I started the week listening to
administrators who were beside themselves about a recent letter sent out to them
by the Governor’s Office about his Education Plan. Administrators were concerned
that in order to get the promise of A (funding reform)
they would have to support B (the Governor’s Education
Plan).
By mid-week the Governor dismissed the
letter. He said that he didn’t know about it and dismissed any promise made of
addressing funding. So I assume that the Governor has washed his hands of the
funding issue.
Fortunately – no one else has. Looking at
the events of the past week, all of us should appreciate the many different
voices that are coming together to articulate a common theme:
This week when we were in
Just yesterday the State Board debated how
to prioritize $400 million – an inadequate amount of new money for education
next year. At the same time the House was approving a $250 per pupil General
State Aid increase. All of you know that the GSA increase would absorb almost
all of the $400 million. Again we need A!
The Board also approved the financial
profiles for 2004, and considering that $400 million doesn’t meet the needs of
school districts statewide, members began to ask each other what programs are
districts cutting to stay afloat? What programs will never see the light of day
again? How many school librarians, aides and teachers do we need to lay off? How short can a school day actually go? What will it
take (districts ‘shuttering their schools’?) to bring serious attention to the
funding issue? It is unfair to make pledges that we will not balance the budget
on backs of taxpayers, when we are currently bleeding schools dry at the expense
of students many of whom no longer know what a well-rounded curriculum
is!
I was asked following the board meeting
Thursday if there is a correlation between schools that are in Academic Warning
or Watch Status and those on Financial Watch. While the analysis hasn’t been
done in quite a few years, I do believe that one does affect the other. And if
forced to, school districts cutting programs will more than likely see sudent
achievement and performance decline.
We remain committed to the solution. I hope
to continue to hear all of our voices speaking out about fair funding in
unison.
Robert
Schiller
State
Superintendent
of Education
Also in today’s
message:
·
Legislative
update
·
Assessment Test
Dates
·
ISBE adds
·
NIU Survey
Results
·
Updates to the State and Federal
Grant Administration Policy Handbook
·
Summer Food Services
Program
·
Help Students Avoid
Bankruptcy
·
SchoolMatch
·
Newsclips
Legislative
Update
The Illinois
General Assembly returned this week and began considering
many important educational issues. On March 22, the Senate Education
Committee held a special hearing in
There will likely
be a special downstate hearing convened by the Senate Education Committee
regarding Senate Bills 3000 and 3001 in the near future.
On March 24, I
testified before the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee in
opposition to SB1074, legislation that would create an autonomous Teacher
Board.
SB1074 passed the Senate last year, but has not advanced in the House of
Representatives. As currently drafted, this legislation gives teacher
unions control of the autonomous board with six of the eleven members being
teachers appointed by the IEA and the IFT.
In my opinion,
SB1074 is bad public policy. If enacted, it would give teachers the power to
self-regulate in a manner not afforded other professions in
A follow-up
hearing on SB1074 has been scheduled for April 1.
The following
education-related bills passed out of the House last
week:
HB4266
(William
Davis), which unanimously passed the House,
proposes an increase in the foundation level of support from $4,810 to $5,060
per pupil. Based on preliminary data, raising the foundation level by $250
per pupil will cost approximately $396.5
million.
HB4431
(Ruth
Munson) attempts to assist rapidly growing school
districts by providing for a grant to be paid if there has been an increase in a
school district's student population over any 2 consecutive school years of (i)
over 1.5% in a district with over 10,000 pupils in average daily attendance or
(ii) over 10% in any other
district.
HB3942
(Mary E.
Flowers) requires a school board to publish each
school's lunch menu and the nutrition content, including calories, of each meal
item. It allows the board to determine the frequency and manner of
publication. It further amends the Critical Health Problems and
Comprehensive Health Education Act by requiring a comprehensive health education
program to include instruction in secondary schools on clinical depression and
suicide prevention. The bill has been assigned to the Senate
Health & Human Services
Committee.
HB4444
(Randall M.
Hultgren) authorizes the levy of
life safety taxes and issuance of life safety bonds for alteration or
reconstruction of bleachers.
HB4688
(Marlow H.
Colvin) establishes the Grow Our Own Teacher
Education Initiative to prepare highly skilled, committed teachers who will
teach in hard-to-staff schools and hard-to-staff positions and who will remain
in these schools for substantial periods of time. It provides that the State
Board of Education shall administer the Initiative as a grant competition,
subject to appropriation, to fund consortia that will carry out Grow Our Own
Teacher preparation programs. An identical bill, SB1550
(Iris
Y. Martinez), also passed the Senate.
The following education-related bills
passed out of the Senate last week:
SB2115
(Miguel
del Valle) sets the conditions under which a
student may be denied enrollment into school for one semester for failing to
meet minimum academic or attendance standards if certain conditions are
met. It also requires a district to identify, track, and report on the
educational progress and outcomes of reenrolled
students.
SB2135
(Susan
Garrett) Creates a K-3 class size reduction grant
program to be implemented and administered by the State Board of Education. It
provides that only those schools that are on the early academic warning list or
academic watch list and that maintain grades K-3 are grant eligible and must use
the grant funds to defray the costs and expenses of operating and maintaining
classes in grades kindergarten through 3 with an average class size within a
specific grade of no more than 20 pupils. If a school's facilities are
inadequate to allow for this specified class size, then a school may use the
grant funds for teacher aides instead. The bill is subject to
appropriations.
SB2360
(Kimberly
A. Lightford) proposes a student achievement improvement grant program to
provide two-year grants to school districts on the academic watch list and other
school districts that have the lowest achieving
students.
SB2362
(John
M. Sullivan) would ensure the recent tax amnesty funds received by many
school districts will not be included in calculation of available local
resources.
SB2732
(Vince
Demuzio) would establish, subject to
appropriations, a three-year technology immersion pilot project to provide a
wireless laptop computer to each student, teacher, and relevant administrator in
a participating school and implement the use of software, on-line courses, and
other appropriate learning technologies that have been shown to improve academic
achievement and specified progress measures. It provides that the State
Board of Education shall select seven (instead of eight) school districts to
participate in the pilot project, one located in the City of Chicago, three
located in the area that makes up of the counties of DuPage, Kane, Lake,
McHenry, Will, and that portion of Cook County that is located outside of the
City of Chicago, and three located in the remainder of the State. A
similar measure, HB 4944, also passed the
House.
SB2769
(Miguel
del Valle) is designed to ensure that every student
takes the Prairie State Achievement Examination prior to receiving a high school
diploma.
SB2918
(Miguel
del Valle) proposes a new graduation incentive
program. It increases the compulsory school age to 17 (with exceptions)
and creates incentives for school districts to recover dropouts. The
proposal also provides possible reimbursement for dropouts who wish to attend
vocational training programs offered through the community college system, or
approved vocational training programs.
SB2995
(Dale
A. Righter)
Provides that for school
districts that have consolidated within a prior fiscal year, the grant index
shall be calculated for each of those school districts that form the new school
district. It also ensures that whichever grant index is the highest shall be
used as the grant index for the newly consolidated school
district.
SB3091
(Frank
C. Watson) would allow a joint agreement made up of school districts, or a
regional superintendent of schools on behalf of programs operated by the
regional office, to apply for a waiver or modification of
mandates.
SB3109
(Miguel
del Valle) requires the State Board of Education to
establish a system to provide for the accurate tracking of transfer students. It
provides that the system shall require that a student be counted as a dropout in
the calculation of a school's or school district's annual student dropout rate
unless the school or school district to which the student transferred sends
notification within 150 days to the school or school district from which the
student transferred documenting that the student has enrolled in the transferee
school or school district.
2005 Test
Dates
In response to the need for earlier scoring
and reporting of data, especially for the AYP calculations in reading and math,
ISBE staff had proposed moving the test dates earlier for the 2004-05 school
year. School districts have expressed concern over shortening the time to
prepare for the ACT. On Thursday, March 25, the Illinois State Board of
Education reviewed possible alternatives to moving the PSAE dates forward and
adopted the following testing schedule for the spring of
2005:
|
Test |
Dates |
Notes |
|
ISAT |
March
7-18 |
Districts may apply for modification to
accommodate spring breaks. |
|
PSAE |
April
27-28 |
The makeup tests are scheduled for May
11-12. |
|
IMAGE |
March
7-18 |
Districts may apply for modification to
accommodate spring breaks. There will be no modification to move
testing to PSAE dates. |
This schedule of slightly earlier ISAT and
IMAGE administrations and keeping the PSAE dates in April (with make-ups in
mid-May) will allow for preliminary reporting of reading and math scores for AYP
calculations by the end of June with reporting of the scores in the other
subject areas by July. ISBE staff was also instructed by the Board to
pursue a shortening of the 45-day review time frame in order to facilitate
earlier status notification to the districts.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may
have caused in planning your school calendars for next year. The State Board
agreed with the concerns expressed by many of you regarding the prep time for
the ACT and supported the PSAE remaining in April. We hope this new schedule
meets everyone’s needs.
State Board of Education
adds Dolton as Supplemental Educational Service
Provider
The State Board of Education this week
approved a South Suburban Chicago school district as provider of Supplemental
Educational Services (SES), and announced that is looking at other states to
recruit more.
The Board approved
The addition of
In addition to other pending applications
ISBE is also taking a proactive approach to recruiting more providers.
ISBE is contacting eight neighboring states for a list of their SES
providers. We will be inviting these approved providers to submit
applications to offer services.
NIU Policy Survey
Results
http://www.niu.edu/PubAffairs/RELEASES/2004/march/edsurvey.shtml
Updates to the State and
Federal Grant Administration Policy Handbook
The Division of Funding and Disbursement
Services has recently updated the State and
Federal Grant Administration and Fiscal Requirements and Procedures
Handbook located at http://www.isbe.net/funding/pdf/fiscal_procedure_handbk.pdf
Included are ISBE policy statements on the
proper administration of grant funds as well as information regarding grant
budgets, expenditure reports, interest income, record retention, function and
object descriptions and required audits. The most significant update is
the new language added to the Required Audits page which includes a reference to
the federal Office of Management and Budget Circular A-87 which outlines cost
principles and standards for determining costs for federal awards. As the
responsible pass-through agency of various federal awards, ISBE requires that
the provisions contained in this circular are fulfilled and confirmed by a local
education agency audit. In addition, ISBE staff will audit against this
standard during regular compliance visits. Further details and information
regarding these cost principles can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars/a087/a087-all.html
If you have questions regarding the
information in this handbook, please contact Division of Funding and
Disbursement Services staff at 217-782-5256.
Summer Food Service
Program
The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) was
established to ensure low-income children continue to receive nutritious meals
when school is not in session. Free meals, that meet federal nutrition
guidelines, are provided to all children at approved SFSP sites in areas with
significant concentrations of low-income children. SFSP operates during
school vacations, primarily in the summer months—from May through
September.
Contact Amy Bianco at 800/545-7892 or visit
the Nutrition Programs and Support Services SFSP’s website at http://www.isbe.net/nutrition/htmls/summer.htm
for more information or
assistance.
Help Students Avoid
Bankruptcy
In response to the large number of young
people and students filing for bankruptcy a website has been created by
Chattanooga State College. The National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges
encourages you to share this resource with your students. Please
visit:
http://webctdev.chattanoogastate.edu/bankruptcy/index.htm
SchoolMatch
The nationally recognized SchoolMatch
public school database is compiled from auditable information gathered annually
state by state from county assessors, county auditors, state taxing authorities,
state departments of education, etc.
School administrators, businesses, and
parents from around the country access the information to assist them in
relocating, updating their residences, or to examine school system improvement
based upon the performance of similar schools.
For additional information visit www.schoolmatch.com
Newsclips
http://www.isbe.net/news/2004/newsclips/040326.htm