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The Record--School districts share money woes with Senate panel
CLIFFSIDE PARK – A bipartisan state Senate committee tasked with proposing changes to the school funding formula met with officials from Bergen County school districts Tuesday to discuss inequities in aid and their effect on local education.
Testimony from the two-hour hearing, the third of four planned by the eight-member Select Committee on School Funding Fairness, will help form the basis for legislation to improve a school aid system often criticized for overfunding some districts and shortchanging others.
“Our community is overtaxed,” said Frank Scarafile, superintendent of Little Ferry schools. Reform "has been a long time coming and the time is now,” he said.
The current formula, adopted by the state in 2008, provides aid to districts based on their number of poor students and English-language learners but has never been fully funded because of other budget concerns. It is rooted in the landmark Supreme Court case Abbott v. Burke, which ordered the state to fund the 31 poorest school districts at the average level of the state's wealthiest districts.
Svetlana Shkolnikova , Staff Writer|Feb. 14, 2017 | Updated 9 hours ago
NY Times--Intel Drops Its Sponsorship of Science Fairs, Prompting an Identity Crisis
Karan Jerath, winner of the 2015 Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award at the International Science and Engineering Fair, on campus at the University of Texas at Austin on Monday. Credit Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
The science fair has been an annual rite of education for generations of students, going back to the 1940s. But even the term “science fair” stirs stereotypical images of three-panel display boards and baking-soda volcanoes. Its regimented routines can seem stodgy at a time when young people are flocking to more freewheeling forums for scientific creativity, like software hackathons and hardware engineering Maker Faires.
That is apparently the thinking at Intel, the giant computer chip maker, which is retreating from its longtime sponsorship of science fairs for high school students.
Intel ended its support last year for the national Science Talent Search, whose new sponsor is Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company.
Now, Intel will drop its backing of the International Science and Engineering Fair. The nonprofit group that organizes both fairs, the Society for Science and the Public, is beginning its search on Wednesday for a new sponsor for the global competition.
STEVE LOHRFEB. 14, 2017
Education Week--Steep Learning Curve on K-12 as State Leaders Take New Seats
At a pivotal time for state education policy, half the nation's state legislatures have at least one new education committee chairperson this year, and a quarter of state schools chiefs are less than a year into the job, according to an Education Week analysis.
This year's large freshman class of key education policymakers has advocates and district leaders on edge as state leaders scramble to finalize the accountability plans due by next fall under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/02/15/steep-learning-curve-on-k-12-as-state.html
Daarel Burnette II |February 14, 2017
