hiring for next
year or making “reduction in force” decisions, we have received a significant
number of questions about the requirements for paraprofessionals included in
the No Child
Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The
following summary is designed to answer at least some of those
questions.
Who
Must Meet the Paraprofessional Qualification
Requirements?
The recently released final NCLB regulations relating to
the qualifications of teachers and paraprofessionals clarify that the
paraprofessional qualification requirements apply only to
paraprofessionals who are
What
Does It Mean To Be A Program Supported with Title I
funds?
Within a school district, Title I monies are directed
to
In targeted assistance schools, the NCLB
paraprofessional qualification requirements apply only to
paraprofessionals who are providing instructional support and whose
salary is funded by Title I funds.
In schools with “schoolwide programs,” the NCLB
paraprofessional qualification requirements apply to all
paraprofessionals who are providing instructional services within that school,
regardless of how the individual’s salary is supported.
What
about Cooperative Settings?
Those paraprofessionals who provide instructional
support in a cooperative setting such as an area vocational setting or a special
education cooperative setting are not required to meet the NCLB qualification
requirements unless:
·
the setting is a targeted
assistance school as delineated on ISBE’s Consolidated Application
for Titles I, II, IV and V Funding, or
·
a schoolwide Title I school as so
indicated on that application.
Only in rare circumstances are special schools
designated as a Title I school and those of you with responsibility for special
schools should already be aware of such a designation.
What
Does it Mean to Provide Instructional Support?
Paraprofessionals for the purposes of NCLB are
defined as individuals who provide instructional support. Under the regulations,
instructional support includes
A paraprofessional is considered to be working under the
direct supervision of a teacher when
Individuals who have only non-instructional duties, such
as providing technical support for computers, translation services, parental
involvement roles, providing personal or custodial care services, or performing
clerical duties are not included in the definition of paraprofessionals under
NCLB.
What
are the NCLB Qualifications Requirements?
Paraprofessionals who come under the Act must be
qualified through one of the following options:
All paraprofessionals newly hired after
What
Does It Take to Meet a Rigorous Standard of
Quality?
Paraprofessionals qualifying under the “rigorous
standard of quality” option must have a secondary school diploma or its
equivalent, but the receipt of a high school diploma is not sufficient to
satisfy the requirements for meeting this standard.
The State Board has endorsed three routes
for meeting this criterion in the relatively near future:
Next week, the State Board will take action on
recommended passing scores for the ParaPro Assessment and the WorkKeys tests. My
recommendations will be on the State Board Web site sometime today and the
Board’s decisions will be communicated to you in next Friday’s message and on
the Web site. We will also provide, as quickly as possible, information about
these tests, how and where they can be accessed, costs, and other relevant
information.
For the longer term, we are working with the Illinois
Community College Board to design and implement an AAS degree and certificate
for paraprofessional educators. Information on that option will be provided as
it becomes available.
This is an important issue that has implications for
your districts and your employees. We are moving as quickly as we can to provide
a variety of options that will allow current and prospective paraprofessionals
to meet the NCLB qualification requirements. You can help by making the
information in this message available to everyone with an interest in
paraprofessional qualification and by sending your additional questions to us by
e-mail, at NCLB@isbe.net.
A chart on the ISBE Web site (http://www.isbe.net/pdf/povertycounts.pdf)
provides data from poverty counts by three entities: (1) the federal
decennial census, currently required to be used for the GSA Poverty Grant; (2)
the federal Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) count, which is the
basis for Title I funding; and (3) the Department of Human Services (DHS) count,
which is the recommendation of the Education Funding Advisory Board. Comparison
of these data is important because of their use in calculating state
aid.
HB430, which is supported by the State Board, would
amend the school code to provide that in calculating supplemental general state
aid that “Low-Income Concentration Level” is defined as the low-income eligible
pupil count from the most recently available federal census or the low-income
eligible pupil count determined by the Department of Human Services based on
those students who are eligible for food stamps or Medicaid, whichever pupil
count is greater, divided by the Average Daily Attendance of the school
district. If passed, the law would become effective
Copies
of the FY2004 Budget and Annual Report
Available
As I announced in a previous message, the 2002 Annual
Report and FY2004 budget are available on the ISBE Web site at http://www.isbe.net/pdf/annual02budget04.pdf;
however, as those two documents are useful tools for understanding the scope and
direction of
TECH
Fair
TECH 2003 – Students
for the Information Age will take place on
Previously known as
TECH 2000, TECH 2003 is a not-for-profit initiative, which for 12 years has
been supported by a broad range of education and business organizations. Its
goal is to raise awareness of the critical role of technology in preparing
students to succeed in today’s world, the need for increased funding for
classroom technology, and the role technology plays in preparing students for an
information-based world. More information about TECH 2003 is on the Web page at
http://www.springfieldtech2000.org.
Robert Schiller
State Superintendent
of
Education
statesup@isbe.net
POOLED
TAX ANTICIPATION WARRANT PROGRAM FOR ILLINOIS SCHOOL
DISTRICTS
PARTICIPATION
SURVEY
The Illinois Rural Bond Bank is developing a pooled tax
anticipation warrant program for
________________________________________________________________________________
___ My District issued tax anticipation warrants in
calendar year 2002.
·
If yes, please indicate the
following:
What is the amount your District
issued in 2002? _________________________
In which month did your District
issue tax anticipation warrants? ____________
___ My District expects to issue tax anticipation
warrants in 2003 (against second installment of 2002
taxes).
·
If yes, please indicate the
following:
What amount does the District
estimate it will issue?_______________________
Please indicate the month of the
District’s largest deficit ____________________
In which month does it expect to
issue warrants? _________________________
___ My District expects to issue tax anticipation
warrants between November of 2003 and April of
2004.
·
If yes, please indicate the
following:
What amount does the District
estimate it will issue? _______________________
Please indicate the month of the
District’s largest deficit ____________________
In which month does your District
anticipate it will sell warrants? ____________
County: ____________ Contact Person:
_______________________________
Mailing address:
_____________________________________________________
Telephone Number: _________________ E-mail address:
____________________
Thank
you for your participation. Information will be forthcoming about this new and
exciting program for