June 16, 2010
A neat piece of budgeting could help Johnston County Schools keep about $10.5 million in state funding. Last week, school leaders asked county commissioners to push about $4.6 million in June funding into July, the start of a new budget year. That move will allow the schools to meet a state requirement that counties spend […]
June 16, 2010
Chicago School Board members Tuesday tackled their worst fiscal crisis since Mayor Daley’s 1995 school takeover by granting school officials the power to raise class sizes to up to 35 students for the next two years. If Schools CEO Ron Huberman acts on that new power, he’s sure to anger hundreds of teachers laid off […]
June 15, 2010
School officials say midyear state aid cuts may cause the district to have a $1-million deficit this fiscal year despite getting concessions from all its employees and making massive cuts to many planned expenses. Yet district officials failed to track the tuition costs of 19 special-education students who were taught out of district last year. […]
June 15, 2010
Strong, consistent learning standards will ensure that students get the education they deserve, an official with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation told those attending the National PTA’s annual meeting. Vicki Phillips, director of education for the foundation, said standards can seem "nebulous," but they’re necessary. She spoke Sunday at the final general meeting of […]
June 15, 2010
Property owners in more than two-thirds of the school districts surveyed in the Cambria-Somerset region will be seeing their real estate taxes increase this year to cover 2010-2011 budgets. Of the 16 districts interviewed by The Tribune-Democrat 10 have already passed or are looking at tax increases ranging from a low of just more than […]
June 15, 2010
Four months after Governor Christie cut $5.2 million from an after-school enrichment program for low-income children, most of the non-profits running sites at 16 North Jersey schools have managed to keep them open for the remainder of the school year. But more than 500 of the approximately 1,200 kids attending New Jersey After 3 programs […]
June 15, 2010
State governments generally try to spare schools from budget cuts. But the recession hit tax revenue so hard that K-12 education is seeing sharp cutbacks in state funding. All major sources of state and local-government revenue—sales taxes, income taxes and prope rty taxes—have fallen. Property taxes are the primary source of school funding, and home […]
June 15, 2010
The Kansas City, Kan., school board agreed on Monday to join a coalition of school districts frustrated with the state’s funding practices. The high-poverty district agreed to recommit to Schools for Fair Funding. Although the organization’s attorneys could not be reached for comment on Monday, they have publicly said that they expected to file a […]
June 15, 2010
The president-elect of the Chicago Teachers Union planned an "emergency picket” today protesting a special Chicago School Board vote to raise class sizes and lay off up to 2,700 teachers. "It’s an emergency board meeting, so we’re having an emergency picket,” explained King College Prep teacher Karen Lewis, who takes over as head of the […]
June 15, 2010
Gov. Christie acted within his authority when he froze $475 million in state aid to schools to close a $2.2 billion budget deficit, a state appellate court ruled Monday.& lt;br /> The Perth Amboy Board of Education lost more than $15 million as a result of Christie’s order to withhold state funding for the remainder […]