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Education finance experts have warned that, beginning in the 2024-25 school year, school districts nationwide will experience a negative impact on finances due to four “atypical financial shocks.” Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, and her peers, in a webinar Thursday, agreed that events putting districts most at risk are the ESSER "funding cliff," whereby officials using ESSER money for recurring financial commitments via budget backfilling, new hires or permanent raises are most likely to be impacted, and enrollment declines leading to fewer revenues, whereby urban districts, those closed longer during the pandemic, and districts in Northern states are most at risk. Inflation, labor scarcity and new hiring leading to recurring financial commitments were also all underlined to present significant challenges, and districts offering permanent raises that are larger than the usual 1-2% on top of 3% through step or column increases, and those growing their staff rolls, are most vulnerable. An economic slowdown affecting state revenue growth was also presented as a huge risk for districts, and those more dependent on state revenue, or in states more affected by economic slowdowns, will be most impacted by this. “This is where things get really pretty ugly,” Roza said.

 

K12 Dive

Learning Itself Is Both Social and Emotional

Research indicates that social support is one of the strongest predictors of resilience and leads to positive social, academic, and health outcomes. In order to benefit from social support, however, children and adults need to practice and develop social competence, the skills that enable them to create and maintain positive networks of support. In this paper, we provide an overview of research on the development of social competence, and current interventions targeting these skills.

Download the full report.

 

Average weekly wages of teachers increased just $29 from 1996 to 2021, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which contrasts a $445 increase in weekly wages for other college graduates. Notably, the figures were adjusted only for inflation. The “teacher wage penalty” grew to a record high of 23.5% in 2021, meaning teachers earned almost one quarter less than other college graduates. Rhode Island (3.4%), Wyoming (4%), and New Jersey (4.5%) have the smallest pay penalties, while Colorado (35.9%), Oklahoma (32.8%), and Virginia (32.7%) have the largest. “Over these nearly two decades, a picture of increasingly alarming trends has emerged. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened considerably over time,” the report concludes. Sylvia A. Allegretto, a research associate with EPI who worked for 15 years at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California at Berkeley, where she co-founded the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, asserts: “This profession needs to be elevated to the status it deserves and importance it holds.”

 

Washington Post

The U.S. Department of Education has announced a new $8m grant competition aimed at increasing the diversity of the teacher workforce and preparing teachers to meet the needs of the most underserved students. The Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence (Hawkins) program supports comprehensive, high-quality teacher preparation programs at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and will focus on evidence-based, comprehensive teacher preparation programs that provide extensive clinical experience. HBCUs, TCUs and MSIs prepare a disproportionate share of teachers of color, so these colleges are uniquely positioned to recruit, prepare, and place teachers who will provide culturally and linguistically relevant teaching in underserved and hard-to-staff schools. Grants will fund applicants that propose to incorporate evidence-driven practices into their teacher preparation programs.

 

Ed.gov

Inflation is having a larger-than-expected impact on Long Island’s 124 public school districts, school officials say, pushing them to cut back on supplies, delay bulk orders, alter capital projects, and consider tapping into reserves. Inflation spiked to 9% nationally in June, its highest level in decades, and was at 8.5% in July. Inflation numbers escalated so quickly that the unexpected costs eluded even the best-planned budgets, officials said. Long Island's school districts received $457m in extra federal and state aid for 2022-23, some related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the extra money is coming from "foundation" aid, the state's single-biggest source of funding for schools. However, the prospect of multiple years of high inflation is a concerning trend.

 

Newsday

Philadelphia city and school officials Monday reassured the public that children will be safe during the next school year, outlining new programs and policies designed to monitor and prevent threats in schools and neighborhoods. Kevin Bethel, the district’s chief of school safety and a former Philadelphia deputy police commissioner, explained how police presence around schools will increase at arrival and dismissal times, and there will be a “safe paths” program in which neighborhood residents patrol the areas around several key high schools. This program is modeled on one in Chicago that pays people and has had some success. The Philadelphia school district’s “threat assessment” team will expand, as will the number of safety officers in schools, and officials will be able to monitor 100 security cameras that the city is installing near schools in high-crime neighborhoods. The city experienced a record number of homicides in 2021 and is already on pace to match that number so far in 2022.

 

CBS News

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is described as attempting to "reshape the education landscape" by sending cash to support campaigns on the eve of the primaries, in many cases targeting school board incumbents who have opposed some of the GOP's policies. Some candidates have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual donors, claims Andrew Atterbury. “Parental rights, curriculum transparency and classrooms free of woke ideology are all on the ballot this election, and it starts with school board elections,” DeSantis said last week when announcing a statewide campaign tour ahead of the midterms. In Miami-Dade County, a school board candidate was hit with a "cease-and-desist" from the DeSantis campaign in July for using a picture of DeSantis in an ad when the governor already endorsed her opponent. “It's gotten fairy ugly,” laments Misty Belford, a Brevard County School Board member endorsed by the Florida Democratic Party.

 

Politico