A daily round-up of education news and views for the Keystone State.

More and more school superintendents are leaving their posts, far more than in a typical year, a result of the extraordinary challenges of keeping kids learning after schools closed in spring 2020 and serving as crisis managers for months on end while dealing with pandemic pressures on their own families. The departures are from the top spots in large cities, including the largest three, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, but also in many midsize and smaller districts in suburban and rural areas, according to AASA, the School Superintendents Association. The turnover this year has been unprecedented, superintendents say, with the usual job responsibilities and tensions exacerbated by crisis management and debates with communities and school boards over when and how to reopen schools during the pandemic. Conflicts over equity and education that addressed racial issues also boiled over, with superintendents often feeling the brunt of the disputes. Daniel Domenech, AASA’s executive director, who served as superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools from 1998 to 2004, said he can’t remember a time that was more fraught for those in the top leadership role in school districts. “In this environment, there’s no joy. It’s all like boom, boom, boom, constantly being hammered over one issue or another,” he said.

 

Washington Post

Districts across Pennsylvania, including those in Schuylkill County, have found costs such as charter school tuitions, special education and pension contributions have risen sharply, far outpacing any increases in state or federal funding. In response to COVID-19, the federal government has doled out $6bn to Pennsylvania. In Berks, the three batches of federal funding totaled just over $258m, which represents about 20% of the combined 2020-21 school budgets of the 18 districts in the county. The Reading School District, which is one of 89 districts in the state that received an amount equal to 25% or more of its 2020-21 budget, is getting almost $168m.

 

Reading Eagle

The Bethlehem Area School District Board of Directors challenges two bills being fast-tracked by the Pennsylvania Senate, SB1 and SB733, which they feel take particular aim at the fiscal health of all of the state’s public schools and provide ways to channel taxpayer money to private interests. SB1, the Board writes, would allow prospective charter schools to circumvent any sort of local oversight and expand Pennsylvania’s two education tax credit programs, the Education Improvement Tax Credit and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit. SB1 would also grow them to a combined $1bn in five years, $bn in 10 years and $8.5bn annually in 15 years by including an automatic annual 25% increase escalator. SB733, they add, is the latest attempt to establish a school voucher program that allows students to take public dollars to private and religious schools, by establishing the Education Opportunity Account Scholarship Program for Exceptional Students. In reality, members claim, it would funnel money away from the public schools that serve most special needs students to private schools that are not held to the same standards. SB733 also explicitly forbids the commonwealth or its agencies from making sure that schools that receive state education resources comply with Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, thus making students with disabilities and their families more vulnerable.

 

The Morning Call

Dr. Khalid Mumin, Reading superintendent, was named the 2021 Pennsylvania Superintendent of the Year by the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators back in October, but he has only just celebrated his achievement in-person. Robin Constenbader-Jacobson, Reading School Board president, said she wasn't at all surprised when she heard Mumin had been named Superintendent of the Year. "Khalid Mumin, from the very start, has proved himself to be the best of the best for the Reading School District," she said, calling him "our superhero."

 

Reading Eagle

Writing in the Capital-Star, Noe Ortega, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of the Department of Education, challenges the oversight of charter schools in the state. "Charter schools are public schools. Our tax dollars fund these schools. And we must hold charter schools accountable to taxpayers and to the same standards as all other public schools," he asserts, adding: "Charter schools make up about 6% of public schools in Pennsylvania, but account for about 25% of the lowest performing schools."

 

Penn Capital-Star

As questions over whether and how racism should be discussed in the classroom continue to dominate headlines across the country, a new national EdWeek Research Center survey found that about a third of K-12 educators support legislative efforts to restrict classroom discussions on the topic. The survey, completed last month, found that while 59% of participating teachers, principals, and district leaders believe systemic racism exists, 23% said they do not believe so. Educators interviewed by Education Week largely said the survey results matched their experiences in schools, many of which have historically excluded such conversations.

 

Education Week

The Copper Development Association (CDA), a market development, engineering, and information services arm of the copper industry, has announced the launch of a new coalition dedicated to promoting the expansion of electric school bus fleets across the U.S. The Electric School Bus Coalition, a group of school bus manufacturers, NGOs and material providers, aims to drive adoption of electric bus fleets and the infrastructure needed to support them through education and actionable, market-driven policy development. John Hipchen, director of energy and electrical systems at the CDA, comments: “We are calling for $25bn in federal grant funding (enough to replace 20% of the current diesel school bus fleet) as part of current infrastructure package negotiations.”

 

School Bus Fleet

A group of bipartisan House members led by Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA) introduced legislation intended to protect K-12 institutions from cyberattacks at the end of last week. The Enhancing K-12 Cybersecurity Act would appropriate $10m annually for the next two years to fund a K-12 Cybersecurity Technology Improvement Program to protect school networks from security risks. The program would be established by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and run by an information sharing organization, and would also direct the body to establish a cybersecurity incident registry to track cyberattacks on K-12 institutions, and help schools share best practices and increase security of critical systems. K-12 institutions have increasingly been targeted by hackers in recent years, with these institutions seen as more vulnerable due to aging systems. The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center tracked 408 cyber incidents that hit U.S. K-12 institutions over the last year, a number the group described as “record-breaking.”

 

The Hill