This is unbelievable. The Republican-dominated State Senate in North Carolina vengefully cut education funding from Democrats’ districts in a 3 am vote.
Having gerrymandered the state to keep Tea Party control, the Republicans have lost all sense of decency.
Reverend William Barber II is our most eloquent spokesman for civil rights today. Some believe he is the next Martin Luther King Jr.
He just stepped down as head of the North Carolina NAACP, where he saw daily assaults on voting rights, public schools, and poor people. He started the Moral Mondays Movement, where people witnessed on the steps of the Legislature, which busily enacted laws to strip away the rights of citizens of the state.
He is starting a national organization to fight for a moral vision for America.
He spoke at the Schott Foundation dinner on May 11. Here is his speech. You are in for a treat.
Public education is in jeopardy in North Carolina.
Please take action now!
The North Carolina Senate introduced SB 603, a bill creating a new voucher program that would give $9,000 a year to students with disabilities going to non-public schools.
Send an email to tell your house member to vote NO for SB 603.
SB 603 is a bill that:
Expands opportunities for fraud
Costs more to administer than traditional voucher programs
Takes funding from our public schools, with particularly negative impacts for public school programs for students with disabilities
Drains the state budget
Lacks accountability
If passed, parents of eligible students get a debit card loaded with approximately $9,000 per year that they can spend on private school costs, tutoring, technology and even account fees!
In addition, SB 603 would allow parents to double- or triple-dip into North Carolina’s already existing voucher programs. Parents could also receive $4,200 from the Opportunity Scholarship program (for students meeting certain income requirements), an additional $8,000 via the Disabilities Grant Program and $9,000 from this program the new proposed program.
Like the Arizona ESA program on which it is modeled, it is ripe for fraud. Arizona’s program has resulted in parents buying televisions, groceries, cell phones and family planning services. Vendors have also been caught overcharging parents. Monitoring of purchases would rely on self-reporting.
Under the proposed bill, even if an audit uncovers fraud, there is no requirement that the parent be forced to repay the taxpayers.
Worst of all, when a parent misuses these debit cards, their children go undereducated.
This is, in our opinion, just one more attempt to defund and attack public education. And it is shameful.
Send this email today to your representative telling them to oppose SB 603.
We make it easy. Just click here.
Then pick up the phone and call on Monday. You can find their number here.
Then post this link on your Facebook page and share it will all of your friends and family in North Carolina.
https://npeaction.org/2017/05/12/north-carolina-alert-stop-super-voucher/
Thanks for all you do!
Carol Burris
Executive Director
Under a bill proposed in the North Carolina legislature, corporations would gain the power to set aside half the seats in a new charter for their employees if they contributed funds, land, or equipment. For their generosity, the corporation would also have seats on the charter boards. The charter would become a perk for corporate leaders and valued employees, kind of like a company store.
The state House is considering a collection of bills that would change who can start a charter and how quickly the schools can grow. Corporations would be able to reserve spaces in schools for their employees’ children, and two towns would be able to set up charter schools for their residents. Under current law, charters are open to any student in the state, although schools can give preference to siblings and school employees’ children.
“This is loosening the restrictions on how charters operate and what they’re allowed to do,” Rep. Graig Meyer, an Orange County Democrat, said of the collection of bills the House Education Committee approved Monday in divided votes.
Under one bill, up to half a charter school’s seats could be reserved for children whose parents work for companies that donate land, buildings or equipment to the school. Employees of those companies would also be able to join the charter school’s board of directors.
Rep. John R. Bradford III, a Mecklenburg Republican, framed the bill as an economic development tool that could help attract companies to rural counties. Companies would be able to offer classroom seats as employee perks, Bradford said, equating charter enrollment to companies paying for employee meals.
“This creates a vehicle where a company can create an employee benefit,” he said.
Meyer objected, saying the provision would have taxpayer money going to company schools.
“This moves closer to privatization than North Carolina has ever allowed before,” he said.
Another bill would allow charter enrollment to grow 30 percent a year without approval from the State Board of Education. Charters are now limited to 20 percent annual growth without board approval. Some Democrats objected on the grounds that it could fuel growth in schools that aren’t good. Allowing charters with bad records to expand would not be fair to taxpayers, parents or students, said Rep. Bobbie Richardson, a Louisburg Democrat.
At the same time, the legislature imposed a mandate to reduce class size without any new funding, which will cause layoffs of thousands of teachers and overcrowding in grades not included in the mandate.
North Carolina blogger-teacher Stuart Egan calls the corporate-control bill “The Privatization of Public Schools Bill.”
Can there be any question that the NC legislature is systematically privatizing the schools of the state?
An urgent appeal from parent leaders at Public Schools First North Carolina. The General Assembly is about to pass a budget that includes no funding for teachers of art, music, and physical education. The unfunded mandate for reduced class size in the early grades will cause massive layoffs and program cuts. ACT NOW!
ACTION ALERT……..ACTION ALERT ACTION ALERT……..ACTION ALERT ACTION ALERT……..ACTION ALERT
PUBLIC SCHOOL ADVOCATES MUST CONTACT LEGISLATORS NOW!
Senators are planning to vote on the HB13 Amended Bill THIS AFTERNOON, Tuesday April 25th at their 4pm session.
PLEASE STOP what you are doing right now and CALL, E-MAIL, or TWEET North Carolina Senators FIRST and then call every HOUSE Member and ask them to add an amendment to put money for SPECIALS in the new two-year budget! The current bill has NO funds to pay for specials teachers next year! PLEASE DO IT NOW!
This may be our only chance to get this bill FIXED to avoid headaches with funding for our specials teachers next year. Let’s avoid having our teachers worry for another year about having their jobs. Let’s avoid potential layoffs next year by getting the money appropriated this year. Ask Senators to AMEND HB13 on the SENATE floor today! If this is their intention, then putting it into the bill this year should be no problem, right?
Ask Senators to amend the bill to add a guarantee of funding for specials teachers for next year in the two-year budget they are working on right now. ASK THEM TO PUT A GUARANTEE OF MONEY IN THE BUDGET to give school districts the planning time they need to keep their teachers in the classroom!
If HB13 is not amended to add money, this will NOT be addressed until the NEXT legislative session, the short session that starts in May 2018 — this is later in districts’ budgeting process than right now! May 2018 will be TOO LATE for many school districts whose teachers will have moved on to find other jobs or will have been dismissed due to lack of funding.
IF THE SENATORS DO NOT ADD THE FUNDING GUARANTEE NOW before the bill returns to the HOUSE for a final vote, OUR TEACHERS AND PARENTS will be left to worry and fret for another 12 months. This is not the way to run our public schools – ACT TODAY!! ASK NOW!!! This is the critical moment in this fight for funding.
Senators have the DATA needed! All of the information needed for the reports that Senator Barefoot wants to so he and other Senators can ALLOCATE money for K-3 teachers and for SPECIALS is in PowerSchool (NCDPI database) right now. This means that all of the Senators have this data NOW and can use it to make all assumptions needed NOW to figure out exactly what appropriations are needed to FUND Specials in 2018-19.
Senators promised to add this language in the Amendment last night and at the last moment they excluded the language leaving the HB13 fix ONLY half done.
BOTTOM LINE: The data needed to make the appropriation in the NEW two-year budget is in PowerSchool database and in the hands of our legislators at this time. The request is simple: put money in the budget now by amending HB13 now to include appropriation for Specials in 2018-19 school year.
To be clear, legislators are to be praised for advocating for smaller class sizes! All public education advocates are for smaller class sizes but not supportive of unfunded mandates or unrealistic implementation plans. The unintended consequences must be dealt with if our goal is to have great public schools that offer the best learning experiences for our youngest children.
Here is a WIN-WIN proposal: Encourage legislators to provide the money for teachers and SPECIALS NOW! And give local school districts time – 3 to 5 years – to find local funds for new classroom space; time to build and create additional space! Give school districts time to find new teachers or reassign/retrain some of their current staff. The alternative is crowded schools, classes in supply closets or lunchrooms, higher local taxes, lack of teaches or teachers with little or no experiences, and extreme over crowding in the upper grades to accommodate space and teachers for K-3. Right now, class sizes in the grades 4 to 12 are too large in many school districts — we have 35 or more kids in many classes!
North Carolina public schools, once considered the best in the South, are under constant attack by the rightwing legislature. The latest salvo is an unfunded mandate to reduce class sizes in the early grades. It is a wonderful idea to reduce class size, but it is costly. Imposing the mandate without funding is a recipe for disruption and chaos.
The Republicans who control the legislature are crazy for privatization, for charters and vouchers and cybercharters. Are the Republicans trying to drive children and families away from public schools by inflicting chaos and stripping away activities that students love?
Despite warnings by district superintendents about massive layoffs of teachers of arts and physical education, the state senate has refused to back down.
“North Carolina’s largest public school system may be warning of “enormous disruptions” without speedy action from state lawmakers on a looming class size funding crisis, but key education leaders in Raleigh tell Policy Watch there’s little sign Republican lawmakers in the General Assembly will act soon.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s any movement planned,” says Sen. Floyd McKissick, a Durham Democrat who sits on the state Senate’s Rules and Operations Committee, a panel that includes some of the chamber’s most powerful lawmakers and sets the agenda for future committee talks.
“McKissick said he met late last week with Sen. Bill Rabon, the eastern North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, but GOP leaders remain reticent to make any commitments regarding a legislative fix to the funding controversy, despite stiff warnings from district chiefs that thousands of teachers’ jobs are in jeopardy.”
Here is a report from Wake County, once considered one of the best school districts in the nation. Syracuse scholar Gerald Grant wrote a book called “Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Public Schools in Wake County.”
That was then. This is now:
“The state legislature’s plan to cut elementary school class sizes could lead to larger class sizes in all Wake County schools, including 40 or more students in some elementary classrooms.
“State lawmakers lowered maximum class sizes in kindergarten through third grade from 24 students this school year to between 19 and 21 students starting in July. Wake County Superintendent Jim Merrill warned Tuesday that unless the state provides relief, the district will have to consider options such as increasing class sizes for older students, cutting art and music classes, laying off teachers and reassigning students on short notice.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article145287929.html
The legislature in North Carolina never tires of finding new ways to mess up their state’s once-greatly admired public schools.
By mandating class size reduction across the state without providing additional funds, districts will be required to send pink slips to thousands of teachers of music, arts, physical education, and teacher assistants.
“We’re not dealing with widgets. We’re dealing with people’s lives and their livelihoods,” says Katherine Joyce, executive director of the N.C. Association of School Administrators (NCASA), an organization that reps public school district leaders at the legislature.
The uncertainty puts at least 5,500 teaching jobs statewide in jeopardy as districts scramble to reallocate resources, according to the NCASA.
That doesn’t include teacher assistant positions, particularly crucial jobs in low-performing schools and districts jettisoned by the thousands in cash-starved districts since 2008. Without major legislative concessions in the coming weeks, K-12 leaders expect many more T.A. jobs will be on the chopping block this year.
One bipartisan-supported reprieve to the looming class size order, House Bill 13, gained unanimous approval in the state House in February, but despite advocates’ calls for urgent action this spring, the legislation has lingered in the Senate Rules Committee with little indication it will be taken up soon.
Sen. Bill Rabon, the influential eastern North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, did not respond to Policy Watch interview requests, but his legislative assistant said this week that Rabon’s committee will not consider any House bills until the General Assembly’s April 27 crossover deadline….
Regardless, public school leaders say the state’s drive to reduce class sizes comes at a particularly arduous time for districts. With North Carolina teacher pay mired among the lowest in the nation, K-12 experts are reporting major teaching shortages and plummeting interest in teaching degrees in the UNC system.
The legislature, dominated by a super-majority of ultra-conservative Republicans in both houses, is doing its level best to harass teachers and drive students to charter schools and vouchers. Under the guise of “reform,” more teachers and programs will be cut.
People who came into education have a strange penchant to work for ultra-conservative politicians, like John White in Louisiana, Kevin Huffman in Tennessee, and Eric Guckian, who was education advisor to the far-right North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.
Now comes this news via Politico Pro. I can’t give you a link because I don’t have a subscription (they told me it costs $3,500 and I run a very low-cost shop here):
A senior Trump administration education adviser is expected to move into a new role at the Education Department, according to multiple sources familiar with the shift who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about personnel issues.
Jason Botel, the former executive director of the Maryland education advocacy group, MarylandCAN, joined the Trump administration in January as senior White House adviser for education.
One source said he is being considered for a deputy assistant secretary position at the agency’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which serves as a key partner to states and school districts in matters spanning pre-K through high school. The position is politically appointed but isn’t Senate-confirmable.
Neither Botel, nor an Education Department spokesman responded to requests for comment.
In recent months, Botel had helped an understaffed Education Department in various roles.
Botel shocked some of his colleagues by joining the Trump administration earlier this year. He had donated $400 to former President Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008. Those who know him say he’s passionate about strong accountability standards, and racial and social justice issues — priorities embraced by the Obama administration. Botel joined Teach for America out of college, teaching in Baltimore public schools, and later brought the charter school network, KIPP, to Baltimore.
You will note that Botel worked for Maryland CAN, which exists to encourage privatization via charter schools. After he left Governor McCrory’s office, he worked at TFA’s Leadership for Educational Excellence, which trains ex-TFA to run for office. Acquaintances believe that his appointment suggests a renewed emphasis on standards, testing, and accountability. Interesting that someone would feel equally comfortable working for Obama and then Trump. A flexible mind.
Veteran journalist Lindsay Wagner writes that Fayetteville’s Trinity Christian School–the state’s largest recipient of taxpayer-funded vouchers–is involved in a major financial scandal. North Carolina places no accountability for how taxpayer money is used or whether students make academic progress. The voucher schools get taxpayer money with neither accountability nor transparency.
North Carolina’s largest recipient of private school vouchers has filed a financial review that lacked basic information consistent with “generally accepted accounting principles,” according to the agency overseeing the taxpayer-funded program.
Because Fayetteville’s Trinity Christian School—also currently embroiled in a separate embezzlement scandal—received more than $300,000 in voucher funds during the 2015-16 academic year, it is required to submit a financial review of their organization.
According to records provided by the State Education Assistance Authority (SEAA), the agency tasked with overseeing the voucher program, the financial review submitted last December lacked crucial elements typically found in such statement including a statement of cash flows and a balance sheet. What was included instead was a brief “statement of activities” that only listed top line revenues and expenses as well as a supplemental schedule of functional expenses.
***
It is remarkable to omit a more detailed balance sheet from a set of basic financial statements, said Mig Murphy Sistrom, a Durham-based accountant whose firm specializes in preparing financial reports for nonprofit organizations.
Because the accounting firm that prepared the financial review for Trinity Christian—Edwards Pechmann & Packer, Inc.—did not include a balance sheet, “it raises a concern that the organization may not have accounting records adequate to produce a balance sheet,” said Murphy Sistrum.
Since 2014, Trinity Christian has received more than $1.2 million in taxpayer funds through the Opportunity Scholarships Program, which provides low-income families money to attend private schools. For the academic year 2016-17, school voucher recipients comprised 60 percent of Trinity Christian’s enrollment, according to state records. The voucher school’s overall school enrollment grew by 25 percent between 2015-16 and 2016-17.
The state places few requirements on private voucher schools to account for how the taxpayer dollars are used to educate students, demonstrate achievement of the students who receive the aid or any transparency to assure the funds are used as intended.
What would Betsy DeVos say? Let the free market figure it out?
Former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory is having trouble landing a job because he is so closely identified with HB2, the bill that said that transgender persons had to use the bathroom aligned with their birth certificate rather than their choice.
Samantha Bee said that McCrory needed to broaden his resume.
“Sorry you’re having trouble finding a new job,” the “Full Frontal” Twitter account wrote to McCrory before offering its “help.”
[How bathroom bill backlash cost North Carolina’s Republican governor his job]
In addition to trumpeting his work on the HB2 bill, “Full Frontal” suggested McCrory highlight legislation he signed “defining voting as between one ballot and one white person.”
And, the show’s Twitter account suggested, he should play up his ability to multitask by emphasizing that he “also found time to discriminate against women.”
McCrory ran as a candidate who would create jobs but his HB2 drove away national corporations, the NCAA, and cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost convention revenues.
By the way, Hate Bill 2 is still on the books. North Carolina’s Tea Party legislators can’t let it go. I thought they might create new jobs for people who inspect genitals in every public bathroom to make sure the law is obeyed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 