Friday Report - March 8, 2019 - Public School Forum

The Friday Report

March 8, 2019

Forum News

This Week on Education Matters: One-On-One with State Superintendent Mark Johnson

It’s been more than two years since Mark Johnson was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction. He’s just unveiled a new initiative that aims to make North Carolina the best place to learn and teach by the year 2030. Superintendent Johnson joins us this week for the full show to talk about the new effort and his legislative agenda and we ask him about everything from private school vouchers to the best way to fund our state’s significant public school needs.

When and Where to Watch Education Matters

Saturday at 7:30 PM, WRAL-TV (Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville)

Sunday at 8:00 AM, FOX 50 (Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville)

Sunday at 6:30 AM and Wednesday at 9:30 AM, UNC-TV’s North Carolina Channel (Statewide)

The North Carolina Channel can be found on Time Warner Cable/Spectrum Channel 1276 or check your local listings and other providers here.

Online at ncforum.local.

Education Matters is also available as a podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Overcast, and Google Play Music.

2019 Jay Robinson Education Leadership Award Gala

James (Jim) and Barbara Goodmon are the recipients of the 2019 Public School Forum of North Carolina Jay Robinson Education Leadership Award. The Forum established the award in 2000 to recognize leaders who have demonstrated innovative, creative, and effective leadership for public education in North Carolina. Mr. and Mrs. Goodmon will be honored at a gala event on Thursday, May 30, at the Raleigh Convention Center.

Jim Goodmon, chairman and CEO of Capitol Broadcasting Company, and Barbara Goodmon, president of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, have spent decades finding innovative ways to meet their community’s needs—and public education has been at the top of their agenda. As actively engaged philanthropists and changemakers, the Goodmons have promoted effective and high-quality human services for disadvantaged people and communities and spearheaded efforts to ensure North Carolina’s citizens have access to first-class early childhood education and public schools across the state.

Event Details:

Thursday, May 30, 2018

Raleigh Convention Center

6:00 p.m. Reception, 7:00 p.m. Dinner and Program

To purchase event tickets, click here.

If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities, please contact Marisa Bryant at [email protected].

State News

NC Teachers Who Carry Guns in Schools Would Get Pay Raises Under New Bill

Photo Credit: Photo by NeONBRAND, Unsplash.

There’s a new push to allow North Carolina teachers to carry guns in school that some state lawmakers think has a chance of being approved this year.

The School Security Act of 2019, filed Wednesday, would boost the salaries of teachers who underwent specialized police training to carry firearms on campus. The same bill was filed last year and died in committee, but Sen. Jerry Tillman, one of the new sponsors of Senate Bill 192, said that the climate has changed to give the legislation more support this year.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Hui, K. “NC teachers who carry guns in schools would get pay raises under new bill.” The News & Observer. 3/6/19.

Report Says Average NC Teacher Salary Is Nearly $54,000. But NCAE Says That Figure Is ‘Skewed.’

Photo Credit: Element5 Digital, Unsplash.

The average salary for a North Carolina public school teacher has risen 5 percent to nearly $54,000 this year.

New figures released Wednesday by the state Department of Public Instruction estimate the average salary for teachers to be $53,975 — $2,741 more than the previous school year. The new number is 20 percent more than the $44,990 average salary five years ago.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Hui, K. “Report says average NC teacher salary is nearly $54,000. But NCAE says that figure is ‘skewed.’” The News & Observer. 3/6/19.

Cooper Seeks $3.9B Bond Package, 9 Percent Teacher Raises

NC Governor Roy Cooper’s State of the State address to a joint session of the General Assembly Monday night, Feb. 25, 2019. Photo Credit: Pool Video.

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s two-year budget would seek to borrow twice as much as state House Republicans are proposing in their respective proposed construction bond referendums.

Cooper pitched the borrowing and several other education-related parts of his spending proposal on Tuesday at a conference in Greensboro. They include raises for all public school teachers, restoring a pay bump for teachers with master’s degrees and providing tens of millions of dollars toward school safety and health staff and improvements.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

“‘Cooper seeks $3.9B bond package, 9 percent teacher raises” WRAL. 3/5/19.

Judge: State Still Owes $729M to NC School Districts

A Wake County judge on Wednesday reinstated a decade-old judgment against the state for hundreds of millions of dollars in civil fines that weren’t paid to school districts over several years.

Under the state constitution, fines collected by state agencies are supposed to be turned over to school districts, but the state diverted that money to other uses between 1996 and 2005. School districts sued and won a $747.8 million judgment against the state in 2008.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Burns, M. “Judge: State still owes $729M to NC school districts.” WRAL. 3/6/19.

‘We’ve Got to Face Reality.’ Some NC Lawmakers Want to Ease K-3 Class Size Rules.

Photo Credit: Pragyan Bezbaruah, Pexels.

North Carolina school districts worried about meeting smaller state-mandated K-3 class sizes could get relief from lawmakers.

Legislation filed last week would allow the State Board of Education to grant waivers to elementary schools that say they don’t have the classroom space or teachers needed to meet the smaller class sizes. House Bill 251 comes as K-3 class sizes are set to drop over the next two years, something that school leaders around the state say will be hard to meet.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Hui, K. “‘We’ve got to face reality.’ Some NC lawmakers want to ease K-3 class size rules.” The News & Observer. 3/4/19.

School Construction Bond Bill Makes Its Way Through the House

House Speaker Tim Moore presents his school construction bond proposal at the House K-12 Education Committee in March. Photo Credit: Alex Granados, EducationNC.

A bill from House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, to put a $1.9 billion school building bond before voters received favorable approval in the House K-12 education committee yesterday.

It includes about $1.5 billion for K-12 schools, and about $200 million each for the UNC System and Community College System.

“I very often…don’t file bills. It’s generally not the role of the Speaker,” Moore said. “But I felt this issue was important enough to do it this year.”

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Granados, A. “School construction bond bill makes its way through the House.” EducationNC. 3/6/19.

The Best School Psychologist in the Entire Nation Works Right Here in Raleigh

Students at Lynn Road Elementary School lined the hallways to celebrate their school psychologist, Leigh Kokenes, for being named 2019 National School Psychologist of the Year in recognition for her advocacy work. Photo Credit: Casey Toth, The News & Observer.

Cheers and clapping rang out throughout the hallways of Lynn Road Elementary School on Tuesday morning as Leigh Kokenes was recognized for being the best school psychologist in the nation.

Kokenes was named the 2019 National School Psychologist of the Year at last week’s annual convention of the National Association of School Psychologists. Kokenes’ colleagues and the students at Lynn Road Elementary celebrated the award Tuesday.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Hui, K. “The best school psychologist in the entire nation works right here in Raleigh.” The News & Observer. 3/5/19.

National News

Too Many of America’s Public Schools Are Crumbling — Literally. Here’s One Plan to Fix Them.

A hole in an exterior wall of Farwell Middle School in Detroit in 2010. Mice were entering through the hole. Photo Credit: Jeffrey Sauger, The Washington Post.

Every school day, some 50 million students and 6 million adults go to nearly 100,000 public schools across the country, amounting to about 1 in 6 Americans. Too many of them enter buildings that are crumbling — literally — and that suffer from problems, including poor air and water quality, mold, broken toilets and rodents.

Yet while research has shown that high-quality facilities have a positive effect on student achievement, and staff and teacher retention and student truancy rates, districts defer costs year after year. According to the National Council on School Facilities, the nation’s PK-12 public school buildings are valued collectively at nearly $2 trillion, and the deferred investment in upkeep is estimated to be between $271 billion and $542 billion. That’s more than a 2014 government report estimated.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Strauss, V. “Too many of America’s public schools are crumbling — literally. Here’s one plan to fix them.” The Washington Post. 3/5/19.

Teacher Protests Spurred Increased State Spending

Thousands of teachers and supporters rally at the state capitol, on April 9, 2018, in Oklahoma City, Okla. Photo Credit: J Pat Carter, Getty Images.

The wave of educator unrest last year, in which teachers walked the picket lines and stormed state capitals by the thousands, led to substantial increases in school funding in places like Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

But the increases were not enough to make up for the steep cuts that those states made since the Great Recession in 2008, and in many cases, the funding mechanisms for the new money aren’t sustainable in the long-term.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Camera, L. “Teacher Protests Spurred Increased State Spending.” The U.S. News & World Report. 3/6/19.

Opportunities

NC Science & Engineering Fair

The 32nd NC Science & Engineering Fair (NCSEF) will be held at NC State University’s Talley Student Union on Saturday, March 30, 2019. General Volunteers are needed on Friday, March 29 (3pm – 7pm) and all-day Saturday, March 30. Click here, General Volunteer Registration, to assist with our 400 plus Grades 3-12 STEM student researchers from across NC with their project set-up, room and hallway monitors, awards preparation, awards ceremonies, and other needed tasks. The volunteer shifts are about 2-3 hours in length.

The NCSEF is a 510(c)3 non-profit and is the NC affiliate to the INTEL International Science and Engineering Fair. NCSEF’s top 12 Senior Research Projects (Grades 9-12) will advance to the 2018 ISEF competition in Pittsburgh with over 1,700 high school competitors from over 70 countries.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email our Volunteer Coordinator, Keith Beamon, at [email protected].

2019 Professional Educators of NC Conference

PENC will be hosting it’s 2019 Conference, “Supercharged with STEAM” on May 4, 2019, in Raleigh at the Renaissance Raleigh North Hills Hotel.

Attendees will earn 0.5 (digital learning) CEUs while they learn about STEAM Education. STEAM is showing success in schools all around the world to better teach academic and life skills in a standards-backed, reality-based, personally relevant exploratory learning environment. It is a framework for teaching that is based on natural ways of learning, customizable for ALL types of students and programs and is FUNctional!

Keynote speaker Jan Hargrave, author, an expert in the field of nonverbal communication will teach you how to improve your communication skills in order to become a more effective communicator. Her information could help you to “read” your family, your students, your associates, in fact, everyone around you. Bring your body, your curiosity, your sense of humor and learn what your body – and the body of others – is communicating to the world.

Visit www.pencweb.org/2019-conference for more details and to register!

Purchase orders may be used for school groups! Please contact Alex Cozort at [email protected] with any questions or for more information.

Schools That Lead’s NC Networked Improvement Communities

Schools That Lead, in partnership with the NC General Assembly and the NC Department of Public Instruction, is excited to announce it will launch its second cohort of North Carolina Networked Improvement Communities for public schools seeking to improve learning outcomes for their students.

In this network, principals and teachers learn to use improvement science to articulate their theories and assumptions, select change ideas and measure impact over time as they work to solve a common problem, seen here by school level.

High schools: Increasing on-time graduation rates;
Middle schools: Reducing 9th grade retentions; and
Elementary schools: Reducing the number of students who have below grade level academic performance, and/or chronic absences and/or behavioral issues.

The total three-year membership fee is $6,000 per school, payable to Schools That Lead in $2,000 increments each year of the three-year program, or by other mutually agreeable terms. Schools should also budget for the costs of travel and substitute teachers for the professional learning sessions.

To apply click, here.

DEADLINE AND SELECTION

Applications are due April 15, 2019 by 12:00 p.m. and are to be completed by the school principal.
Schools will be selected by lottery (if necessary) and notified of selection by May 1, 2019.
The first convening of selected schools will be held in the Raleigh/Durham area in September 2019.

East Carolina University’s Project I4

East Carolina University’s Department of Educational Leadership was awarded a five year, $9.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The focus of Project I4 is K-12 school leaders and how they engage with math and science teachers in their schools to improve teaching practices and academic discourse for equitable student outcomes.

Participants will earn a 9 credit Micro-credential (MC). These credits can be used toward the ECU Ed.D. in Educational Leadership. The MC is a year-long experience beginning with a one week Learning Exchange on campus in late July. This is followed by on-line and in-school classroom experiences in the fall and spring led by ECU instructors and small group facilitators. The MC concludes back on campus the following summer. An innovative feature of Project I4 is the development and testing of a virtual reality simulation of STEM classrooms to enable principals to practice observing and giving feedback in a game setting.

Recruitment for MC Cohort I has now begun. For more information contact the Project I4 lead, Dr. Matt Militello at: [email protected].

NC Principal Fellows 25th Anniversary Celebration

The NC Principal Fellows Program is trying to locate and invite all former Principal Fellows Commissioners, Campus Coordinators, and Directors to 25th anniversary events.

Complete this form to update your contact information. Contact Dr. Eddie Price, North Carolina Principal Fellows at [email protected] or (919) 291-0008.

Burroughs Wellcome Fund Accepting Applications for Student STEM Enrichment Program

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has opened its application for the 2019 Student STEM Enrichment Program (SSEP) grant awards. SSEP supports diverse programs with a common goal: to enable primary and secondary students to participate in creative, hands-on STEM activities for K-12 students and pursue inquiry-based exploration in BWF’s home state of North Carolina. These awards provide up to $60,000 per year for three years. The application deadline is April 16, 2019.

For more information or to access the application, visit

https://www.bwfund.org/grant-programs/science-education/student-science-enrichment-program.

Synergy Conference 2019

The Synergy Conference 2019 for afterschool professionals will convene April 24-25, 2019 at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, NC. This year’s conference is themed “DOING THE M.O.S.T.: MAXIMIZING OUT-OF-SCHOOL TIME”. The conference timeline can be viewed here.

Early Registration is now open for the annual SYNERGY CONFERENCE! You can register here by February 10th for the discounted rate of $200. Regular registration will begin on February 11th at the regular rate of $225.

We are excited to announce that Mentoring has been added as a new workshop strand. Workshop strands include Arts & Literacy, Closing Gaps, College & Career Readiness, Mentoring, Organizational Capacity, Public/Private Partnerships, S.T.E.M., and Youth Development.

Keynote Speaker Spotlight

Byron V. Garrett will be this year’s lunch and award ceremony keynote speaker. One of the most compelling voices of our time, Byron V. Garrett is Chairman of the National Family Engagement Alliance (NFEA); a nonprofit dedicated to transforming education through meaningful family engagement. Byron is the Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of The Valdecio Collection, a lifestyle brand consisting of clothing, watches and fragrances. The former Director of Educational Leadership & Policy for Microsoft, Byron is a consulting author for Scholastic and released the Byron V. Garrett Social Emotional Learning Collection in 2017 to foster social and emotional learning in today’s classrooms.

To learn more, please visit: ncafterschool.org/synergyconference2019/

FAST NC Fundraising Drive to Aid Public Schools

Florence Aid to Students and Teachers of North Carolina – FAST NC – is an effort led by a bipartisan group of current and former North Carolina education leaders to help the state’s public schools as students and educators struggle to return to normal following Hurricane Florence and its impact.

To learn more about FAST NC and how to donate, click here.

The Friday Report is published weekly by the Public School Forum of NC and is distributed to Forum members, policymakers, donors, media, and Forum subscribers. Archived editions can be found at ncforum.local.