An Opinion by Don Ulrich, deputy superintendent of Clovis Unified School District, in the Fresno Bee on June 1, 2018. …The Legislature needs to do what the voters wanted: invest in school campuses. The state needs to sell more than $3 billion Proposition 51 bonds by the end of this year… …If the state keeps…
Monthly Archives: June 2018
Teacher walkouts spread, but the movement has limits
June 6, 2018
What state could be the next to have a teacher walkout? There have been scattered rumblings of protest in Nevada and Louisiana. And there are at least five additional states that meet the major conditions for a statewide action: centralized governance and funding, and below-average teacher pay and per-student spending. The states are Arkansas, Idaho,…
Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond, the two candidates for state superintendent of public instruction, are of one mind on many fundamental educational challenges in California, like the need for more school funding, the importance of solving a teacher shortage, and a focus on closing disparities in achievement. But scratch deeper, and differences emerge. On one…
The national spotlight on the strikes and walkouts this spring has been on the teachers themselves. But in the shadows was another group that’s just as critical for keeping schools running: support staff. Often overlooked in the broader public discourse, these workers, including instructional aides and paraprofessionals, sometimes had more at stake in the walkouts…
Schools will be required to include procedures to respond to active shooter situations, and school buses must have seatbelts by 2035 under a pair of bills that passed the Assembly recently. Under AB 1747, schools would be required to conduct annual active shooter drills in addition to including active shooter procedures in their safety plans….
Ruling lifts parents’ civil right to visit schools
June 5, 2018
Efforts by school district officials to restrict parental access to their child’s classroom after a disagreement over educational services could have violated the parent’s civil rights, a federal judge ruled late last week, allowing a key case to move forward. At issue is the limits a school district has to restrict a parent from coming…
More children who have been exposed to lead in California may be identified and receive support services under a bill pending before a key Senate panel. SB 1097 would impose greater reporting requirements regarding the number of children tested for lead exposure, and those found to have high levels of lead in their blood, and…
Fatal flaw in CA’s education funding model
June 5, 2018
There’s something happening here and what it is isn’t exactly clear. Schools across CA are cutting programs and laying off employees in the midst of a booming economy. Why? A fatal flaw in the five-year old Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, is pushing many school districts to the brink of financial insolvency. Gov. Brown…