| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Cathy Woodruff Some members of the Board of Regents are expressing strong reservations about a plan to boost the weight given to standardized student test scores in evaluating teachers and principals under New York’s Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) program. Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. is scheduled to ask the Regents to make the change during their next meeting on June 17 and 18. “I’m very much opposed to having that go into effect this year,” Regent Roger Tilles said in an interview with On Board. Other Regents including Kathleen Cashin have also expressed concerns about the plan, which involves using a more sophisticated formula, known as “value-added,” when student test score data is used in teacher and principal evaluations. Under APPR legislation approved in 2010, adoption of the new value-added model by the Regents would trigger an increase in the weight of state test scores to 25 percent, up from the 20 percent share allotted under the current model, which is called growth. |
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| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Cathy Woodruff Reworked versions of many of the 32 school budgets rejected by voters in May will slice art and music, athletics and extra-curricular activities, kindergarten and academic enrichment in efforts to trim tax levy increases to levels more voters will accept. While the North Babylon school district in Suffolk County will be asking voters to approve the same budget proposal on the statewide revote day of June 18, other districts contacted by On Board said they were pursuing program reductions in tandem with staff cuts. Leaders in some districts said they have reached the bottom of financial reserves that, until now, have helped to minimize program cuts and property tax hikes. “We’ve gone through everything,” said Tupper Lake Superintendent Seth McGowan. “We’re spending our last dollars in our unemployment reserve and we’ve depleted our general fund balance. We’re left with half a percent in fund balance.” McGowan and other school leaders told On Board that they are crossing their fingers that new reductions will be enough to satisfy voters who objected to earlier proposed tax increases, yet won’t alienate parents and others who want to maintain current offerings. The balancing act has been especially challenging in districts like Tupper Lake, where original budget proposals sought property tax levy increases above the state cap, triggering the need for a 60 percent supermajority approval to override the cap. |
| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Eric D. Randall While poet Emily Dickinson described hope as “the thing with feathers” – a self-propelled emanation of the soul – Steven Pemberton doesn’t see it quite the same way. As the kickoff speaker for NYSSBA’s Annual Convention in October, Pemberton will share his view that hope, at least in children, is more like a seed that needs to be nurtured in order to bloom. A biracial orphan who identifies with youth who struggle against circumstances, Pemberton is the chief diversity officer for Walgreens and the author of a memoir called A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home. “People come to our Annual Convention expecting to be inspired and re-energized,” said Barry Entwistle, NYSSBA’s director of leadership development. “Steven Pemberton offers a perspective on the spirit of ambition that people are going to remember.” |
| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Thomas J. Nespeca The month of June is famous for good things – the start of summer, graduations, cooking on the grill, and the end of the state legislative session in Albany. As Mark Twain once said, “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” (I wonder if he was referring specifically to the New York State Legislature. After all, Twain and his wife Olivia, the daughter of a New York coal merchant, lived in Buffalo and Elmira.) While NYSSBA member districts are grateful to the Legislature for many things, such as a recent record of on-time state budgets, the end of the session always produces anxiety in NYSSBA headquarters. Typically, we see a flurry of last-minute, out-of-the-blue, unfunded mandates that affect our schools and local governments. Some of these proposals may well be good public policy (others, not so much). The problem is, since they come after the state has adopted its budget for the following year, lawmakers end up passing on the cost for these new mandates to schools – even though they too have already passed their budgets for the coming year. That puts us school board members in a difficult situation. With no money from the state earmarked for the new mandate, we have to determine how to pay for it using local resources. Often that means taking from other program areas in the budget, including initiatives supporting ongoing student achievement. In short, something else gets shortchanged. Our resources are stretched too thin. |
| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Cathy Woodruff The list of factors that can affect how well a student performs on a single state standardized test is long, and only one item on that list is how well he or she has mastered the material being tested. Virtually all of the other variables are beyond the control of his teacher or his school principal, who both are to be rated, in part, on that student’s performance under New York’s fledgling Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) program. Some variables are impossible to predict in any reliable, systematic way. Perhaps pre-test jitters kept this student awake the night before the test. Maybe a sick parent, or even a sick pet, is weighing on his mind. But testing experts say other influences that can harm a student’s performance are predictable and quantifiable. Those influences, they say, can be recognized through a formula or “algorithm.” |
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| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Lisa A. Johnson This spring, Junior Achievement of Western New York recruited University of Buffalo School of Management undergraduates to work with students in a personal finance and career exploration curriculum called JA Economics for Success®. Thirteen UB students spent 40 minutes a week for six weeks at Buffalo’s #45 International School, which serves children of refugees from more than 70 countries and only half of the students are proficient in English. Activities included a discussion of credit scores and an activity that reinforced their understanding of the cost of credit. The final day was a career day in which a dozen speakers, including a firefighter, police officer, engineer, and hair stylist told the students about their careers, shared advice and answered students’ questions. One of the college volunteers, Kittie Pizzutelli, recounted how one girl in her class was especially shy and rarely spoke, yet by the time the diploma ceremony rolled around, the girl gave a short speech on stage to all of her fellow students. One of the sixth graders, who wants to be a lawyer when he grows up, said, “It was a lot of fun and it was good to learn about how to be successful in the future.” |
| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Pilar Sokol A state appellate court has ruled that a school district was not liable for injuries sustained by a student when another pulled her to the ground by the hair and repeatedly punched her in the head in a hallway between classes. Generally, a school district will be found liable when one of its students is intentionally harmed by another if the district could have reasonably anticipated the harm and failed to provide adequate supervision. Although school officials in Conklin v. Saugerties CSD had been aware of rumors about a possible fight, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, Third Department, found no liability, noting specific actions taken by school authorities and teachers in response to both rumors and the first punch. The court’s decision provides guidance for districts that might face a similar situation. In Conklin school officials first heard of the possibility of a fight from a message left by the father of the student who ultimately was injured. He reported discovering disturbing comments when monitoring his daughter’s MySpace account. In response, an administrator returned the call before school the next morning and arranged for the school social worker to meet first thing in the morning with both students – first separately and then together. Throughout those meetings, the two students remained calm and denied any intention to fight each other. |
| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By Pilar Sokol In two separate appeals, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, First Department, recently was asked to rule that termination penalties imposed against two New York City teachers were inappropriate because they shocked one’s sense of fairness. In both cases, the court decided otherwise. |
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| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 By the New York State Association of School Attorneys A law commonly called “Obamacare” – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA – was signed into law by President Barack Obama nearly three years ago. Since then, school officials have speculated about its practical implications for school districts. But some key issues were clarified on Dec. 28, 2012, when the IRS issued proposed regulations. These regulations explain when employers – including school districts – will be liable for tax penalties under the ACA. The good news is that districts can take steps to avoid or limit these tax penalties. Because the law uses the number of full-time employees to determine whether sufficient coverage has been provided to meet requirements, districts need to develop expertise on determining when substitute teachers, bus drivers and other “variable hour” employees become full-time employees under the law. |
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| On Board Online • June 10, 2013 Avoiding denying health coverage to substitute teachers who achieve full-time status will be a challenge for school districts under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The law calls for employers to consider the number of hours worked on a month-by-month basis, but a district may not know until a month is over which substitutes are full-time. And by then it is too late to offer coverage. The ACA defines full-time employees as those who average at least 30 hours of service per week (or generally 130 hours of service in a month). Districts can avoid the possibility of needing to provide health care coverage for substitutes if they ensure that no substitute has more than 130 hours of service per month. But educational needs may require otherwise. In that case, districts should track the number of hours worked by each substitute and follow IRS regulations on what the law calls “variable hour” employees. |