More Perfect Union’s Post

Housing keeps growing and becoming increasingly expensive in Los Angeles, and now, the California Department of Education wants to encourage school districts to build housing for teachers on their property. Erin Baldassari KQED News reports on the new effort to keep the teaching workforce https://lnkd.in/gMcu5mx2 #LosAngelesHousing #CaliforniaEducation #TeacherHousing #AffordableLiving #TeacherSupport #HousingCrisis #WorkforceHousing

This includes some interesting perspectives on the 20-year history of Oakland Unified, but I reject the framing that the deficit is a crisis that reflects chronic issues in our district. School districts and other public agencies up and down the state are facing historic deficits as the pandemic relief funds expire, including the City of Oakland, SFUSD and San Diego Unified. We in Oakland Unified just don’t have a Coliseum we can sell to postpone the necessary cuts by a year. But many public agencies were given tremendous funding that we had to spend on a short timeline, and now that funding has expired, we need to cut back. We also need to reduce our number of schools given declining enrollment due to demographic change that impacts not just Oakland, but districts across the state and country. But that has also been clear for a long time and needs to be handled not as a crisis, but in phases as we plan for the future. https://lnkd.in/grTfjmiS

Does a proposed $10 billion bond favor more affluent California school districts? Some superintendents from low-income and small districts say that the proposed bond leaves them underfunded, reports Carolyn Jones THE 74 https://lnkd.in/g8ze5xwK #CaliforniaSchools #EducationFunding #SchoolEquity #PublicEducation #EducationPolicy #SchoolFinance #EducationEquity #EducationReform

Securing voters’ support for school bond measures can be tricky. Take a look at five tips that can go a long way for district leaders.

OPINION | Equitable Funding Is Essential for All Public School Students -- full op-ed by Karen Lobos linked below "There is no formula or rationale that justifies the current ongoing inequity in public school funding. Our students are not worth 25% less than their public school peers. In our local district, the levy approved by voters allocates $3,449 per student — but families who voted for this funding and have a scholar at our charter public school receive none of this support. Students are already navigating more than enough challenges. As they continue to weather the consequences from the instability of a global pandemic, economic insecurity, and social upheaval, incomplete funding for their public school should not be another (avoidable) obstacle." /// #Voices #Education #RainierPrep #Seattle #SouthSeattle #SouthEnd

Does school choice work for families who may lack local education providers? Shaka Mitchell discusses how education savings accounts would empower rural students in Tennessee and how it's succeeded in numerous other rural states. #SchoolChoice #SchoolChoiceNow

Great, disruptive, inevitable change is now on its way to the central administrations that control our large urban school districts. Read more on the latest post at CharterFolk. #edreform #publiceducation #education #charterschools

Take a moment today to look through Bellwether's new report about the intersection between school funding inequities and district lines. Check out whether your state is creating a system where some school districts are "economic elites" while others are "opportunity outsiders" within the same metropolitan area. Their bottom line when it comes to addressing major discrepancies in property wealth between districts? "[School funding] formula reform alone is unlikely to be sufficient. . . . disparities in local funding are so massive in so many metro areas that few states will have the ability to raise and deploy enough state dollars to overcome the disparities created by their current school funding policies — let alone ensure that districts serving the highest levels of student need have more funding per pupil. Thus, states seeking to level the landscape of funding must look beyond the allocation of state aid, closer to the root of the problem: the structure and rules around local revenue and fragmented, segregative district boundaries." Nice work Bonnie O'Keefe and all! https://lnkd.in/e3CmigGn

"A new poll out from Morning Consult finds that teacher morale is rock-bottom, teachers’ optimism about K-12 education has hit its lowest point in four years, and the majority of teachers support most forms of school choice, including Education Savings Accounts, public charter schools, and open enrollment among districts." Learn more at NJ Education Report: New Poll: Teachers Are Overwhelmed and Support School Choice https://lnkd.in/eYUrh39t #NJEdReport #NJSchools #LauraWaters

A large population increase in Texas over the last several years has increased demand for new K-12 school buildings. As a result, bond authorization approvals for local Independent School Districts (ISDs) have surged 560% over the past 10 years. In general, spreads on Texas bonds are higher than other AAA states due to the lack of a natural buyer base in the State of Texas, given that the state does not impose an income tax on residents. The increased bond supply has caused spreads on PSF bonds to more than double recently, a summertime trend that we have observed during prior years as well. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gANbQEGR