Voucher lobbyists were not able to garner enough support for vouchers among House Republicans to bring a bill to the floor. If you have not already done so, please thank your legislators for actually putting ALL of our students first.
WITF.org
by Mary Wilson Thursday, 15 December 2011 20:01
The push stops here:
Turzai says vouchers and Shale “never our issue”
Governor Corbett said he wanted to pass school vouchers and a
Marcellus Shale impact fee this year. Neither one of those is going to
happen.
There were rallies. There were platform
roll-outs. There was the governor, who hesitated to rank his legislative
priorities. But he ceded that at the top of his to-do list was passing a
bill creating vouchers for the poorest students in the lowest-performing
schools, as well as passing a Marcellus Shale impact fee.
House Republicans said this week there weren’t
enough votes for a vouchers bill, or even the less-divisive expansion of
education tax credits
http://www.witf.org/state-house-sound-bites/the-push-stops-here-turzai-says-vouchers-and-shale-never-our-issue
Roebuck unveils alternative to vouchers:
'All Students Can Succeed'
Proposal
would help 100 percent of kids in lowest-performing schools instead of just 3
percent, for about same cost as voucher plan
Press release HARRISBURG , Dec. 14 – State Rep. James Roebuck, D-Phila.,
Democratic chairman of the House Education Committee, today announced his
alternative to private-school voucher plans that have been floated in Harrisburg
"I
call my plan 'All Students Can Succeed' because it is designed to help 100
percent of students in Pennsylvania's lowest-performing schools through
targeted improvements rather than handing tax-funded private-school vouchers to
3 to 9 percent of the children in those schools and hoping they find private
schools that will accept them," Roebuck said.
"All
Students Can Succeed would help 100 percent of the kids in these schools for
about the same cost of the voucher plans that only cover 3 to 9 percent of the
kids, and without violating the state constitution. This would be a win-win for
these children and for taxpayers. I believe it can and should receive
bipartisan support."
http://www.pahouse.com/PR/188121411.asp
“Some will argue that poverty is not an excuse for
poor academic performance. They are correct; poverty is not the excuse, it is
the cause”
Don't blame the teachers for the racial achievement gap
Don't blame the teachers for the racial achievement gap
Poverty is the main
culprit, argues Pitt professor LARRY E. DAVIS
For more than a decade
now, blame for the racial achievement gap has been laid almost solely on the
failure of teachers and schools. I believe this focus to be both incorrect and
unfair.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11352/1197401-109-0.stm?cmpid=newspanel#ixzz1gtCnxWYO
Scranton School
District : $2.2 million hacked from Scranton
BY SARAH HOFIUS HALL
(STAFF WRITER)
Published: December 16, 2011
More than $2.2 million has been
trimmed from the Scranton
School District
Read more: http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/district-2-2-million-hacked-from-scranton-schools-budget-more-cuts-remain-1.1245749#ixzz1gi7UveT9
“The district of 17,855 students, most of
whom live in poverty, is operating with a leaner staff than in years past. The
2011-12 budget, which runs through June, eliminated 204 positions through
vacancies, attrition, transfers and 112 layoffs.”
Allentown
School board passes preliminary budget,
accepts principals' retirement notices.
By Steve
Esack, Of The Morning Call, 12:19
a.m. EST, December 17, 2011
On the same night the Allentown School Board
approved a proposed preliminary budget with a tax hike for 2012-13, it accepted
the retirements of four principals and a central administrator.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/allentown/mc-allentown-schools1216-20111216,0,7805706.story
Broke Chester Upland School District
Delco Times By JOHN
KOPP, jkopp@delcotimes.com
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2011/12/16/news/doc4eeabeeccbd0d265187345.txt?viewmode=fullstory
Phillymag.com
by Victor Fiorillo December
7, 2011
Vahan
Gureghian Drops $28.9 Million In Palm
Beach
Good ol’ Vahan Gureghian, the
controversial, ridiculously wealthy, and famously mysterious
attorney-entrepreneur who owns that 30,000-square foot-thing in Gladwyne, founded a charter school in the impoverished city of
Chester, and donates a heck of a lot of money to Republicans in
this state,
recently paid $28.9 million for an oceanfront property in Palm Beach.
http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/12/07/ahan-danielle-gureghian/
It is not clear what year the
following article was published.
However, to my knowledge, to date no details requested in the Inquirer’s
Right to Know request have been made available and there are no provisions in
any pending charter school reform legislation that would require public
disclosure of such financial information and transparency by private management
companies contracted to run charter schools funded by Pennsylvania taxpayer
dollars.
Inquirer
wins appeal; Chester
Published on AllBusiness.com
Because
Charter School Management is a private company that hires all school employees
and manages the school's finances, it has been able to keep many details of its
financial operations secret. That
contrasts with most charter schools, which don't contract out all operations
and typically disclose extensive information about their finances through their
federal nonprofit earnings statements, which all nonprofits must make public.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.