Grading Texas

Here is some more information reinforcing TSTA’s concern about the new Texas Education Agency rule giving school districts a huge loophole for declaring financial emergencies in order to fire more teachers.

As I outlined in my previous Grading Texas post, the rule was adopted by state Education Commissioner Robert Scott to help carry out Senate Bill 8, an antiteacher law enacted during the June special session, making it easier for school districts to put much of the brunt of the $5 billionplus in state education cuts on classrooms and students. Senate Bill 8 allows districts to furlough teachers, cut their pay and declare financial emergencies in order to lay off more employees.

According to a survey conducted by three superintendents before the holidays, 85 percent of 53 school districts in the Panhandle already have cut their budgets, with the brunt of the cuts falling on staffing and programs affecting students. The survey is linked below. One superintendent told the Amarillo GlobeNews that struggling students were particularly hurt because they lost the extra help from support staff that they needed. And, with more budget reductions anticipated for the 20122013 school year, superintendents are not through dealing with the crisis yet.

Several hundred districts are suing the state in an effort to force the Legislature to adopt a more equitable and adequate school finance system, but that litigation will take months to work its way through state courts. Meanwhile, districts in the Panhandle and elsewhere will be looking with interest at TEA’s new rule, establishing standards for declaring a financial emergency, or “exigency.”

Part of the rule does set specific standards including loss of state funding, declining enrollment, unforeseen natural disasters or unanticipated major expenses – that promote accountability from school districts. But Commissioner Scott added a subsection that creates a loophole. It would allow a financial emergency to be declared for a school district under “any other circumstances approved in writing” by the education commissioner. TSTA has asked the commissioner to delete that subsection because it, in effect, eliminates any standards whatsoever.

The budgetcutting in the Panhandle is only a small sample of what has been going on – and will continue – in school districts across Texas. And, the ultimate victims are school children. Gov. Rick Perry and the legislative majority are responsible for the mess. But if TEA is going to impose standards, they should be standards, not a free pass.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1Z5O0jO5sNimhNhcn6kC6YJpz8LCUxW7DHFo_kL2ViozkEqiN8pZ5bvPq4wa&hl=en_US

While Gov. Rick Perry has been out of state, making a joke of himself in Republican presidential politics, he has left it to others to deal with the $5 billionplus in public education budget cuts he left behind in Texas.

Part of that task has fallen to his appointed state education commissioner, Robert Scott, who a few months ago adopted a new rule making it easier for school districts to get waivers from the 221 class size cap for kindergarten through fourth grade. The result has been thousands of young children crammed into overcrowded K4 classes and thousands of unemployed teachers.

Now, Scott has drafted another rule, creating a huge financial accountability loophole for school districts seeking further budgetary relief. Senate Bill 8, enacted by the Legislature in June, requires the commissioner to adopt minimum standards under which a school district can declare a financial emergency for such steps as imposing more layoffs through a reduction in force. (The official term is “financial exigency,” a bureaucratic tongue twister that must have been designed to numb the mind to the reality of what it means.)

Part of the rule, Section 109.2001(b)(15), is fine as far as it goes. It sets specific standards including loss of state funding, declining enrollment, unforeseen natural disasters or unanticipated major expenses – for which a financial emergency can be declared. But then the commissioner added subsection (6), which opens the door to widespread abuse by school districts that would rather lay off more teachers and weaken classrooms than, say, ask local voters for a modest tax increase.

Subsection (6) would allow a financial emergency to be declared for a school district under “any other circumstances approved in writing” by the education commissioner. This creates a mechanism for the commissioner to approve a financial emergency without requiring a school district to meet any standards whatsoever. It is an accountability loophole big enough to drive Rick Perry’s army of taxpayerpaid bodyguards through.

In a filing with the Texas Education Agency, TSTA has urged the commissioner to delete subsection (6) from the rule. Financial emergencies must be justified by clearly established criteria before school districts can be allowed to use them to fire more employees, cut teacher pay or order teacher furloughs – all of which would harm the learning environment for students.

Perry, meanwhile, has been in South Carolina this week in a lastgasp struggle to make himself relevant on the national GOP stage. You may have noticed where he attacked Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney over all the lost jobs that Romney’s company, Bain Capital, cost workers in corporate takeovers. Perry said there is “something inherently wrong” with benefitting from losses suffered by others.

I doubt that Perry realized the hypocrisy of that remark. He is too busy trying to reap political benefit from all the pink slips he has provided to Texas’ public schools.

I can understand why Gov. Rick Perry is getting Texas Monthly’s annual “Bum Steer of the Year” award – no Texas governor has ever gone to such great lengths to earn it – but I can’t understand why the magazine was so hesitant to single out the governor, even to the point of being almost apologetic.

“No one wants to give the governor a Bum Steer. No one wants to poke fun at the elected representative of 25 million Texans,” wrote editor Jake Silverstein. The final straw, he said, was Perry’s gigantic “oops” moment, his inability during a televised debate to remember the third federal agency he would abolish were the country to commit the disastrous act of electing him president.

Although that gaffe is memorable, no one should have been embarrassed by it, except the governor, his inner circle of advisers and the nearsighted campaign contributors who have spent millions of dollars keeping him propped up in the governor’s office for the past 11 years in exchange for government contracts and other political favors.

The “oops” moment is far from the worst sin that Perry has inflicted on the people of Texas during this year alone. The governor’s handling last spring of the state budgetary crisis – which he largely created with an underfunded school finance plan five years ago – should have been more than enough to already have planted him at the top of the “Bum Steer” list.

He insisted upon and signed a state budget that slashed billions of dollars from health care programs of critical importance to millions of Texans and cut $5.4 billion from the public schools. It was the worst public education budget of his lifetime, the first in more than 60 years to fail to pay for enrollment growth. He orchestrated these cuts and other spending reductions while leaving more than $6 billion of the taxpayers’ money unspent in the Rainy Day Fund. And, he had the gall to say it wasn’t his fault if school districts started laying off teachers.

No one wants to give the governor a Bum Steer? Says who?

The Bum Steer, of course, is designed to entertain as much as educate. And, there is absolutely nothing entertaining about the estimated 32,000 school employees who, so far, have lost their jobs because of Perry’s budget cuts – and the thousands more expected to join them next year. Even in the face of adversity, though, teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other school employees who still have jobs are doing their best for their students. Many are dealing with larger classes, insufficient supplies and outdated textbooks, but they are creating success stories every day.

While Rick Perry will spend much of the holiday season trying to sell a frozen bill of goods to Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire, Texas teachers and other educators – and their students – will be taking some welldeserved time off. So will I, even if my holiday break may not be as wellearned.

I and my colleagues at TSTA wish you a happy season free of bum steers and look forward to seeing you again next year.

-From Texas Monthly

Austin ISD board president Mark Williams admitted last night what has been obvious to just about everyone else in Austin for several weeks now. The school district has “rushed” a controversial proposal to hand over two schools in East Austin to a charter school operator and has conducted a “poor” process for seeking public input.

Both the rush job and the poor public information process have been driven by Superintendent Meria Carstarphen, whose apparent fascination with the charter operator, IDEA Public Schools, is outdone only by her disdain for Austin ISD parents and taxpayers who don’t share her view. Carstarphen wants to give IDEA, which is based in South Texas, a contract to take over Eastside High School and Allan Elementary, despite strong community opposition – from parents, students and Education Austin, the TSTA affiliate that represents many teachers and other AISD employees.

The board slowed down Carstarphen’s runaway freight train by postponing a vote on the IDEA proposal until next Monday, at which time it needs to apply the brakes even more firmly. The proposed IDEA contract needs further study. The Austin AmericanStatesman, which also has been urging more review, has gone so far as to label the superintendent’s proposals “halfbaked.”

IDEA has received some acclaim for its charter operations in South Texas, but there has been research indicating that IDEA engages in some “cherry picking,” choosing mostly the best and the brightest students for its schools, instead of trying to educate every child who comes along, as traditional public schools do.

According to former University of Texas researcher Ed Fuller (who now is at Penn State), IDEA starts with a student body that has fewer lowperforming and economically disadvantaged students than traditional public schools. Yet, traditional public schools will continue to educate the vast majority of children in Texas and in Austin, even if the AISD board were to adopt Carstarphen’s proposal to divert tax dollars to the private charter operator.

Carstarphen has challenged the thoroughness and objectivity of Fuller’s research. But she needs to do more than that. She needs to have the district conduct its own objective research into IDEA’s methods and record and share those findings with the public. Then, if she still thinks IDEA is a good idea for AISD, she needs to methodically make her case with the public and the board, not create artificial deadlines for the board to rubberstamp her proposal.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sharedgen/blogs/austin/education/entries/2011/12/12/updates_from_tonights_aisd_boa.html