NSBA BoardBuzz

Get “Center”ed!

2009-07-07T20:13:59Z

BoardBuzz loves progress. And our friends at the Center for Public Education have embraced it! Not only have the launched a redesigned and updated website, but they’ve added a blog–the Edifier!

The new site is easier to navigate and offers interactive tools and the ability to share content to social networking sites. Definitely wander over and check it out.

Nominate an innovative technology leader

2009-07-07T15:53:20Z

Do you know an emerging leader who is transforming education through their innovative application and approach to technology?

NSBA’s “20 to Watch” search is underway again this year. Twenty to Watch seeks to identify the next generation of leaders who reflect the spirit of creativity and collaboration while embracing the power of technology to enhance learning for students, inspire colleagues, transform operations, and engage communities.

The “20 to Watch” are exceptional leaders who will help define expectations for the role technology can play in the future. The 20 technology leaders will be recognized at the general session at NSBA’s T+L Conference, Oct. 28-30 in Denver. Additionally, these 20 outstanding leaders will be showcased in future NSBA education technology publications and multimedia projects. To nominate a technology leader, click here.

A step towards a student welfare standard

2009-07-07T19:00:56Z

After the new decisions that were released during June’s big school law week, BoardBuzz has had the Supreme Court on our minds. As a result, we were doubly interested in NSBA General Counsel Francisco Negron, Jr.’s article recently published in American University Law Review. The article titled “A Foot in the Door? The Unwitting Move Towards a ‘New’ Student Welfare Standard in Student Speech After Morse v. Frederick” discusses an emerging legal trend that may expand schools’ abilities to protect their students.

The article focuses on Morse v. Frederick, a 2007 decision popularly known as the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case in which the court held that a school principal may restrict student speech that can be reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use. Negron argues that when read together, the majority opinion and Justice Alito and Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion, permit schools to regulate student expression that may threaten student welfare. Justices Alito and Kennedy sought to limit the majority’s holding to speech involving illegal drug use, but in doing accepted the premise that schools may limit speech that encourages dangerous conduct, Negron points out. Ironically, some lower courts have interpreted this opinion to carve out an exception to students’ First Amendment rights, thereby expanding Morse rather than containing it.

As Negron concludes:

“…Morse appears to have unwittingly created a new standard-not yet fully expressed as such, but found amongst its fractured opinions- that is premised on the underlying notion that schools may generally regulate student speech where student welfare is at stake.”

If this trend continues, school districts will be better able to keep students safe from potentially dangerous expression. Now that’s a decision BoardBuzz can get behind!

After the new decisions that were released during June’s school law week, BoardBuzz has had the Supreme Court on our minds. As a result, we were doubly interested to read NSBA General Counsel Francisco Negron, Jr.’s article recently published in American University Law Review. The article titled “A Foot in the Door? The Unwitting Move Towards a ‘New’ Student Welfare Standard in Student Speech After Morse v. Frederick” discusses an emerging legal trend that may expand schools’ abilities to protect their students.

Justices Alito and Kennedy sought to limit the majority’s holding to speech involving illegal drug use, but in doing accepted the premise that schools may limit speech that encourages dangerous conduct, Negron points out. Ironically, some lower courts have interpreted this concurrence as carving out an exception to students’ First Amendment rights, thereby expanding Morse rather than containing it.

As Negron concludes:

“…Morse appears to have unwittingly created a new standard-not yet fully expressed as such, but found amongst its fractured opinions- that is premised on the underlying notion that schools may generally regulate student speech where student welfare is at stake.”

If this trend continues, school districts will be better able to keep students safe from potentially dangerous expression. Now that’s a trend BoardBuzz can get behind!

Brand new blog

2009-07-06T15:30:01Z

BoardBuzz was excited last week when we heard about a new blog from the folks at National Journal. Their new education blog assembles some of the biggest names (and sharpest minds) in the education world to discuss hot issues. It’s so cool, we don’t even mind the competition!

In fact, NSBA’s own Anne Bryant has been asked to contribute (see, we told you the biggest names and sharpest minds!), and contribute she has. This week’s question is about the merits of mayoral control. And Anne weighs in:

Conversations have centered around the merits of mayoral control of school districts for years now. And in some cases, like in Chicago and Boston, some degree of mayoral control works. With the proper oversight and accountability, as well as the involvement of a highly functioning school board and an engaged community, these kinds of relationships can work. But perhaps most importantly, what sets those school districts apart from other mayorally controlled districts, what really makes them work, is the strong relationship between the mayor and the school board.

Check it out . . . the conversation is just getting started!

Our kind of town

2009-07-01T19:18:37Z

BoardBuzz can think of little it enjoys more than professional development (yes, we were those kids in school). And what better professional development is there than NSBA’s Annual Conference. Yeah, we know, it feels like it just happened . . . but April will be here before you know it and it can’t hurt to start planning things now. Next year’s conference will be held in Chicago from April 10-12. Check out this new video about the conference from our YouTube channel.

Vouchers make no difference in Florida

2009-07-01T13:52:59Z

It should come with no surprise that the Florida private school voucher program has not helped raise student achievement, according to this article in the St. Peterburg Times. This latest finding is added to the numerous others that have drawn similar conclusions about the lack of effectiveness of vouchers (see here and here).

The study of Florida’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, mandated by the state legislature, showed that students using vouchers are doing no better than their peers in public school. Even voucher proponent Jay Greene was quoted as saying voucher support “promised the moon, and public policy almost never delivers the moon.”

The truth is vouchers are not the answer to improving education for all students and do not maraculously improve public schools. As Congress considers whether to fund another voucher program — the only federally funded voucher program for the District of Columbia – lawmakers should consider these programs’ lack of effectiveness as concluded by so many studies, discontinue the voucher experiment, and redirect the funds to public schools, see NSBA’s letter to Congress here. Also check out NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center for information and resources.

Children are winners in Medicaid rule reversal

2009-07-01T13:43:43Z

After years of fighting a Medicaid rule that would’ve cut billions of dollars from services provided to eligible students, school districts across the country are seeing their advocacy efforts pay off. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sibelius announced this week that the agency is reversing the rule and continues to allow school districts to claim Medicaid reimbursement for outreach activities and transportation costs for eligible students with disabilities, see the Federal Register here.

BoardBuzz knows that NSBA appreciates the years of coordinated efforts from school districts and state school boards associations to reverse the rule. Even though the rule was issued in December 2007, our joint advocacy effort has helped delay its implementation through congressional action, see NSBA’s advocacy on Medicaid reimbursement here.

Schools are an essential place where children can get their health services. Eliminating outreach and transportation reimbursement to school districts would’ve denied the most vulnerable children these services. At the end of this fight, the winners are our children.

School law week with the Supremes

2009-06-30T16:29:03Z

The U.S. Supreme Court often hands down a flurry of rulings toward the end of its term, and this year is no exception. What set last week apart, for those of us in the education world, was that we got three school law rulings. So here we go:

The special ed case

First, the Court gave us a long-awaited answer to the question of whether parents of a student who never has received special education services in public school can place their child in private school and get public reimbursement. With Justice Anthony Kennedy recusing himself in earlier cases on this question, the Court hadn’t been able to rule definitively.

But last week in Forest Grove v. T.A., the Court ruled that Oregon parents who’d initially agreed with their school district that their son was not eligible for special education services but later pulled him out, without notifying the district, and put him in a residential school, could sue to get reimbursed for the tuition—over $5,000 a month. The details of the ruling, the dissenting opinion, the background on the case, and NSBA’s friend-of-the-court brief all are available starting here, courtesy of NSBA’s Legal Clips.

The big question on everyone’s mind is what kind of fallout we can expect: Will parents who’d like a taxpayer-paid private school education for their children be less inclined to try to work in good faith with their public schools? NSBA General Counsel Francisco Negron tells NPR that this is the scenario that worries schools, and it surely isn’t what Congress had in mind. In the Los Angeles Times, NSBA Deputy General Counsel Naomi Gittins expresses hope that the impact will be limited, since “Most parents do try to work with the school district.” Charles P. Conroy, executive director of a Massachusetts private school, offers reassurance in a Boston Globe op-ed. In this entry on his Education Front blog, Dallas Morning News columnist William McKenzie agrees with the decision but worries that it “could cost districts a boatload of money.” Wall Street Journal columnist and blogger Sue Shellenbarger has mixed feelings.

The media flurry case

The case that got the most intense media interest was, naturally, the Arizona strip search case, Safford Unified Sch. Dist. #1 v. Redding, which BoardBuzz wrote about here. Here, again, the Court ruled that the search of a thirteen-year-old girl suspected of concealing pills went too far, given the limited danger from prescription Ibuprofen and the lack of any reason to think she was hiding the pills in her underwear. Luckily, though, the Court agreed that on a question like this, where even the judges themselves disagree so much, the law isn’t so clear cut that the educators should be personally liable if they made the wrong call. Again, Legal Clips has all the details and background starting here.

The implications? Well, for starters, Gittins tells McClatchy, school officials ”will think long and hard before they authorize a strip search in the future.” That’s probably not a bad thing. But on NPR Negron warns that, as we said last week, the decision also casts uncertainty on searches for other kinds of dangerous contraband, like weapons. And even when it comes to what may seem like more minor threats, he reminds CNN, “The home medicine cabinet now poses a serious threat to students, who may take those medications for abusive purposes.” Watch for future litigation over how “dangerous” something is, he predicts.

The sleeper case

The third case was more obscure and very complex, but it was a biggie in a nation where public schools are tackling the enormous educational challenges of an incredibly diverse student population, and have limited resources ot get the job done. Horne v. Flores was an appeal of lower court rulings that the state of Arizona violated the federal Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA) by failing to fund English language learner programs adequately. The state never complied with the lower court’s order to come up with some rational connection between the needs and the funding provided, but some state officials argued the situation had changed so much since then that the state shouldn’t have to.

The Supreme Court ruled that the lower courts must consider more carefully certain subsequent changes in the educational situation which may mean Arizona no longer is violating the EEOA and should be relieved from complying with the orders on funding. Details from Legal Clips on the case, including Justice Stephen Breyer’s blistering dissent, start here. The Arizona Republic reports on reactions to the ruling here.

One thing that had education and civil rights advocates worried was an argument that the state’s progress with ELL students under No Child Left Behind automatically meant that the state also was complying with the EEOA. An “enormous can of worms” was how NSBA Senior Staff Attorney Tom Hutton described that argument in the journal Diverse: Issues in Higher Education when the case was argued: “How would this play out in the special education context? I have a hard time believing the court would go there.”

And in the end it didn’t go there—not quite, anyway. While the Court rejected the idea that NCLB compliance = EEOA compliance by definition, it did say NCLB was relevant to the question of whether overall circumstances have changed sufficiently that Arizona no longer is violating the EEOA. That’s the question the lower court will have to reevaluate now. The Associated Press reports that the lawyer representing the plaintiffs welcomes the opportunity.

The Supremes to school officials

After such a busy week shaping school law, perhaps it’s fitting that a speech Chief Justice John Roberts gave over the weekend generated a message for school officials. The Associated Press reports that the Chief Justice said they shouldn’t “look to the Supreme Court to set school rules, only to clarify them when officials have abdicated that responsibility.”

Roberts called the Court’s rulings “clarity intended to deal with narrow issues that surface from government actions,” adding, “You can’t expect to get a whole list of regulations from the Supreme Court. That would be bad. We wouldn’t do a good job at it.”

True enough. But the downside of narrow guidance probably is more lawsuits, as everyone learns how to apply these rulings.

Innovation matters

2009-06-30T16:25:51Z

Our own Ann Flynn, NSBA Education Technology Director, speaks on how technology innovation can be leveraged to improve or benefit school district administration. Check out the video available below from Education Week.

Ann Flynn: Why Tech Innovation Matters from Education Week on Vimeo.

Inside the Department of Education

2009-06-26T20:39:25Z

This morning at the Council of Urban Board of Education’s (CUBE) Issues Seminar in Chicago, one of the unsung and behind the scenes gurus of the education world spoke to an audience of urban school board members, superintendents, and other education leaders about college readiness and how America needs to make some changes to its education system. Greg Darnieder lead the office of college readiness program for Chicago Public Schools and like many Chicago staff, was asked by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to take some of Chicago’s ideas to the national level. When Mr. Darnieder was in Chicago, his programs brought in over $150 million to Chicago students for scholarship opportunities. A few comments that stuck with the attendees:

He advised all school board members to check the Department of Education’s web site often, daily if possible, since changes and opportunities are announced on an ongoing basis. He especially encouraged attendees to go to the section “what works” to find solutions to problems that are facing districts now.
1.2 millions students a year drop out of high school. That’s too many, by anyone’s standards and all educators need to focus on solutions to this epidemic.
We are in a unique time in our history regarding public education. This is a chance that we haven’t seen in our lifetime, and the Secretary of Education views the opportunities in education as the Civil Rights Issue of our time.

And finally, we’ll leave with a quote from the president that Mr. Darnieder shared about education: “In a global economy where the most valuable skill is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity – it’s a prerequisite” - President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

CUBE continues to discuss the issues, share what is happening around the country and bring it back home to local districts. For more information, check out CUBE’s web site.