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Daily news stories about education funding
litigation, education funding policy, cost studies, advocacy
and No Child Left Behind.
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March 12, 2010
Education Finance – General
GA---K-12 will see a cut of $101 million in 2011 beyond
what Perdue had originally proposed.
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more…
MI---Governor Jennifer M. Granholm today applauded the
introduction of legislation that will save hundreds
of millions of dollars by reforming the state employee
and public school employee retirement systems and, in
the process, encourage approximately 47,000 eligible
public employees to retire this year.
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more…
MS---Gov. Haley Barbour signed legislation Thursday
that would restore $82 million of the $458.5 million
in spending cuts he has made to the 2010 state budget.
The money, which comes from an assortment of state reserve
funds, would restore $37.1 million to K-12 education…
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more…
ND---The Teacher's Fund for Retirement (TFFR), the North
Dakota state pension plan for teachers and administrators,
is in jeopardy. The state Legislature will be increasing
employees' monthly contributions while also reducing
benefits starting in 2011.
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more…
SD---A plan to boost state aid to South Dakota school
districts after the economy rebounds appeared dead Wednesday
after House and Senate members failed to agree on a
plan.
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more…
UT---Lawmakers struggled this session to leave the public
education budget unscathed. But ultimately, lawmakers
and the governor worked together late in the session
to produce a $2.9 billion basic education budget for
next school year that largely keeps education intact,
cutting schools by roughly $9 million and not giving
them money for an additional 11,000 new students expected
next school year.
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more…
Federal Stimulus Issues
WA---State lawmakers passed a bundle of major education
reforms Thursday, including a plan that should help
the state compete for the Obama administration's $4.35
billion Race to the Top program.
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more…
March 11, 2010
Education Finance – General
IL---Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn pitched a 33 percent
income tax increase Wednesday, framing the debate as
a choice between finding more money or hurting schoolchildren.
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more…
MO---Kansas City School Superintendent John Covington
says the decision to close almost half the district's
schools was difficult and painful but "unquestionably
the right thing to do."
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more…
VA---The House of Delegates will not ask local governments
to pay back money for teacher retirement plans after
all.
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more…
March 10, 2010
Education Finance – General
AZ---State lawmakers want voters to let them raid a
fund that is supposed to provide special programs for
early childhood development.
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more…
Other News
Culminating a year’s work, a panel of educators
convened by the nation’s governors and state school
superintendents released a set of proposed common academic
standards on Wednesday. The standards, posted on the
panel’s web site, lay out the panel’s vision
of what American public school students should learn
in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten
to high school graduation.
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more…
CA---The federal government has singled out the Los
Angeles Unified School District for its first major
investigation under a reinvigorated Office for Civil
Rights, officials said Tuesday.
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more…
March 9, 2010
School Funding/Litigation
MD---Saying that Baltimore's schools have made great
strides in the past several years toward providing better
teaching to special education students, a federal judge
ended 26 years of oversight of the school system and
paved the way for a final settlement in two years.
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more…
Education Finance – General
AR---A month after rejecting a proposal by the Weiner
and Delight school districts to merge their 200-miles-apart
school systems, the state Board of Education today gave
the districts approval to merge with neighboring districts.
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more…
NY---Salaries for teachers and administrators in New
York rose 5 percent in the 2008-09 school year from
the previous year, including a 19 percent jump in the
number of employees making more than $100,000 a year,
according to a recent report from the conservative Empire
Center for New York State Policy.
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more…
WI---Gov. Jim Doyle has quietly dropped a wide-ranging
school funding reform proposal that he has been talking
about for more than a year
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more…
Federal Stimulus Issues
AZ---Arizona could owe the federal government almost
as much money as a proposed sales tax increase would
raise if voters reject it.
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more…
March 8, 2010
School Funding/Litigation
SD---A group of schools that lost a court fight over
the state's school funding formula has filed an appeal
to the South Dakota Supreme Court.
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more…
Education Finance – General
GA---School systems in DeKalb County, Dublin and West
Georgia’s Haralson County are offering a glimpse
of the future for many districts across the state.
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more…
NH---A lawsuit backed by 294 municipalities, counties
and school districts is being filed against New Hampshire
contesting the state's reduced contribution to the state
pension fund for local police officers, firefighters
and teachers.
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more…
RI---Rhode Island cannot afford the system that currently
promises lifetime pension benefits to 19,733 retired
public school teachers and state workers, according
to a report released Sunday by the Rhode Island Public
Expenditure Council that details soaring costs set to
explode in the coming years.
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more…
Federal Stimulus Issues
Cheers, jeers and finger-pointing followed the federal
government’s announcement Thursday (March 4) of
the 15 states named as finalists in a $4.35 billion
grant competition to revamp the nation’s schools.
But what can’t be debated is that the Race to
the Top program has attracted most states’ interest.
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more…
Other News
Seeking to step up enforcement of civil rights laws,
the federal Department of Education says it will be
sending letters in coming weeks to thousands of school
districts and colleges, outlining their responsibilities
on issues of fairness and equal opportunity.
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more…
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