Like so many of the microschool founders I visit across the U.S. and interview on my semiweekly LiberatED , Hayes never expected to run a school. She had been a mathematics professor at Montana State University for more than a decade, fully intending to stay in that role until retirement. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” said Hayes. 

Covid was the catalyst. When her children’s schools shut down in the spring of 2020, and her college classes went online, Hayes began hearing from parents who wanted tutoring services. She also wanted to help her own three children stay on track academically, and find a way for them to have small, safe social interactions. 

In fall 2020, Hayes leased a gym downtown with large garage doors that opened wide, providing for maximum ventilation. She spaced children six feet apart, enabling them to meet in person while working through their remote public school curriculum. In addition, Hayes offered all kinds of enrichment activities, focused on project-based learning and frequent outside expeditions. 

Parents and learners loved it. So did Hayes, who connected with some experienced educators who were also passionate about outdoor, experiential learning mixed with core academics. “Covid offered a moment to reflect on what was important to me and how I spent my days,” said Hayes, who realized that the abundant time outside in nature working on meaningful educational projects was just as important for her as an educator as it was for the children in her program—including her own kids. 

In early 2021, several parents approached Hayes, saying that if she created a full-time school, they would pull their kids out of public school and send them there. Hayes was in. She resigned from the university and established Peak Academy as a nonprofit private school. 

“Teaching at the university was a great experience, but my world opened up when I started this school,” Hayes told me when I visited Peak Academy earlier this week as part of my trip to survey the growth of Montana microschools, or small schools and spaces that are typically less expensive and more individualized than traditional private schools. Located in a pastel green-painted home on a quiet residential corner just a couple of blocks from Bozeman’s quaint downtown, Peak Academy currently serves 16 middle school students who spend their days learning academics, doing projects, and enjoying frequent field study with two full-time teachers, in addition to Hayes and other part-time instructors from the community.

For high school, many of Peak’s students attend the nearby , one of the area’s first schools to focus on project-based, outside experiential learning along with high-quality academic instruction. It launched in 2017 and has become an inspiration for new Bozeman-area microschool founders who share a similar educational vision. 

In the nearby town of Belgrade, Lindsey Vose also plans to recommend the Bozeman Field School as a high school option for her microschool students. Vose worked as a California public school teacher for eight years before leaving that job in 2018 to be an instructor for a secular hybrid homeschool program. It was her first exposure to homeschooling and alternative education, as well as the hybrid homeschool model in which homeschooled children attend a full-day, drop-off program several days a week for academics and enrichment while working through the program’s curriculum at home with their families on the remaining days. 

She pulled her kindergartener out of public elementary school and enrolled her in the hybrid homeschool as well, appreciating its smaller, more personalized learning model. Her preschooler also came along. 

During Covid, the Vose family moved to Montana seeking a different, more farm-based lifestyle. Her husband worked remotely for his California-based engineering firm, and Vose began to search for hybrid homeschool programs. “When we came here, I knew we weren’t going to go to public school, and there were no outdoor, nature-based, academic-focused, secular hybrid homeschools here. It didn’t exist, so I had to do it,” said Vose, who began running her program, , out of her garage in 2022 with four children, including her two children.

Today, Wild Wonders is located on a leased, five-acre farmstead property near Vose’s home. It has 22 K-6 students who attend the mixed-age, drop-off program Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Vose currently employs two full-time teachers, but with 35 students registered for this fall, and a future middle school expansion in the works, she will be hiring additional staff. Vose says the local demand for her program has been enormous. 

“I get inquiries every day. I can’t keep up with the growth,” she said, adding that she plans to retain the “micro” aspect of her microschool. “Staying small is really important to me. I value the small classes and the strong sense of community here. Everybody knows each other. I’m not willing to give that up,” she said. 

Another former public school teacher, Rusty Bowers, was also attracted to the microschooling model and its focus on individualized learning. A high school math teacher and principal in Montana public schools for over 10 years, Bowers launched , a K-8 Acton Academy affiliate, in fall 2023. Acton Academy is a fast-growing microschool network focused on learner-driven education. Founded in 2009, the Acton network now includes over 300 independently-operated schools, serving thousands of learners. “I started an Acton Academy because I left the public education sector as a discouraged educator. After being out, I kept asking myself what the best education environment would look like if I could truly inspire each student to become the best they could be. In that search, I found Acton and fell in love with their model and high standards of excellence,” said Bowers, whose two children, ages 10 and 5, attend his school.

East of Bozeman, Emily Post has a similar commitment to high standards and student-empowered learning. She launched as a recognized K-8 private school in fall 2020 in a storefront location in downtown Livingston. It currently enrolls about 20 students, including Post’s two children. Access is a key priority for Post, who told me that the school’s $10,000 annual tuition is financially out-of-reach for many local families. She used part of the grant she received from , an education philanthropic nonprofit and entrepreneur network, to fund scholarships for students, and is also a partner with ACE Scholarships that offers partial scholarships for low-income students to attend a private school of their choice.

These scholarships help but they are not enough to meet the overall demand she sees from local parents who want new and different educational options. Last year, Post applied to open a tuition-free public charter school, Yellowstone Experiential School, under Montana’s new charter school legislation. Of 26 applicants, she was the only one who wasn’t a public school district and the only one who was because she didn’t receive local school district permission before applying to the state to be a provider, as the charter law requires. “I tried to get local approval first but I could never get on the local school board agenda,” said Post, frustrated by the bureaucratic barriers. 

She plans to try again, but is also hoping that Montana expands its new education savings account (ESA) program to include more students. Currently, this limited school choice program applies only to special needs students in the state. Since 2021, 11 states have passed universal or near-universal education choice policies that enable all or most K-12 students to access a portion of state-allocated education funding to use on a variety of approved learning options, including innovative schools like Educatio.   

“It absolutely makes sense for funding to follow students,” said Post. 

The N.C. Community College System’s (NCCCS) primary legislative request this short session is money for Propel NC, . The request includes a nearly $100 million price tag for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-25.

The State Board of Community Colleges unanimously approved the new plan in February, five months after the system officially began work in August to revise its funding model. The NCCCS’ current state funding model was created in 2010 and last updated in 2013.

“This is labor-market driven and where we need to be,” Finance Committee Chair Lisa Estep “It’s a much needed shift.”

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The vast majority of funding for the state’s 58 community colleges comes from state appropriations.

The system’s current funding model allocates resources to the colleges in proportion to the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) students they enroll in each of their programs. Certain courses receive more state funds than others based on a four-tier funding model.

Propel NC would shift the current FTE funding tiers to “workforce sectors,” with courses ranked and valued by statewide salary job demand data every three years. All curriculum and continuing education (CE) courses would reside in the same workforce sector. The NCCCS this shift “prioritizes connecting students to high-demand, high-wage jobs.”

The anticipated cost of this component of the model is approximately $68.6 million, .

“The change from tiers to workforce sectors does more than bring in new dollars and simplify our categories,” Richmond Community College President Dr. Dale McInnis “It changes our business model at the college level. We will be able to make program and course decisions based on the quantified labor market value that education brings to the student as recognized by our state’s employers. The choice of offering a degree or short-term certificate will be driven by the value proposition for the student and the needs of the employers.”

Propel NC includes a $93 million recurring ask to lawmakers, according to  outlining the model. There is a $99 million ask for FY 2024-25.

Here are the other components of the plan:

• Increase in base funding. The plan calls to increase the base allocation for instructional and academic support funds 5.8%, “which closes the gap to actual spending patterns and account for inflation,” per the NCCCS document. “This modification would also increase the enrollment allotment above 750 FTE based on this increase in other costs funding.” The anticipated cost for this request is about $24.4 million.
• Enrollment increase reserve. The current enrollment growth reserve was implemented in 2010 in response to the large number of students enrolling in community colleges after the Great Recession. The system wants to request $6 million in non-recurring funds for a fixed per-FTE amount for any colleges that go over the enrollment threshold set by their FTE for the fiscal year. The system would then like to build replenishment of the fund into the recurring enrollment growth fund in the state budget.
• Excess tuition retention. Excess tuition receipts currently fund the enrollment increase reserve. Propel NC would change that, allowing excess tuition receipts to return to the college which generated them but only on years when the system as a whole generates excess receipts.

You can view more details about Propel NC, including projections for the proposed workforce sectors, . You can read more about how community colleges are currently funded .

What are people saying?

In January, NCCCS leaders said the system had already started meeting with lawmakers about Propel NC. In February, State Board Chair Tom Looney said the system had more than 100 letters of endorsement for the plan from businesses across the state.

“I couldn’t be more proud of where we’ve arrived at this point in time. I think this is a game changer for our system,” NCCCS President Dr. Jeff Cox said in November. “It answers the call that I think we’re hearing from our legislature and our governor about the community colleges’ critical role in meeting the workforce needs of the future of our state. …It aligns our system in a way we’ve just never been before.”

Feedback from lawmakers so far has been positive, NCCCS Information and Communications Specialist Marcy Gardner told EdNC in an email. System leaders plan to continue conversations and advocacy for Propel NC, she said.

“While we hope to get the full funding to launch Propel NC this fall, we are developing contingency plans so that we can be prepared to move forward with whatever level of funding is ultimately approved in the state budget,” Cox told EdNC.

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, an ex-officio member of the State Board, expressed his support for the plan at the Board’s January and February meetings. Robinson is the Republican nominee for the 2024 governor’s race.

“Moving from tiers-based to labor-market driven, I would suppose that would give us a lot more flexibility, so I think that’s very good,” Robinson said. “Community colleges are going to be essential (to the economy)… so I’m glad to see the work that’s going on.”

North Carolina has a projected one-time $1.4 billion surplus in state revenues through Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, according to . This essentially means there are $1.4 billion extra state dollars that lawmakers can choose to invest this short session.

With a Republican supermajority this session, Republicans will drive fiscal and policy decisions. On May 1st, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a , which are state-funded vouchers families can use to pay for eligible private schools. To do so, the bill would allocate roughly an additional $463 million to the program over the next two years.

In addition to expanding vouchers, House Speaker Tim Moore, , told media he would like to see funding for child care subsidies, additional raises to school and state employees, and an additional $400 million toward Medicaid.

So far, the General Assembly’s only discussions regarding community colleges have involved clarifying terms for how local college board trustees are selected.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s included $34.3 million to implement Propel NC.

“This new funding model will help streamline degree attainment and prepare a well-trained workforce to meet the demands of the State’s growing economy,” the proposal says.

Cooper’s proposal also allocated $3 million to establish the enrollment increase reserve. The governor’s proposal did not including funding to increase the base allocation for colleges.

John Locke Foundation Board Member John Hood also recently made the case for Propel NC in

“Implementing some version of the Propel NC model would require a modest increase in state funds,” he wrote. “Its advocates argue that community colleges not only produce labor-market returns but also serve as critical hubs in local communities. I find their argument persuasive.”

Enrollment growth adjustment

The NCCCS is also requesting an enrollment growth adjustment. This adjustment is usually funded in the budget, but it is not statutorily required.

During the Board’s finance committee meeting in March, the system shared an initial projection of $54 million in enrollment growth. Since then, the system has updated the enrollment growth estimate to $69 million, NCCCS’ Gardner said in an email.

The governor’s proposal included a $25 million enrollment growth adjustment for FY 2024-25, “based on the increase in community college enrollment. Community college enrollment increased by 4.6%, or 10,435 full-time equivalent students.”

myFutureNC’s legislative priorities

Five years ago,  of 2 million 25- to 44-year-olds with a high-quality credential or postsecondary degree by 2030.

“From 2019 to 2022, the state has increased overall educational attainment by 4 percentage points from 53.4% to 57.4%,” a . “But, most recent data show we still remain 391,900 away from 2 million, and are tracking 24,096 behind where we needed to be at this point in time to reach the goal.”

Screenshot from myFutureNC’s legislative priorities document.

myFutureNC’s include NC workforce credentials, targeted financial aid provided to all postsecondary students who face unexpected emergencies, and local and regional technical assistance to promote collaboration.

The organization’s legislative request also includes two partner support items:

• Early foundations for success, including NC Pre-K and Science of Reading implementation.
• High-quality implementation of Career Development Plans, integrated through NCcareers.org.

“myFutureNC promotes the work of all sectors and helps find and fill gaps to drive educational access and attainment outcomes that align with and fulfill employer needs,” the document says.

You can read their full priorities .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A coalition of education and civil rights groups plan to push for changes to how Alabama funds its schools.

A Thursday news release announcing the formation of the coalition said that Alabama is one of the few states to allocate money based on enrollment rather than needs from students.

Education budget chairs and have both spoken in the past about changing the way Alabama provides funding for schools.

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“Alabama has not updated the way it funds public schools in more than three decades, and how we fund them creates large disparities across the state,” said Jason Meadows, the advocacy and partnerships director of A+ Education Partnership, wrote in the release. “Every child is different, and some children need more support to be successful. A better approach would be to consider the specific needs of students within each school system and ensure every school can fund the resources needed to help them and their families thrive.”

A+ Education Partnership, an education advocacy organization, launched the coalition. Other members include Alabama Possible, Alabama Network of Child Advocacy Centers, Alabama, Goodwill, Faith in Action Alabama, Teach for America Alabama, Huntsville Committee of 100, EmpowerED Birmingham, Birmingham Promise, Alabama Arise, New Schools for Alabama, Mobile Area Education Foundation, Black Alabamians for Education, Breakthrough Birmingham, Baldwin County Education Coalition, Inc., Alabama State Conference NAACP, Education 4 Life, Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama (¡HICA!), AG Gaston Business Institute, Alabama Expanded Learning Alliance, New Life Church of God in Christ, Montgomery Education Foundation, Alabama Families for Great Schools, VOICES for Alabama’s Children, Learning Little People, LLC, and John Wilson, Chief School Financial Officer, Baldwin County Board of Education, according the release.

Every Child Alabama is beginning by launching a

The 1901 Alabama Constitution, passed to take the vote from Black Alabamians and poor whites, includes tight property tax caps that make it difficult for local governments to raise adequate revenue for schools. , Alabama’s per-pupil spending in 2022 was $11,819, 36th in the nation. The national average was $16,340.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

LINCOLN — After an emotional, four-hour debate that extended into Tuesday night, Nebraska lawmakers gave initial approval to a to attend private schools.

The vote was 31-12 to advance Legislative Bill 1402 from first-round debate, which came after the bare minimum, 33 senators, voted to halt a filibuster against the bill.

Two senators, Myron Dorn of Adams and Teresa Ibach of Sumner, voted for cloture but were “present and not voting” on advancing the actual bill.

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While opponents of the bill called it unconstitutional and a way to block a public vote on school choice, advocates said students who struggle in public schools, especially those in low-income families, deserve the option of a private or parochial school through what amounts to a school voucher.

“Every child should have access to a high-quality education, not by chance, not by privilege, but by right,” said State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, a former member of the Omaha Public Schools Board.

The main sponsor of LB 1402, Elkhorn Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, said students from low-income families, who get priority for the Opportunity Scholarships, don’t have the same choice of switching to a private or parochial school as do children in a more affluent family.

“Why is it that we in the Legislature don’t feel that kids should have a choice?” Linehan said, pointing out that the $10 million cost of the bill is a tiny fraction of what’s spent on public schools.

‘Blatantly’ unconstitutional

LB 1402 comes up for second-round debate on Wednesday. If it passes, it is expected to be challenged, either by a referendum to put it on the fall ballot or by a legal challenge that it violates on the “appropriation” of public funds to non-public schools.

Lincoln Sen. George Dungan said LB 1402 is more constitutionally suspect than the Opportunity Scholarship Act passed by the Legislature a year ago.

Last year’s law allowed taxpayers to earmark up to half of their state income tax liability to “scholarship granting organizations” that then handed out grants to children to attend private or parochial schools, thus likely not a direct appropriation.

“This is blatantly a (state) appropriation,” Dungan, an attorney, said of the new bill.

Linehan disputed that, citing a 1984 ruling by the Nebraska Supreme Court that upheld a state program that granted scholarships to students who could then choose to attend a public or private college.

‘Straw man’ argument

“The straw man argument that this is unconstitutional doesn’t hold water,” said Dunbar Sen. Julie Slama, who is also a lawyer.

But Dungan, as well as Omaha Sen. Wendy DeBoer, disagreed, saying the money doled out by LB 1402 — unlike the scholarship funds of 1984 — can only be used for private education.

Passage of LB 1402 would nullify a referendum petition drive led by the state teachers’ union that gathered more than 117,000 signatures to place last year’s bill on this year’s November ballot. Just how passage of this year’s bill would play out — whether it would lead to the removal of the referendum from the ballot, for instance — has not yet been determined.

The head of the Nebraska State Education Association called Tuesday’s vote “a slap in the face” to those who signed the petition so that voters would have the final say on school choice.

“It is deeply troubling that Sen. Lou Ann Linehan and her out-of-state billionaires continue to try to deny Nebraskans’ right to vote on this issue,” said Jenni Benson, president of the NSEA and a leader in Support Our Schools, which organized the referendum.

The petition drive was hotly contested, with competing claims of improper tactics to collect signatures and block people from signing. to collect signatures and employ “blockers” to discourage signers.

A group financially backed by charter school proponent Betsy DeVos, a former official in the Trump administration and member of a billionaire family, was a major funder of the school choice forces.

A year ago, the State Legislature’s passage of the Opportunity Scholarship Act ended Nebraska’s status as one of only two states that didn’t offer some type of school choice. North Dakota is the other state.

1,000 scholarships expected

Under that law, more than 1,000 students are expected to receive Opportunity Scholarships averaging $5,000 each to attend a private or parochial school.

This year, however, Linehan introduced a new version, LB 1402, in large part to avoid an expensive campaign battle over the referendum placed on the November ballot to nullify last year’s law.

The new bill also eliminated the income tax break on donations to scholarship granting organizations, which Linehan said was wrongly portrayed as helping the wealthy.

Under the new bill, the state treasurer would set up a program to provide scholarships to eligible students to attend “qualified” schools. That would eliminate the middle man, the scholarship granting organizations, and aim the money directly to students.

Cost dropped to $10 million a year

On Tuesday, the senator offered more amendments intended to expand support for LB 1402. The fiscal impact of the bill was reduced to $10 million a year, instead of $25 million, and an “escalator” clause was dropped that would have allowed spending on private schooling to rise to $100 million a year.

One supporter of LB 1402, Omaha Sen. Christy Armendariz, argued that with math and reading scores suffering in public schools in her district, something needs to be done.

“We’re tripping over ourselves about what school building they’re in? We should be doing everything we can,” Armendariz said.

But opponents of LB 1402 said there were no guarantees students would do better in private schools or avoid bullying there.

Omaha Sen. Megan Hunt said private and parochial schools can discriminate, unlike public schools, by denying entrance or expelling LGBTQ students.

Bellevue Sen. Carol Blood argued that Nebraskans are asking to decide the issue of school choice at the voting booth, just as they decided the issues of capital punishment and Medicaid expansion.

“Then it’s resolved once and for all,” Blood said.

But Wayne said he considers LB 1402 a “pilot project,” that can be rescinded by future legislatures if it doesn’t work out.

Linehan agreed, adding that in other states, the battle over school choice is a “continual fight.”

“It’s not a one and done deal,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

Members of the received an update on child care at their meeting April 2.

The biggest child care issue across North Carolina is the lack of sufficient funding to support competitive, family-sustaining wages for early childhood educators. Adequate funding could keep programs in operation when pandemic-era stabilization funding runs out at the end of June 2024.

‘Let’s be buffaloes’

Sandy Weathersbee, the owner of in Charlotte, who also serves on the boards of the and the , shared his concerns with the committee.

Weathersbee’s primary concern is staffing. Early childhood education programs like his have to compete for teachers with the public school system, which has the advantage of offering state-funded health and retirement benefits despite low teacher salaries.

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“We’ve not been able to find a solution to a problem that is bigger than we are,” Weathersbee said. “We need help.”

He argued that help is needed urgently because of the upcoming expiration of funding that stabilized early childhood education during the pandemic. That funding will sunset in North Carolina at the end of June 2024 — the date referred to as the “funding cliff.”

Weathersbee pointed to the recent results of a conducted by the to bolster his argument that support is needed now.

Here are some key findings from that survey about the challenges providers expect to face when we reach the funding cliff:

• About 3 in 10 programs (29%) expect to close.
• About 4 in 10 centers (41%) expect to close or combine classrooms, leading to decreased enrollment capacity.
• More than half of programs (54%) plan to cut costs, which could reduce program quality, including child nutrition.
• Almost all programs (88%) expect to increase parent fees in the second half of the year, raising the annual costs for families by more than $1,000 per year.
• When asked to name one support that would help programs be sustainable, the most common response was increasing funds for staff salaries (38%).

With these storm clouds brewing, Weathersbee asked members: “Do we want to be cows or buffaloes?”

“Cows will try to outrun a storm only to succumb to its speed and stay in it longer. Buffaloes will run right into the storm and get out of it faster,” Weathersbee explained. “Let’s be buffaloes.”

‘We know what quality looks like’

Ariel Ford, director of the (DCDEE) at the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), provided the committee with on the state’s efforts to revise our quality rating and improvement system (QRIS), in addition to addressing the challenges posed by the funding cliff.

In 2023, the General Assembly passed requiring the to make recommendations for updating the QRIS. This is the system through which child care programs are granted a rating of one to five stars based on meeting specific standards related to quality.

Ford pointed out that North Carolina was the first state to launch a quality star-rating system, back in 1999.

“What we’ve learned over 25 years is that we know what quality looks like, and we know that there’s multiple paths to get there,” Ford said.

Ford presented an overview of the to adopt three pathways to quality instead of the single pathway we’ve always had.

The first would be a modified version of the one that’s currently in place, in which programs are evaluated by an outside consultant and rated on a scale. The commission plans to review that scale if the new recommended pathways are supported by legislators.

The second pathway would be a new one specifically for programs that fall outside of the typical early childhood education framework, such as developmental day programs that serve children with disabilities.

“So for instance, if you have multiple children in wheelchairs that are feeding with feeding tubes, their day just looks a little bit different than our more traditional child care programs, and we wanted to honor that and to respect the quality that comes with that,” Ford said.

The third pathway is what Ford described as “shovel-ready” or “mission-ready” — a system for recognizing federal accreditations in our state’s star-rating system.

Right now, programs such as Head Start, Early Head Start, and those accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) have to go through the entire QRIS process for North Carolina, creating administrative redundancies and inefficiencies.

At the direction of the legislature, the commission created a crosswalk that aligns federal accreditations with our state’s rating system to relieve the administrative burden of these established high-quality programs.

Ford said the commission has this pathway ready to be implemented at the General Assembly’s discretion: “We can basically just turn that light on at any second.”

But looming over these potential changes is the June 2024 funding cliff. Ford also referenced the new survey results from the CCR&R Council, pointing out that North Carolina has already had a net loss of 53 programs in 2023.

Here are what some had to say about what they’ll do when the stabilization funding sunsets:

• “Childcare teachers have historically been one of the lowest compensated workers in our county. With the end of the staff bonuses we no longer have any incentive to offer teachers to stay except for their unending love of the children in their care. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough because their loving hearts do not pay the bills.”
• “I don’t know. This 4 years have beaten me up and I’m tired. We are taking the same surveys and SCREAMING that we are going under, and no one is listening. It’s disheartening.”

One intervention Ford proposed was the need to increase the subsidy rate floor.

Ford said the state’s child care subsidy program serves 51,000 children statewide, which is less than 15% of eligible children. And the subsidies reimburse less than half the cost of a classroom slot. That’s because the rate is based on what families can afford to pay, not what the service actually costs to provide.

Of particular concern to Ford is what she calls the “rural disadvantage” when it comes to the subsidy reimbursement rate.

Because the rate is based on what local residents can afford, it is typically lower in rural areas with a lower cost of living and income base.

“What we have learned over the years is that it doesn’t actually cost a whole lot less to run child care in our rural communities; their costs just look different,” Ford said.

When the Southwestern Child Development Commission announced in the western part of the state last year, Ford asked them about subsidies.

“I said, ‘What would have happened if that subsidy rate floor had been in place?’ and they said, ‘That would have made our bottom line work,’” Ford told the oversight committee.

Ford also said the continued underfunding of NC Pre-K needs to be addressed.

NC Pre-K is a statewide public preschool program designed to support low-income 4-year-olds at risk of negative education outcomes. It’s serving less than half of eligible students and costs $11,330 per student for one academic year.

Of the eligible students enrolled, more than half are in classrooms operated by public school systems, which receive $10,791 per student. But almost half of classrooms are operated by private programs, which receive only $5,450 per student — 48% of the total cost.

“I love our school districts, and we partner with them all the time, but they don’t have space or room or even necessarily the function of doing [NC Pre-K] for all across the state,” Ford said. “We need our private providers in that [they] are the ones set up for zero-to-five care. That’s their bread and butter.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Missouri Senate Democrats ended their filibuster Tuesday of a bill that seeks to expand the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program — agreeing to let the legislation come to a vote after Republicans added provisions boosting public school funding and teacher retention efforts.

receiving first-round approval by a 20-13 vote in the Senate Tuesday evening is the second version to come to the floor this week. The original 12-page bill ballooned to 76 pages before expanding to 153 pages Tuesday after negotiations.

“There are plenty of things (in the bill) that I dislike,” Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, told the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Andrew Koenig.

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Koenig, a Republican from Manchester, acknowledged the compromise.

“That makes two of us,” he said.

“I know that there are things you wish you could change, and there are things that I wish I could change. At the end of the day, I think we’ve gotten to that right balance,” Arthur said.

Republican Sens. Justin Brown of Rolla, Mike Moon of Ash Grove and Elaine Gannon of DeSoto joined Democrats voting against the bill.

Gannon has spoken against the bill at the committee level and told The Independent that she fears tax-credit scholarships pull money from public schools.

“If you want choice, pay for it. If they’re not happy, there’s other options out there, like charter schools and private schools.” she said.

On the Senate floor Monday evening, she spoke about six counties who removed tax-credit scholarships from their local Republican Party platform.

“These six counties feel if they take public dollars, the government’s going to come in and regulate those parochial schools and private schools,” she said.

Currently only available in charter counties and cities with at least 30,000 residents, the legislation that won initial approval Tuesday would open the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, MOScholars, statewide.

It would also increase the salary one can make to qualify for the program as low-income from 200% of the amount used to determine reduced lunch to 300%. The income cap, for a family of four, would be $166,500, under this school year’s reduced lunch eligibility.

The bill would additionally increase the amount awarded to those with limited English proficiency, those who qualify for free or reduced lunch and students with individualized education plans.

MOScholars currently has a ceiling of $50 million in tax credits, which it has not reached in its first couple years of the program. The bill seeks to raise the cap to $75 million, with an adjustment tied to the “percent increase or decrease in the amount of state aid distributed to school districts.”

Koenig has launched a campaign for State Treasurer, the office that oversees the MOScholars program.

The bill also would permit charter schools to open in Boone County. Currently, charter schools are only allowed in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, who is in his last year in the Senate, spoke in favor of adding a charter in his home county.

“We’re just trying to give another option for Columbia,” Rowden, a Republican from Columbia, said on the Senate floor.

These provisions were in place as Senate Democrats led a filibuster lasting roughly four hours before the chamber adjourned at 8 p.m. Monday. After closed-door negotiations, Koenig’s bill was amended to impact 24 additional sections of state law.

The changes include incentives for school districts in charter counties or cities with 30,000 or more residents to have instruction five days a week, changes to the state formula that funds public schools and boosting the minimum teacher salary to $40,000.

The foundation formula, which currently has a multiplier of student attendance, would shift to enrollment in its place. A commissioned by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education last year.

“It is well understood that average daily attendance rates tend to be lower (relative to enrolled, eligible pupils) in districts that are higher in child poverty and in minority concentrations. As such, when state aid is calculated based on average daily attendance, that aid is systematically reduced in higher poverty, higher minority concentration districts,” Baker wrote.

A fiscal note has not been completed for the current version. Koenig said the changes to the state-aid formula, which would be ushered in 10% increments, would cost $70 million for each 10%.

Also added to the bill is the proposed creation of a literacy fund that could receive up to $5 million from the state’s general fund to provide grants for weekly reading programs.

Other additions include a proposal to permit school districts to pay teachers more who fill roles in “hard-to-staff” schools and areas, a boost to the career ladder program and additional pathways to teaching certifications.

One piece of the bill discussed Tuesday would allow people with bachelor’s degrees to complete an 18-hour teacher training program for credentials to teach in Missouri private schools.

Public schools could get more teachers into classrooms through a provision giving bachelor’s degree recipients “subject-area certifications” only for their areas of expertise. The bill also would strike an entrance exam to receive training in education.

Debate ended at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, with Senate leadership promising to send the bill to fiscal oversight in the morning. It needs to be approved by the Senate one more time before being sent to the House.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

As for its other mission — to work with state legislators to fix the problem — founder Rebecca Sibilia now admits that EdBuild did this “very, very poorly.” In 2020, after just five years, the group closed up shop. 

Sibilia, who previously worked on school finance with Washington, D.C., schools and for the education reform group StudentsFirst, remembers that at the time she and others at the organization decided that while they’d done much to raise consciousness about the problem, they lacked the tools to move the issue forward.

As it turns out, the move coincided with the COVID pandemic, which threw school budgets into chaos nationwide. If anything, the need for clear, actionable information on funding now is greater than ever. “One of the biggest things that has come from the COVID era is that we have realized how much the data sucks,” she said.

Policymakers “have been making guesses in the dark about how to fund our schools.”

So four years later, Sibilia is debuting a new venture, EdFund, which goes live today. She spoke this week with The 74’s Greg Toppo about the need for better funding research and dissemination — and a new model for collaborating not just with legislators and policymakers, but for underwriting researchers, journalists and others to help make sense of the data. Sibilia plans to issue EdFund’s first request for proposals shortly.

She expects to eventually have “many more proposals than what we have money to fund.” At the moment, the new organization has three main funders — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation — providing about $1.5 million annually. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

The 74: Thinking about EdBuild, you focused so much on unequal funding. I wonder: What’s the evolution? What’s next?

Rebecca Sibilia: EdBuild was really constituted with two missions: The first was to raise national awareness around the problem, which we did pretty well. And the second was to work with legislatures to actually fix it, which we did very, very poorly. And so at the end of the five years, we were like, “I’m not sure there’s much else to tell. We’ve raised the collective consciousness on what the problem is with school funding in terms of local funds. But we certainly aren’t structured, we certainly don’t have the tools to move this forward. And so, we need to shut down.” That was why we shut down.  

Four years later, what’s your focus? 

We need much more policy-relevant research because for 60 years, we’ve been arguing about whether or not money matters, and it is the dumbest debate of all dumb questions that exist in the world. Because at the end of the day, states exist in a limited-resource environment. What we don’t need is an answer to an ethereal question about endless resources and what they’ll do for student achievement. What we need are answers to practical questions, like “Where should I put a marginal dollar when I have it?” Or, “What are the right tax policies that states should be setting around local dollars in order to create more equitable, but also adequately funded systems?”

This complete disconnect between research and policy has led us to a place where policymakers have been making guesses in the dark about how to fund our schools, and I frankly believe that’s one of the reasons why very few legislators actually understand their funding formula. There’s very little science behind it because we just haven’t provided that.

So who is your audience?

We’re trying to bridge the gap between research and policy. So we see our stakeholders as three groups, with two very different workstreams: the research community, advocates and journalists. I would love to be able to say that policymakers are the endgame on this, but really, advocates and journalists are the ones who are going to be able to interpret this work, and get the overall thrust of what is new and what it means for kids, into the hands of policymakers. I should also mention that we’re a 501(c)3 [nonprofit].

When you talked to The 74 in 2020, you said the next step wouldn’t be through a 501(c)3. It sounds like you’ve changed your mind.

I have not. I’m just not the one to do it. There is an organization that you may have heard of that recently started up with some seed money from the Gates Foundation called . They are at the Southern Education Foundation and they’re shaping up a litigation strategy for school district borders and school funding and integration. So they’re kind of pulling on both of those strings. I’ve given up on legislators actually making a fundamental change to the system. I really think that that’s going to happen through the courts. But in the meantime, the research has to inform what we’ve got in place right now, because that endgame in the courts is in 10, 15, 20 years.

Your “exit interview” with us happened right as COVID hit. And I wondered: What have the past four years done to this issue?

One of the biggest things that has come from the COVID era is that we have realized how much the data sucks. School finance data sucks. It sucks, it sucks. And it’s one of the biggest restrictions to good research in this field, and certainly timely research that could inform better decisions. We had a focus group of about 40 or so graduate and Phd students, and we asked them if they were studying school finance. They said, “No.” We asked them, “Which of these 10 factors would make you more likely to study school finance?” And 80% of them said, “Better data.” 

The second thing is that we’re understanding a lot more that school districts tend to invest in the things that do matter for raising student achievement, and that’s human capital. Whether it’s teachers, tutors, guidance counselors, etc. It’s human capital. This question of whether putting an additional dollar into a school district will raise student achievement —what Kirabo Jackson will tell you is, “Yes, just the dollar will.” What EricHanushek will tell you is, “Well, it depends on how it’s spent.” And the answer that we’ve learned through ESSER funds is that it tends to be spent on the people in the school, which means that everyone’s right. So those are kind of the two things that have come out of COVID.

Let’s go back to the first issue: How can you make the data suck less? Is this what your RFP is about?

Yes, in part. Let me go through the four C’s of who we are: We’re going to curate a policy-relevant research agenda. So instead of letting funders determine what they’re going to fund and making researchers chase that money, we’re instead going to go to policymakers and say, “What are the questions you’re going to have to grapple with in the next five years,” and then fund research to answer those questions. We’re going to curate a policy-relevant research agenda. That was the first thing we did. That’s why we’ve been quiet for the past six months.

The second thing we’re going to do is commission research against that policy agenda. That’s the RFP that we’re releasing this year. We hope to double the size of the investment next year and so on. And what you’ll see in the RFP is that we say: In some cases, we are flying so blind as it relates to school funding, that just putting together a data set will move the entire research field forward. So if students want to do this, if journalists want to do this, if policy organizations want to do this, in some cases collecting better data is just part of the solution. 

O.K. 

And then the third thing that we’re hoping to do is communicate the research that does exist and will come out of these RFPs in a way that it’s friendly for policy audiences — journalists and advocates primarily. We’re going to do so by white-labeling stuff. What we’re going to try to do is put together interactives and graphics and briefings and that sort of stuff, but it’ll all be available to advocates through an [an embeddable element on a website], and they can just stick it straight on their website. Or we’ll have podcasts that someone can send to a policymaker to listen to. We’re really trying for this to become an opportunity for advocates to learn what the research says, and a way for advocates to actually incorporate that into their everyday work so that everything is just more grounded in research. 

Then the fourth is connect. I got a call just the other day: There is a state that we happen to have been linked to in the past that happens to be moving school funding reform this year. And they were like, “We need somebody who can come down and talk about this one element of our funding formula.” So we sent one of our board members down, because he is an economist and has studied the issue. He can talk about that and educate policymakers on what his research says. We’re hoping to do more of that — just make those direct connections.

I was struck by something you said a couple years ago. You singled out California, New York and New Jersey, arguably three of the most progressive states in the country, that have “the most shameful set of borders around schools.” And it really made me think that if they can’t budge on this issue, what hope do you have for anybody solving it?

The states where all of the school finance reform mojo is happening are in the South! Tennessee their funding formula and went to a very progressive funding system. The Mississippi House , a very progressive funding system. The two co-chairs in Alabama have been talking about it — I wouldn’t be surprised to see them move in the next year or two.

It’s the southern states that are recognizing that the way they’re funding schools through these resource formulas just isn’t aligned with the science. This is one area where we actually can do some bootleg research and it can inform stuff. We used to say all the time at EdBuild that we need to move to a student-based funding formula for two reasons: One, different students have different needs. Two, when you think about how things work in the state capitol, you want advocates to be able to advocate for kids rather than themselves. And so in a resource-based formula, the people who are advocating in the capitol are the nurses association, the teachers association, the superintendents association, the principals. And the people in a weighted-student-formula environment who are lobbying in the capitol are special ed parents and English-language-learner communities and that sort of stuff. That’s really where you start to tilt the system in favor of kids instead of in favor of resources. 

It doesn’t sound like you’re abandoning the border fight. Taking a new approach maybe?

I’ve given up on borders changing through the legislature. The power dynamic just works against school districts that serve predominantly students of color.

I live in Maryland and we have county schools, which is not to say that they’re equal, but I live in a county that’s pretty diverse. I’d imagine somebody like you would say that’s a step in the right direction. Tell me where a place like Maryland sits in this discussion.

New Jersey has just over a million students, and they have over 600 school districts. Maryland has 850,000 kids, and they’ve got 24. That’s where Maryland fits in the conversation. So here’s the deal: What Maryland can do is they can take these enormous inequities in local funds and pool them because they’re sharing them across a much larger geography. The state has to do less to equalize because it’s equalizing at the local level first.

In New Jersey, the state has an enormous burden to equalize because they have to fix things for the 550 school districts that aren’t the bastions of wealth in the state. We can either move to systems that look like Maryland — and I believe that has to happen through the courts — or, short of that, we can change funding formulas to make much more sense as it relates to the way that we’re funding schools. And that’s what we can do through legislatures, policymakers, researchers all talking.

O.K. This is becoming clear to me now.

You can headline it as, “Rebecca Sibilia has given up hope.” [Laughs.]

I’m going to assume that you’re going to be done in five years, because that’s the way you do everything. What would you consider success in 2029? 

You know , right? He’s my ex-husband. And we’re still very good friends. We got engaged trying to change Tennessee’s funding formula 10 years ago. And we got it done last year. We started in 2016 to try to change Mississippi’s funding formula. And this year the House passed something. It takes a decade from the point that you start to educate the legislature and advocates and journalists about how their formula works and what research says for that to translate into policy. I believe that an organization can exist for five years and have a 15-year impact. We are seeing that bear out from the EdBuild time. 

One of the reasons we have these four distinct workstreams is because I think that several can be absorbed in different places. So maybe EdFund continues to run just as a funders’ collaborative. It just takes in money from foundations and puts it out for research, but the people who are curating the research agenda are the National Conference of State Legislatures. And the people who are communicating are at a specialized shop in the Urban Institute. And we’ve already created the bridges. Everyone’s talking and singing “Kumbaya,” so we don’t need to do the connecting anymore.

When you think about the construct of what EdFund could be, it could continue to exist past me. I could peace out and EdFund could continue to exist as it is, or we can start thinking about whether or not it makes more sense for these activities, once they have worked well together for a few years, to be absorbed in different places. Frankly, many other organizations out there in the education space could also afford to think about their work in the same respect.

I couldn’t let you go without asking you about this tweet from you at South by Southwest. Somebody took a picture of you talking to the Education Writers Association and you tweeted, “A bunch of journalists just created a better school funding formula than any current state model. How about them apples? Want more equitable funding? Elect your local reporter.” Thank you, by the way. We won’t take credit for that, but I wonder: Conceptually, is it a simple thing that we are just mucking up, or is it truly a complicated matter? 

There’s a part of every school funding formula called an . If you boil it all down, the state decides how much every school district needs to operate. They subtract out how much they think each community should raise, and then they give the rest. That’s what happens in every state. On the allocation side, people tend to understand how their state allocates: There’s a base amount and then there’s a weight for different kids, etc. That’s a policy that’s kind of easy to understand.

Ohio’s expected local contribution, I’m not kidding, goes for four pages, 12-point font, just in the mathematical equation alone. So if you’re a legislator and you’re looking at your state code and it’s 16 pages worth of, “Divide by, add two, regress four,” you’re just going to be like, “I give up.” But if you boil it down to, “Ohio uses a matrix that starts with the property wealth of every school district and gives a deduction for districts that have lower median household incomes,” I get that. What’s happened in school funding is that we’ve gotten so scared of the way it’s written because the code looks so scary.

It is scary, but we haven’t conveyed the concepts. Why haven’t we conveyed the concepts? Because research is what conveys concepts. And we haven’t had research to do it.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provide financial support to EdBuild and The 74.

A state audit shows at least eight Maryland school systems didn’t use $12.3 million designated for students in underserved communities.

According to the from the Office of the Inspector General for Education, officials with the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) didn’t provide training and guidance for local school officials to utilize what are known as concentration of poverty grants.

Those grants are to aid students inside buildings designated as community schools, which receive services such as before- or after-school tutoring, access to mental health professionals and educational field trips. Community schools, which are around the state, are part of the education reform plan.

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Two pieces of legislation focused on community schools are part of this year’s set of priorities. The bills are proposed to help expand the number of community schools in school systems with fewer than 40.

“Several [school districts] shared frustrations about the lack of clarification or guidance by MSDE staff about whether certain items, positions, or services could/could not be procured using [concentration of poverty] funding,” Inspector General Richard P. Henry wrote in last week’s audit. “Specifically, [the districts] advised that MSDE staff would primarily provide only verbal guidance regarding how to spend CoP funds on wraparound services, and little to no written approval or guidance was provided.”

The audit, which reviewed records from July 1, 2019, through Jan. 31, 2023, noted about $1 million was returned to the state. The “selected” school systems, also referred to as local education agencies, or LEAs, that were investigated were Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Dorchester, Montgomery, Somerset, Washington and Wicomico counties.

According to the audit, money from the concentration of poverty grants is disbursed in two portions:

• Personnel grants: A fixed amount to hire a community school coordinator and a health care practitioner.
• Per-pupil grants: Money used to provide various wraparound services that can include additional school counselors, English language leaner classes and professional development for teachers and other staff.

However, the audit shows personnel grants allocated between fiscal years 2020 to 2022 were only used in Dorchester and Wicomico counties.

Some local school officials used the concentration of poverty grant funding to pay consultants to train staff on how to use the money. One example in the audit noted a school system entered into a five-year, $4.1 million contract to receive “continued technical support in implementing a community school strategy.”

Senior staff with the MSDE weren’t aware of this going on, the audit said, but “LEAs appropriately reported these training costs to MSDE, but MSDE did not have any follow-up questions regarding these expenses. This absence of follow-up appears to be attributable to MSDE’s lack of adequate controls regarding LEAs’ submitted reports and expenditures.”

A recommendation from the audit to the department: develop a strategy for communicating policies and procedures to all school staff. In addition, the department should establish a team of subject matter experts, legal counsel and other stakeholders in the process such as representatives from the Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board. The board, known as the AIB, oversees the education reform plan through 2032.

Responses

Interim Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright, who began working as the state’s , wrote in a letter dated Feb. 1 that the agency “is committed to continuously improving its processes and internal controls…”

The department submitted several responses to the inspector general, including that a concentration of poverty grant program manager continues to coordinate the development of policies and procedures that began in November. A draft of the procedures will be shared with the AIB, with full implementation estimated for March 1.

The program manager is coordinating an annual review process of the concentration of poverty grant policies and procedures with stakeholders to be implemented by July 1, the agency said in response to the audit.

One recommendation where the department disagrees with the inspector general was a suggestion to temporarily pause specific finance and program activities. mandates funding for buildings designated as community schools.

The department hired an independent firm in September 2023 to verify grant expenditures incurred from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2023. The contract is set to expire this September.

Henry, the inspector general, wrote in response that the department should “continue to engage the independent firm” beyond September.

The [inspector general’s office] “believes that the State Audit referenced in MSDEs response will not ensure that LEAs are using grant funds in accordance with State law,” Henry wrote.

Shamoyia Gardiner, executive director of Strong Schools Maryland, said it’s not the first time an audit has reported problems with the department.

“It’s not a surprise,” she said after a rainy rally Monday in Annapolis by advocates requesting that lawmakers “fully fund” the Blueprint plan.

Gardiner said the Blueprint board has the authority to approve all implementation plans and assess the spending of funds.

“The fact that didn’t happen is a sign that perhaps we need stronger accountability,” she said.

This article originally appeared in .

Four months after officially beginning work in August to revise its funding model, the N.C. Community College System (NCCCS) unveiled its new plan, called Propel NC, at the State Board of Community Colleges meeting Jan. 19.

The plan received a unanimous vote of approval from all 58 members of the N.C. Association of Community College Presidents (NCACCP) in December. The full State Board is set to vote on the modernization plan in February and then will request consideration of Propel NC by the legislature during the short session in April. Between now and then, NCCCS stakeholders are working to engage business leaders across the state, too.

“This is an orchestrated effort with businesses in all 100 counties and across all 58 colleges,” State Board Chair Tom Looney said at Friday’s meeting. “Exciting times are ahead for us here in the North Carolina Community College System.”

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Propel NC

The NCCCS’ current state funding model was created in 2010 and last updated in 2013.

The vast majority of funding for the state’s 58 community colleges comes from state appropriations, with  allocated each year of this biennium.

The system’s current funding model allocates resources to the colleges in proportion to the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) students they enroll in each of their programs. Certain courses receive more state funds than others based on a four-tier funding model.

Under the proposed model, funding based on FTE would remain in place, but the current FTE tiers would shift to “workforce sectors” instead. The 16-person Propel NC work group says this will move the NCCCS toward a labor-market driven model of community college programs.

The anticipated cost for this part is approximately $68.6 million, .

Under this model, all curriculum and continuing education (CE) courses would reside in the same workforce sector. A nursing curriculum and nursing CE course would be funded the same way, for example.

The proposed sectors largely focus on health care, technology, and trades. Courses not on this list would be held harmless and retain their same value, but they would not be labeled in tiers. There would be a catch-all sector for transfer and general education courses.

“Tier funding never resonated with anyone, no one ever knew what (the tiers) meant,” Finance Committee Chair Lisa Estep said. “This model… resonates with everyone and ultimately brings so much back to the student and to business, so I think its great we’re going down this path.”

Under the proposed model, courses will be ranked and valued by statewide salary job demand data. The course rankings will be updated every three years.

On Friday, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, an ex-officio member of the State Board, expressed his support for the plan.

“Moving from tiers-based to labor-market driven, I would suppose that would give us a lot more flexibility, so I think that’s very good,” Robinson said. “Community colleges are going to be essential (to the economy)… so I’m glad to see the work that’s going on.”

In addition to instructional funding based on FTE, colleges receive a base allocation for institutional and academic support, which includes additional funding for multi-campus centers.

The NCCCS modernization plan proposes to increase the base allocation 5.8%, “which closes the gap to actual spending patterns and account for inflation,” the NCCCS document says. “This modification would also increase the enrollment allotment above 750 FTE based on this increase in other costs funding.” The anticipated cost for this request is about $24.4 million.

The NCCCS modernization plan also includes two other focus areas, listed below.

• Enrollment increase reserve. The current enrollment growth reserve was implemented in 2010 in response to the large number of students enrolling in community colleges after the Great Recession. The system wants to request $6 million in non-recurring funds for a fixed per-FTE amount for any colleges that go over the enrollment threshold set by their FTE for the fiscal year. The system would then like to build replenishment of the fund into the recurring enrollment growth fund in the state budget.
• Excess tuition retention. Excess tuition receipts currently fund the enrollment increase reserve. The NCCCS work group would like to change that, allowing excess tuition receipts to return to the college which generated them but only on years when the system as a whole generates excess receipts.

Together, the request has a nearly $100 million price tag. Meetings between NCCCS leaders and legislators have already started, per the system.

“I couldn’t be more proud of where we’ve arrived at this point in time. I think this is a game changer for our system,” NCCCS President Dr. Jeff Cox said in November. “It answers the call that I think we’re hearing from our legislature and our governor about the community colleges’ critical role in meeting the workforce needs of the future of our state. …It aligns our system in a way we’ve just never been before.”

You can view more details about Propel NC, including projections for the proposed workforce sectors, . You can read more about how community colleges are currently funded .

Increased oversight of presidential reelections

State law has historically given the State Board of Community Colleges the authority to approve or deny the election of local college presidents by local boards of trustees. The new budget, , adds reelection authority to the Board.

This is being interpreted as requiring State Board approval for any contract renewals, extensions, or amendments for local presidents, and the State Board on Friday proposed an to reflect that.

On Friday, the Board approved two reelections: President Dr. Patty Pfeiffer and President Dr. Janet Spriggs.

The Board also approved Dr. Michael Rodgers as the next president of . The college’s board of trustees shortly after the meeting. The search process began after Cox announced his new role as system president.

“We did a nationwide search and had 42 applicants for the position,” said Wilkes Community College Board Chair Jay Vannoy. “We are excited to announce Dr. Michael Rodgers as the next president of WCC. He has the education, knowledge, and experience to lead our college. We are looking forward to working with him to continue and build upon the work Wilkes Community College is doing to educate and train our students. I also want to thank Morgan Francis for his great leadership as interim president during this transition period.”

Dr. Rodgers will take the helm in early June.

The meeting included several other personnel decisions and announcements.

• The Board announced Kelly Klug as the new director of grants with a salary of $105,000. Klug will serve as a resource for grants within the system.
• The Board voted to create a new position, , who will lead the Career & College Readiness Graduate (CCRG) program. The position will be funded through a reorganization of system funds.
• Cox also recognized two new staff members: Dr. Chris Harrington, the new lead of ApprenticeshipNC, and Dr. Zach Barricklow, for the new position of associate vice president for strategy and rural innovation.

Student completion strategies

Strategies to advance student success and completion were discussed several times at January’s meeting.

First, the Board’s “transformative discussion” focused on strategies for increasing student completion.

The discussion included information on Collaborative, a program established by the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2007 to increase timely degree completion. Today, the program serves 25,000 students a year, and the collaborative partners with institutions across the country to replicate their model.

Dr. Shun Robertson, the UNC System’s vice president for access and success strategy, spoke about how the UNC System has replicated this model with a focus on community college transfers. The program, , provides financial aid and advising to eligible students.

Only 36% of N.C. community college students graduate within two years of transferring to the UNC System, Robertson said — nearly 20 percentage points lower than the four-year completion rate for first-time, full-time students. Despite this gap, community college transfers have, on average, equivalent GPAs in their first year as their peers.

“So they are qualified, they are doing well in our institutions,” Robertson said. “They’re just not graduating at the same rate. So why is this?”

TrACe is currently offered at three institutions right now — Appalachian State, UNC Greensboro, and East Carolina University.

Scott Byington, associate vice president of onboarding and advising at (CCCC), also spoke about student completion strategies.

At CCCC, 62% of students are part-time, he said. About a third of students are parents, and 17% are single parents. Another third of students struggle with housing and/or food insecurity.

The college has worked to address these challenges in a few ways: more intensive advising, accelerated course options, emergency funding for micro-grants, and laptop loaners, among other things.

These strategies are working, Byington said. But most of the strategies are funded through grants, which don’t always offer very sustainable funding.

“We need these graduates. There are thousands of jobs coming to North Carolina, and we need students who are ready,” he said. “It’s going to require investment to get more of these students to not just start, but to finish.”

Minority Male Success Initiative

The Board also heard and approved its , which was established in fall 2003 to improve the retention and graduation rates of minority male students. Since then, “over 10,000 students have received support and assistance towards achieving their educational, professional, and civic goals,” the report says.

This is the first year the system has had to provide a report regarding the program.

As of July 2022, 21 community colleges received funding for the initiative. The amount of state funding has remained the same since 2016 — $810,000 for a 3-4 year period. The report says funding is “allocated through a competitive funding process.”

“This is a critical program,” said Sarah West, co-chair of the Board’s programs and student success committee.

Several Board members, including West, emphasized the need for such an important program to include more funding to expand the initiative to more colleges and to expand the work happening at each campus.

You can read examples of how colleges with initiative funding used the money starting

ERP, student food insecurity, and more

• The Board approved funding to for the period Sept. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2025, for “an amount not to exceed $2,000,000 to reimburse the pilot colleges for costs incurred for the modernized ERP.” These updates should eventually improve data collection and sharing across the system.
• Tony Pile, the Board’s student member and president of the North Carolina Comprehensive College Student Government Association (N4CSGA), read a letter promoting the importance of student representation on local boards of trustees, based on a motion passed at the N4CSGA fall conference. The letter asked the Board to formally vote to maintain the ex-officio student member on local boards.
• Pile read another letter asking the board to acknowledge and address food insecurity on campuses across the state. Over 50 of the 58 campuses have a food bank, he said, but the N4CSGA would like to see a fully operational food pantry on every campus by fall 2024.
• The Board approved to continue support of a prison education project carried out by Pamlico Community College and Pamlico Correctional Institution. You can read EdNC’s report on the program from August 2022 .
• Cox approved the following colleges to offer with an effective term of fall 2024: Cape Fear Community College, James Sprunt Community College, Sandhills Community College, and South Piedmont Community College.
• The Board also met in closed session at the end of its meeting to discuss winners for this year’s NCCCS faculty and staff awards.

The full Board is scheduled to meet next Feb. 15-16 in Raleigh.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

N.C. community college leaders have long called for an update to the state funding formula for community colleges, which was created in 2010 and last updated in 2013.

In August, the N.C. Community College System (NCCCS) officially started work to develop a modernized funding model ahead of the legislative short session with the goal of creating a more flexible, workforce-friendly system. On Nov. 16, the State Board of Community Colleges heard an update on that work from NCCCS Chief Financial Officer Dr. Phillip Price, President Dr. Dale McInnis, and President Dr. Rusty Hunt.

McInnis, who is part of a 16-person work group for the project with Price and Hunt, said the team will bring a more detailed plan to the Board in January after the N.C. Association of Community College Presidents votes on it in December. The full Board is set to vote on the modernization plan in February.

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“I couldn’t be more proud of where we’ve arrived at this point in time. I think this is a game changer for our system,” NCCCS President Dr. Jeff Cox said. “It answers the call that I think we’re hearing from our legislature and our governor about the community colleges’ critical role in meeting the workforce needs of the future of our state. …It aligns our system in a way we’ve just never been before.”

The vast majority of funding for the state’s 58 community colleges comes from state appropriations, with allocated each year of this biennium.

The system’s current funding model allocates resources to the colleges in proportion to the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) students they enroll in each of their programs.

The majority of state funding falls into the instructional category and is distributed using a formula based on FTE student enrollment. One FTE is equivalent to 512 hours of instruction. Colleges are funded in arrears, meaning they receive funding based on the higher of the current year’s FTE or .

Certain courses receive more state funds than others based on a .

The work group is proposing to change the current FTE tiers to “workforce sectors” to move toward a labor-market driven model of community college programs. Under this model, all curriculum and continuing education (CE) courses would reside in the same workforce sector. A nursing curriculum and nursing CE course would be funded the same way, for example.

The sectors largely focus on health care, technology, and trades. Courses not on this list would be held harmless, the work group said, and retain their same value, just not labeled as tiers. There would be another catch-all sector for transfer and general education courses.

In addition to instructional funding based on FTE, colleges receive a base allocation for institutional and academic support, which includes additional funding for multi-campus centers. They also receive a small amount of performance-based funding.

The NCCCS modernization plan also includes three other focus areas beyond the proposed workforce sectors, listed below.

• Institutional and academic support base funding. “The base model has good bones,” Hunt said, “but it did need some modernizing.” This base funding largely goes toward salaries and benefits but can also be used toward other instructional costs. The NCCCS would like to see the base amount for “other costs,” which was set decades ago, increased to account for inflation.
• Enrollment increase reserve. The current enrollment growth reserve was implemented in 2010 in response to the large number of students enrolling in community colleges after the Great Recession. The system wants to request non-recurring funds for a fixed per-FTE amount for any colleges that go over the enrollment threshold set by their FTE for the fiscal year. The system would then like to build replenishment of the fund into the recurring enrollment growth fund in the state budget.
• Excess tuition retention. Excess tuition receipts currently fund the enrollment increase reserve. The NCCCS work group would like to change that, allowing excess tuition receipts to return to the college which generated them but only on years when the system as a whole generates excess receipts.

“One of the great things about our system is our open door. We’re registering students up until the day classes start across the system in every college,” McInnis said. “One of the challenges with that is our enrollment can fluctuate, and it’s usually directly proportionate to changes in the labor market and the economy. …What we’re looking for is an alternative to deal with the next wave of surges in enrollment.”

The group considered including headcount data in the funding model, instead of FTE, to account for an increase of part-time students but decided college data did not support the change.

The NCCCS work group also discussed ways to incentivize partnerships and improve the multi-campus model, McInnis said, but those factors are not yet ready for implementation.

You can read more about the current funding model for community colleges

Implementation of budget, accreditation changes

Last month, the State Board items in the new state budget for community colleges.

At that meeting, the Board approved an initial budget allocation package that contained the 4% salary increase in 2023-24 and other employee benefit increases, funds for enrollment growth, and additional funds for basic skills and child care grants. In a separate item, the Board also approved allocations for up to $14.2 million to complete the rural broadband project.

On Nov. 17, the Board approved allocations for several additional budget items for 2023-24, listed below.

• $1.5 million allocation to support the Finish Line Grants program. Through this program, eligible students can receive up to $1,000 per semester for an unanticipated financial hardship. To be eligible, students must be in good academic standing as defined by the college and have completed at least 25% of their degree or credential program.
• $31.7 million in each year of the biennium for faculty recruitment and retention, which is limited to faculty “with a majority teaching load in Tier IA or IB courses.” You can view the allocations
• More than $7 million each year of the biennium to fund a nursing faculty salary adjustment. Starting pay for nursing faculty will be increased by 10%, and other nursing faculty may receive salary increases up to 15%.
• An initial allocation of $5.3 million to community colleges for the High-Cost Workforce Start-Up Fund Program to support the start-up of Tier 1A and Tier 1B health care workforce programs offered at N.C. community colleges. You can read the allocations for 11 new programs of the agenda.
• $200 million in State Capital Improvement Infrastructure Funds (SCIF) over the biennium. These funds will go to nearly two-thirds of the state’s community colleges, which marks an unprecedented number of individual allocations to community colleges. You can view the allocation list on . You can also view highlights from those allocations on community college items in the budget.

NCCCS Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Brian Merritt also gave the Board a brief update on accreditation provisions in a .

Those provisions require colleges and universities to change accreditors every accreditation cycle, which lasts 10 years. The new law does not allocate any funding toward the process, which Merritt said will involve a lot of expenses and time for colleges.

“This is going to be a big lift for our institutions, especially our rural institutions,” he said. “There is a lot of anxiety across our system about this.”

The state’s 58 colleges are at different stages in their accreditation cycles, Cox said. The law does allow colleges to stay with their current accreditor for consecutive cycles if they are “not granted candidacy status” from another accreditor three years before the current accreditation expires.

There are for higher education listed in the law.

The NCCCS is working to provide guidance to the colleges, Cox and Merritt said, and is working with the UNC System to provide aligned guidance. Then, the system will meet with the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to receive their guidance, as the DOE must approve any change in accreditors before a college can start that cycle.

EdNC will provide a more in-depth update on these accreditation changes and their impact soon.

Data on student supports

The Board received several annual reports on important initiatives to support students and programs.

First, the Board discussed the Year 2 report of the RISE Up Training and Credentialing Program. That program was funded and mandated by the General Assembly in 2021 and directs the NCCCS to collaborate with the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association (NCRMA) and Retail Consumer Alliance Foundation (RCA) to teach foundational skills to students attending Cooperative Innovative High Schools (CIHS).

Students who complete the mostly online program will earn industry credentials in the following areas: retail industry fundamentals, customer service/sales, inventory management/profitability, supply chain warehouse/inventory, and logistics.

Since February 2022, Lenoir Community College has served as the lead college for the program.

In June 2022, the NCRMA requested a technical budget correction which expanded the program to any student enrolled in a N.C. community college. The new state budget expands access further to any student who meets eligibility.

As of August 2023, 279 credentials were allocated across four courses.

“Program access is expected to expand which will allow additional credentials to be earned,” the report says.

You can read the RISE report starting of the meeting agenda.

The Board also discussed the Year 2 legislative report on the High-Cost Workforce Start-Up Fund Program. In 2021, the General Assembly allocated $5.2 million “to assist N.C. community colleges in starting new programs in high-demand career fields that require significant start-up funds,” the report says. The new budget also allocated funding to the project.

Per the report, 46 colleges submitted applications for the funds, and 14 successfully received the money. A final report on how the grant money was spent is due to the system office by July 16, 2024.

Most of the funding (65%) was used to purchase program equipment, the report says. You can view the other budget categories below.

Finally, the Board discussed the summary of the 2022-23 N.C. Child Care Grant Program for community college students.

Since 1993, the state has allocated money to the community college system to help students afford child care.

During the 2022-23 fiscal year, colleges self-reported $2.5 million in N.C. Child Care Grant aid to students. Per the report, this represents an increase of $641,640 from the nearly $1.9 million disbursed during the previous year.

The new budget also provides $1.2 million in annual recurring funding for the program.

Even more is needed to make a dent in the student need, community college leaders along with wider eligibility for students. A lack of affordable child care can also make it difficult for students to successfully spend the money, sometimes leaving colleges with unexpended grants.

In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the grant assisted 744 students, according to the report, an increase of 68 students from the year before.

However, colleges reported inability to serve 631 students who applied for the grant. Colleges attributed the inability to serve more students due to students not meeting the eligibility/enrollment requirements for the grant or running out of grant funds for the year.

You can view that report of the agenda packet.

New Davidson-Davie President and Board members

• The Board approved the final candidate for the president at on Nov.17, and the college soon after announced Jenny Varner as its new president. Varner has been serving as acting president since , who served as president since 2019, died from esophageal cancer in July.
• The system is looking for four other community college presidents at Alamance Community College, Martin Community College, McDowell Technical Community College, and Wilkes Community College. The personnel committee is set to meet again ahead of next month’s full Board meeting to discuss those searches.
• Three new Board members, appointed by lawmakers , were sworn in on Nov. 17. Those new members include Paula Benson, director of advocacy group Wilson Forward; Raleigh developer John Kane; and business leader Geoffrey Lang. Each of the new members has previous experience serving on education boards. Their terms expire June 30, 2025.
• The Board approved metrics for the performance evaluation of Cox’s first year as system president, which outlines requirements for an end-of-year bonus. You can view that document on The Board approved its Year 1 Goals for Cox at .
• The Board approved up to $1.52 million to provide service management software for five Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) modernization pilot colleges, from Dec. 1, 2023 to May 31, 2026. In September, the Board approved “significant reorganization” of system positions to support that modernization work.
• Tony Pile, the Board’s student member and president of the North Carolina Comprehensive College Student Government Association (N4CSGA), said N4CSGA is working with local SGA chapters to advocate for continued student voice on local boards of trustees. The new budget included at the state and local level for community colleges. While the State Board still has a standing student member, the budget made student representation on local boards optional for colleges.
• The N4CSGA will host a mental health campaign in January, Pile said. Many of the state’s community colleges are working 

The full Board will meet next on Dec. 15 for a virtual meeting.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

When Debbie Fery started hearing this year from substitute teachers who had not been paid for time spent taking mandatory trainings, it felt personal.

Fery, treasurer and chair of government affairs for the Oregon Substitute Teachers Association, and a substitute teacher herself, took her own fight to get paid for a required safety training to the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industry back in 2020.

“It’s like no one respects us enough to pay for it,” she said.

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All teachers are required to take certain training courses, some each year, and most full-time teachers take the classes during the week before school starts when they’re technically back on the clock. But substitute teachers often have to complete the training when they’re not on the clock.

Many of the courses that districts require substitute teachers to take – on things like cybersecurity, federal academic and health privacy laws and what to do in the event of a school shooting – take no more than a few hours online, and by law, districts must pay substitute teachers for their time. But Fery said many aren’t doing so and that state money set aside for this since 2022 has gone unused.

District officials told the Capital Chronicle that’s because they didn’t need the money.

Fery settled her claim of wage theft with the Willamette Education Service District, 16 of the 21 districts it encompasses and the substitute teacher staffing company Edustaff, all of which had told her they didn’t owe her money for the time she spent taking the online courses in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Following the settlement, the labor bureau wrote a guidance letter to districts and posted it to its website, explaining that by law they needed to pay substitutes for mandatory training. Still, Fery said, district officials have told her and members of the substitute teachers association that they do not need to pay them.

Teacher associations like hers played a critical role in securing state funding in 2022 for districts so they could pay substitute teachers for more than 20 different training classes, many of which are mandatory depending on the district. Less than one-third of Oregon’s 197 school districts and 19 education service districts have used the state money, leading Fery and legislators to wonder how widespread wage theft is for substitutes taking these trainings.

The Capital Chronicle emailed 17 districts that either requested money and did not use it, or did not request any money at all. The few administrators who responded said they tapped into other pots of money to pay substitutes to train, that they did not need the money or that a company that provides them with substitute teachers is responsible for paying them to take required courses.

New task force

State Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, convened in early November the first meeting of a new Joint Task force on Substitute Teachers, of which Fery is a member. It’s looking at a number of issues that’s led to a shortage of substitute teachers statewide and the growing reliance on two private companies – ESS and Edustaff – to provide substitutes to districts.

Dembrow said the task force will consider concerns about wage theft in the coming year. It is slated to provide recommendations to the state Legislature by December of 2025.

Dembrow said he still needs to learn more about why districts have not used the money the state set aside in 2022.

“To be fair to them, if there were problems with the process, we should know that,” he said. “But we need to get to a place where subs are getting paid for the training that they need.”

Fery said she’s heard from more than 30 substitutes in at least 10 districts who have not been paid to take SafeSchools Training, a series of courses intended to show that all teachers are following state and federal safety mandates. She asked several if they would talk with a Capital Chronicle reporter but said they declined out of fear of retribution.

$16 million unspent

Due to a critical shortage of both substitute teachers and fully licensed classroom teachers, the Oregon Legislature in early 2022 passed on teacher licensing and other requirements. It included $100 million in incentives and bonuses to attract and retain teachers, classroom assistants and substitute teachers and $19 million for districts to reimburse classroom assistants and substitute teachers for mandatory training through January of 2024. But districts have spent just $3 million – 15% – of that money, according to data from the Oregon Department of Education. Districts had until the end of July to submit invoices for reimbursement. The remaining $16 million can no longer be spent and will be returned to the Legislature in January, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

Of Oregon’s 197 school districts and 19 education service districts, 93 districts applied to the education department for money and just 53 actually used it.

Administrators in districts that applied but didn’t spend the money, or used far less money than they were allocated told the Capital Chronicle they didn’t need it or as much as they thought. They had substitutes take the training while they were on the clock, they said, or used money from the Student Success Act – meant to boost equity, mental health care and help recover learning time lost during COVID for the state’s highest needs students – to pay them.

Many districts that applied for funding did not submit invoices for reimbursement by July, according to the data from the education department. Some districts ultimately invoiced for just a fraction of the money the state was prepared to give them.

As one example, the West Linn-Wilsonville School District didn’t spend any of the $263,000 it applied for and the state allotted. The Multnomah Education Service District, serving about 100,000 students in eight school districts – including Portland Public, the state’s largest district – didn’t spend any of the more than $194,000 that officials applied for in 2022.

An unnamed media relations official wrote via email that most substitutes took mandatory trainings during work hours and that it used Student Success Act money to pay for any training outside of those hours.

Superintendent Mike Johnson of the Creswell School District near Eugene said the Lane Education Service District provides most of the substitute teachers at Creswell schools and pays for their training. He did apply for $56,250 to pay for SafeSchools Training for classroom teachers and classified staff from the state’s $19 million fund, but in the end, the district only owed $1,300 for training hours, he said. He expensed it to the school’s general fund instead.

In all, the state’s money paid for 11,000 substitutes and classroom assistants to take mandatory training. The average per hour of training across employees was $50.

Of the 11,000, 30% were contracted by a third party service. The two largest in Oregon are ESS and Edustaff. Those companies aren’t allowed to bill the state for training, but they can bill the district for the training hours, and the district can bill the state for reimbursement, according to Fery. She has worked under contract for Edustaff as a substitute and said it is not uniformly paying substitutes to take the training.

The Greater Albany School District was allocated $300,000 from the state, but it never invoiced for reimbursement. Michelle Steinhebel, communications director for the district, said it entered into a contract with Edustaff last year and that officials were under the impression that the company is ensuring the teachers take the SafeSchools courses and paying them for their time.

Attempts by the Capital Chronicle to reach representatives of Edustaff and ESS by phone and email went unanswered.

For Fery, withholding payment for mandatory training is a form of wage theft that is leading to a lack of dignity and respect that perpetuates the state’s teacher shortages.

Dembrow agrees that it is not helping.

“All the steps that we can take to get this workforce the professional recognition that they deserve – that’s what we need to do,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

After the state turned down federal funding for summertime child food vouchers, the South Dakota Department of Education is seeking sponsors for another program that provides summer meals to needy children.

Sponsors feed kids who qualify for free or reduced price lunch during the school year, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reimburses sponsors. , sponsorships are available for Bennett, Bon Homme, Buffalo, Charles Mix, Custer, Gregory, McCook, Meade, Oglala Lakota, and Stanley counties.

Potential sponsors must by Feb. 1 to be considered.

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The ask comes after South Dakota’s decision not to deliver to more than 60,000 kids in the summer of 2023.

That money was available through a separate USDA program called Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), launched during the pandemic and made permanent this year.

South Dakota was to opt out.

Unlike the summer food program now seeking brick-and-mortar hosts for meals, the summer EBT doesn’t tie food aid to location. Instead, it offers EBT cards worth $40 per child per month to eligible families through the summer, which can be used to buy , but not hot foods.

The state signed on for pandemic EBT in 2020 and 2021, but not in 2022 or 2023.

Gov. Kristi Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, that because of “South Dakota’s record low unemployment rate, our robust existing food programs, and the administrative burden associated with running this program, we declined these particular federal dollars.”

The site-based summer food program is not meant to be the only way to provide meals to kids when school’s out, said Nancy Van Der Weide, spokesperson for the Department of Education.

“It is a stop-gap to help those kids who fall through the cracks — the ones who, for whatever reason, are not able to access food via SNAP,” she said via email, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Offering food, as opposed to money for food, “ensures that the meals these children eat are balanced and nutritious, and that meals are available throughout the month rather than until the money runs out.”

“Doing it this way also ensures that money is used efficiently for food that goes to children first. Many schools also operate summer feeding programs from their buildings to achieve the same ends.”

Critics: Denying funds indefensible

The programs are not an either/or proposition, however. The state could take advantage of both if it chose to. While the pandemic EBT program is over and the deadline for the first 2024 summer EBT is fast approaching, says that states could opt in to the program in future years.

The South Dakota arm of the nonprofit group Bread for the World has urged state residents to ask Gov. Noem and Education Secretary Joe Graves to accept the funds for next summer.

The site-based summer food program is helpful but doesn’t touch all South Dakotans, the organization says, particularly those unable to access meal sites.

“Neither program by itself is enough to cover a child’s nutritional needs,” . “Kids need both.”

Cathy Brechtelsbauer, Bread for the World South Dakota’s leader, cited that says just 5.5% of the children who receive free or reduced price school lunch are fed through site-based programs.

Turning away funding is indefensible, according to Brechtelsbauer.

“How can they turn down food for kids who are hungry?” she said.

She was among the signatories of a Nov. 20 letter urging the state to reverse course on the EBT funds. The other name on the letter was Xanna Burg, Director of South Dakota Kids Count.

“South Dakota has not yet committed for 2024,” the letter reads. “There is still time to commit so that school-age children will not miss out on critical nutrition support during the hungriest time of the year.”

Thirty-nine other organizations are listed on the letter. Among them: Augustana University, the American Heart Association, Sioux Falls Thrive, the Boys and Girls Club of Standing Rock, South Dakota Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota.

Fury, the governor’s spokesman, told South Dakota Searchlight via text on Thursday that he stands by the administration’s earlier explanation for declining the federal funds.

Brechtelsbauer called the reference to federal requirements and administrative burdens a smokescreen.

“Forty-three other states did this, so we could figure out how to do it in South Dakota,” Brechtelsbauer said. “If we can’t, we’ve got a much bigger problem.”

School lunch debate looms for 2024 session

The question of who ought to pay to feed hungry kids has become a recurring one for lawmakers and their communities in recent years.

Earlier this week, the Sioux Falls School District announced that it had secured a donor to cover unpaid balances for 1,800 students whose parents hadn’t kept up with school lunch payments. that the debt from unpaid lunch accounts has accrued at about $3,000 a day. Without the donor, the district could have ended the year with as much as $500,000 in school lunch debt.

Moving forward, kids whose lunch accounts fall $20 in the red will be served a sack lunch. A $75 negative balance will cut off meals altogether.

State Rep. Kadyn Wittman, D-Sioux Falls, who brought a bill in the 2023 session that would have offered free school lunch to all children regardless of income, took to X (formerly Twitter) to express her consternation over news of a private donor paying off lunch debt.

“That should be the government’s responsibility,” . “It is cruel and, frankly, unbelievable that South Dakota kids can go hungry during the day if their parents fall behind on payments.”

Her bill to provide free school lunch for all failed in the House Education Committee. The Department of Education opposed the bill.

Wittman plans to introduce a “scaled back” version of the bill in the 2024 session.

“Last year’s bill was way too optimistic. I realize that South Dakota is not ready to offer free school lunches,” Wittman said.

Rather than cover school lunch for all, her new proposal would essentially offer free meals to students who currently qualify for reduced price lunches by reimbursing schools for the reduced price charges. Families whose incomes are between 135% and 185% of the federal poverty line qualify for reduced price lunch; those with incomes lower than 135% of the poverty line qualify for free lunch.

Wittman is hopeful that a coalition of supporters will help move her fellow lawmakers to support the bill, which is estimated to cost $578,916 annually – millions less than last year’s proposal.

According to a pre-session information sheet on the bill, its cosponsors will include Tyler Tordsen, R-Sioux Falls, Sen. Liz Larson, D-Sioux Falls, and Sen. Mike Rohl, R-Aberdeen.

At least one other school lunch proposal will not appear before lawmakers in 2024, however.

Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, had signaled plans to introduce a bill, , that would have paid for lunch for K-8 students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch.

Deutsch has since decided not to pursue the bill. The lawmaker told South Dakota Searchlight that concerns about a leaner budget, in her weekly column in late October, have convinced him to table the proposal for now.

“Given our budget tightness, I thought this was probably not the year to bring it,” Deutsch said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

A legislative panel exploring whether Tennessee should reject federal funding for its K-12 students isn’t allowing public testimony from Tennesseans about how federally funded programs are run or how they affect their children.

And it’s not hearing from Tennessee-based advocacy groups either.

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However, two conservative advocacy groups from outside the state are set to weigh in on the discussion Wednesday as the panel wraps up five days of hearings.

Steve Johnson, a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, is scheduled to speak to the GOP-led committee on behalf of the Center for Practical Federalism, part of an . The says it seeks to educate people on the benefits of federalism, which it describes as a system of government where “some authority belongs to the national government, and much more resides with states, communities and the American people.”

Also on the agenda is Sal Nuzzo, senior vice president of the James Madison Institute, a Florida-based think tank that lists “limited government” among its guiding principles. His says he was appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on that state’s government efficiency task force. He also has worked with longtime antitax activist Grover Norquist, the bio says.

The testimony will mark a departure from proceedings that have been mostly fact-finding presentations during the previous four days of hearings with established nonpartisan researchers, school district leaders, and state officials.

The panel, in September, is to report back to Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature by Jan. 9 on its findings and recommend strategies for rejecting potentially millions of U.S. education dollars in order to avoid federal regulations that cover everything from mandated student testing to civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students.

If Tennessee opts to forgo any federal funding for its students, it would be the first state to do so. Federal dollars typically make up about a tenth of state education budgets and provide additional support for students who are from low-income families, have disabilities, and are learning the English language. The money also provides targeted support for certain needs ranging from rural education to technology and charter schools.

Estimates of the impact of federal education funding in Tennessee have varied from $1.1 billion to $1.9 billion since House Speaker Cameron Sexton first in February. On Tuesday, officials with the state education department attributed the variance to additional federal education relief in recent years due to the pandemic.

For the current fiscal year, they said, Tennessee is projected to receive about $1.3 billion from the federal government, or about a tenth of the total spending on the state’s K-12 students. The rest of the money comes from the state and local governments.

State officials also reported that all 148 Tennessee school districts receive one or more federal grants, affecting a wide swath of the state’s nearly 1 million public school students. Of those, nearly 152,000 students are considered economically disadvantaged; about 129,000 receive special education services; and more than 66,000 are learning the English language.

Sexton and other GOP leaders have said Tennessee would continue services currently funded by the federal government and would fill the gap with its own funding if it decides to go that route.

Advocates for people with disabilities weren’t invited

Sen. Jon Lundberg and Rep. Debra Moody, who chair education committees in their respective legislative chambers, co-chair the special legislative panel and set the agenda for meetings that began on Nov. 6.

Last week, Lundberg told Chalkbeat that his committee has not allowed testimony from parents or education advocacy groups in Tennessee because the focus of the hearings is on efficiency and federal requirements for accepting federal dollars, not whether the state will continue to provide those services.

“Our charge is not to look at eliminating programs, or adding programs,” said Lundberg, a Bristol Republican. “It’s about, if we say we don’t need the federal government to provide X program, can we as a state do it more efficiently and serve this student population more effectively?”

Among the groups left on the sidelines was the Tennessee Disability Coalition, an of organizations and individuals that advocate for full and equal participation of people with disabilities in school and all other aspects of life.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, one of two Democrats serving on the special legislative committee, had asked the panel’s co-chairs to invite the coalition to give a presentation about the intricacies of the federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, known as IDEA, and the services it covers for students with disabilities. However, the coalition received no invitation, said Jeff Strand, the group’s coordinator of government and external affairs.

None of the panelists who have testified thus far have spoken in depth about IDEA, its services, or impacts.

“Some panelists have even mischaracterized the tenets of IDEA that are codified in (Tennessee state law), with one even saying that IDEA is in the code in its entirety,” Strand said.

Committee leaders also declined a request from Tennessee parents to testify on behalf of Rise & Shine, a grassroots advocacy group organized after a in March left three children, three adults, and the shooter dead at a private school in Nashville.

“It’s hard for me to see this as a neutral facts analysis that’s not political when they’re talking to outside organizations and not more Tennesseans who have a perspective and experiences with these federal programs,” said Maryam Abolfazli, a Nashville mom and the group’s founder.

“It feels like they view our voices as emotional pleas, rather than a way to get insights into how these programs and funding work for Tennessee families,” she told Chalkbeat.

School leaders and education commissioner air concerns

Moody, the House co-chair, declined to comment Tuesday when asked why testimony is needed from the two out-of-state groups, or whether it’s appropriate before a fact-finding panel.

Neither Johnson nor Nuzzo, who represent those groups, returned phone calls from Chalkbeat on Tuesday asking how and why they got on the agenda.

Those testifying so far have been researchers with the state comptroller’s office; the legislature’s fiscal review committee; and the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan research group and think tank in Tennessee.

The committee also heard from Austin Reid, the legislative director of the National Conference of State Legislatures; and from if the state has the resources to reject federal funding and fill the gap with state revenues.

Many of those testifying warned that Tennessee will enter uncharted territory if it opts to reject federal money. And Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, echoed those concerns on Tuesday in her first testimony before state lawmakers.

“Many federal requirements are also codified in Tennessee state law, and the issue of accepting or rejecting federal education funding is a complicated one, with numerous legal implications and uncertainties,” Reynolds said.

“For these reasons, it’s hard to project exactly how decisions (to opt out of federal funding) would play out,” she added.

Possible ramifications could include budget cuts or tax increases during a future shortfall or recession; protracted court battles over federal requirements that may still exist for schools even if funding is refused; and Tennesseans having to pay federal income taxes for education support that would go to other states.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Mykenzie Ritschard of New Glarus had not signed up to speak at Tuesday’s rally in support of funding Child Care Counts, funding that Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee eliminated last week without explanation. But when organizer and child care provider Corrine Hendrickson opened up the podium to whoever wanted to speak, Ritschard fought through tears and sobs to tell her story.

Ritschard’s son, the oldest of two children, has autism. She struggled to find child care until she offered to quit her “dream job” in a dentist’s office to work at The Growing Tree, a New Glarus child care center owned and operated by child care advocate Brooke Skidmore.

Skidmore “jumped at the offer mostly because she’s so short staffed,” Ritschard said.

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Additionally, when Ritschard’s son was diagnosed with autism, Skidmore allowed his therapists to come into the center to work with him, something not many child care centers permit.

“We’ve seen so much progress,” Ritschard said. “I really don’t know where we would be without the opportunity that we were given.”

Ritschard, Hendrickson, Skidmore, and several other child care providers spoke on Tuesday about the potentially devastating consequences of cutting Child Care Counts funding from the budget, for them, their students, and the economy as a whole as families have to make hard decisions in the face of a shortage of openings and rising costs.

“We are here because we are trying to make clear just how misguided this decision is,” said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine). “It is our job to design and implement programs that help fill the gaps in essential services in the state of Wisconsin. This decision by the GOP to gut the program will do the exact opposite. It is cynical, it is shortsighted, and it is wrong for the state of Wisconsin.”

The $340 million Gov. Tony Evers had in the budget for Child Care Counts was to maintain the program, which many providers stated was not enough. From Jan. 1 until Tuesday’s rally, the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families recorded 166 child care centers had closed. Many said that without that financial support, they may have to raise their rates up to $50 per week per child, putting families in a bind. A from the Wisconsin Policy Forum (WPF) found that year-round child care is more expensive than in-state tuition at any University of Wisconsin school.

Vince Williams, policy advisor for State Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) who co-chairs the Joint Finance Committee (JFC), told Hendrickson in an email that Child Care Count “meant to provide short-term relief.”

“It is important to recognize that the Child Care Counts program was started with one-time, federal COVID relief money” Williams wrote. “This funding is not ongoing and ends this year…Child Care Counts was an important program to help child care centers, employees and families weather the pandemic. But, again, it was funded with one-time, federal relief funds and was not meant to continue.”

Williams also pointed to the $95 million JFC allocated for other child care programs:

$45 million for the Wisconsin Shares program, which provides subsidies for low-income families to pay for child care.
$30 million for Quality Care for Quality Kids which will fund the resumption of YoungStar bonuses paid directly to child care centers.
$5 million for REWARD stipends that are paid directly to child care workers.
$15 million for a new revolving loan fund for start-up child care centers.

Last week JFC approved raising the household income ceiling for accessing the Wisconsin Shares program from 185% of the federal poverty level to 200%, making it more accessible to low-income Wisconsinites. The budget motion also eases the reduction of benefits when a household’s income increases above the ceiling, reducing the “benefits cliff.”

The WPF’s report found that cutting Child Care Counts without implementing new funding streams could “re-creat[e] the same or even greater challenges for the industry, families and the economy at large,” however.

Advocates say one obstacle is a profound misunderstanding of early childhood education and the child care industry. Phillip Scott, co-owner of Crone Apothecary, struggled as a single father to find child care for his son. Scott and several other small business owners went to Washington D.C. with Main Street Alliance in May to advocate for federal child care funding. According to Scott, when they met with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, Johnson said something about “single women need to stop having babies out of wedlock” and could “easily find a rotation with other moms and take turns.”

“We went quiet… [T]he ladies in the room that were child care workers got very, very upset,” Scott told the Examiner. “When this is what is being talked about at the federal level, I can only imagine what the Republican Party is discussing here at our Capitol.”

Based on his own experience, Scott said this could have a major impact on the current labor shortage and entrepreneurship.

“Right now, we’re struggling with people having to decide, do I wanna work and pay 40 to 60% of my income to be able to send my kid to child care so I can actually have a job? Or do I just stay home and figure that out. And typically, if it’s not a two-income household, that’s not even an option,” Scott said. “I do have a lot of friends that are entrepreneurs that unfortunately the mom or the dad have chosen to stay home. And being [a single-income household] has made it hard.”

“If we don’t fix this problem and extend this money to be able to move this forward for children in our state, we’re gonna fall behind economically,” Scott said.

Beyond the impact of cutting funding for Child Care Counts, Nicky Krause of New Glarus took to the podium to voice her concerns about what the decision said about democracy in Wisconsin. She recounted how, despite probing from state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) for an explanation, none of the Republicans who voted to remove the funding gave an explanation why.

“We have an issue where there’s 80% popular support. That to me suggests that this is not a partisan thing and yet the lawmakers did not feel the need to explain what their reasons are,” Krause said. “And if they give no reasons, then we can’t exactly find a pathway to compromise and reconciliation. So it’s disturbing. The democracy cannot function if there isn’t this basic reciprocity, and I don’t see that.”

The response from Marklein’s office was sent to Hendrickson almost immediately after the rally. The only explanation given was that the funding initially came from the federal government. In a state with a $7 billion budget surplus, advocates say that explanation seems incomplete.

None of the state’s big business lobbies or right-wing think tanks have explicitly come out in support of the decision. However, Rachel Ver Velde, senior director of Workforce, Education and Employment Policy at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, told a state Senate committee on Monday that WMC favors “tax credits for employers to set up employer based child care options to or to buy slots for their employees.”

“We think that a lot of employers view this as something that is important, and they want to help provide those resources to their employees,” Ver Velde said. “I think they would have a higher incentive to do so if there was tax credits tied to that as well.”

Hendrickson, responding to Ver Velde’s comment over email, wondered why other businesses should get tax credits instead of the state directly funding child care providers. Tying child care to an employer limits access, she added.

“What happens when that business closes or lays people off, etc and then that child no longer has care and the parent can’t access it to find a job?” Hendrickson asked. “How does a small business with a lot of employees — retail, bars, restaurants — compete with big businesses? This is one more way that large businesses can continue to monopolize industries.”

Hendrickson also said tax credits wouldn’t necessarily translate to higher wages for child care workers, which is needed to keep centers staffed. WPF’s report found that lead early childhood educators earn on average $24,981, or $12 an hour assuming a 40-hour workweek.

Lani Harrison, who used to work at The Growing Tree in New Glarus, also took to the podium on Tuesday to explain why those wages were not sustainable.

“I loved my job,” Harrison said. “I enjoyed the challenges. Every day was a new adventure with the amazing and inquisitive minds of a child.”

But even with a Bachelor’s degree, her family was living paycheck-to-paycheck, with no health insurance, dental insurance, vision care, retirement, or student loan forgiveness. She saw more than 35 of her coworkers leave child care. Eventually Harrison, too, left the profession to become a special education teacher at a public school.

“[Child care] teachers will continue to leave the field for higher paying jobs that are less stressful and have benefits,” Harrison said. “How can child care providers stay open without the crucial resource for teachers? How can the rest of the society work without child care?”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed legislation on Tuesday that increases local government funding, provides Milwaukee with a path to address its funding crisis, and requires several controversial policy changes for local governments across the state. Evers also signed another bill that was negotiated alongside the local government funding bill, increasing school districts’ revenue limits and boosting state aid to independent charter and private voucher schools.

Evers said the shared revenue issue is one that he began working on when he first took office in 2019.

“That effort began for me with a simple truth: that for far too long, our local communities have been forced to do more with less,” Evers said at a signing ceremony in Wausau. “We’ve seen the consequences of that in action, play out in communities across Wisconsin, especially in recent years… Local partners in every corner of the state have been forced to make impossible decisions about what essential services to fund, having to choose between paying for first responders, addressing PFAS, fixing the roads, and other critical priorities that affect the health, safety, and well-being of Wisconsinites everywhere.”

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Evers signed the shared revenue bill, which will dedicate 20% of the state’s sales tax to local government funding, while surrounded by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers, including Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Irma) and Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), and local officials from across the state.

“I believe… the state should be doing its part to support our local partners and our local communities should have the resources they need to make sure those basic and unique needs are done,” Evers continued. “And I’ve also believed that supporting our local communities is an area where we could work to find common ground and bipartisan support. Well, folks, I was right.”

The bill will provide an additional $274.9 million to that can be spent on costs related to law enforcement, fire protection, emergency medical services, emergency response communications, public works and transportation.

The Wisconsin Counties Association and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities celebrated the “historic” legislation, praising the bipartisan efforts and saying the new funding would position the state for future prosperity.

“Working alongside our state leaders, this new law creates a sustainable funding source for local governments and more closely aligns incentives for government to promote a vibrant and flourishing economy,” said Mark O’Donnell, the counties association chief executive. “Under this momentous agreement, local governments will see an increase in shared revenue payments linked to our state’s economy, creating the resources to provide the vital services our citizens need.”

The legislation also creates an innovation grant program meant to encourage counties and municipalities to consolidate services.

Milwaukee provisions challenged by local stakeholders

The signing happened more than three hours away from Milwaukee, the state’s most populous city, which was also a major point of contention throughout the negotiation process. Evers’ spokeswoman Britt Cudabeck and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s spokesman Brandon Weathersby both said that he chose to sign the bill in Wausau because the legislation affects every Wisconsin community, not just Milwaukee.

The legislation gives Milwaukee and Milwaukee County the ability to enact, if two-thirds of their governing bodies approve, an additional 2% sales tax in Milwaukee and 0.4% tax in Milwaukee County. The additional revenue can be used to pay for unfunded pension obligations and public safety costs but comes with strings attached.

Crowley and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson also joined Evers in Wausau for the signing.

“For Milwaukee County, this brings us closer to avoiding a devastating fiscal cliff and continue critical service our residents rely on each day,” Crowley said in a statement. “As deliberations on the sole issue of additional revenue turn to local legislative bodies, it’s important that Milwaukee County, as an arm of the state, acknowledge the fiscal realities that we must confront.”

Crowley said the fiscal cliff is “the biggest single threat” to improving the quality of life for Milwaukee County residents, and that it’s important they don’t “miss the mark.”

The support from the top county and city leaders comes as other local Milwaukee officials explore taking action to mitigate certain policies in the legislation.

Milwaukee Common Council President José G. Pérez said that it’s essential that the local body works to pass the 2% sales tax as soon as possible. He also said, however, that the council will begin efforts to remove several provisions from the state statutes.

Pérez said the council will take up legislation separate from the sales tax that would double funding for the city’s Office of Equity and Inclusion and Office of African American Affairs, set aside money for litigation to fight provisions that “overstep our home rule,” and direct local agencies to apply for a federal grant to extend the streetcar.

The state law signed by Evers includes language that prohibits the city from using money from levying taxes on developing, operating or maintaining its streetcar, bars the city from using tax revenue on diversity, equity and inclusion positions, requires the city to maintain the level of law enforcement and fire department staffing at at least the current level and requires Milwaukee Public Schools reinstate school resource officers in schools.

The Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression criticized the legislation in a statement, calling it “the worst assault on the people’s movements in Wisconsin since the victories achieved coming out of the George Floyd Uprising of 2020.” Pointing to requirements to reintroduce police officers into MPS schools and for the city to maintain specified levels of law enforcement, the activist group said that the bill reduces people’s say over policing in their communities.

“These bills are a direct response to policy wins over the police secured by the Milwaukee Alliance and other community organizing efforts, including the banning of chokeholds, elimination of no-knock warrants, and a policy forcing the timely public release of video footage of police crimes,” the group stated.

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), who voted against the bill, pointed out that it requires Milwaukee to hire an additional 165 police officers beyond its current number. “If they can’t find qualified candidates, the city risks losing 15% of its shared revenue, for the next year. This is not progress,” Larson said Tuesday morning.

Evers signs education funding bill

Evers also signed , which will increase payments to Wisconsin’s private choice and independent charter schools and raise revenue limits for school districts, on Tuesday. The bill was negotiated alongside the shared revenue deal.

The bill would raise the cap on the minimum amount of revenue school districts are allowed to collect from state aid and local taxpayers to $11,000 per student from $10,000 and increase per-pupil aid payments for private voucher and independent charter schools.

The bill would increase the per-pupil payments for private voucher and independent charter schools. According to a , under the bill the aid for private school choice K-8 students would increase from $8,300 in the current year to $9,874 in the 2023-24 school year and $10,271 in the 2024-25 school year. Per-pupil payments for private school choice 9-12 students would rise from $9,045 to $12,368 and then to $12,765, and independent charter school students’ payments would increase from $9,264 to $11,366 and then to $11,763 per student.

Public school advocates, including the Wisconsin Public Education Network (WPEN), called on Evers to reject the deal, saying the bill underserves Wisconsin public school students.

“Public school students and local property taxpayers will pay the price, while private schools that can legally discriminate and pick and choose their students get a blank check from the state,” WPEN said in a statement. “With voucher enrollment caps set to come off entirely in 2 years, this is the most reckless and irresponsible thing Wisconsin could do with its massive surplus, especially when we consider that the nearly 80% of students participating in the statewide voucher program never attended a public school.”

Evers said on Tuesday that the “small bump” for independent charter and private voucher schools was a way to reach the goal of passing shared revenue.

“What people forget is everytime we have a budget for public schools, our money for vouchers goes up too and so there’s almost nothing different than last time,” Evers said. “We added a little bit more money in order to get this deal across the finish line, but the idea that somehow voucher schools and independent charters haven’t been receiving money and all of a sudden they are this time? That’s just not true.”

Evers also touted other portions of the education funding that was negotiated with shared revenue, but included in the budget rather than as separate legislation.

“I will never stop fighting to do the right thing for our kids because I believe, as I’ve often said, that what’s best for our kids is what’s best for our state,” Evers said. “Today, we’re one step closer to making a historic investment in this budget for K-12 schools and education.”

The investment includes an increase of $1 billion in state aid to public K-12 schools, raising the per-pupil aid by $325 in each year of the biennium, a $97 million increase in special education funding, $50 million to improve reading and literacy for K-12 students and $30 million to be spent on school-based mental health services.

He said the next step to introducing the new legislation is passing the biennial budget.

“We have to pass the budget,” Evers said. “The budget has not been signed. It hasn’t been approved by the Legislature, once that’s done I feel confident we’ll be in a good place to implement this.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

“This is a big step forward for public education,” former Los Angeles schools superintendent Austin Beutner said in a press release. “It’s the first guaranteed increase in funding for California public schools since Prop 98 was passed by voters 34 years ago.”

With widespread support, including celebrities such as Dr. Dre and Lil Baby, the measure’s 61.6% voter approval was expected.

Proposition 28, which provides funding for K-12 courses typically cut from school budgets during lean fiscal periods, won’t raise taxes. Instead, the measure creates an annual funding stream by requiring the state to direct 1% above what is legally required to spend on education for arts and music programs.

There will also be more funding set aside for public schools in low-income neighborhoods.

“A good education is the best path out of poverty for many and the promise of opportunity for all,” Beutner said.

The shouting referred to California’s Proposition 28, a ballot initiative that aims to pump at least $800 million into K-12 arts and music programs.

It comes with a pleasing selling point: It won’t increase taxes. That’s one reason no one is raising money to defeat the measure — a relief to former Los Angeles schools chief Austin Beutner, who led the effort to get the question on the ballot and donated over $4 million to the cause.

As superintendent, he and the unions often butted heads. But on that early October day, union members joined him in asking managers of a sandwich shop and a crowded breakfast joint to hang campaign signs in their windows.

“We just want to make sure people know what Prop 28 is,” said Beutner, adding he’s encouraged by the positive reception the measure has received. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had the community of California in support of public education.”

From New Mexico to Massachusetts, voters will decide on several education-related ballot initiatives when they head to the polls Nov. 8. Most propose to raise taxes for additional school funding, but others could decide if all students should get free meals or whether lawmakers can override state board policy.

The California arts measure, however, is decidedly more high profile, attracting support from some big names in the entertainment industry. To promote the initiative, Beutner shared the stage with rappers Dr. Dre and Lil Baby. In San Pedro, “Lord of the Rings” actor Sean Astin pitched in.

“Our members absolutely champion arts and music education in schools. It’s what we’ve built our life and our career on,” said Astin, representing the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. “We think every child, every student deserves [to be] exposed to the arts and music in their public school.”

‘The most impact’

Twenty-three states currently provide grant funding for arts education or have a school for the arts, according to the Arts Education Partnership, a project of the Education Commission of the States. But generally, states aren’t required to fund them, said Mary Dell’Erba, the Partnership’s assistant director. Some states fund arts efforts through license plate fees or lottery funding.

Proposition 28 is unique, she said, not just because of the large sums of money it would generate, but the priority it places on arts funding in the state budget.

Called Arts and Music in Schools, the measure would require that 1% above what the state is legally required to spend on education be directed toward the arts. In years when revenues decline, the funding wouldn’t be cut any more than the overall K-12 budget.

Eighty percent of the funds would go toward arts teachers. And while all schools would have access to the funding, 30% would target low-income schools.

To Malissa Shriver, chair of Turnaround Arts: California — a nonprofit that supports school improvement through the arts — that’s huge. When her program began, she said it was hard to find schools that met the organization’s requirement to employ credentialed art teachers.

She gave Beutner credit for “knowing how money bleeds out into administrative costs” and for designing the proposition “in such a way it can have the most impact.” Only 1% can be used for administration and the rest can go toward materials or teacher training.

She argues that along with students’ math and reading achievement, creative expression can help students regroup socially and emotionally after many months of pandemic isolation.

But even if the measure passes, it will face challenges. One is staffing.

“Just because there is a requirement that the funding support educators doesn’t mean there will be educators to hire,” Dell’Erba said.

Some editorial writers have criticized the measure as “ballot box budgeting” and said the state shouldn’t tell local school boards how to spend money.

‘Be who we want to be’

Beutner’s crusade stems partly from his own experience. A shy student in elementary school, he gained confidence after learning to play the cello in fifth grade.

“I could perform in front of thousands of people before I could speak in front of tens of people,” he said. “It all started with that sense of belonging.”

The San Pedro High 12th graders who campaigned with him that day — some dressed in cheerleading uniforms, others holding handmade signs — agreed.

Miki Vasquez, a senior, said art and music “lets us be who we want to be.”

Chris Soto said he’d take a guitar class if one were available. And Isabella Menzel, a first-time campaigner, shouted, “This is the most excited I’ve ever been.”

One student brought “Lord of the Rings” volumes for Astin to sign. After chanting with the students for a few blocks, Astin left early. Currently a graduate student at American University in Washington, studying public administration and policy, he said he had homework to do. “I have an essay due in six hours.”

Other state initiatives

While Proposition 28 might be the ballot measure with the most star power, it’s not the only education initiative to come before voters on Nov. 8. Here’s a rundown of the rest:

Colorado: The Healthy Schools Meals for All program would fully reimburse districts for offering students free breakfast and lunch, regardless of family income. It would also increase pay for school nutrition staff and offer training and equipment to make meals from scratch. To pay for the program, the initiative would cap income tax deductions for those making $300,000 or more. There is no organized opposition to the measure, but one lawmaker who voted against putting it on the ballot said he had a “fundamental problem” with subsidizing meals for students whose parents can afford to pay.

Idaho: An advisory question on the ballot asks voters whether they approve or disapprove of HB 1, a bill lawmakers passed this year that would change the tax rate structure to free up $410 million annually for public schools. The ballot measure describes the additional funding as “the single largest investment in public education in Idaho history.” According to HB 1, the outcome of the vote will guide the legislature on whether the changes become permanent. But one political scientist described the non-binding proposition as a campaign ad for Gov. Brad Little and lawmakers who supported the bill.

Massachusetts: Question 1 would amend the state constitution to tax millionaires an additional 4% above the existing 5% flat-rate income tax. According to supporters, the Fair Share Amendment would raise roughly $2 billion for public schools, higher education, road maintenance and public transportation. They argue additional revenue is needed to address educational inequities that grew because of the pandemic. The Coalition to Stop the Tax Hike Amendment argues the measure is deceptive because it would apply to one-time transactions like selling a house. They also say it would allow lawmakers to create new tax brackets and higher rates that would eventually affect the middle class.

New Mexico: Amendment 1 would set aside roughly $150 million annually from the state’s Permanent School Fund for early-childhood education and about $100 million for teacher compensation and programs serving students at risk of failure. The fund comes from oil and gas revenues and capital investment returns. The measure seeks to increase the distribution of the fund from 5% to 6.25%.

If voters approve it, the measure would need final approval from the U.S. Congress because early-childhood education was not one of the approved uses written into the federal law. There is no organized opposition to the measure, but a Republican lawmaker who voted against placing it on the ballot said withdrawing more from the fund would leave fewer resources for the state’s children.

Voters will also decide Bond Question 3, which would authorize almost $216 million in bonds for capital projects, including those at tribal schools, a child psychiatric center and an Albuquerque preschool that serves deaf children.

Rhode Island: Question 2, placed on the ballot by the state legislature, asks voters to approve $250 million in bonds for school construction and renovation. .

West Virginia: The state legislature would get final say on any rules or policies passed by the Board of Education if voters approve Amendment 4. Republicans in the legislature pushed for the measure, arguing that regulations governing schools should be left to those elected by voters, not an appointed board. But opponents, including former state Superintendent Clayton Burch and Miller Hall, former state board president, argue the proposed amendment would subject education to more partisanship and would lead to inconsistency in learning due to changes in the legislature.

Get together a bunch of policy researchers, though, and what do you have? It’s one of the less well-known ones. When we gather, we’re a “fracas” of policy wonks. Not an ounce of cohesion in the bunch. This is most fully true at the most focused levels: the more specific the topic, the more fractious the fracas. 

It’s certainly the case in my field, English learner policy, where years of serious research and debate have not yielded anything recently like a coherent manifesto or policy agenda to guide federal education leaders. Our work is too often vague and detached from English learners’ real needs. 

To that end, I spent much of the past year sharing a short draft of policy recommendations with more than 100 folks who know and care about English learners’ success — educators, researchers and advocates — to collect feedback and develop a slate of concrete reforms to significantly improve how the country and its schools serve these students. The result, , was published at The Century Foundation today. It provides a much-needed starting point for overhauling the Every Student Succeeds Act and other federal policies governing English learners’ education.

Above all, the report calls for a significant expansion in federal English learner investments. In the field of education policy, it’s not exactly fashionable to be direct about this. Policy wonks generally earn their way in this work by creatively reimagining existing systems, not simple, direct calls for resources. But in a moment when nearly one-quarter of U.S. children speak a non-English language at home, it’s clear that English learners deserve more federal funding. Much more.

, ESSA’s Title III, the core funding stream dedicated to English learners’ linguistic and academic development, was never sufficient to adequately support their success. It’s even failed at a more rudimentary level: since its inception in 2002, Title III funding hasn’t even kept pace with growth in the English learner population. The $664 million appropriated that year worked out to roughly $175 for each of the ~3.8 million English learners in U.S. schools in 2002. As of 2018 — — there were more than 5 million English learners, so the $737 million appropriated that year worked out to just $147 per child. What’s more, this analysis doesn’t take inflation into account. 

It’s not a complex situation: the United States is spending less per pupil on English learners now than we did in 2002, and that base amount was paltry to begin with. The solution should be commensurately simple: , Title III should at least triple in size, to roughly $2.2 billion per year (still just $440 in federal dollars per student). 

Atop this fundamentally critical funding increase, the report also calls for a series of targeted federal investments to shift how English learners are educated. Above all, these focus on rewiring the federal “English-only” approach to these students’ learning to instead support students’ English development and their emerging bilingualism. This tracks the suggesting that well-implemented bilingual education programs are the best means of supporting English learners’ linguistic and academic development. In particular, that integrate English learners and native English speakers in bilingual settings to be . 

Here’s the good news: public demand for bilingual education has grown in recent years. Here’s the bad news: every local and state effort to expand access to bilingual programs has been limited by the of the American teaching force. There simply bilingual teachers to go around. And, of course, scarcity almost inevitably produces inequity in public education — true to form, suggests that are increasingly slipping away from linguistic integration .

The project of expanding dual language programs in the United States is, at base, a subset of the broader goal of increasing teacher diversity. To that end, the report recommends two new federal grants programs: 1) a $200 million investment in creating and growing linguistically diverse teacher training pipelines, and 2) a smaller, $50 million funding pot for states willing to “pilot, redesign, and implement new bilingual teacher certification and licensure policies.”

As the country works to finally get the educational inputs right for English learners — more funding and better instructional programs — it’s also critical to update . At present, American schools only track the performance of linguistically diverse students up until the point when they reach their state’s definition of proficiency in English. After that, they are soon “reclassified” as former English learners and “exited” from that defined student group — meaning that their academic progress gets lumped in with the general student population. But this offers an incomplete picture, since former English learners’ performance in U.S. schools  tends to improve with their English abilities.

To address this challenge, the report recommends including “former English learners” in federal requirements for school transparency and accountability systems. That is, local and state leaders should be required to keep track of how English learners perform academically after they become proficient in English. This would provide a more complete picture of their linguistic and academic development — and how well schools are supporting each.

To be sure, today’s report doesn’t fully represent the views of any one of the scores of people who read and responded to it. Everyone suggested fixes, and no one person’s changes were wholly adopted — I even cut a few of my own favorite ideas. But the document does include a battery of ideas supported by most of the English learner stakeholders who engaged with the text. The ideas are as specific and actionable as we could keep them, and — if adopted by policymakers in Congress and the U.S. Department of Education — would make a real difference for millions of linguistically diverse children across the country.