a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
The state budget is the grimmest picture we've seen in years. There will be 6% cuts in all state departments, although not formally approved by OSPB, which are in addition to the former 4% cuts. CDE can't take cuts in certain lines (assessments, SARs, Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind), so the 6% really amounts to 13%. Stroup forwarded the SBE's recommendations to the JBC, which includes the elimination of the Excellent Schools Awards. We sent 3 other plans, with various amounts of the Excellence Awards, one with "indirect costs" cuts in CDE. OSPB proposes to eliminate all of the Excellence Awards AND cut 6% out of CDE's program administration and salary increases. Federal funding has mitigated the effect to some degree, but NCLB has given us additional mandates. Suckla said that we need to know what additional services we need to provide for NCLB and how much funding we've received to do them. The staff is working longer hours and more tasks. We have, for example, one fewer auditors, so we'll have less frequent audits. Services will be affected in that we will likely have more mistakes and things will take longer to be done. Data has become so important. Polis suggested we might consider mortgaging CSDB to help pay for their costs; Moloney worries that such a move might not be warmly embraced by the Legislature. We had to put in requests for supplemental funding because enrollment was higher than expected and so were health insurance costs. Orr suggested that we prioritize our cuts according to the Constitution first. Suckla said that we need to analyze the areas that all our staff is working on, to see if we can streamline or how they can more effectively take on all the additional tasks.
The JBC put together a list of education items that could be cut and asked us to make recommendations for prioritization. Randy plans to send them a letter late this week, based on what we come up with today. Stanford suggested that programs which have already been promised should be funded, even if it requires some expenditure of State Education Fund money - that we should focus on balancing the budget and not worry about possible bankrupting of the Fund in the future - that we should spend as much as is reasonably possible so that we can focus on our priorities (longitudinal analysis and closing the achievement gap). I disagreed somewhat, saying that districts are willing to consider cuts in some programs such as textbooks, rather than others. I also said that I'm not willing to overlook possible long-term effects of taking money out of the Education Fund. Suckla said that we should allow districts as much flexibility as possible.
The consensus seemed to be coming up with which items we are willing to consider negotiating with (eliminating) and which we are not. We also are interested in convening this conversation with the education community. Therefore, the letter will be somewhat general and discuss that we will convene a process. We could say that assessments are an important of our educational reform. Push for their not spending any additional money. I proposed that we say that we don't want to cut services to schools and districts. We are looking at all the administrative things we can do such as raising GED fees for services. For new programs, we can look at the data (such as for full-day kindergarten for unsatisfactory schools) to see if they were effective. Charter school capital construction funding needs to be reexamined. We would add to their list looking at eliminating the double reserve funds that TABOR might not actually require.
People in general are very pleased with how the SARs came out this year. As of Monday, 80% of the report cards have been shipped. Printing and delivery is going smoothly, except for the insert with explanations of the SARs that the Work Group wanted - it was packaged and sent separately. The mammoth task of distribution is done by the schools. The process in CDE of working with districts to resolve disputes about the data went well. The one big mistake was with the Spanish tests - some schools' weighted scores had been calculated without them. It affected elementaries, since the test is given in grades 3-4. Only 7 schools' performance ratings were affected and 18 improvement ratings. In the performance ratings, 6 went up and 1 (Hayden) went down. In the improvement ratings, 10 went up and 8 went down. The SARs for those schools are being reprinted, and the CDE website has been corrected.
CDE recently received a large missive (300 pages) from USDOE with the final regulations for NCLB. AYP is really the "heart of the matter." In our preliminary plan we came up with a definition that is closer to our vision of longitudinal, value-added. USDOE insisted that we modify that definition, adhering more closely to their requirements. We have to set a statewide baseline from which each school must make AYP - we had originally hoped to be able to take each from where it was. Using a statewide average is going to put the baseline much higher than some schools currently are; thus, they will have to make huge gains to come up to baseline within the next two years. We are studying data to see what differences will result from the change in the definition. People from Washington will be here next Tuesday to assist in our rewriting. In March, we're planning a 2-3 day conference on our statewide accountability system, to bring together a discussion about accreditation and NCLB. Some of the requirements relating to school choice have been changed; for example, we can't use capacity as a reason not to provide choice, which will impact Denver especially. There are also issues with small, rural districts enabling access to choice. We'll have to deal individually with each of our 178 districts around how they might implement their choice plan.
Our HR-1 Hub Committee meets monthly and has 9 subcommittees working on various parts of the plan. (The Data Subcommittee has been absorbed into the other subcommittees to give them the specific data they need.) A lot of people from different educational organizations are involved.
Dorothy Gotlieb mentioned there needs to be more emphasis in principal licensure on leadership development and professional development rather than on adherence to requirements. We have received feedback on our proposed rules for principal preparation from CASE and from the Alliance for Quality Teaching. Gotlieb has submitted amendments to the emergency rules incorporating these ideas. Concern has been raised about the PLACE test for principal licensure - will it incorporate all of these standards? Not all of them can be assessed that way. The institutions of higher education say that they are able to help develop performance assessments in the standards outside of content knowledge instruction.
Orr raised a question about CCHE's requirement that students cannot go into student teaching until they have already passed the PLACE assessment. Do they have the right to make that rule? It assures that student teachers have the content knowledge, but perhaps the SBE has jurisdiction in that area.
Most of the changes we are making to the SBE's Operating Procedures are to implement changes in law, such as obsolete provisions being removed, how we fill vacancies, etc. I called into question whether these procedures are legally binding - are they bylaws or standing rules? The determination seemed to be that they are standing rules (which means that they can be changed at any meeting).
We spent some time discussing changes to the rules for electing Chair and Vice Chair, since the new Board will consist of 8 members (not only an even number, but split evenly between the two political parties). The suggestion is to require every nomination to be seconded, and to limit each person to making one nomination and one second for each office. The majority seemed to agree that the rules would say that if "the Board is evenly divided between political parties, and the newly elected chair and vice chair represent the different parties, the chairmanship shall rotate between the elected chair and vice chair, with the elected chairman serving as chairman the first year." However, because statute says that a chair must be elected for two years, the rotation would essentially be a "gentleman's agreement." Our legal counsel, Tony Dyl, said that the rotation is legal, because the law requires that the two officers be elected for a two-year term. We came up with the following scenario: If there are more than 2 candidates and none gets a majority vote, we will hold a run-off election to lower the number to two candidates. If there are tie votes in three rounds of voting and still no majority, we will hold a simultaneous ballot for both chair and vice chair. If after 3 rounds of voting there is still no majority, the immediate past chair and/or vice chair will continue to serve until a new chair and/or vice chair can be elected. Our hope in having 3 rounds of voting in each case is that eventually someone would change their votes accordingly to result in a decision.
We are updating our rules for conducting charter school appeal hearings to include some changes made in legislation, as well as conducting our hearings more effectively. We will change the requirement that each side has 5 minutes to speak uninterrupted, so that they are given a choice about whether they have that time.
We asked for clarification on how we are legally required to make our decisions. Our decisions are judicial, in that we determine what is true, what the law requires, and what is in the best interests overall for the district, pupils, and community.
Clarification was asked for regarding the issue of conflict of interest. Rico Munn is concerned because he used to work for Kaplan and Ernst, a law firm that often represents school districts in charter school appeals. He was wondering if he needs to make a disclosure to that fact. Our legal counsel, Tony Dyl, said that it is all right for that disclosure, but we have only had one case since this law was passed where State Board members have disclosed and/or recused themselves. I pointed out that what we've done in the past shouldn't be a concern; otherwise - for example - we could have people argue that Suckla has a conflict of interest and is biased in favor of districts because sh had been on a local school board and president of CASB. The law allows each of us to determine when we should recuse ourselves, and I think we should use our best judgment.
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