If you haven’t seen this yet, enjoy the read if it doesn’t make you sick. The Sun-Times has this article about how the Top-paid school staffer earns $375,000. His pension will be over $200K per year. I’ll talk about this more later so read the article first.
The Republican Assembly of Lake County proposed the 65% solution to help with funding Illinois Schools without a tax increase. As I mentioned yesterday, I would like to delve into this a little deeper.
Illinois Schools currently average 59.5% of their funding going into the Education Fund which ostensibly is for the kids. [...]
Here is an article about how 1 Jr. High is dealing with not lower grades. They eliminated homework because the students didn’t do it anyway. Read the full article here.
Junior high students at the Marya Yates School in Matteson simply had too many crushes to attend to, Web sites to surf, [...]
The Republican Assembly of Lake County makes the argument that the 65% Solution will provide $906 million to classrooms without a tax increase. Illinois schools currently average 59.5%.
I will take the time tomorrow to delve into this a little deeper. I believe we need education reform, but I am not sure this is [...]
The Democrats have come to an agreement in next years State budget. You can read the stories about it in the 2 following articles.
Plan Would Bail Out CTA, Hurt Schools
Dems consider skipping pension payment to fill gap
(Hat Tip: Extreme Wisdom)
I just laughed when I saw the title of the first article. How does [...]
Read the Daily Herald article about the Schoold Board special meeting last night. (Hat Tip: D46 Information Message Board) They are advertising for teachers so they can restore the cut programs. The board believes this is sustainable and not a one year ploy.
Congratulations to all the students of D46 who should see [...]
Don Selzer is leaving District 46 for Woodland Distirct 50. Read the full press release here.
Mr. Selzer was selected through an extensive interview process including a panel composed of parents, community members and staff.
According to this statement this has been an extensive process. My question is that, what was the timeline for this. [...]
Responsibility is defined as:
The state, quality, or fact of being responsible.
Something for which one is responsible; a duty, obligation, or burden.
This is the key word describing the alleged Ethics Violations by Dr. Anderson, the District Superintendent in CCSD #46. The charges were brought in March because of flyers going out in several school newsletters [...]
I found out tonight that even thought the bill is on hold, it is not dead yet. It is still being taughted and could be revived. This is a very sneaky tactic. Make your opponents think it is dead so they stop fighting it. Then push it through under cover of [...]
Meeks kills his bill to revamp school funding was the title of the article in the Daily Southtown on Friday. Meeks did not have the Republican support he needed and even some Democrats had expressed doubts. Meeks will be bring this bill back up in the fall or next spring.
Thanks to all [...]
I just heard about this today on Focus on the Family. La Canada High School is doing Bat Boy the Musical for their show this year. Parents are outraged because of its content which includes depictions of rape, incest, bestiality, drugs, alcohol, sex and murder. Remember, this is a high school. [...]
So much for property tax relief. The Chicago Tribune has done an analysis of the tax swap bills (HB755/HB750/SB750/SB1484). This analysis shows that on average there will be a 20% increase in your combined property tax and income tax bills if this is passed. Now you can see why it is [...]
I am sorry for the outage today. There was a hard drive failure that had to be fixed. Please accept my apologies if this cause you any inconveniences.
Ralf Seiffe has a must read article in the Illinois Leader about HB755. (Hat Tip: Extreme Wisdom)
There is a large group of people heading to Springfield tomorrow to lobby for this bill. See below for this information. As Bruno instructed, fax this letter to your Senator/Representative tomorrow, May 18th. Get 7 [...]
Well, in case you don’t have a scorecard, HB 750/SB 750 and SB 1484 are morphing. This time in amendments to HB 755. (Hat tip: Extreme Wisdom) . HB 755 actually started out a very supportable bill. Here is it’s Synopsis As Introduced:
Amends the School Code. Requires a school board [...]
Sorry for the confusion. This was by Michael Van Winkle of the Illinois Policy Institute and not CRAFT.
(Oak Park, Ill.) In the news last week was word of an agreement between two sides of the debate over education funding reform. The compromise was hailed as a great step forward. Unfortunately, no one seemed to [...]
According to Mike Tyron Illinois Representative, McHenry County will lose 75.6 million dollars if HB-0755 (formally HB-750) passes.
Individual income taxes ( note that business inc tax not allocated by county) from McHreny County
$188.1 million
Property tax relief (which, of course, is not all for residences)
$99.8 million
State Aid increase through foundation
$8.2 million
LGDF increase
$4.3 million
County [...]
I sent this suggestion to my District’s BOE tonight. I thought I would post it here as well for others to use and send to their BOE as well. The formatting has been changed for the web. The link to get more information about Cute PDF is here.
This is a rather simple [...]
David Gelernter had a commentary in the L.A. Times entitled “Let’s Get Rid of Public Schools”. (Hat Tip: Extreme Wisdom.) David’s commentary starts off like this:
Discussions of school choice and vouchers nearly always assume that public schools are permanent parts of the American educational scene. Increasingly I wonder why. Why should there be [...]
This weeks Carnival of Education is hosted over at The Education Wonks. You enjoy the posts, so head on over. Here are few that I found interesting.
A Constrained Vision has a well done post on Merit Pay for teachers. To go along with this read Jenny D.’s couple of post about how [...]
Extreme Wisdom has a grea post on Rent-Seeking Politicians and a link to an article entitled Rent-Seeking, Public Choice, and The Prisoner’s Dilemma. His take on it shows how the public education monoploy is now overpriced and causing us great harm by caring more about keeping its’ monopoly than the best education for [...]
The Landmark Legal Foundation filed a complaint against the NEA practices of not disclosing their political expenditures to its’ membership. Read the full complaint here. Below are several excerpts:
As described in this complaint, the NEA’s political activities are widespread and pervasive. However, since at least 1994, its expenditures in support of these activities [...]
I mentioned this yesterday and I wanted to explore it more. I have posted small blurbs about this before, here, here, and here. We already have Alcohol-Free and Drug-Free schools. Why not Sex-Free schools?
The purpose of schools is to educate our kids. The focus of education should be on reading, [...]
David Parker was arrested at his 5 year old son’s school after questioning book being sent home with his son on same-sex couples. He was attempting to opt-out and seeked assurances from the administration that he would be notified of any adult themed material ahead of time to do this. They never did [...]
Jonathan Kallay at OverEducation is a teacher in Bellevue, Washington. He has a article with links to resources for teachers to look into alternatives to the National Unions.
I found some articles in this week’s Education Carnival hosted this week by Jenny D that I thought some of you might be interested in as well.
Students creating their own tests. This is taking place at a school in Canada.
What Should We Be Seeing In The Classroom?. This is a post by Assorted [...]
Extreme Wisdom has a sample letter for you to copy and personalize it. You can send this to the editor at your local paper. Find your local paper using Illinois Press Contact Page at FreedomWorks.
This time, Jersey County, Illinois is building new schools that voters rejected. (Hat Tip: Extreme Wisdom)
According to information provided by the Coalition for Public Awareness of Jersey County, Illinois, the repair estimate for bringing the district’s existing high school into compliance with state code was $531,000 in 2000. A year later, the district’s repair [...]
If anyone is looking for information about ISAT’s and othe Assessments used in Illinois, you can visit ISBE Student Assessment Division page. I thought this would make it easier than for all us us to look for the proper page.
The State of Utah has enacted a voucher program to help its Special-Needs Students. This was done by the newly elected Governor Jon Huntsman. Huntsman toppled the Governor before him because of her veto on this issue.
Undaunted by the veto, Rep. Merlynn Newbold (R-South Jordan) worked with opponents between the [...]
