News Impacting CA School Districts Through February 26
Federal News
A coalition of education organizations and nearly 100 school districts has called on U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to deny Gov. Schwarzenegger’s request for a waiver to cut K-12 spending as much as he proposes. If Duncan buys their argument, the governor would have to come up with an additional $850 million for schools.
In a proposed change to the No Child Left Behind law, the Obama administration would require states to adopt new academic standards to qualify for federal money from a $14 billion program that concentrates on impoverished students.
Sacramento News
The Legislative Analyst Office has released its fiscal analysis of the four propositions appearing on the June 8 primary ballot.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office has issued its analysis of the state’s education budget in two reports: The 2010-11 Budget: Proposition 98 and K-12 Education and Higher Education.
Reforming State and Local Governance
The Open Primary initiative which will be opposed by the Democratic and Republican parties will be on the June ballot. Considering both parties will be opposing it maybe enough reason to vote Yes to change things in Sacramento.
School District Impacts
Lake Elsinore
Members of the union that represents nonteaching personnel in the Lake Elsinore school district voted to reject a proposal to take a pay cut to help save jobs.
Social Media Stories for Week of February 26
Filed under: Community Engagement, Social Media
Board Members
LinkedIn is considered a social networking site for professionals and has over 50 million members. If you have not created a profile on LinkedIn, I would encourage to consider it. It is a good place to network with other professionals in your community. If you already have a profile on LinkedIn, you can join a LinkedIn groups School Board Trustees and network with other school board trustees.
Schools and the Classroom
Rather then wait for the adults to provide access to student information, a high school senior created an iPhone application that provides class schedule information, grades and more.
A college professor blogs about the pros and cons of a new trend where colleges are allowing seniors to provide a video as a part of the admissions process .
Social Media Stories for Week of February 19
Board Members
If you are a GMail user you may have noticed a new feature in your email: Buzz. This maybe a game changer for social media as Google enters the fray.
Schools and the Classroom
Should a school district be allowed to activate the webcam when any of their student issued laptops are reported lost or stolen? A lawsuit in Philadelphia filed this week will begin to decide the matter.
A Wake County middle-school teacher may be fired after she and her friends made caustic remarks on a Facebook page about her students, the South and Christianity.
In the 1983 movie War Games, a young Matthew Boderick gained access to the nation’s defense systems. Did the same thing happen when bored Chinese students hacked into Google? Do you want to a play a game?
Community Engagement
The simple act of asking for others opinion via a survey is the first step in the engagement process. The next step is sharing the results so a conversation can begin around shared values. This process is happening in Sacramento.
News Impacting CA Schools for the Week Ending February 19
Federal
The White House and the Department of Education have announced a new Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge and are inviting public schools across the country to compete to have President Obama speak at their graduation.
Sacramento
The state Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would require Amazon.com and other online retailers to charge sales tax on purchases in California, generating an estimated $107 million a year. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to veto the measure when Democrats proposed it last year, and it stalled in committee. But Democrats reintroduced it Thursday in a tax enforcement bill that was part of a $5 billion budget package moving through the Legislature.
Reforming State and Local Governance
Labor unions have contributed 1 million dollars into a proposed ballot measure that would change the legislative vote requirement to pass a state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority. The committee is backing the “On-Time Budget Act of 2010”. The proponents have until May 10 to gather valid signatures from at least 694,354 registered voters in order to put the proposed constitutional amendment on November’s ballot.
Social Media Stores for the Week of February 12
Board Members
As you venture forth into social networking arena, I am sure you are concerned about your personal privacy and the implications on your school district. For one point of view, the European Union has issued Seventeen Golden Rules for Keeping Safe on Social Networks.
Schools and the Classroom
Audits of the U.S. educational system have revealed that the highest hurdle to adopting skills-based teaching practices is the lack of an easily implementable curriculum. Enter social video games as a solution — immersive environments that simulate real-world problems. Today, technologically eager schools are replacing textbook learning with social video games, and improving learning outcomes in the process.
Wesley Fryer’s article on User Friendly Media, helps teachers locate “copyright friendly media”.
Community Engagement
Online surveys sponsored by school districts to reach feedback about budget priorities is a useful tool. More than 11,000 people took a survey sponsored by the Sacramento City Unified School District, including 4,200 students.
Publishing a recap of school board meetings with links to documents is a way to improve engagement with the community as well as build credibility.
News Impacting CA School Districts Through February 12
Federal News
The Obama administration trumpeted last fall that school districts had used stimulus money to save, or create, some 250,000 education jobs. Now the new studies point to the problems likely to beset thousands of school districts when the federal money runs out.
A new task force is charged with developing an interagency action plan to solve the problem of obesity among our Nation’s children as part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign. The campaign will take a comprehensive approach to engage both public and private sectors to help children become more active and eat healthier within a generation, so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight.
State Controller John Chiang reported that California collected $1.28 billion more in January tax revenues than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger projected in his current budget plan.
Reforming State and Local Governance
Staggered by a 25 percent loss in the last fiscal year, the board of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System began crafting a strategy to petition lawmakers for higher rates. CalSTRS gets more than $6.6 billion in annual contributions from the state, school districts and teachers. About $1.6 billion of that comes from the state.
Social Media Stories for the Week of February 5
Board Members
Do not underestimate the power of email. Over the past seven years I created email lists of over 1,000 email addresses from Board member email correspondence. By creating lists like Parents, Employees and Community, you can send periodic updates to targeted groups. It also helps come election time.
Schools and the Classroom
When examining the employee implications of implementing social media, a review of policies and practices should be done. For examples you can review an online database of social media policies and guidelines developed for Intel employees.
For teachers who using blogs in their classrooms it is recommended to use comment moderation for ALL blog posts and other social media websites they setup for use with K-12 students.
Do schools have to archive student email? It depends .
Community Engagement
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is a part of a series of reports undertaken that highlight the attitudes and behaviors of the Millennial generation, a cohort of adults ages 18 to 29. The latest report focuses teenagers usage compared to the Millennial generation. Here is a recap of the report showing usage patterns of social media among teens to adults.
An overnight success ten years in the making, social media is as transformative as it is evolutionary. At last, 2010 is expected to be the year that social media goes mainstream for business. Typically, public education will another ten years behind the adoption by business. Here are the ten stages of social media integration .
News Impacting CA School Districts Through February 5
Federal News
As part of its commitment to transparency in governance, the Department of Education is providing the public with the applications it received from states applying to the Race to the Top program.
Sacramento News
The Legislative Analyst Office issued a report Education Mandates: Overhauling a Broken System. The report recommends eliminating the remaining mandates either in whole or part. By relieving schools from performing the vast majority of K–14 mandate requirements, resulting in more than $350 million in annual savings.
State Controller John Chiang issued a stern warning about California’s cash reserves, telling legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger they must act on nearly $9 billion in budget cuts the governor is seeking by March — or the state will run out of cash to pay its bills.
The San Diego Unified School District is working to eliminate the costly state penalties that come with raising class sizes past 20 students in the earliest grades. District administrators are working to help establish legislation that would suspend the fines at a time when the state is slashing funding to public education. San Diego Unified is working with local lawmakers to carry a bill.
Reforming State and Local Governance
Californians haven’t a clue where the state gets its money or how it spends it — basic essentials for people who want to run the show.
The California Teachers Association plans to begin gathering signatures for an initiative to repeal corporate tax benefits that lawmakers approved in the past two years. The tax changes are worth an estimated $1.7 billion annually and scheduled to begin in 2011-12. CTA wants to qualify the initiative for the November 2010 ballot.