January 2012

REFLECTIONS FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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Wow! Were you in attendance for our annual members-only Legislative Connection? The crowd was the biggest ever. Approximately 200 people were in attendance, 50 more than last year. It was an amazing mix of educators, school board members, non-profit leaders, business members, elected and appointed officials. We had representation from the Board of Regents, the State Board of Education, Governor's office, well over 50 legislators, plus leaders in student government. These leaders came together to talk about education and hear from the Superintendent of Education and House and Senate Education Committee leadership. Talk about a moment in time that offers hope for the coming year!  My hope for tomorrow is that opportunities such as this lay the groundwork for collaboration on educational issues.

My other hopes for tomorrow?

• I hope elected leaders acknowledge that college and career readiness starts way before 3rd grade.
• I hope the achievement gap, which is evident as children enter school, is targeted with effective interventions and closes before children exit 3rd grade.
• I hope our teachers, the frontline warriors charged with increasing performance to meet the expectations of the Common Core and internationally benchmarked levels, receive the professional development they'll need to do this work in new ways. No business attempts to increase or improve production without providing the training and development their employees need to do the work.
• I hope parents, business leaders and community members find ways to assist their local schools to make sure children are reading on grade level by 3rd grade; that middle schoolers have a sense of the connection between their schooling and what they want to be when they grow up; and that high school students have opportunities for job shadowing and internships.
• I hope charter schools and school districts can talk together and learn from each other in an environment of collaboration and mutual respect; that we eliminate the negativity that competition can create. After all, if the intention of the charter school law was to create "laboratories" from which district schools can learn, it seems to me to be important that there's a positive relationship between the two.
• I hope elected officials realize that school funding matters. We can't expect more and more from the system, while cutting the very resource needed to pay for highly effective teachers, for intervention specialists, for professional development or for all day kindergarten. We can't take away the very tools educators need to reach higher and more rigorous goals for children.

Our hope for our member organizations?  That each of you introduce ABEC to at least one additional education or business leader and encourage them to become part of this movement. I hope you bring them to our annual conference.
 
This year, 2012, is ABEC's tenth anniversary. I hope we continue to add voices to the ABEC message that schools cannot raise expectations alone - everyone has a role to play.

Sincerely,

Susan Carlson
ABEC executive director

 

“Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.”  ~ Mark Twain

 

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GOVERNOR'S FY13 BUDGET RECOMMENDATION

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Earlier this month, Governor Brewer released her Fiscal Year 2013 (FY13) budget. Specifically included for K-12 education are:

• $50 million for reading specialists and for development and implementation of comprehensive curriculum, intervention and remediation programs in grades K-3. Funds are to be used to identify students who are not on track to pass the 3rd grade standards and early intervention, when they are at risk of retention. Funding will be generated by an increase in the K-8 Group A weight from 1.158 to 1.179.
• $35 million increase to CORL monies to back-fill from the loss of federal Education Jobs Act Funds.
• The elimination of the building renewal formula
  • Appropriates $100 million for a three-year transitional period, while school districts and the School Facilities Board (SFB) inventory all systems with an online preventive maintenance system.
  • $933,500 to purchase the subscription for an online preventive maintenance system for all school districts.
  • $40 million increase to CORL and charter school Additional Assistance for the district-side costs to inventory all school systems, perform sufficient preventive maintenance, and help the State move to a life-cycle replacement-based Building Renewal system. $871,400 for SFB administrative costs
• A reduction of the K-12 rollover by $100 million per year:
  • For FY13 – the amount due to school districts would be reduced from the current $952 million to $852 million. In future years the amount owed to school districts would be reduced by $100 million per year.
  • For example, in FY14 the rollover owed would be reduced to $752 million and in FY15 the rollover amount owed would be reduced to $652 million. The amount owed to school districts would continue to be reduced by $100 million per year until the rollover disappeared.
• In return for the reduction in the amount of the rollover, the state would pay school districts $200 million in FY13 and $100 million per year in future years during the time that the rollover was being reduced.
  • Districts would be able to use the FY13 $200 million payment and the future annual $100 million payments for soft capital and/or revenue help to offset the reduction in the amount of the rollover payments that will no longer be paid to the districts.
• District Sponsored Charter Schools (DSCS):
  • Prohibit the ability of establishing new DSCS
  • Statutory change to provide that district-owned space that is leased to another entity is included in SFB’s square footage calculations for new school construction considerations, including space leased to a DSCS.
  • Projects for district-owned buildings or any part of a district-owned building that is leased to a charter school be included in the list of projects not eligible for Building Renewal grant funds.
• $500,000 to finalize the development of a database that will expedite the researching of educator certifications and disciplinary actions
• $186, 500 for 2 investigators for the State Board of Education to investigate alleged misconduct of certified personnel
• $4.6 million for adult education to draw down $11.8 million in federal funds for workforce development

~ Summary provided by Chuck Essigs and Janice Palmer

For more details on the Governor's Budget Recommendations, click on a link below:
FY2013 Executive Budget Recommendations - Full report
FY2013 Executive Budget Recommendations – Presentation

IMPORTANT NOTE: at its upcoming February board of directors meeting, the ABEC board will discuss certain details of the Governor’s proposed budget and its potential impact. If you are a current ABEC member and wish to attend the meeting, you must reserve a seat due to limited seating!  To RSVP, contact Karen at 602-261-6702 or karen@azbec.org.

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ARIZONA EDUCATION WATCH

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In her State of the State Address on January 9, 2012, Governor Brewer said she will keep her promise to voters that the temporary one-cent sales tax will end in 2013, acknowledging that Arizona is a leader in parental choice and her commitment “to children for the next century – quality teachers – a safe environment – a setting of parents’ choosing – data-driven decisions and the highest of standards.”

Governor Brewer’s policy agenda, “The Four Cornerstones of Reform: Centennial Edition,” focuses on:
1) economic competitiveness;
2) education;
3) state government; and
4) renewed federalism.

For K-12 education, Governor Brewer outlined the following:

• Focus this year will be on the implementation of Arizona’s education framework, not new reforms
• The launch of a campaign to encourage parents to read to their children
• Creation of a searchable database that will allow parents to research a teachers license and disciplinary actions
• Reform teacher decertification process by “establishing professional practices and mandating automatic loss of teacher certification for certain offenses” and reforming investigatory process
• Tasking the Arizona Ready Council to “develop recommendations for Legislative consideration to fund reforms that promote the results we want in both K-12 and Higher Education.”

To read Governor Jan Brewer’s State of the State Address speech, click here.

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Arizona was recently awarded $25 million through the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top Phase 3 (RTTT) grant program to advance Arizona’s education reform efforts.  The Arizona Department of Education (ADE), in collaboration with the Governor’s Office of Education Innovation and Arizona’s County School Superintendents, will seek to:

• Establish Five Regional Education Centers to serve as a key mechanism in delivering Race to the Top professional development, technical assistance and support services ($2.5M);
• Implement the Arizona 2010 Academic Standards (Common Core) using STEM as the vehicle ($3M); and,
• Complete the Student-Teacher Connection to the ADE Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS), through linking students and teachers to individual courses to provide timely, accurate and actionable data at the classroom, school site, local education agency (LEA) and state levels ($2.5M)

Additionally, the Governor’s Office of Education Innovation has entered into a cooperative Inter-Service Agreement (ISA) with ADE to provide support for vertical alignment of statewide goals and reform efforts between ADE and the Five Regional Education Centers and create new data dashboards for the Arizona Ready Council State Report Card ($1.5M).

ADE will serve as the fiscal agent for the grant, and provide overall leadership, coordination and oversight for all projects activities, and will also manage the allocation of RTTT funds to eligible LEAs ($3M).

Half of the total award ($12.5M) will be allocated to eligible LEAs to implement Arizona’s RTTT Phase 3 plan.  Eligible LEAs are those Title I LEAs that have signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs), and have completed a detailed Scope of Work.  Allocations are determined by each participating LEA’s relative sharing of funding under Title I, Part A for FY2011.

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“Bills of significant interest” that have cleared the Education Committees:

SB1047 - tax credit; student tuition organizations - Establishes a tax credit for excess contributions to certified school tuition organizations.

SB1048 - school tuition organizations; credits; administration - Provides administrative and qualifying changes to school tuition organization statutes relating to the corporate and individual programs.

HB2180 - schools; pilot; outcome-based funding - Directs SBE to establish an application process for a four-year pilot program for the outcome-based funding of schools in consultation with the Department of Education and the State Board for Charter Schools.

ABEC will continue to monitor the status of these bills as well as many others as they navigate their way through the legislative process.