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For the first time since the pandemic began, Texas public schools will be rated based on how students score on the STAAR test. However, for this year only, schools will receive an A-C rating. Districts and schools that score D or F will receive a “Not Rated” label instead. Schools which fall in those bottom tiers will also evade possible sanctions from the Texas Education Agency during the 2022-2023 school year. “STAAR results allow parents, teachers and schools to see how individual students are performing so they can better support those students moving forward,” Frank Ward, a TEA spokesperson said. “There is extensive evidence that the process of setting reasonable goals for schools and publicly reporting on progress towards those goals improves the kinds of academic supports our students receive.”

 

KSAT	The Texas Tribune

 

Improved coordination and more comprehensive efforts among schools, governments, community organizations and court systems are needed to keep youth out of the juvenile justice system and respond to those who do become involved, lawmakers and panelists said during a House Civil Rights and Human Services Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Several lawmakers and witnesses also suggested youth be incarcerated only when they are violent or dangerous. “Preventing youth from ending up in detention is imperative,” said Ranking Subcommittee Chair Russ Fulcher, a Republican from Idaho. “We know that incarcerating youth greatly decreases their chance for a successful future.” He added that when out-of-home placement becomes necessary, detention facilities must be made safe for youth and provide opportunities for them to succeed. Panelists also spoke about the value of connecting youth in the juvenile justice system with arts, extracurricular activities, and career and technical education. Involvement in those activities can help build self-confidence, expose youth to pro-social engagements, and help them gain skills needed to get jobs, they said. 

 

K-12 Dive

San Antonio ISD has approved a bigger pay raise for full-time teachers and staff, following pushback from the community. Teachers and support staff will receive a 3% pay raise followed by 2% for principals, assistant principals and associate principals. Other department staff whose salaries are over $100,000 will receive a 1% raise.  Board members were originally going to approve a 2% pay raise across the board, but members of the community called for a larger raise for teachers during the public comment portion of the meeting, including Councilwoman Teri Castillo. "Recognizing that as an elected official of our city's most economically poor city council district, we must work collectively to ensure that we uplift our communities," Castillo said. "That starts with investing in our schools and investing in our teachers because that's an investment in our students."

 

My San Antonio

San Antonio Current

The South San Antonio ISD board has commenced the process of firing suspended superintendent Marc Puig, voting 3-2 on Wednesday to relieve him of his job duties, suspend him without pay and propose termination. Mr. Puig was placed on paid leave in early December, pending an investigation into a conversation with trustee Ernest Arrellano, then the board president, that was accidently recorded. The two discussed hiring Mr. Arrellano’s brother for construction consulting. Mr. Puig later said he never suggested the idea and, in a recent text message, said he only mentioned his brother as “a metaphor or symbol, a means of understanding the difficulty in finding quality people.”

 

San Antonio Express-News

Donna ISD Superintendent Angela Dominguez says that changes are coming to the district's dress code, based on feedback from a survey sent out earlier this year. The most significant recommendation on the middle school dress code is likely allowing students to wear blue jeans. Other recommendations included allowing hats, leaving hair length up to parents, allowing ear piercings and not requiring shirt-tucking and belts. “We need our kids in school,” Ms. Dominguez said. “And so we don’t want to lose academic or social/emotional ground with our kids, so we felt like it was really important to listen to them and make some adjustments in our policy so that we’re a little more accommodating to where students are right now.”

 

The Monitor

The U.S. Department of Education has confirmed that schools can seek more than a year’s worth of time to finish spending some of the $200bn K-12 schools got in three rounds of federal pandemic relief aid on contracts for construction, mental health, tutoring, and other third-party services. Notably, obligation deadlines for all ESSER programs remain the same (ESSER I funds by September 2022, ESSER II funds by September 2023, and ESSER III funds by September 2024), but where there may be flexibility is liquidation deadlines for ESSER I, ESSER II, and ESSER III, not just for ESSER III as a lot of media coverage is suggesting. The original liquidation deadline for ESSER programs is four months after the obligation deadline, so with this flexibility districts may be able to get 18 months after the obligation deadline to liquidate funds instead. The Department is prioritizing considering applications for school construction projects, however in extenuating circumstances other contracts may be considered too. Many schools have signed contracts with third-party providers to spend ESSER funds on tutoring, mental health support, curriculum materials, professional development, technology tools, and even substitute teachers, so, depending on the circumstances of the district when they submit an application with their state, the Department may also apply this flexibility to other outside of construction.

 

Education Week

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education illustrates the state of school finances back in 2020, during the first three months of the pandemic. It offers a snapshot of the situation many states and districts found themselves in, having to make difficult and costly decisions in the months before federal aid was made available. K-12 Dive presents a set of charts based on the data in the report, covering increases in staff compensation, changes in per-pupil spending, how expenditures outpaced revenues in a majority of states, and the extent to which federal revenues had dipped by March 2020. 

 

K-12 Dive

Among the COVID-19 pandemic’s most pernicious aftershocks is its impact on student mental health. About 44% of adolescents experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the pandemic, compared with 37% in 2019, according to a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recognizing this, districts across the country are using federal COVID relief aid to bring mental health professionals into schools and to expand social-emotional learning. This also creates the challenge of how to sustain new school staff positions when the funding expires at the end of 2024. Medicaid, the federal-state partnership that provides health care for millions of public school students, could be part of the solution, as long as states take the necessary steps to use it and federal agencies back them up. In 2014, the federal government opened up a new avenue for support when it reversed what’s known as the free care rule and allowed schools to seek Medicaid reimbursement for certain health services provided by school employees, including mental health counselors, for all students enrolled in Medicaid. Previous guidance limited reimbursement to services included in a student’s Individualized Education Plan or Individualized Family Service Plan under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Currently, 16 states — Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — have expanded their programs to allow qualified school providers to bill for covered behavioral health services for Medicaid-enrolled students beyond those with IEPs, according to the Healthy Schools Campaign.

 

The 74

All Nations Community School in Oak Ridge North is launching a drone education program for its high school and middle school students. The small private school has been investing in its STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math — programs for several years and sees the drone program as a natural extension of the robotics program it has had for two years. Both the robotics program and the drone program are funded by a grant from Rice University. Aha! Education will provide the drones and the training to All Nation’s teachers

 

Houston Chronicle

McAllen ISD’s board of trustees approved a bid in the amount of $1.958m for improvements to a McAllen High School synthetic football field and other track and field improvements. Funds will go toward a new 8-lane all-weather track with artificial turf on the practice field. Austin-based Hellas Construction, which lists the Dallas Cowboys among its clientele, has been recommended for the project. 

 

The Monitor