Trends in the News Archive - Page 18 of 53

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Education Week, 10/22/18

Billionaire makes major investment in public schools

Barbara Dalio, who is married to…billionaire hedge fund founder Ray Dalio, has spent the past decade leading the Dalio Foundation’s efforts to strengthen public education by investing millions in it. During that time, Dalio’s focus has shifted away from giving to charter schools and reform efforts such as Teach for America and toward troubled public school districts. “A few years ago, there was a feeling among some wealthy donors that giving to local neighborhood schools might be a waste of money, said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies with the American Enterprise Institute. “Now the zeitgeist has changed,” said Hess. In 2016, Dalio provided $3.25 million to Achievement First and $2.25 million to Teach for America. But by fiscal year 2018, those figures were down to zero. Meanwhile, the funding Dalio gave to public school districts increased from $4.2 million to $4.8 million.

Alternative Education Models and Funding Mechanisms

Education Week, 10/19/18

Hurricanes deal deep blow to schools’ finances

In Florida’s Panhandle, education leaders have started the strenuous work of cleaning up and repairing schools ravaged by Hurricane Michael earlier this month, but they are also running into a longer-term problem: steep cost estimates that could lead to mounting piles of bills. In New Hanover County, N.C., Superintendent Tim Markley dipped into the district’s estimated $15 million surplus to allocate up to $9 million to pay for schools to be cleaned up and readied for students to return. The saving grace for many districts could be whether they have cash on hand to hire contractors and prevent small problems from morphing into bigger, more expensive ones, said David Stephens, the executive director of risk management for the Florida School Boards Insurance Trust.

Local Education Funding School Money and Performance State Education Funding

Texas Tribune, 10/10/18

Analysis: Texas’ school finance problem in one pesky chart

A chart on the newest edition of the Texas government publication called “Fiscal Size-Up: 2018-19 Biennium” tracks what local, state and federal taxpayers have been contributing to public education in Texas over the past decade. Spoiler: The load has steadily shifted to local property taxpayers. Texas is spending 6.3 percent less per student, in constant dollars (stated in 2010 dollars, adjusted for inflation and population), than it was spending in 2010. If you applied 2008’s shares of the public education load to today’s numbers, the system would need $6 billion less from local school districts, about $5.5 billion more from the state, and about $438 million from the federal government. Those are one-year numbers, and it’s a running problem — not a one-time fix. To keep the state and local shares at about 45 percent each, state lawmakers would have to find $9 billion for the next two-year budget.

State Education Funding

The Inquirer, 10/10/18

As Pa. special-education costs rise, school districts pick up more of the tab

Increases in special-education costs in Pennsylvania are far outpacing increases in the state’s contributions to those expenses, leaving local school districts to pick up bigger shares of the tabs, according to a report released Tuesday. The report said the widening divide between special-education costs and state funding “forces local school boards to choose between raising additional revenue to meet funding gaps, spreading limited resources across a range of programs, and/or reducing needed services and supports for students with disabilities.” Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials, said some school districts have reduced resources for regular education programs in order to pay for required special-education expenses.

Local Education Funding School Enrollment and Student Population

The 74 Million, 10/10/18

With L.A. schools facing threats of fiscal oversight, district to cut 15 percent of local & office staff in emergency cost-cutting plan

L.A. Unified will eliminate $43 million in administrative salaries as part of an emergency cost-cutting plan to stave off its fiscal overseers. The cuts won’t be at school sites this year, but rather at the central and local district offices. The number of jobs that will be lost will be left up to each department, but they represent an overall 15 percent reduction. The job cuts are one half of a two-part strategy to right-size the district’s budget, which is projected to be on the verge of bankruptcy in two and a half years. They also come as the district is negotiating raises for teachers under the threat of a strike, and after it has approved salary increases of about 6 percent for two-thirds of its workforce.

Local Education Funding School Money and Performance

The State Journal-Register, 10/10/18

Report: New Illinois K-12 school money went where intended

The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability said that more than 89 percent of the new education money in last year’s state budget went to districts designated at Tier 1 schools – those that were furthest away from their adequacy targets. Another nearly 10 percent went to districts designated as Tier 2, which are considered slightly better off financially and slightly closer to meeting adequacy targets. “In other words, in its first year, the (new formula) has begun to reverse Illinois’ ignoble tradition of inequitably funding public education,” the report said. “However, there is much work to be done.” The report said that 83 percent of the state’s 707 school districts remain below their adequacy levels, something the new formula is intended to eventually eliminate.

State Education Funding

Chalkbeat, 9/27/18

How do you make a better school? The Detroit Children’s Fund says start with principals — and $85 million

One of Detroit’s largest education philanthropies, The Detroit Children’s Fund, is expanding its presence in the city’s schools, laying out plans to spend upwards of $85 million by 2025 to train educators, help successful schools expand, and open new ones. The Fund has gotten off to a quick start since the arrival of Jack Elsey, executive director of the Fund, spending $7 million in the last year on a wide range of projects, including a major grant to a high-performing charter school network, the formation of a city-led education commission, a campaign to attract teachers to Detroit, and a program that trains school principals and their top advisors to raise standards in their school.

School Money and Performance

NWI Times, 10/8/18

State committee chooses 8 measures to alert if a school district is in fiscal trouble

The financial status of all Indiana school corporations is poised to be evaluated next year using eight measures that are intended to indicate whether the district may require state assistance or intervention. The main indicators are: student enrollment trends; school fund balances; annual deficit or surplus; fund balances as a percentage of expenditures; a comparison of per-student tuition support with per-student expenditures; revenue by type; referendum funding relative to other revenue; and the share of general fund spending tied to salaries and benefits.

School Money and Performance

Education Week, 10/7/18

Betsy DeVos has approved every ESSA plan. Read what’s in them.

Roughly 34 months after President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law, all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have gotten the seal of approval for their ESSA plans from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. For each ESSA plan, Education Week highlights six individual policy areas that advocates, analysts, and educators are watching closely. These include the long-term goals, how states will measure school quality beyond test scores and graduation rates, and how states will grade schools.

Federal Education Funding

The 74 Million, 9/25/18

A school budget showdown in California: Why the state and county have warned Los Angeles Unified to get its financial house in order — or they’re taking over

The Los Angeles Unified School District board was jolted last month when a top county official showed up unannounced to say, You’re spending more money than you make and the savings you’ve been living off of are about to run out. L.A. Unified has to act now, and it has three choices, the officials said: Make more money, cut spending, or do both. Candi Clark, chief financial officer of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, who is legally required to act if a school district will run out of money within three years, has given L.A. Unified until Oct. 8 to adjust its budget, including detailing exactly how the district expects to make the $73 million in cuts it has vowed to carve out of the next two years’ budgets. If the county isn’t satisfied, it will “disapprove” the district’s budget. The next step is assigning a financial expert to assist the district, then imposing a fiscal adviser. The final step would be a state takeover, which happened in neighboring Compton in 1993 and in Inglewood in 2012.

Local Education Funding School Money and Performance