The Network for Public Education is launching a campaign to fight back against the Trump-DeVos budget cuts to public schools and budget gains for privatization.
Open this link, join our action, and send it to your friends!
Archives for category: Budget Cuts
Media experts warned that the elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will bring an end to public media in small and rural communities. The giants in large markets like New York City will survive, but not the smaller markets.
“Public radio and television broadcasters are girding for battle after the Trump administration proposed a drastic cutback that they have long dreaded: the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
“The potential elimination of about $445 million in annual funding, which helps local TV and radio stations subscribe to NPR and Public Broadcasting Service programming, could be devastating for affiliates in smaller markets that already operate on a shoestring budget.
“Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s president, warned in a statement on Thursday that the Trump budget proposal, if enacted, could cause “the collapse of the public media system itself.”
“But the power players in public broadcasting — big-city staples like WNYC in New York City — would be well-equipped to weather any cuts. Major stations typically receive only a sliver of their annual budget from the federal government, thanks to listener contributions and corporate underwriters. Podcasts and other digital offshoots have also become significant sources of revenue.
“Rural affiliates, however, rely more heavily on congressional largess, which can make up as much as 35 percent of their budgets. Mark Vogelzang, president of Maine Public, called the Trump proposal “the most serious threat to our federal funding” since he started in public broadcasting 37 years ago.
“We’re always living on the edge in this ecosystem of public broadcasting,” Mr. Vogelzang said in an interview.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports about 1,500 stations that carry a range of educational, journalistic and arts-related programming. The corporation dates to the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. Its funding, while a minuscule part of the federal budget, has been under regular peril since the 1970s from conservative lawmakers, who often denounce what they view as the liberal bent of public media.”
AASA Executive Director Responds to President Trump’s FY18 Budget Proposal
Alexandria, Va. – March 16, 2017 – Earlier today, President Trump released details for his FY18 budget proposal. It is a “skinny budget,” in that it only covers discretionary funding, and within that, doesn’t fully list the impact on all discretionary programs. The proposal cuts funding to the U.S. Education Department by $9 billion (13 percent). It provides a $1 billion increase for Title I, but the increase is for states and districts to use for portability and choice. This is in addition to a new $250 million school choice/voucher program and a $168 million increase for charters, bringing the total amount of NEW funding in the President’s budget for choice to $1.4 billion. The budget level funds IDEA, eliminates ESSA Title II Part A and eliminates the 21st Century Community Learning Centers.
In response to this budget proposal, AASA Executive Director Daniel A. Domenech released the following statement:
“AASA is deeply concerned that the first budget proposal from the new administration doesn’t prioritize investment in the key federal programs that support our nation’s public schools, which educate more than 90 percent of our nation’s students. While we would normally applaud a proposal that increases funding for Title I by $1 billion, we cannot support a proposal that prioritizes privatization and steers critical federal funding into policies and programs that are ineffective and flawed education policy. The research on vouchers and portability has consistently demonstrated that they do not improve educational opportunity and leave many students, including low-income students, student with disabilities and students in rural communities-underserved. AASA remains opposed to vouchers and will work with the administration and Congress to ensure that all entities receiving federal dollars for education faces the same transparency, reporting and accountability requirements.
“AASA is disappointed at the significant cuts proposed to critical education programs, including the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Title II. FY 18 dollars will be used by schools across the nation in just the second year of ESSA implementation, and the idea that this administration thinks that schools can do this work—and the administration claim they support this work—without supporting teachers and teacher leaders, and their professional development, is a deeply disconcerting position.
“As recently as yesterday, Secretary DeVos indicated an interest in supporting state and local education agencies, and ‘to returning power to the states whenever and wherever possible.’ AASA is concerned that while the Department indicates it wants to return power, the proposed funding levels—including continued level funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and cuts to core programs in ESSA—deeply undercut state and local efforts in these areas and expand the reality of federal requirements without commensurate support, further encroaching on state and local dollars. The return of power, however well intended, when systematically and deliberately paired with low funding, translates into unfunded federal requirements.
“AASA remains committed to parity between defense and non-defense discretionary (NDD) dollars, and we are deeply opposed to the proposed $54 billion increase in defense discretionary spending being offset by NDD spending cuts. AASA supports robust investment in our nation’s schools and the students they serve, and we support increased investment for both defense and NDD funding by lifting the budget caps, as set forth in the Budget Control Act of 2011, for both. NDD programs are the backbone of critical functions of government and this proposed cut will impact myriad policy areas—including medical and scientific research, job training, infrastructure, public safety and law enforcement, public health and education, among others—and programs that support our children and students.
“Increased investment in education—particularly in formula programs—is a critical step to improving education for all students and bolstering student learning, school performance and college and career readiness among our high school graduates. AASA remains hopeful that our President, who has consistently articulated an interest in growing our economy, growing jobs, and keeping this nation moving forward, will recognize the unparalleled role that education plays in each of these goals and work to improve his FY18 budget to increase investment in the key federal K12 programs that bolster and improve our nation’s public schools, the students they serve and the education to which they aspire.”
###
About AASA
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, founded in 1865, is the professional organization for more than 13,000 educational leaders in the United States and throughout the world. AASA’s mission is to support and develop effective school system leaders who are dedicated to the highest quality public education for all children. For more information, visit http://www.aasa.org.
Thanks for Jim Harvey of the National Superintendents Roundtable for this breakout of Trump’s budget cuts:
On Thursday, March 16, the Trump administration released a preliminary budget plan for Fiscal 2018 that proposed huge increases in defense-related spending and corresponding cuts in domestic programs, including education. According to stories in The Washington Post, the budgetary impact across government agencies and the U.S. Department of Education includes the following:
Agency
Change from Fiscal 2017
THE LOSERS:
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
– 100%
National Endowment for the Arts
– 100%
National Endowment for the Humanities
– 100%
Environmental Protection Agency
– 31%
State Dept. and USAID
– 29%
National Institutes of Health
– 20%
Department of Education
– 13%
Transportation
– 13%
National Science Foundation
– 10%
THE WINNERS:
Department of Defense
+ 10%
Homeland Security
+ 7%
Veterans’ Affairs
+ 6%
With regard to the U.S. Department of Education, proposed cuts amount to $9.2 billion, according to the Post. Significant programs are on the chopping block, while funds are added to promote the administration’s school choice agenda:
Program Change from 2017
Grants to states for teacher training
– $2.4 billion
Grants to colleges for teacher preparation
– $43 million
Impact Aid
– $66 million
Special Education
No Change
College Work-Study
Reduce “significantly”
Upward Bound & Related TRIO Programs
– $200 million
SEOG program for low-income college students
– $732 million
Pell Grants
No Change
Pell Reserves
– $3.9 billion
School Choice, made up of:
+ $1.4 billion
Title I Portability
+ $1 billion
Charter Schools
+ $168 million
Private school choice
+ $250 million
The Trump administration offered a budget that would deeply cut the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department, eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as the Legal Services Corporation. There will be cuts to the Department of Education but it is not clear which programs will be hit. The cuts fall heavily everywhere except the military and border defense. There will also be deep cuts to climate research. It seems we will be, under Trump, a garrison state with no culture, other than bugles and drums. And no future either, except as a nation locked in a shell and surrounded by a wall. Some Republicans might find Trump’s cuts hard to accept.
Mike Klonsky, veteran activist in Chicago, was surprised to read in the New York Times that the public schools of Chicago were the fastest improving urban schools in the nation and that their improvement was due to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s wisdom in choosing principals. This ran counter to everything he knew.
He writes:
I’m not sure who in Rahm Emanuel’s oversized City Hall PR Dept. planted this story in the New York Times, but kudos to them for getting this piece of fluff past the fact checkers and custodians of common sense. Peter Cunningham swears it wasn’t him, but I congratulated him anyway.
The Op-ed by David Leonhardt, “Want to Fix Schools, Go to the Principal’s Office” focuses on Chicago and gives all the credit to the mayor and CPS super-principals for the district’s supposed “fastest in the nation” gains in student achievement, rising graduation rates and lower dropout rates.
Using cherry-picked data, he makes a case that Chicago is on or near the top of the nation’s public schools, even while 85% of its students continue to live in poverty and the entire district teeters on the brink of financial collapse.
In other words, Leonhardt is whistling past the graveyard. He’s over his head when it comes to writing about education in Chicago.
All this reminds me of the Arne Duncan, Chicago Miracle in 2008, when no success claim about turnaround schools was ludicrous enough to be challenged by a compliant media.
As for fewer dropouts and spiraling graduation rates, I’d love to believe the reports but don’t know how anybody can, given CPS’s history of deception in reporting such data.
Klonsky notes that these are difficult days for Chicago principals because of decisions made by the mayor, like privatizing custodial services:
Ironically, Leonhardt’s pat on the principal’s head comes at a time when Chicago principals are threatened with 30% budget cuts and are being hard hit by the board’s privatization scheme’s which have left their buildings in shambles, massive staff cuts and exploding class size. Not to mention the fact that CPS principals are rarely in a school long enough to lead any substantial school improvement effort.
Lest we forget, Mayor Rahm made history by closing 50 public schools in one day, a feat for which he will live in infamy. And activists led by Jitu Brown had to conduct a 34-day hunger strike to persuade the mayor to keep a community high school open.
In assessing the article’s claims, Klonsky interviews Troy LaRiverere, one of the city’s star principals, who was fired by Emanuel after LaRiviere criticized him. Troy is now president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. LaRivere said:
Chicago principals are working in a district that continues to make it far more difficult for them to do their jobs. They pull one resource after another. For example, if you’re a CPS principal now, you can’t have an assistant principal. If you really value the position as the article claims, then you invest in the position. The words don’t line up with deeds.
Finally, we’re all not making the gains we could be making if they invested in us and in the schools. The principals that are making gains are making them, not because of the system, but in spite of CPS.
Klonsky says that Chicago principals have learned how to do “more with less.” Meanwhile Mayor Rahm is looking for newbies to replace the veterans. And says Klonsky:
But to single them out over classroom and special-ed teachers, who have been steadfast, even while baring the brunt of cuts, losing their planning time while class sizes explode, is divisive and misleading at best.
Vouchers died in the Oklahoma legislature, for now. The sponsor of voucher legislation pulled the bill, saying he didn’t want it to squeak through. Probably, he didn’t have the votes.
No reference was made, apparently, to the research showing that vouchers don’t improve academic performance and often depress it.
“A divisive school-choice proposal that would create state-funded education savings accounts allowing students to attend private schools is off the legislative agenda, at least for now.
“Sen. Rob Standridge, R-Norman, pulled Senate Bill 560 from consideration on Wednesday, which appears to eliminate the possibility of school vouchers becoming law this session.
“The move was a bit of a surprise. Five senators had signed on as co-authors, and Standridge had collected letters of support from political groups and religious leaders.
“Up against the committee deadline, though, Standridge felt he didn’t have the votes.
“I don’t want to pass it by a thin margin,” Standridge told senators in an appropriations committee meeting Wednesday morning. “I want us to feel good about this.”
“The bill had squeaked through the education committee Feb. 20 by a vote of 9 to 7.
“An education savings account – or education scholarship account, as SB 560 called it – gives parents a portion of the state funding used to educate their child, and the parents can spend the money on private school tuition or other qualifying expenses. Critics of education savings accounts and other forms of school choice say such programs siphon money from district schools, hurting public education, and channel it to private schools, often religious ones.
“Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Aurora Lora, in a written statement, urged senators to reject the proposal because it would compound budget cuts that public schools have already endured.
“Vouchers are not the answer to improving educational outcomes for all students, especially in the current budget crisis,” she wrote.
“The Oklahoma State School Boards Association also opposed the measure.
“I appreciate the Senate for not moving forward with a divisive bill that distracts from the most important issues facing Oklahoma’s nearly 700,000 public school students: a historic teacher shortage and severe budget cuts,” Executive Director Shawn Hime said.
“Standridge, however, said he’s not giving up, and like-minded legislators have encouraged him to reintroduce education savings accounts through another avenue, such as in the budget negotiation process. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” he said.
“Standridge’s proposal would have varied students’ fund amounts based on their families’ household income, and the total number of participants would have been capped at 1 percent of all public school students.
“Based on those parameters and others, Senate staff estimated public schools could see an estimated net loss of $16 million the first year. More than $5 million would have remained in the school funding formula for 7,000 students who were no longer in public school.
“The School Boards Association ran its own fiscal analysis, finding that the proposal would divert from public schools up to $30 million in the first year and $1.6 billion over a decade.”
The Network for Public Education will watch what Betsy DeVos does and report it to you immediately.
We will keep you informed about what the privatizers are doing in your state and community.
We will help you connect with other people in your state who are mobilizing to stop privatization.
The fight to save public education will happen in communities and districts, at the grassroots level.
We ask you to join us, become active, send us action alerts about meetings, protests and demonstrations in your district or town or city so we can help you get the news out.
Here is information you can use:
Get everyone you can to join NPE. Sign them up
http://networkforpubliceducation.org/become-a-member/
Tell others on Facebook to join. We will be mobilizing in the months ahead.
Create a local group in support of public schools. Use Facebook or create a website. Then join our Grassroots Network.
http://networkforpubliceducation.org/grassroots-education-network-3/
Read our emails. We will be regularly launching campaigns at the national and state level.
Make a donation. If we are to fight this we will need funds. http://networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/donate/
Together, we will build a movement so powerful that we can beat Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and all others who aim to privatize our public schools. Together we can keep the for-profit privateers and frauds out of our schools.
Work with us. We need your help.
It is baffling that there is a sector of the Democratic Party that aligns with far-right Republicans on education issues. The Republicans want nothing more than to turn education into a free market, a strategy that has no evidence behind it.
Steven Singer bemoans the fact that a group of Democratic legislators in his state of Pennsylvania are supporting the Republican push against public schools.
He writes:
“Democrats are supposed to be liberals, progressives.
“That means upholding the Constitution and the Separation of Church and State.
“So why are so many Pennsylvania Democrats sponsoring an expansion of the state’s de facto school voucher bill?
“A total of 11 out of 84 sponsors of HB 250 are Democrats. The bill would expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs.
“The Commonwealth already diverts $200 million of business taxes to private and parochial schools. That’s money that should be going to support our struggling public school system.
“The new bill would add $50 million to each program for a total of $100 million more flushed down the drain.
“Pennsylvania has a budget deficit. We’ve cut almost $1 billion a year from public schools. We can’t afford to burn an additional $300 million on private and church schools.
“We expect Republicans to support this regressive nonsense. Especially in gerrymandered Pennsylvania, they’ve gone further and further right to please their Tea Party base and avoid being primaried.
“But the few Democrats left in the House and Senate are likewise in districts that would never vote Republican. You’d expect them to get more and more progressive. Instead, even here we see them taking steps to the right!
“Democratic sponsors of the bill are almost exclusively from the state’s urban centers – Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”
He lists the Democrats who support corporate giveaways.
Don’t vote for them.
Phyllis Bush is a retired educator and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
She writes here about the hidden cost of vouchers, which are a gift of public dollars to private schools with no accountability.
Here is an excerpt:
Vouchers drain state tax dollars from the entire education funding pot. This often causes district budgeting deficits and/or the need for tax increases, referendums and the like. That loss of revenue to public schools increases class sizes and diminishes student resources such as counselors, support personnel, supplemental materials and buses.
From the vantage point of a traditional public school supporter, vouchers are a gift of taxpayer funds given to private schools without any accountability. Additionally, the expansion of choice is creating two separate school systems. In this parallel system, one pathway will be for those who can afford quality choices. The other pathway will be to an underfunded, separate-but-unequal road, marked by poverty and by zip codes. As most people know, public schools are required to accept all students while “choice schools” have the option of choosing the students who fit their agenda. Choice schools are allowed to reject students with behavior issues, students with low scores, students with disabilities, and students who don’t speak English.
The probable result of this further expansion of choice schools will be that the children with the most difficulties will be housed in the least well-financed schools. Sadly, many legislators have chosen to be willfully unaware of the consequences of “school choice.”
While the reformers and the takeover artists and the hedge fund managers talk and talk and talk about the miraculous results of school choice, research shows that these results are uneven at best. As thoughtful citizens and taxpayers, wouldn’t it be prudent if we asked ourselves what is best for our traditional public schools, our communities and our kids?
Perhaps the fundamental question is what does society stand to lose in the name of “school choice?” Whose choice is it, anyway?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 