February 15, 2011
A little girl with pigtails poked her head into the school nurse’s office at Roll Hill Elementary School in North Fairmount. "My throat hurts," said Kennedy Drake, 6. It was around 9 a.m. on a Thursday. Nurse Angela Mullins’ busy day was just beginning. Ten minutes later, a 7-year-old girl limped in to get an […]
February 15, 2011
The Kansas Senate voted Monday to restore $26 million in proposed budget cuts for special education funding, which proponents said was needed to prevent the future loss of millions more in federal aid. Voice vote approval for the measure followed nearly 45 minutes of debate during which members argued over whether to restore the proposed […]
February 15, 2011
President Obama proposed a 2012 Department of Education budget on Monday that would, if approved, significantly increase federal spending for public schools, and maintain the maximum Pell grant — the cornerstone financial-aid program — at $5,550 per college student. Whether it will be possible to keep that Pell maximum remains uncertain, however, given that House […]
February 15, 2011
The question of what it takes — and what it costs — to properly educate New Jersey’s nearly 1.4 million school children took center stage in a Bergen County courtroom Monday, as the state’s long-running Abbott vs. Burke school funding case returned to court. School superintendents from Piscataway and Woodbridge were called as the first […]
February 15, 2011
There are few issues that generate more heat than spending on public education. Now more than ever, schools are faced with decreased state and federal aid and skyrocketing costs of state mandates, mostly to pay for staff benefits and pensions. Special education services also make up a significant chunk of school district budgets. The per […]
February 14, 2011
Two years after Congress made the federal government’s largest one-time inve stment in the nation’s public schools, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—the economic-stimulus package—has prevented massive teacher layoffs, spurred states to devise sweeping education overhaul plans, and invigorated the national conversation about turning around the worst-performing schools. Yet a critical question remains: Will the […]
February 14, 2011
Kansas could lose up to $26 million in federal special education funds if a plan to cut spending is adopted by the state Legislature, according to lawmakers critical of the proposal. Earlier this week, the House passed a series of spending reductions in the current year budget that affected schools, workers’ paychecks and a variety […]
February 14, 2011
Two years after his appointment as emergency financial manager for the Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb has outsourced many services, unearthed corruption and closed a number of schools. Yet the district’s mammoth deficit has continued to grow amid the state’s downturn and growing pension and debt obligations, and the city’s schools are still grappling with […]
February 14, 2011
After a decade, many of Missouri’s charter schools are not doing much better than traditional public schools, a national watchdog group concluded. & #x0A;Two reasons: not getting their fair share of education money or enough monitoring, contends a report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Chronically low-performing charter schools, the report concluded, should […]
February 14, 2011
The funding and policy control of Iowa schools are slated to get significant attention in the state Legislature this week. On the Senate side, majority Democrats plan to move ahead with a 2 percent increase in base per-pupil funding for Iowa’s 359 K-12 public school districts, an amount that backers say will provide about $65 […]