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Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

A Washington Post analysis found nearly 200 incidents in recent years when a bullied student took his or her own life. Some schools are paying out millions and changing policies.

Donna St George:

Families argue that schools have a legal obligation to keep children safe, and many political leaders agree: Fifty states have enacted laws to combat school bullying. But in day-to-day school life, some policies are not robust, and others are not enforced. And advocates say that a belief persists in some communities that bullying is part of childhood and that “kids will be kids.”

Efforts to curtail bullying are not a priority for many schools across the nation, especially after the pandemic left schools with even greater needs than before, said Dorothy Espelage, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied the issue for three decades. “It’s not just North Carolina,” she said. “It’s all over this country.”

The National School Boards Association declined an interview for this story. Several school systems with recent cases have defended their actions, saying they handle bullying properly, and many say they are committed to safe schools. Some districts did not respond to inquiries from The Post.

Experts point out that bullying does not “cause” suicide, which typically happens for a complex set of reasons. A student who is being bullied may also struggle with mental illness, early childhood trauma, family conflict, sexual or gender identity issues, or many other challenges.

Lawfare, school choice and the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Wall Street Journal:

Progressives tee up a case for the state Supreme Court’s new majority.

This should be an easy case, but the new 4-3 progressive majority on the Court is cause for worry. If the lawsuit is successful, it could end school choice in Wisconsin without a possibility of appeal because the case is based on state law claims. The result would mean upheaval for 29,000 children in Milwaukee’s voucher program, 4,000 in Racine and 19,000 in the rest of the state. Judges call that a “reliance” interest to consider carefully when considering a precedent.

The real power behind this case is the teachers union. Bob Baxter, executive director of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, says tests scores are a “fallacy” and that “every student that’s in a voucher school suffers.” Students who attend charters “are not learning the curriculum they need to learn in order to be a part of a democratic society,” Mr. Baxter adds. “We believe the right wing wants to crush participation in democracy.”

But the vouchers passed democratically. The real democratic issue here is whether four progressive Justices are going to trample their court’s precedent and the voters and impose their own policy preferences. That would rob poor children of better choices in favor of the unions who financed Justice Protasiewicz’s judicial campaign. Who’s anti-democratic?

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

School Choice and Student Outcomes

Will Flanders

As private school choice programs expand at a rapid pace across the nation, a common complaint is that they will harm public schools. In Wisconsin, where a large increase in private school choice funding was recently passed, a state senator claimed that public schools would be “defunded,” despite $1 billion in public school increases being passed at the same time. In Iowa, where a ground-breaking Education Savings Account was passed earlier this year, the director of Iowa’s School Board Association complained that the funding “can be better spent serving the 485,000 students in public schools, given the needs that they have.” With school choice options growing across the nation, it is important for policymakers to know whether these complaints are valid. Fortunately, new research is able to answer this question.

We analyzed data from Wisconsin, where one of the nation’s oldest school choice programs began in Milwaukee in 1990. In addition to the Milwaukee program, Wisconsin has been home to a statewide school choice program since 2013, providing a lengthy time frame to study. We compared public school proficiency outcomes across districts as enrollment in school choice increased. Contrary to the doom-and-gloom predictions of some choice opponents, we found that there was no impact on math outcomes, and a positive relationship to reading outcomes—as choice enrollment in a district increased, so did public school test scores. In other words, the growth of school choice did not harm public schools and may have even helped them.

A curious Bezos Washington Post take on homeschooling

Peter Jamison:

Across the country, interest in home schooling has never been greater. The Bealls could see the surge in Virginia, where nearly 57,000 children were being home-schooled in the fall of 2022 — a 28 percent jump from three years earlier. The rise of home education, initially unleashed by parents’ frustrations with pandemic-related campus closures and remote learning, has endured as one of the lasting social transformations wrought by covid-19.

But if the coronavirus was a catalyst for the explosion in home schooling, the stage was set through decades of painstaking work by true believers like those who had raised Aaron and Christina. Aided by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) — a Christian nonprofit that has been dubbed “the most influential homeschool organization in the world,” and is based less than five miles from the Bealls’ house in Northern Virginia — those activists had fought to establish the legality of home schooling in the 1980s and early 1990s, conquering the skepticism of public school administrators and state lawmakers across the country.

Through their influence, a practice with roots in the countercultural left took on a very different character. Among conservative Christians, home schooling became a tool for binding children to fundamentalist beliefs they felt were threatened by exposure to other points of view. Rightly educated, those children would grow into what HSLDA founder Michael Farris called a “Joshua Generation” that would seek the political power and cultural influence to reshape America according to biblical principles.

## I’ve known a number of people who chose home schooling. In many cases, academic rigor was a significant factor. Religion was for some as well.

Perhaps these links might offer a bit of background:

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Following losses in the last school board election, Milwaukee’s teachers union has paid big this season to support its favored candidates, reporting spending over $88,000 since January.

Rory Linnane:

The political action committee of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, the union for MPS staff, first gave about $11,000 directly to candidates’ campaigns in January: $5,000 to Zombor, and nearly $1,500 each to Hart, Herndon, O’Halloran and Siemsen.

In March, the group spent another $41,422 on postcards and digital ads for Zombor, $22,000 for Herndon, $12,000 for Hart, $1,100 for Siemsen and $1,100 for O’Halloran.

The MTEA’s PAC is funded by MPS staff who choose to pay into it on top of their membership dues. That includes over 5,000 teachers and other staff members.

Ben Ward, MTEA executive director, said he thought the school board has been moving the district in a positive direction since the 2019 elections, when union-backed candidates swept their races. MTEA has advocated for board decisions since then to pursue a referendum for arts and music funding, increase minimum wages in the district and implement experience-based raises, Ward said.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Teacher union$ and $chool Board Governance: Californian edition

Mine Antonucci:

The California Teachers Association spent heavily on school board races in the state, distributing $1.8 million to 125 local affiliates, which were required by union policy to add almost $1 million more to the total.

That investment seems to have mostly paid off. California election results take weeks to finalize, but union-backed candidates are leading in 35 of the 52 races in which the state union spent the most money.

The biggest winner was Rocio Rivas, running for a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board. The union contributed more than $330,000 on her behalf.

The union supported Shana Hazan and Cody Petterson with $145,000, and they won seats on the San Diego Unified board.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Pennsbury school board officials used unconstitutional policies and bullying tactics to silence criticism of diversity, inclusion and equity agenda

IFS:

“School boards across the country should take note. Rules for public comments must respect the First Amendment rights of speakers. If you are limiting which opinions may be shared, you’ll be held liable for violating First Amendment rights,” said Alan Gura, Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Free Speech.

A federal court ruled in November that several Pennsbury policies governing speech at school board meetings were unconstitutional. Those policies, modeled after a template recommended by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA), allowed the meeting’s presiding officer to stop speakers whose comments were deemed “personally directed,” “personal attacks,” “abusive,” “verbally abusive,” “irrelevant,” “disruptive,” “offensive,” “inappropriate,” or “otherwise inappropriate.” After an evidentiary hearing in Philadelphia, Judge Gene Pratter found ample evidence that the Board selectively enforced the rules to stifle criticism of its actions and members.

The plaintiffs in the case were censored for attempting to criticize district policies, including efforts to promote contested ideas about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Marshall was once interrupted mere seconds into speaking because the solicitor objected to his use of the term “critical race theory” to describe the district’s initiatives. Critics of the board were cut off for addressing their comments to board members, while other speakers were permitted to directly praise board members and school employees.

“Rules for public comment periods are meant to maintain time limits and protect each speaker’s right to be heard, not police which viewpoints are expressed. Pennsbury’s rules were so vague and subjective that the board could effectively shut down any speech they didn’t like, and that’s exactly what they did,” said Del Kolde, Senior Attorney at the Institute for Free Speech.

After the injunction was issued, Pennsbury abolished one of the two policies challenged in the lawsuit and rewrote the other to comply with the First Amendment. The court also ruled against a board requirement that speakers publicly announce their home address before beginning their remarks. According to a spokesperson for the PSBA, the model policy was put under review after the court’s ruling.

Commentary on school of education effectiveness and k-12 diversity choices vs monoculture

Ann Althouse:

But what’s really bothering Strauss isn’t the outrage of insulting education departments. It’s Hillsdale’s participation in charter schools around the country. There’s the “Hillsdale K-12 curriculum that is centered on Western civilization and designed to help ‘students acquire a mature love for America.'”

Valerie Strauss:

At the reception last week, held at a Cool Springs conference center in Tennessee, Arnn made comments while addressing an audience from a lectern and while sitting on the stage next to Lee on a stage. Here’s a sample:

“Ed departments in colleges. If you work in a college you know, unless you work in the ed department. Ours [Hillsdale’s] is different. They are the dumbest part of every college. [Audience laughs.] You can think about why for a minute. If you study physics, there is a subject. … How does the physical world work? That’s hard to figure out. Politics is actually the study of justice. … Literature. They don’t do it much anymore, but you can read the greatest books, the most beautiful books ever written. Education is the study of how to teach. Is that a separate art? I don’t think so.”
“If you read a book called ‘Abolition of Man’ by C.S. Lewis, you will see how education destroys generations of people. It’s devastating. It’s like a plague. … The teachers are trained in the dumbest part of the dumbest colleges in the country. And they are taught that they are going to do something to those kids. … My wife is English, and she is a gardener, big-time. And she doesn’t talk about what she is going to do to these plants. She talks about what they need. Because if you give them what they need, they will grow.”
“The philosophic understanding at the heart of modern education is enslavement. … They’re messing with people’s children, and they feel entitled to do anything to them.”
“Here’s a key thing we are going to try to do. We’re going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child. Because basically anybody can do it.”

Educators and other Tennesseans said they were angry at Arnn for making the comments and at Lee for failing to defend his state’s teachers and teacher preparation programs. Claude Pressnell Jr., president of Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, tweeted: “This is incredibly disturbing. Dr. Larry Arnn’s demeaning portrayal of Tennessee’s Ed prep programs and professors is uninformed and offensive. I’m disappointed that @GovBillLee is not on record with Dr. Arnn defending the integrity of Tennessee’s education programs.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on Critical Race theory in taxpayer supported K-12 schools

C Bradley Thompson:

Parents en masse organized to protest the teaching of Critical Race Theory (and Critical Gender Theory) in America’s government schools. We’ve all seen the videos of school board meetings that erupted in anger as parents vented their frustrations with local school board officials. It’s clear from those meetings that the parents opposing CRT believe that the doctrine is racist both in theory and practice and that it is fomenting racial division and hatred.

In response to this burst of parental outrage, the Education Establishment and its lackeys in the mainstream media launched a PR campaign dedicated to mocking and dismissing the claim CRT was being taught in America’s classrooms. The Washington Post claimed that “critical race theory is not part of the local school systems’ K-12 curriculum, nor mentioned in the state’s Standards of Learning . . . There is scant evidence it’s taught anywhere – let alone everywhere.”[1] According to a headline in a NBC News report, “Teaching critical race theory isn’t happening in classrooms, teacher survey says.”[2] PBS New Hour declared “[t]here is little to no evidence that critical race theory itself is being taught to K-12 public school students.”[3]Speaking on behalf of the Education Deep State, The New York Times asserted, “Education leaders, including the National School Boards Association, deny that there is any critical race theory being taught in K-12 schools.”[4]

Interestingly, after denying that CRT is taught in America’s schools, most mainstream media articles on the controversy typically went on to suggest that even though CRT is not taught in America’s schools, it would in fact be a good thing if it were as a tool in the fight against racism. And then of course, the articles typically ended with the obligatory “Kafka-trap” in which it would be suggested that any claim that CRT was being taught in the government schools was itself evidence of racism, thereby proving the need to teach CRT. The Washington Postsuggested, for instance, that Republicans were using CRT as a racist “dog whistle,” the purpose of which was to fan the flames of “moral panic.”[5]

Notes on pro school choice poll results

School Choice Wisconsin:

Wisconsin voters strongly support making all families eligible for the state’s school choice programs and favor ending funding inequities between choice, charter, and traditional public schools. These are among key findings on education issues in a scientific, random sample poll conducted earlier this month by one of the nation’s leading opinion research firms.

“Parents want more options. They want to be more involved. It’s as simple as that,” said Nic Kelly, President of School Choice Wisconsin.

The poll showed support for school choice across the political spectrum. While strong Republican support is unsurprising, noteworthy is solid majority support among independents and sizable support among Democrats.

SCW retained OnMessage Inc. to conduct the poll. The firm’s national recognition includes being named “Pollster of the Year” in 2019 by the American Association of Political Consultants (https://theaapc.org).

Wisconsin parents have four tax-supported options for enrolling children in K-12 schools. They are: (1) traditional public schools in the district where a family lives; (2) traditional public schools in districts other than where a family lives; (3) public charter schools; and (4) private schools in one of the state school choice programs. All parents may participate in the first three options, while the private choice programs are limited largely to lower income families.

Taxpayer support of charter schools and choice schools is about 60% of traditional school funding. Students at these schools generally outperform those in traditional public schools on state proficiency exams. Students in choice programs consistently score higher on the college-readiness ACT test. In Milwaukee, the state’s Department of Public Instruction finds that twice as many choice and charter students attend highly-ranked schools when compared with students in the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Commentary

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on the taxpayer supported Madison K-12 school climate

Nada Elmikashfi:

While all city employees at one time were required to live within the city limits, the residency requirement was eliminated for Madison Metro drivers in the 1980s and in subsequent years for other unionized employees as well. Arguments to keep the requirement were based in part on concerns over a dwindling middle class, while opponents have cited the high cost of living in Madison and the quality of suburban schools.

Dan Rolfs, a community development project manager for the city and a union representative for the Madison Professional and Supervisory Employee Association, told Brogan that members have had concerns about sending their kids to public schools in Madison and were drawn to the new high school facilities of Verona, DeForest and Sun Prairie.

It’s understandable. The resource-rich tech and science labs, professional looking athletic facilities, expansive aquatic centers, and unique greenhouses in these suburban schools would be a draw for any parent. Who doesn’t want the best education for their children?

According to a 2021 report from the Madison school district, enrollment has been “decreasing slightly since the 2014-15 school year” and the district projects another decrease next school term. Enrollment for 4K-12 in 2021-22 was 25,936 students, down 482 students from 2020-21.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Maddie Hanna and Kristen A. Graham:

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

A proposal to reduce choice in the taxpayer supported Denver schools

Boardhawk:

The Denver school board last week introduced a draft policy that could limit the autonomy of innovation schools and zones — district-run schools that under state law have some charter-school-like autonomy.

The policy has been given the official title of Standard Teacher Rights and Protections. If passed, the rights and protections provided would be the same as those provided by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the local teachers’ union, to teachers in non-innovations schools.

According to the draft, those protections include but aren’t limited to a workload consistent with 40 hours per week, minimal duties outside of classroom teaching, a uniform school calendar and compensation ranking in the top three for neighboring school districts.

Since innovation schools operate under specifically designed waivers from both the collective bargaining agreement and district rules and regulations, removing the contract waivers could limit the schools’ ability to operate as they have in the past. The waivers have long been a sore point for the DCTA.

In some cases, the waivers allow innovation schools to offer students longer school days if needed and allow teachers to be resources to students outside regular class time.

Lobbying, Influence, Self Destruction and the National School Board Assocation

Laura Meckler:

Email correspondence from the time suggested that the NSBA might have been acting at request of the White House, according to documents released through open records requests filed by a conservative group called Parents Defending Education. Slaven and the White House said that isn’t true.

In one email, an NSBA board member wrote that Slaven had said the letter had been requested by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona for use by the White House. In another, Slaven wrote that the letter included “additional information on some of the specific threats,” as requested by the White House. Cardona’s spokeswoman said he did not solicit the letter.

Five days after the NSBA letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland responded. He directed the FBI to work with U.S. attorneys across the country to convene meetings within 30 days with federal, state and local leaders to discuss strategies for addressing threats to school personnel.

Slaven circulated a copy of the letter to the NSBA board on the evening of Sept. 29, after sending it to the White House. He told members it would be distributed to the press the next day.

5 takeaways from Pennsylvania’s ongoing, landmark school-funding trial after one month

In questioning the superintendent of a rural school district, a lawyer for Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman repeatedly asked why the state’s academic standards mattered for students entering certain professions.

“What use would a carpenter have for biology?” asked John Krill of Matthew Splain, superintendent of the Otto-Eldred School District in McKean County and president of the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, one of the plaintiffs. Splain had said his district’s scores on state standardized tests in biology and other subjects were not acceptable.

“What use would someone on the McDonald’s career track have for Algebra 1?” Krill continued.

As lawyers for the plaintiffs objected, asking what the relevance was, Krill said that the trial was about whether Pennsylvania was meeting its constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient” system of education.

“The question in my mind is, thorough and efficient to what end? To serve the needs of the Commonwealth,” Krill said. “Lest we forget, the Commonwealth has many needs. There’s a need for retail workers, for people who know how to flip a pizza crust.”

He was hired to fix California schools — while running a business in Philadelphia

Mackenzie Mays:

California’s first superintendent of equity lives in Philadelphia and has a separate job there, more than 2,500 miles away from the schools he advises as one of the highest paid officials in the state Department of Education, according to records and interviews.

Daniel Lee, a psychologist, life coach and self-help author, owns a Pennsylvania-based psychology firm and is the president of the New Jersey Psychological Association’s executive board. He has also been serving as a deputy superintendent for the California Department of Education since July 2020, a role dedicated to the success of children of color that was originally backed by a foundation grant but is now funded by state taxpayers.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who was instrumental in the hiring, has known Lee for more than two decades since they were social workers in Philadelphia and included Lee in his wedding party. The Education Department’s nonprofit affiliate initially hired Lee without publicly posting the job that now pays up to $179,832, and Lee’s 18-page resume shows no prior experience in California or relationships with school districts in the state.

Lee, 51, voted in Philadelphia as recently as November and owns a home there, according to local records.California education and taxpayer advocates questioned why the state hired someone living across the country with other duties to address persistent inequities in the nation’s largest school population. The hiring appears to flout California policy, which allows few exceptions for a state employee to live elsewhere.

Enemies of the School Board: Parents in some school districts find their input suppressed—and their dissent criminalized.

Christopher Rufo:

The school board was able to do this because the Round Rock Independent School District has its own police force, with a three-layer chain of command, patrol units, school resource officers, a detective, and a K-9 unit. The department serves under the authority of the board and, through coordination with other agencies, apparently has the power to order the arrest of citizens in their homes. For many parents, the school board is sending a message: if you speak out against us, we will turn you into criminals. When reached for comment, the school district’s police department confirmed that it initiated the investigation and that “one board member requested details from the RRISD Police” prior to the criminal referral.

Round Rock is not the only school board to resort to repressive tactics to stifle dissent. In Loudoun County, Virginia, for example, where parents have protested against critical race theory and a sexual assault cover-up, the superintendent asked the county sheriff to deploy a SWAT team, riot control unit, and undercover agents to monitor parents at school board meetings. The sheriff refused, telling the superintendent that he had not provided “any justification for such a manpower intensive request,” but the mere attempt was astounding.

Even the FBI, under the direction of Attorney General Merrick Garland, has mobilized to monitor parents at school board meetings and, if necessary, prosecute them under domestic terrorism laws. The National School Boards Association, which had requested the federal intervention in a letter to the Justice Department, was later forced to apologize after state chapters strenuously objected to the tone and content of that letter. Yet the Biden administration has moved forwardwith the effort, creating a task force of federal agents and attorneys to coordinate against parent protesters.

The battle lines are clear: on one side, the Biden administration, public school bureaucrats, and their armed agents; on the other, parents and families who oppose school closures, mask mandates, critical race theory, and corruption. Public school officials have demonstrated a willingness to use police power to silence and intimidate their opponents. If parents are to succeed, protesters must continue to organize peacefully and highlight corruption and abuses of power by local school officials.

“This isn’t just about Dustin [Clark] and me,” said Story. “It is about everyone. If they can come for us and get away with it, school boards nationwide will be emboldened to come for you.” He is right—and parents must work together to stop it.

Parents in some school districts find their input suppressed—and their dissent criminalized.

Christopher Rufo:

Voters shake up school boards in Colorado’s biggest districts

Marianne Goodland:

At stake in the state’s second-largest school district: control of the board by candidates backed by teachers’ unions or those supported by conservative causes.

Incumbents who chose not to run again held two of the three seats on this year’s ballot and had been backed by the union in past elections.

Unofficial results show the Jeffco Kids slate of Danielle Varda (District 1), Paula Reed (District 2) and Mary Parker (District 5) winning by comfortable margins. The slate was backed by the Jefferson County Education Association and the Colorado Education Association, as well as from an independent expenditure committee (IEC), Students Deserve Better, funded by CEA and several other teachers’ unions along the Front Range. IECs are allowed to collect unlimited contributions but are forbidden by state law from coordinating with candidates they support.

Varda won over Jeffrey Wilhite, Reed defeated Therese Shelton and David Johnson, and Parker defeated Kathy Miks.

The Jefferson County GOP endorsed Shelton, Miks and Wilhite.

Brooke Williams, president of the Jeffco Education Association, told Colorado Politics “Voters showed they trust the educators in the classroom. I’m very excited because these are the candidates who will help unite our community for our students’ future…they’re going to be focused on our students, expanding career and technical education programs and career opportunities, what our students need and what educators need to improve education in Jeffco and give students the best possible experience.”

School issues are pitting Americans against one another, but they aren’t surefire winners for either party.

Adam Harris:

And it’s not all about CRT. Although that fight has garnered a lot of attention, the current animus toward school boards, and the members who sit on them, goes back to the start of the pandemic, when many schools shut down, prompting intense anger from some parents. Pamela Lindberg, a six-year Robbinsdale, Minnesota, school-board member, was on the receiving end of some of that ire. This past summer, on July 19, at the close of the board’s regularly scheduled meeting, Lindberg announced that she was resigning. “I will not continue to accept that hateful and disrespectful behavior with my service to the community,” she said. “The hate is too much. I no longer feel respected nor effective.”

Lindberg is one of the dozens of school-board officials who have left their positions in the past year. In Minnesota, nearly 70 members have resigned or retired since August 2020—a typical year would see fewer than 20 such departures, according to the Minnesota School Boards Association. In Wisconsin, three board members left the Oconomowoc Area School Board in unison, calling the board’s work “toxic and impossible to do.” And in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, a board member who had voted twice in favor of requiring masks for children resigned after receiving several threats and observing a vehicle idling outside his home late at night.

School-board meetings, once ho-hum affairs punctuated by lengthy conversations over public-works projects and curricula, and presentations about the successes of local students, have, over the past 20 months, become one of the most prominent outlets where people feel they can voice their opposition to everything including masks, vaccine mandates, and equity initiatives. From 2006 to 2020, Ballotpedia, which tracks elections, covered an average of 23 recall efforts against 52 school-board members each year; this election, they tracked 84 efforts against 215 officials.

And school-board elections are typically low-turnout events. But that was not the case this go-round. When Wendy Francour, who faced a recall in Mequon-Thiensville, was first elected in 2014, she received 2,300 votes—this year she received nearly 6,800. These elections are disproportionately attended by interested parties such as parents and teachers, a slice of the public but not one broadly representative of the larger public’s interests. But this year’s turnout numbers suggest a wider swath of people were motivated to vote on education—an issue that, though important, rarely polls highly among voters’ most pressing concerns.

Amid Crucial State Elections, Virginia Education Association Places its Second-Largest Local Under Trusteeship

Mike Antonucci:

In a much-disputed action, the local’s board of directors voted 7-4 on Oct. 25 to approve a memorandum of understanding that gave the state union authority over most of its finances and operations.

The story was first reported by Jared Foretek of InsideNoVa.com.

“Specific concerns regarding the management and government of the PWEA have risen to the level where abuses or the perception of abuses must be addressed, so as to ensure that no state or federal laws are violated, or ethics are impinged,” reads the memo obtained by InsideNoVa.com.

Those concerns apparently involve alleged financial mismanagement and a hostile workplace created by local President Maggie Hansford. She was elected in August 2020 but was the subject of two unsuccessful recall attempts this year.

“After five Board members, two committee chairs, several committee members and the long-time PWEA receptionist have left their posts due to the mistreatment and bullying tactics of President Hansford, a majority of the Board feels that there needs to be some guardrails put in place,” reads a letter posted on the union’s Facebook page by the local’s board majority.

Is the Public School System Constitutional?

Philip Hamburger:

The public school system weighs on parents. It burdens them not simply with poor teaching and discipline, but with political bias, hostility toward religion, and now even sexual and racial indoctrination. Schools often seek openly to shape the very identity of children. What can parents do about it?

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia, said in a Sept. 28 debate. The National School Boards Association seems to agree: In a Sept. 29 letter to President Biden, its leaders asked for federal intervention to stop “domestic terrorism and hate crimes” against public school officials. Attorney General Merrick Garland obliged, issuing an Oct. 4 memodirecting law-enforcement agents and prosecutors to develop “strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

The public school system, by design, pressures parents to substitute government educational speech for their own. Public education is a benefit tied to an unconstitutional condition. Parents get subsidized education on the condition that they accept government educational speech in lieu of home or private schooling.

I have long been amazed at the lack of lawfare addressing our long term, disastrous reading results.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Lawfare & K-12 Parents & Schools: White House staff had been in communication with NSBA staff over “several weeks,”

Erika Sanzi:

Remember the letter that the National School Board Association (NSBA) sent to President Biden a few weeks ago that complained about frustrated and angry parents and referred to them as the “equivalent of domestic terrorists?” It turns out that the president and CEO of the organization went rogue together (after direct coordination with White House staff) and sent the letter without the knowledge of their board.

How do we know? My organization, Parents Defending Education, filed public records request to find out.

We were immediately suspicious. Let’s remember that five days after the letter was sent, US Attorney General Merrick Garland fired off an official memorandum from the Department of Justice saying that the FBI would take the lead on the law enforcement response to parents at school board meetings. That lightning fast turn around time (5 days!) is only possible if the fix is already in.

And it was.

Not only were the NSBA board members left out of the loop, but they were then forced to answer for the letter that they did not know about, did not approve and don’t even agree with on the merits.

Teachers unions influenced last-minute CDC school guidance, received copies before public release, emails show

Joe Schoffstahl:

The records further show that the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the two largest teachers unions in the U.S., received a copy of the guidance before the CDC released it to the public. The guidance included a phased reopening approach for K-12 schools based on coronavirus cases in the area.

“These documents are further evidence that instead of following the science, the White House and the CDC allowed politics to influence policy,” Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told Fox News.

Sutherland’s group obtained the emails as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services and provided them to Fox News. The group filed the litigation after the government failed to provide records on the decision-making process regarding school guidance.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Schools boards, bastions of local democracy, persecute dissident parents

Glenn Reynolds:

American parents are organizing to fight racist critical race theories being taught in their kids’ schools. Attorney General Merrick Garland, once touted as a moderate, has responded by asking the FBI to treat them as domestic terrorists.

As befits the Biden administration, this over-the-top authoritarianism is accompanied by the stench of corruption, as it turns out that Garland’s son-in-law is in the business of selling educational materials on CRT.

Garland’s self-dealing and thuggery are grounds for resignation. But that isn’t the worst thing that’s happened. Bad as it is, the Biden administration’s poisonous combination of graft and authoritarianism can be remedied by getting rid of the administration — something that, if polls are any indication, is eminently doable.

The bigger problem is that school boards all over America seem to be growing ever more authoritarian themselves. Instead of serving as bastions of small-scale representative democracy, boards seem to regard themselves as above accountability to the voters and parents.

It was, after all, the National School Boards Association that, citing shaky claims of “threats,” asked the administration to investigate anti-CRT parents as “domestic terrorists,” specifically invoking the Patriot Act in its letter.

Showing up to dress down school boards over their dereliction of duty isn’t a crime. It’s good parenting and good citizenship.

Maud Maron:

I am a mother of four, a criminal defense attorney and a lifelong liberal who is deeply concerned about the direction of New York City’s public schools. I’ve been outspoken about my views, along with an untold number of frustrated parents. For that, the FBI is considering using the PATRIOT Act against me.

Let me explain: late last month, the National School Boards Association, an umbrella organization representing thousands of local elected school board officials, sent a letter addressed to President Biden. It warned that “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat.” But not just any threat: “the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The letter implored the White House to enlist the support of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate the threat — adding that the alleged crimes fall under the purview of the “PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism.”

I read the letter with grave concern, as would any American who cares about our public schools and the safety of teachers and students. What was the nature of this threat? And would my own children be at risk?

As it turns out, the threat is me. The threat is parents showing up to dress down school boards over their dereliction of duty. That is what the NSBA considers a crime.

I urge you to read the letter in full. You will see that it contains 24 footnotes. The worst of the so-called crimes include prank calls; a single individual in Ohio yelling a “Nazi salute in protest of masking requirements”; another individual in Washington State whose disorderly conduct prompted the board to call a recess; “spreading misinformation” online, and disorderly conduct arrests. In New York, where I live, disorderly conduct is not even a criminal offense.

And yet within days of the NSBA letter, the top law enforcement official in the country, Attorney General Merrick Garland, publicly responded to the letter with a memorandum to the director of the FBI. Garland agreed with the NSBA that “there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against board members — without providing any evidence. He further announced specialized training for board members to “aid in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes” and, more worryingly, the creation of a task force composed of FBI and Justice Department representatives to “determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes.” The FBI’s clear message to parents is that the NSBA is on the right track.

Commentary.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Conflict of interest mars Attorney General’s investigation of parents in school controversies

Hans Bader:

Left-wing teachers unions and the National School Boards Association say parents have threatened or harassed school officials over mask mandates, or for peddling critical race theory or transgender ideology. In response, Attorney General Merrick Garland says the Justice Department will investigate such “harassment, intimidation and threats.” Usually, the Department of Justice does not investigate threats, viewing them as matters to be addressed by local law enforcement, rather than the federal government. But suddenly, that has changed, for ideological reasons.

“True threats” are unprotected by the First Amendment. But harsh rhetoric can’t be punished as a “threat.” And calling something “harassment” doesn’t automatically strip it of protection under the First Amendment. As a federal appeals court noted in striking down a school’s overly broad “harassment” code that restricted speech critical of homosexuality or feminism, “there is no categorical ‘harassment exception’ to the First Amendment’s free speech clause.” (See Saxe v. State College Area School District (2001)).

Parents have certainly aimed angry diatribes at school officials and left-wing teachers in recent weeks. But those diatribes are generally speech protected by the First Amendment, and few of them are “true threats.”

Some angry messages from parents are likely to be viewed by progressive Justice Department civil-rights lawyers as “harassment” or “intimidation,” even if they constitute speech protected by the First Amendment. In the 1990s, civil-rights officials in the Clinton administration investigated citizens for “harassment” and “intimidation” merely because those citizens spoke out against housing projects for recovering substance abusers or other classes of people protected by the Fair Housing Act. These civil-rights investigations largely ceased after a federal appeals court ruled such investigations violated the First Amendment, in White v. Lee (2000). But in 2017, a judge allowed bloggers to be sued for intimidation for angry blog posts that allegedly created a “hostile housing environment” (oddly, the bloggers raised no First Amendment defense against being sued for their speech, and the court’s ruling didn’t discuss the First Amendment at all.).

Small California school districts will refuse to follow mask mandate

Joe Hong:

Some school officials are flouting the updated state rules, saying students will be allowed to return to the classroom with or without a mask.

California’s smallest school districts say they will refuse to send kids home for not wearing a mask despite a new state mandate.

Superintendents in these tight-knit and typically more conservative communities want the state to let local districts make their own decisions, considering the success some of them have had with reopening their campuses last year without triggering COVID-19 outbreaks.

“These districts were in class all year, and they just don’t believe masks are needed to teach children,” said Tim Taylor, executive director of the Small School Districts Association, which represents hundreds of districts with fewer than 5,000 students.

On Monday afternoon, the California Department of Public Health went back and forth on updates to its masking rule. Health officials first said students who refuse to wear masks without a valid medical excuse won’t be allowed on campuses. Four hours later, the agency revised the guidelines to say local districts will be responsible for enforcing the mask mandate.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Declares Racine School Closure Order Invalid

WILL:

The News: The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously declared that an order from the City of Racine’s public health officer closing all schools, public and private, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is invalid and lacked proper legal authority. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) filed an original action to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on November 19, on behalf of a group of parents, schools, and membership associations. The Court granted WILL’s original action and issued a temporary injunction blocking the City of Racine’s school closure order before it could go into effect on November 27.

Quote: WILL President and General Counsel, Rick Esenberg, said, “The Court determined, once again, that a local public health officer violated the law when it ordered all schools in her jurisdiction closed. This marks another important case reminding public officials that emergencies do not override the rule of law.”

Background: The City of Racine Public Health Department issued an order on November 12, closing all school buildings in the City of Racine, private and public, from November 27 to January 15, as a means of addressing COVID-19. When Racine issued this order, WILL had already filed an original action to the Wisconsin Supreme Court challenging Dane County’s school closure order and obtained an order enjoining it.

WILL filed an original action to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on November 19, on behalf of a group of parents, schools, and membership associations and similarly earned a temporary injunction blocking Racine’s school order while the Court decided the challenge to Dane County.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Rhode Island Mom and School Board Governance: legal edition

William Jacobson:

Nicole Solas is the South Kingstown, Rhode Island, mother of a child entering kindergarten in the fall who has been targeted by the School District, School Committee, and Rhode Island School Superintendents Association, after she filed a large number of public records requests regarding Critical Race and Gender teaching in the elementary school.

Solas first told her story in an op-ed at Legal Insurrection, and her story went national with multiple media appearances, including on Fox and Friends, and Tucker Carlson. Here are our posts about her story:

Political Posturing, interests and “adult employment” on taxpayer supported Dane County Madison public health ordering schools closed

Wisconsin Supreme Court:

For the respondent, there was a brief filed by Remzy D. Bitar, Sadie R. Zurfluh, and Municipal and Litigation Group ̧ Waukesha. There was an oral argument by Remzy D. Bitar.

For the petitioners Wisconsin Council of Religious and Independent Schools, et al., there was a reply brief filed by Richard M. Esenberg, Anthony LoCoco, Luke N. Berg, Elisabeth Sobic, and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, Milwaukee.
For the petitioners St. Ambrose Academy, Inc. et al., there was a reply brief filed by Misha Tseytlin, Kevin M. LeRoy, and Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP, Chicago, Illinois; with whom on the brief was Andrew M. Bath and Thomas More Society, Chicago, Illinois; with whom on the brief was Erick Kaardal and Mohrman, Kaaradal & Erickson, P.A., Minneapolis, Minnesota.

An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Attorney General Josh Kaul by Colin A. Hector, assistant attorney general, and Colin T. Roth, assistant attorney general; with whom on the brief was Joshua L. Kaul, attorney general.
An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Institute for Justice by Lee U. McGrath, Minneapolis, Minnesota; with whom on the brief was Milad Emam, Arlington, Virginia.

An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Freedom from Religion Foundation by Brendan Johnson, Patrick C. Elliott, and Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., Madison.

An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor and Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction by Heather Curnutt, Madison.

An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of City of Milwaukee by Tearman Spencer, city attorney, and Gregory P. Kruse, city attorney.

An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Madison Metropolitan School District and Monona Grove School District by Sheila M. Sullivan, Melita M. Mullen, and Bell, Moore & Richter, S.C., Madison.
An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Madison Teachers Inc., Wisconsin Association of Local Health Departments and Boards, Wisconsin Education Association Council, Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, Racine Educators United, Kenosha Education Association, and Green Bay Education Association by Diane M. Welsh, Aaron G. Dumas, and Pines Bach LLP, Madison.
An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Governor Tony Evers and Secretary–Designee of Department of Health Services Andrea Palm by Sopen B. Shah and Perkins Coie LLP, Madison.
An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice by Barry J. Blonien, Tanner Jean-Louis, and Boardman & Clark LLP, Madison.

An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of Liberty Justice Center, Alaska Policy Forum, Pelican Institute For Public Policy, Roughrider Policy Center, Nevada Policy Research Institute, and Rio Grande Foundation by Daneil R. Suhr, Reilly Stephens, and Liberty Justice Center, Chicago, Illinois.

An amicus curiae brief was filed on behalf of League of Wisconsin Municipalities by Claire Silverman and Maria Davis, Madison

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and commentary from Scott Girard:

“While Heinrich allowed schools to use their premises for child care and youth recreational activities, the government barred students from attending Mass, receiving Holy Communion at weekly Masses with their classmates and teachers, receiving the sacrament of Confession at school, participating in communal prayer with their peers, and going on retreats and service missions throughout the area.”

Additional commentary:

“Reasonable” should mean that the public health authorities followed their own internal guidelines for evaluating regulations. These include posting the scientific evidence leading to the regulation, receiving community input, and studying the effectiveness and sustainability of the regulation. In the case of Covid and the schools all this was ignored in Dane County. There was no evidence of transmission in children of school age at the start, the community’s wish to have the schools open was ignored and, over time, it was seen that surrounding counties kept their schools open without increasing Covid transmission – and this last point was completely ignored by Dane County. But the Supreme Court didn’t address the issue of irresponsible public health officials. Perhaps it cannot as Owen pointed out. Perhaps dereliction of duty must be addressed by criminal courts. Instead the Supreme Court answered a different question which might be put as follows: suppose a majority of children in a given community refused the regular vaccines – or refuse the covid vaccine – can the public health authorities close the school? The answer was no. This is significant because racism has been defined as a public health issue. Suppose a majority of parents refused to allow their children to attend a CRT seminar defined as immunization against racism and required for admittance to school. Could the public health authorities close that school. No. In the past certain religious tests have been required before attendance at universities was allowed and non-conforming universites have been closed. If racism is a public health issue the Test Acts may return as public health tests and if that happened we may be sure Dane County would adopt Test Regulations closing non-conforming public schools if it could. Then this Court decision, barring such Test Regulations, would seem far-sighted.

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Samantha West, Alec Johnson and Rory Linnane:

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

School Board Parent Legal Posturing

William Jacobson:

Last Friday, June 4, 2021, I filed a public records request with the South Kingstown school district seeking, among other things, records of communications with the Superintendents Association and public sector unions regarding Nicole and/or PDE, and records as to how Cummiskey’s statements were approved.

My suspicions were confirmed, in part, last night during a School Committee public meeting when Cummiskey gave a statement announcing she was stepping down as Chair, though not from the School Committee entirely. Cummiskey stated that she did not write the statement attacking Nicole and accusing PDE of being racist. She said the statement in its various forms for media, social media, and public hearing, was prepared by a Public Relations firm hired by the School Committee at the recommendation of the Committtee’s legal counsel.

[Note, in the statement Cummiskey gave, there’s a reference to a mailer. That’s a separate issue of a controversy over the leak of student names and addresses to a local AFL-CIO affiliate for use in a campaign to approve a school bond, that ultimately was rejected.]

Here is the key excerpt from the statement (full video below):

WELCOME TO FAIRFAX COUNTY PARENTS ASSOCIATION

Fairfaxparents.org:

Fairfax County Parents Association is a nonpartisan volunteer grassroots organization of parents that seeks to ensure students are the first priority in Fairfax County Public Schools. This is accomplished by educating parents about the governance and administration of the school system and empowering parents to advocate on behalf of their children. We seek to ensure the school board is governed in accordance with the law, specifically that the roles are non-partisan. The FCPA will work to support teachers and staff of the school system to aid their efforts to educate our children.

Commentary on Incumbent school board member election losses (unopposed in Madison…)

Tricia Zunker said she knows school board presidents sometimes have a target on their backs. It’s part of the job, she said.

But as Zunker led the Wausau School District board over the past year, she said, “People were so cruel, you’d think I personally brought the pandemic here.”

Angry citizens scrawled messages about her on sidewalks around town. A board president in a neighboring district wrote on Facebook that she was “a waste of physical space on the planet.”

Tuesday’s election brought the coup de grace: Of seven candidates seeking four seats on the board, Zunker finished sixth. Three winners, all newcomers, ran as a bloc against what they called Wausau’s “virtual and hybrid learning nightmare.”

After a year in which parents’ frustrations put schools in the spotlight more than ever, board elections were unusually contentious and partisan. Across the state, many voters opted for change.

Incumbents lost in suburban districts such as Oak Creek-Franklin, and more urban districts such as Green Bay. Those who unseated incumbents criticized reopening plans, transparency and current board members’ political leanings.

Not every district elected candidates pushing for more in-person learning, though. Christina Brey, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Education Association Council representing educators around the state, said the issue swung both ways.

In more urban areas, like Milwaukee and Green Bay, voters favored candidates who were in favor of more cautious reopenings and enjoyed the support of local teachers unions. In other districts, support from teachers was the kiss of death.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Milwaukee School Board guide: Here’s what you need to make an informed vote with no incumbents running for four open seats

Rory Linnane:

About half of Milwaukee voters will elect new school board members April 6, with no incumbents running for four open seats.

Two of the races have only one candidate on the ballot: Walker’s Point Center for the Arts executive director Marcela Garcia for the south side District 6 seat now held by Tony Baez; and recently retired Milwaukee Public Schools teacher Harry Leonard for the southwest District 7 seat held by Paula Phillips.

The north side District 4 seat is contested between Silver Spring Neighborhood Center Opportunity Youth Program Director Aisha Carr and North Side Rising organizer Dana Kelley.

Running for District 5 on the east side are Alex Brower, director of Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans; and Jilly Gokalgandhi, Equity in Education team member at American Family Insurance Institute.

Brower and Kelley, members of the Milwaukee chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are running on a socialist slate and are backed by the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA), the union for MPS staff.

Milwaukee Teachers union: ‘Very irresponsible’ if school board approves in-person plan

Matt Smith:

Milwaukee Public School teachers would return to the classroom next week ahead of a phased-in return of students learning in April under a plan that will go before the school board Tuesday evening.

The plan calls for in-person instruction four days a week, with Wednesdays set aside for cleaning when students would remain learning virtually.

“We are just very clear – it would be very irresponsible for any school board member to vote yes to what the administration has put forward,” Amy Mizialko said Monday evening, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.

Mizialko said the administration has failed to put together a comprehensive safety plan despite teachers having access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Phillip Sasser, MD, MS, Timothy McGuine, PhD, LAT, Kristin Haraldsdottir, PhD, Kevin Biese, MA, LAT, Leslie Goodavish, PA, Bethany Stevens, Andrew M. Watson, MD:

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarcerati

Part 5 Finance: Can a FAC protect the school treasure chest?

Armand A Fusco:

It should now be clear that education dollars are not immune from corrupt indulgences, and that school budgets in the approval phase and spending process leave much to be desired. If dollars are to be spent more wisely and if fraud is to be prevented, a new thought process is needed about budgets–how financial transactions are monitored, how resources are used, and how the treasure chest can be secured from being plundered. Part of the rethinking process must also include prevention—making it difficult for waste and fraud to take place.

To begin with, school boards must keep a very unpleasant fact in mind. Don I. Tharpe, the executive director of the Association of School Business Officials (ASBO) claims that “embezzlement happens a lot more frequently than we are willing to admit.” However, ASBO does not track cases of theft and fraud and neither does anyone else. With billions of dollars involved, it’s amazing that such a void exists. Since such information is not easily available, school officials are handicapped in keeping an intelligent and forensic eye on district funds.

Therefore, it’s important for the state to be much more proactive in helping school districts guard the treasure chest; after all, education is a state responsibility. In Texas, the State Comptroller—a 60-year old grandmother who was elected to the position–is performing this task. Unlike previous office holders, she had a zeal for looking at school operations and doesn’t wait to be invited to audit school operations (transportation, retirement plans, curriculum alignment, finance, etc.); instead, she unhesitatingly “storms the ramparts.” Her proactive efforts in 32 school districts have saved over $85,000,000 in just two years. In fact, she won a prestigious award for government innovation from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. This program demonstrates the value and impact of independent and aggressive audit reviews.

Inside Education, Part 4: Finance: Are school budgets cholesterol free?

Reported COVID-19 Incidence in Wisconsin High School Athletes During Fall 2020

The purpose of this study was to describe the reported incidence of COVID-19 in Wisconsin high school athletes in September 2020, and to investigate the relationship of COVID-19 incidence with sport and face mask use.

Methods: Surveys were sent to athletic directors of all Wisconsin high schools regarding sports during September 2020. The association between reported case rates in athletes in each county and the county general population were evaluated with a weighted linear model. Multivariable negative binomial regression models evaluated the associations between COVID-19 incidence and sport type and face mask use by players, adjusting for the county COVID-19 incidence for each school.

Results: 207 schools that had reinitiated sport reported 270 COVID-19 cases among 30,074 players, for case and incidence rates of 809 cases per 100,000 players and 32.6 cases per 100,000 player-days, respectively. The case rates for athletes in each county were positively correlated with the case rates for the county’s general population (β=1.14±0.20, r=0.60, p<0.001). One hundred fifteen (55%) of cases were attributed to household contact, 85 (41%) to contact outside sport or school, 5 (2.4%) to school contact, and 1 (0.5%) to sport contact. No difference was identified between team and individual sports (incidence rate ratio (IRR)=1.03 [95% CI=0.49- 2.2], p=0.93) or between non-contact and contact sports (IRR=0.53 [0.23-1.3], p=0.14), although the difference between outdoor and indoor sports approached statistical significance (IRR=0.52 [0.26-1.1], p=0.07). 84% of schools required face masks while playing. For those sports with >50 participating schools, there were no significant associations between COVID-19 incidence and face mask use in cross country (IRR=0.71 [0.2-2.2], p=0.52), football (IRR=1.6 [0.6-5.1],

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Removing barriers to school choice would help more low-income kids learn in person

Cori Petersen:

This past fall, many public schools made the decision to go virtual as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this wasn’t the case for most private schools. In fact, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, only 5% of private schools went virtual as of October. This is driving demand for private schools across the country and in Wisconsin.

“I think parents have seen how different schools have responded to the COVID pandemic. Some systems and schools went into a self-protective mode and put student needs in a subordinate place,” said Charles Moore, principal of High Point Christian School in Dane County. “Others stepped into ‘harm’s way’ and delivered in-person education despite the potential dangers.”

High Point Christian School, with locations in Mount Horeb and Madison, welcomed 57 new families to their school this past fall. Many parents cited their desire for their children to learn in person as the main reason for coming to the school. But as we celebrate National School Choice Week this week, it’s important to consider ways to expand access to the choice programs so that low-income families can send their children to an in-person, private school if they so desire. Reforms that would make choice more accessible are longer enrollment periods, allowing children to enter the parental choice programs at any point in time — no matter what grade they are in — and eliminating enrollment caps.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Keystone Oaks School District Cancels Classes Due To Teachers’ Strike

CBS2

Classes are canceled for students in the Keystone Oaks School District due to a teachers’ strike that has been authorized by the Keystone Oaks Education Association.

RELATED: Keystone Oaks Education Association Announces Intention To Strike If New Contract Is Not Reached

Beginning on Monday, February 1, 2021, the strike goes into effect and classes will be canceled until Monday, February 8, 2021, at the latest.

The Keystone Oaks Education Association, the union representing teachers within the district, and the Keystone Oaks Board of School Directors were unable to reach an agreement by the union’s target date, triggering the strike.

Negotiations continued through the past week and this weekend.

While the strike is on, school sports will continue for in-season sports but conditioning for out-of-season sports will not be held.

Students that attend Parkway West Career & Technical Center will continue attending regular classes.

San Francisco’s school board in name only

SF Chronicle:

For the past year, the shuttered San Francisco schools have been schools in name only, so perhaps it’s fitting that the school board has taken to occupying itself by tinkering with their names. The members of the city’s Board of Education, having largely quit the education business and rebranded themselves as amateur historians, found much of history unfit for the honor of association with their empty classrooms.

The school board voted late Tuesday to rename 44 schools in what is no mere correction of anachronistic monuments to racists and conquistadors. The cleansing extends to fully a third of the district’s campuses, sparing no name that, according to the internet research of the board and its emissaries, “significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as a board resolution put it.

Never mind that the name of the man from whom the board borrowed that phrase, Thomas Jefferson, was deemed no longer suitable for attachment to one of the city’s elementary schools.

Removing barriers to school choice would help more low-income kids learn in person

Cori Petersen:

This past fall, many public schools made the decision to go virtual as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this wasn’t the case for most private schools. In fact, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, only 5% of private schools went virtual as of October. This is driving demand for private schools across the country and in Wisconsin.

“I think parents have seen how different schools have responded to the COVID pandemic. Some systems and schools went into a self-protective mode and put student needs in a subordinate place,” said Charles Moore, principal of High Point Christian School in Dane County. “Others stepped into ‘harm’s way’ and delivered in-person education despite the potential dangers.”

High Point Christian School, with locations in Mount Horeb and Madison, welcomed 57 new families to their school this past fall. Many parents cited their desire for their children to learn in person as the main reason for coming to the school. But as we celebrate National School Choice Week this week, it’s important to consider ways to expand access to the choice programs so that low-income families can send their children to an in-person, private school if they so desire. Reforms that would make choice more accessible are longer enrollment periods, allowing children to enter the parental choice programs at any point in time — no matter what grade they are in — and eliminating enrollment caps.

High Point Christian School is part of the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP). This means there are vouchers available for students whose families make below 220% of the federal poverty limit to attend High Point, and other participating schools, at no cost.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

California teachers unions mobilize against Democratic school reopening bill

Mackenzie Mays:

California teachers unions are demanding that the Legislature maintain pandemic restrictions on school reopenings and have begun mobilizing against a Democratic bill introduced last week that could force schools to reopen in March.

In separate letters to legislative leaders, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers urge lawmakers to avoid rushing to reopen K-12 schools as Capitol momentum builds to address learning loss and education inequities. Most of the state’s 6 million public schoolchildren remain at home with distance learning.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Michigan Catholic high schools sue state over in-person learning ban

John Wisely:

Three Catholic high schools are suing the state in federal court, saying Michigan’s most recent order banning in-person learning violates their First Amendment right to practice their faith.

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon on Monday extended by 12 days a previous order banning in-person learning at high schools, colleges and universities. Gordon said the order is necessary to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Preschools, elementary and middle schools and boarding schools are allowed to offer in-person learning under the order.

The three high schools — Everest Collegiate High School and Academy in Clarkston, Fr. Gabriel Richard High School in Ann Arbor and Lansing Catholic High School — along with the Michigan Association of Non-Public Schools say they should be allowed to do the same, noting they use rigorous safety protocols and their infection rates are very low.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, Wil Van Cleve, MD, MPH2; Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD3:

Question

Based on the current understanding of the associations between school disruption and decreased educational attainment and between decreased educational attainment and lower life expectancy, is it possible to estimate the association between school closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and decreased life expectancy of publicly educated primary school–aged children in the United States?

Findings This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost. This loss in life expectancy was likely to be greater than would have been observed if leaving primary schools open had led to an expansion of the first wave of the pandemic.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

In San Francisco, Closed Public Schools, Open Private Schools

Amelia Nierenberg:

In San Francisco, restaurants, movie theaters and museums are open at reduced capacity. The share of coronavirus tests that come back positive in the city has stayed low since a surge over the summer.

But as some of San Francisco’s private and parochial schools have begun to reopen their doors, its public school district has not set a timeline for resuming in-person instruction, except to say that it is not likely in this calendar year.

That has made San Francisco the latest flash point over school reopening. This politically progressive city is also California’s most unequal area, and its sharp debate about how best to safely educate low-income and minority students during the pandemic resonates across the country.

Frustrations boil over

Last month, in the wake of months of protests for racial equity across the country, San Francisco’s district administrators recommended a significant move. They told the principals of roughly one-third of the district’s 125 public schools that their communities should start brainstorming new names for their schools, because the current names had historical associations with slavery, genocide, colonization or other injustices.

The list included schools named for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as enslavers; Abraham Lincoln, for his treatment of Native Americans; and even the state’s senior U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, over reports that, as mayor in 1984, she replaced a vandalized Confederate flag outside City Hall.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

School boards have too much power they aren’t using to fix education

Chris Stewart:

This past Sunday my 8 Black Hands crew did a show on the missing importance of school boards, and then this article pops up saying the National School Boards Association (NSBA) has launched a campaign called “Public School Transformation Now!”

The goal, flimsy as ever, is to “bring equity issues front and center.” I’m triggered because leaders, especially education, consistently go for sophistry over function. They focus on the feel-good rather than the complex. They love the fashion instead of the fix.

If you read through the article and the NSBA’s Twitter timeline you’ll be browbeaten with the words “reinvent!” and “reimagine!” and “transform!” With America’s massively ineffective public schooling gasping for air from the shock of Covid, I don’t blame them for branding their effort in aspirational terms even as parents and journalists complain about the remote learning “disaster” across cities. And I certainly don’t blame them for ringing the bell on important issues like increasing teacher diversity, stemming potential teacher shortages, the urgent need for flexibility on how special education services are delivered, and the national need to ensure kids can access the internet. But it feels like some essentials are missing from their hubbub.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Annysa Johnson, Samantha West and Alec Johnson:

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Wisconsin public school enrollments see biggest drop in decades in first count since COVID-19, adding to budget challenges

Enrollment in Wisconsin public schools fell by 3% this year, the largest dip in decades, and private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers saw an increase, though not as much as last year.

In all, according to new data released Thursday by the state Department of Public Instruction, public schools enrolled 818,922 full-time equivalent students in the current school year, down more than 25,000 students, based on the headcount taken in late September. Private voucher schools added 2,577 students for a total of 45,954.

Because school funding is tied to enrollment, the shifts will be costly for many districts around the state at a time when they are spending millions more on expenses related to the coronavirus pandemic. In all, nearly a third of the state’s 421 public districts will see a decline in their state aid totaling more than $23 million this year, losses that will continue because schools are funded in part on a three-year rolling average.

“There will be significant, long-term structural effects on school districts’ finances,” said Dan Rossmiller of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

K-12 Tax, Referendum and budget climate: Madison School District enrollment drops by more than 1,000 students

A substantial 2020 tax and spending increase referendum is on Madison school district voter ballots this fall.

Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders

Emily Oster:

In early August, the first kids in America went back to school during the pandemic. Many of these openings happened in areas where cases were high or growing: in Georgia, Indiana, Florida. Parents, teachers, and scientists feared what might happen next. The New York Times reported that, in parts of Georgia, a school of 1,000 kids could expect to see 20 or 30 people arrive with COVID-19 during week one. Many assumed that school infections would balloon and spread outward to the broader community, triggering new waves. On social media, people shared pictures of high schools with crowded hallways and no masking as if to say I told you so.

Fear and bad press slowed down or canceled school reopenings elsewhere. Many large urban school districts chose not to open for in-person instruction, even in places with relatively low positivity rates. Chicago, L.A., Houston—all remote, at least so far.

It’s now October. We are starting to get an evidence-based picture of how school reopenings and remote learning are going (those photos of hallways don’t count), and the evidence is pointing in one direction. Schools do not, in fact, appear to be a major spreader of COVID-19.

Since early last month, I’ve been working with a group of data scientists at the technology company Qualtrics, as well as with school-principal and superintendent associations, to collect data on COVID-19 in schools. (See more on that project here.) Our data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September revealed an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff. That’s about 1.3 infections over two weeks in a school of 1,000 kids, or 2.2 infections over two weeks in a group of 1,000 staff. Even in high-risk areas of the country, the student rates were well under half a percent. (You can see all the data here.)

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

State Supreme Court puts pause on Dane County Madison public health order barring in-person school

Scott Girard:

Schools in Dane County that want to open for in-person education can do so immediately for all grades after the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of the Public Health Madison & Dane County order requiring virtual learning for grades 3-12.

The court’s conservative majority issued the 4-3 ruling [PDF document], which combined three cases brought against Emergency Order No. 9 since its Aug. 21 announcement, just before 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

The court will consider the arguments against the case on its merits in the months to come, but the order is on hold in the meantime. Thursday’s opinion, which lawyers believe is the first time the court has weighed in on a local COVID-19 order since the pandemic began, indicates those seeking to overturn the order will have a good chance to win.

“First, based upon the briefing submitted at this stage, Petitioners are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim,” the opinion states, adding that “local health officers do not appear to have statutory authority to do what the Order commands.”

Parents, private and parochial schools and membership associations brought the lawsuits challenging Public Health Madison & Dane County director Janel Heinrich’s authority to close schools. They maintain that schools planning to open took precautions over the summer to follow guidance issued by PHMDC to make in-person learning safe.

In its announcement of the Aug. 21 order, PHMDC outlined positive case averages that would be required to allow in-person school for grades 3-5 and 6-12. With the recent uptick in positive cases, mostly among UW-Madison students returning to campus, Dane County was unlikely to reach those numbers anytime soon.

Logan Wroge:

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21 [July, 2020]

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Texas Education Association online education Commentary

Brittney Martin:

Though Lee struggled with her online classes last semester, Garcia plans to keep her home again this fall. Lee has asthma, as does her nineteen-year-old sister, who contracted COVID-19 in June and narrowly avoided having to be admitted to the hospital as she struggled to breathe. Garcia has once again requested a hot spot from the district.

For those students whose needs are not met by the program, Rowe insists that this is just the beginning. “Those are the districts where we really need to dig deeper into the analytics and figure out who else has need,” Rowe said. “This isn’t going to be it. We won’t be done. We’ve just got to figure out how to peel back the next layer now.”

“Teachers have access to materials in their classrooms that are not available at home,” – despite million$ spent on Infinite Campus

Costs continue to grow for local, state and federal taxpayers in the K-12 space, as well:

Let’s compare: Middleton and Madison Property taxes:

Madison property taxes are 22% more than Middleton’s for a comparable home, based on this comparison of 2017 sales.

Fall 2020 Administration Referendum slides.

(Note: “Madison spends just 1% of its budget on maintenance while Milwaukee, with far more students, spends 2%” – Madison’s CFO at a fall 2019 referendum presentation.)

Property taxes up 37% from 2012 – 2021.

MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21

1. 4K-12 enrollment: -1.6% (decrease) from 2014-15 to projected 2020-21

2. Total district staffing FTE: -2.9% (decrease) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

3. Total expenditures (excluding construction fund): +15.9% +17.0% (increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

4. Total expenditures per pupil: +17.8% +19.0%(increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

5. CPI change: +10.0% (increase) from January 2014 to January 202

6. Bond rating (Moody’s): two downgrades (from Aaa to Aa2) from 2014 to 2020

Sources:

1. DPI WISEdash for 2014-15 enrollment; district budget book for projected 2020-21 enrollment

2. & 3.: District budget books

5. Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/)

6. Moody’s (https://www.moodys.com/)

– via a kind reader (July 9, 2020 update).

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21 [July, 2020]

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

K-12 Tax, Referendum & spending climate: California’s state budget has big benefits for a Teacher unions, stifles charter schools and funds phantom students

Mike Antonucci:

Students of civics might think the California state budget is crafted by the elected representatives of the citizenry, who debate and amend proposals working their way through various committees, ultimately leading to a spending plan with majority support and the signature of the governor.

All that happens, of course, but no budget makes it to the governor’s desk without at least the tacit approval of the state’s public employee unions. Since public education alone makes up a minimum of 40 percent of the state budget, the California Teachers Association has an outsize influence over the construction of that budget.

This has been true for at least the 27 years I have covered the union’s operations. In 2000, for example, then-President Wayne Johnson boasted to his members about how he had the governor and state legislative leaders on the phone with him, falling over themselves to place more money in the education budget, until Johnson finally relented at an additional $1.84 billion.

This year’s budget, however, rivals any previous examples of teachers union benefits sewn into state law.

Imaginary money. The budget relies on two sources of funding that do not exist, and may never exist. First, it hopes that the U.S. Senate will approve, and President Donald Trump will sign, the HEROES Act, which contains $1 trillion in aid to state and local governments. Should that fail to happen, California will issue $12 billion in deferrals to school districts. Deferrals are essentially IOUs to be paid in the next fiscal year. This is also money that doesn’t yet exist.

Should deferrals become necessary, the state also authorizes school districts to transfer money from any account they hold to any other account in order to pay their bills. Money targeted for a specific purpose or program can be used for any purpose or program. Districts can also use the proceeds from the sale or lease of property for any general fund purpose.

Costs continue to grow for local, state and federal taxpayers in the K-12 space, as well:

Let’s compare: Middleton and Madison Property taxes:

Madison property taxes are 22% more than Middleton’s for a comparable home, based on this comparison of 2017 sales.

Fall 2020 Administration Referendum slides.

(Note: “Madison spends just 1% of its budget on maintenance while Milwaukee, with far more students, spends 2%” – Madison’s CFO at a fall 2019 referendum presentation.)

Property taxes up 37% from 2012 – 2021.

MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21

1. 4K-12 enrollment: -1.6% (decrease) from 2014-15 to projected 2020-21

2. Total district staffing FTE: -2.9% (decrease) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

3. Total expenditures (excluding construction fund): +15.9% +17.0% (increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

4. Total expenditures per pupil: +17.8% +19.0%(increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

5. CPI change: +10.0% (increase) from January 2014 to January 202

6. Bond rating (Moody’s): two downgrades (from Aaa to Aa2) from 2014 to 2020

Sources:

1. DPI WISEdash for 2014-15 enrollment; district budget book for projected 2020-21 enrollment

2. & 3.: District budget books

5. Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/)

6. Moody’s (https://www.moodys.com/)

– via a kind reader (July 9, 2020 update).

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21 [July, 2020]

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Quincy Local Refuses to Endorse Massachusetts Teachers Association Reopening Statement

Mike Antonucci:

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has been active since the COVID-19 shutdown — surveying members, holding meetings and issuing guidelines and policies. The state union hasn’t been shy about providing bargaining instructions to local affiliates, some of which go beyond the standard problems associated with reopening.

Last week the MTA board of directors approved a policy statement, which it then sent to all locals, asking for them to hold a vote to endorse the statement. Here it is, in full:

Educators across Massachusetts miss their students and are eager to resume learning in person – as that is how education is supposed to be. Our greatest collective obligations, however, are to keep students, educators, families and communities out of harm’s way and to prevent a resurgence of COVID-19 in our communities and across the state. Therefore, the districts and the state must demonstrate that health and safety conditions and negotiated public health benchmarks are met before buildings reopen.

The different abilities of communities to meet these standards reflect the profound inequality of our society by class and race. The legacy of structural racism through community disinvestment has left Black, Latinx and Indigenous students, educators and communities with higher risk factors and worse outcomes, all while depriving them of resources to meet these standards. Middle-class and affluent communities will be better suited to meet necessary health and safety benchmarks.

School teachers from across the state protest for a virtual fall semester

Tamia Fowlkes:

Protesters from four of Wisconsin’s largest cities gathered Monday in a National Day of Resistance caravan to demand that legislators and superintendents make the fall 2020 academic semester completely virtual.

Educator unions, community organizations and advocates from Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee and Racine traveled to the Capitol, the state Department of Public Instruction and the state Department of Health Services.

“We have districts marching teachers and students into an unsafe position in which teachers and students are likely to contract COVID,” said Angelina Cruz, president of Racine Educators United. “It is unsafe, because our schools are not fully funded in a way that can address all of the safety concerns we have.”

The caravan, which started in Kenosha, traveled through Racine and Milwaukee before arriving in Madison about 1 p.m. Teacher unions from Beaver Dam, Cudahy, Greendale, Middleton, Oak Creek, South Milwaukee and St. Francis also joined the effort to push for virtual school in the fall.

Similar marches and caravans calling for safe schools took place in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.

Organizers of the Wisconsin caravan wrote a letter July 20 to Gov. Tony Evers, Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor and Secretary of Health Services Andrea Palm, detailing their dissatisfaction with the state’s resources and social distancing practices in schools.

The growing COVID-19 outbreak has some teachers fearing for their lives, organizers said.

A Milwaukee attorney is offering free wills to teachers returning to classrooms in the fall, noted Tanya Kitts-Lewinski, president of the Kenosha Education Association and co-organizer of the protests. “Educators are afraid, to say the least,” she said.

“Teachers have access to materials in their classrooms that are not available at home,” – despite million$ spent on Infinite Campus

Costs continue to grow for local, state and federal taxpayers in the K-12 space, as well:

Let’s compare: Middleton and Madison Property taxes:

Madison property taxes are 22% more than Middleton’s for a comparable home, based on this comparison of 2017 sales.

Fall 2020 Administration Referendum slides.

(Note: “Madison spends just 1% of its budget on maintenance while Milwaukee, with far more students, spends 2%” – Madison’s CFO at a fall 2019 referendum presentation.)

Property taxes up 37% from 2012 – 2021.

MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21

1. 4K-12 enrollment: -1.6% (decrease) from 2014-15 to projected 2020-21

2. Total district staffing FTE: -2.9% (decrease) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

3. Total expenditures (excluding construction fund): +15.9% +17.0% (increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

4. Total expenditures per pupil: +17.8% +19.0%(increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21

5. CPI change: +10.0% (increase) from January 2014 to January 202

6. Bond rating (Moody’s): two downgrades (from Aaa to Aa2) from 2014 to 2020

Sources:

1. DPI WISEdash for 2014-15 enrollment; district budget book for projected 2020-21 enrollment

2. & 3.: District budget books

5. Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/)

6. Moody’s (https://www.moodys.com/)

– via a kind reader (July 9, 2020 update).

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Annysa Johnson & Molly Beck:

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Teachers unions in largest districts call on Wisconsin Governor (& former DPI Leader) Tony Evers to require schools start virtually

Teachers unions in the state’s five largest school districts are calling on Gov. Tony Evers and the state’s top health and education leaders Monday to require schools to remain closed for now and to start the school year online only, arguing the threat from the coronavirus remains too high for students and staff to safely return.

The unions voiced their concerns in a letter to Evers, Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor and Department of Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm, saying the virus is “surging across Wisconsin” and that the state has among the fewest restrictions in place to contain its spread.

Gov. Tony Evers wears a face mask during a Tuesday briefing with reporters on the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m looking at the state of Wisconsin, county by county right now, and you have a high (coronavirus) activity level in all but about 10 counties,” said Amy Mizialko, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, who signed the letter alongside union presidents in the Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha districts.

“We want Gov. Evers to get in the ring and stay in the ring,” she said. “And we believe Secretary Palm has the authority to (order) a virtual start of the school year until there is clear containment and control of the virus.”

Spokeswomen for Evers did not respond to emails from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sunday and Monday seeking the governor’s reaction.

Evers has said in recent weeks that he would not be issuing an order to shut down schools ahead of the fall semester or if health officials find outbreaks tied to classroom instruction.

He said he’d rather see local health officials take steps to quarantine individual classrooms or schools than issue another statewide order shuttering school buildings.

But the coronavirus outbreak in Wisconsin is worsening with three record-setting days of new cases in the last eight days.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Commentary on K-12 Governance and fall 2020 plans.

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Wisconsin DPI 87 page “reopening schools” plan

Wisconsin DPI:

Responding to COVID-19 is a tremendous undertaking for schools. Schools are tasked with re-envisioning educational delivery models in a span of weeks and adjust practices accordingly. As we look toward the fall, the safety and health of our students, educators, and families remains of the highest importance.

The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is providing this guidance to aid in school districts’ decision making as they look to build educational services and supports in a COVID-19 environment.Under state law, school districts determine the operations of their buildings and the learning environment. Risk mitigation and health factors will drive decisions regarding school operations.

While I expect schools to reopen this fall, they will undoubtedly look different. There will need to be social distancing, new cleaning and disinfecting procedures, and changes to how educators deliver instruction. There will be students who are not able to return to school due to health concerns and students and staff who may be quarantined due to exposure. This means every school district will need to plan for both school operations on campus and remote learning.

The DPI will be using federal CARES Act dollars to support school districts around remote learning options. Changes will need to be made as districts look at how they provide meals to students, transport students to and from school, move through their buildings, and gather to celebrate achievements.

The DPI partnered collaboratively with our state’s educational leaders: the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, Association of Wisconsin School Administrators, Wisconsin Council of Administrators of Special Services, Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Wisconsin Education Association Council, and the Cooperative Educational Service Agency Statewide Network and in conjunction with the Department of Health Services.

Education Forward was developed to help local education and community leaders plan appropriately for students to return to school this fall. There are 421 school districts, 26 independent charter schools, and 792 private schools serving a school-age population of over 1,000,000 students in Wisconsin.

Due to the extensive variance in schools, this guidance is offered as a workbook to be considered in conjunction with the Department of Health Services risk assessment checklist. Please use these tools to discuss school district reopening plans with local health agencies and ensure information is complete in regards to the magnitude of risk associated with options being considered. The DPI will continuously update this guidance as new information arises and provide additional resources as they become available to support school operations and the learning environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the inequities existing in Wisconsin.As we look to address these inequities and the planning around the pandemic,the DPI is focused on providing school districts the necessary supports andregulatory relief to pursue innovative strategies to ensure equitable access to learning.

Thomas Sowell’s book “Charter Schools and Their Enemies” is scheduled to be available June 30.

2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results