Latest news with #PublicSchoolsWeek
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lima will open doors for 'Public Schools Week'
Mar. 20—LIMA — Lima schools Superintendent Jill Ackerman likes to say the district has something to offer for every student. She plans to open the doors to Lima Senior High School on Tuesday to show the public just how much the district has to offer now: from the high school's 12 career technical programs, student clubs and dual-credit classes to its orchestra program and classes for disabled students. "You want to see where your tax dollars are going?" Ackerman said. "We owe that to our community. Let us show you what we're doing." Lima schools will begin its annual Public Schools Week tradition with a 15-minute pep rally at the high school. The Lima Senior Marching Pride, Spartan Cheerleaders, Mayor Sharetta Smith and other speakers will welcome visitors, who are invited to tour the high school's career tech labs, view student artwork, make buttons in the graphics classroom or play in the kid zone until 7 p.m. "There are so many ways we are reaching every child," Ackerman said. "So many things we do to help the most vulnerable and most high-achieving students, and all those in between. So many ways we embrace students and their families regardless of their circumstances." Lima schools started Public Schools Week a decade ago to promote public schools amid the expansion of private school vouchers. Lawmakers initially created the publicly funded scholarships so students in low-performing Cleveland schools could afford to attend private schools. The scholarships are now available to any Ohio child, regardless of where they live or how much their parents earn. Ohio spent nearly $1 billion last school year on the scholarships, which now award as much as $6,166 per year for children in kindergarten through eighth grade and $8,408 for high school students. Families whose household earnings are at or below 450% of federal poverty level, or $144,675 for a family of four, are eligible for the full scholarship, while scholarships for the highest-earning families are capped at $616 per child in grades K-8 and $840 per child in high school. The expansion resulted in nearly 69,000 new scholarships awarded last school year. The majority of those scholarships went to students who already attended private schools, as private school enrollment grew be fewer than 3,000 students, according to an analysis of state data by Policy Matters Ohio, which opposes vouchers. Only 28 of the nearly 600 Lima students who used vouchers this year come from low-income families, Ackerman said during a press conference Thursday. The majority of those students "have never set foot in our district" and "spent their entire school careers in a private school," Ackerman said. "They have been paying private tuition without complaint but now take voucher money." Voucher opponents say private schools are not held to the same financial, academic and licensure standards as public schools, which are audited and graded for student performance. Supporters say accountability comes from parents, who can remove their children — and the child's scholarship — from a private school at any time if the school does not meet expectations. Lima schools joined a lawsuit challenging the legality of the voucher program, which opponents allege violates the Ohio constitution and diverts funding from public schools. The lawsuit is pending in Franklin County Common Pleas Court but is expected to proceed to trial this year. Any disruption to state or federal funding could jeopardize operations for high-poverty school districts like Lima schools: Only 11% of the district's per pupil spending comes from property taxes, amounting to $2,570 per student, according to the Cupp-Patterson report. The district is eliminating $500,000 from its budget due to the expiration of federal pandemic aid, though most of those reductions are coming through attrition, Ackerman said. The future of school funding is in flux as lawmakers draft the state's operating budget, which will determine funding for public schools and private school vouchers for the next two years, and as President Donald Trump issued an executive order Thursday to disband the federal Department of Education and return education authority to the states. Ackerman said she remains hopeful the order will direct federal funding to the states, rather than cut funding from schools. PUBLIC SCHOOLS WEEK SCHEDULE Lima schools will host a pep rally ahead of its annual district-wide open house next Tuesday. The pep rally will begin at 5 p.m. in the Lima Senior High School gymnasium, 1 Spartan Way, followed by the open house from 5:15 to 7 p.m. This year's open house will include: Free dinner prepared by the Spartan Inn culinary students—barbecue chicken, baked beans and potato salad Appearance by the Easter bunny, Spartan Ride, the Spartan basketball teams and cheerleaders Free books for the first 120 families in the library Student performances in the Joe Henderson Auditorium Student artwork Kid Zone with games, activities and face painting Meet and greet with the school resource officers and K-9s Tours of the career tech labs and student recording studio Health checks by patient care students Crafts in the graphics classroom Featured Local Savings
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Don't let us fade away': Advocates rally for public schools
The rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol was a chance for speakers to share their experiences of going to referendum. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner. Prentice School District, a rural district in the northern part of Wisconsin, will ask voters on April 1 to raise their property taxes and provide the district $3.5 million over the next four years for operational costs. It's one of the smaller requests among the over 80 ballot measures — totaling $1.6 billion in requests — that will go before voters across the state next month. Denae Walcisak, a member of a team campaigning to pass the referendum, drove three and a half hours from the Northwoods to attend a Friday rally at the Capitol organized by the Wisconsin Public Education Network (WPEN). She spoke about her district's third time trying for a yes and described the lengths community members are going to for students in her district. Her dad, who is a school board member, put off knee surgery for almost a year, Walcisak said, while he donated his time and money to fill in as a school bus driver in the rural district and to transport students to field trips and games. 'Teacher organizes fundraisers for the art club to pay for basic supplies… Our band teacher also teaches sixth grade reading. We have a part-time elementary gym teacher who is 82 years young. Our tech ed teacher bought a welding machine for his students with his own money… My son needs speech therapy. The school has tried twice to hire this year, but who wants to take a job at a school whose future is uncertain?' Walcisak said. Even with the funding from the referendum, Walcisak said the district will continue to just scrape by. She called for more funding from the state. 'The lack of funding is affecting our whole community and our way of life. I ask you from the people of Prentice, please don't let us fade away,' she said. The rally marked the end of Public Schools Week, an annual recognition of Wisconsin's public schools and a time advocates use to call for supporting and investing. Gov. Tony Evers issued a declaration on Monday reminding Wisconsinites that public education is a right and that public schools need support and investment from elected officials. The rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol was a chance for speakers to share their experiences of going to referendum — the stress of repeatedly asking for them and consequences of failure — and to call for the state to make greater investments in schools. WPEN Executive Director Heather DuBois Bourenane said the use of school referendums is an 'overwhelming,' 'expensive' and 'incredibly disequalizing' way of funding schools. A scroll with the names of every school district that has gone to referendum since the last state budget was rolled out and suspended from the third floor of the building, reaching down to the ground floor. 'Not all of these referenda passed… Some of them had to go more than once, and still didn't pass. Some of them had to go again and again and keep asking for less,' DuBois Bourenane said. 'When we fund our schools like this, our gaps get wider and wider.' State Superintendent Jill Underly, who is running for a second term in office against school choice advocate Brittany Kinser, said the underfunding of Wisconsin's schools has reached a 'critical point.' 'With the next state biennial budget, we have a chance — a real chance — to finally catch your school districts up and to give them what they need to thrive,' Underly said. The pleas from rallygoers come as the budget writing process picks up in the state Capitol. Evers introduced a state budget proposal last month that would invest an additional $3 billion in K-12 education, and Republican lawmakers, who have said Evers' proposal costs too much and therefore isn't serious, are preparing to write their own version. Jeff Pressley and Joni Anderson, members of the Adams-Friendship School Board, and Tom Wermuth, the district's school administrator, spoke to the repetitive and divisive nature of the school referendum process. 'We're on the treadmill for referendum endlessly. We live literally paycheck to paycheck or referendum to referendum,' Pressley said, adding that the state's funding formula is the problem with school funding. The state's complex school funding formula takes into account a combination of state, federal, and local aid. Of the funding, local property taxes and state aid are the two largest sources of revenue for schools, but school districts are restricted in how much they can bring in by state revenue limits. Revenue limits were adjusted for inflation until 2010 and since then, lawmakers have only sometimes provided increases. Currently, school districts receive a $325 increase annually in their per pupil revenue limits. Referendums are a way for districts to exceed their revenue limits, and schools have begun relying on them increasingly to meet costs. Last year, a record number of school districts went to referendum. 'The funding formula in the state of Wisconsin worked significantly better from 1993 to 2010. During that time period, school districts were provided inflationary increases to the revenue limit…' Wermuth said. 'Right now, we're operating on a $3 million a year referendum. We're in the second year of a four-year, non-recurring referendum… even with our referendum, we're about $1.2 million dollars behind inflation. Like most districts, we can't get off that treadmill.' Pressley said lawmakers have made school boards and districts the 'villain' by forcing districts to have to go to voters to meet costs. 'We have a lot of retired people on fixed incomes. Almost 50% of our funding for our schools comes from local property taxes. So, who's the bad guy? It's not the people in this building, it's the people at the school district because you raised our taxes,' Pressley said. Wermuth said he practically isn't an educational leader anymore. 'I am a financial expert. I study spreadsheets and cannot get off selling referendums to the public,' Wermuth said. He added that the process is 'incredibly divisive' and that 'at some point in time, the tolerance is just not going to be. It's not going to exist, regardless of what we try to do.' Freshman Rep. Angelina Cruz (D-Racine) said that the problems facing school districts aren't 'unsolvable.' She said the state's estimated $4 billion budget surplus could be used to help fund school districts, that the state could tax its wealthier residents to help afford costs and stop funding private school vouchers at the expense of public schools. She said that the recent budget proposal from Gov. Tony Evers was a good starting point as it includes raising the special education reimbursement to 60%, increasing per-pupil revenue and investing in student mental health services, universal free school meals and literacy education. Cruz called on people to continue to speak up for better school investments — even as Republican lawmakers are likely to throw out all of Evers' proposals. 'There is an appetite to fully fund our schools, and when the proposal comes back to not do that, you need to continue to show up, and use your voices to advocate for our kids,' Cruz said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Don't let us fade away': Advocates rally for public schools
The rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol was a chance for speakers to share their experiences of going to referendum. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner. Prentice School District, a rural district in the northern part of Wisconsin, will ask voters on April 1 to raise their property taxes and provide the district $3.5 million over the next four years for operational costs. It's one of the smaller requests among the over 80 ballot measures — totaling $1.6 billion in requests — that will go before voters across the state next month. Denae Walcisak, a member of a team campaigning to pass the referendum, drove three and a half hours from the Northwoods to attend a Friday rally at the Capitol organized by the Wisconsin Public Education Network (WPEN). She spoke about her district's third time trying for a yes and described the lengths community members are going to for students in her district. Her dad, who is a school board member, put off knee surgery for almost a year, Walcisak said, while he donated his time and money to fill in as a school bus driver in the rural district and to transport students to field trips and games. 'Teacher organizes fundraisers for the art club to pay for basic supplies… Our band teacher also teaches sixth grade reading. We have a part-time elementary gym teacher who is 82 years young. Our tech ed teacher bought a welding machine for his students with his own money… My son needs speech therapy. The school has tried twice to hire this year, but who wants to take a job at a school whose future is uncertain?' Walcisak said. Even with the funding from the referendum, Walcisak said the district will continue to just scrape by. She called for more funding from the state. 'The lack of funding is affecting our whole community and our way of life. I ask you from the people of Prentice, please don't let us fade away,' she said. The rally marked the end of Public Schools Week, an annual recognition of Wisconsin's public schools and a time advocates use to call for supporting and investing. Gov. Tony Evers issued a declaration on Monday reminding Wisconsinites that public education is a right and that public schools need support and investment from elected officials. The rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol was a chance for speakers to share their experiences of going to referendum — the stress of repeatedly asking for them and consequences of failure — and to call for the state to make greater investments in schools. WPEN Executive Director Heather DuBois Bourenane said the use of school referendums is an 'overwhelming,' 'expensive' and 'incredibly disequalizing' way of funding schools. A scroll with the names of every school district that has gone to referendum since the last state budget was rolled out and suspended from the third floor of the building, reaching down to the ground floor. 'Not all of these referenda passed… Some of them had to go more than once, and still didn't pass. Some of them had to go again and again and keep asking for less,' DuBois Bourenane said. 'When we fund our schools like this, our gaps get wider and wider.' State Superintendent Jill Underly, who is running for a second term in office against school choice advocate Brittany Kinser, said the underfunding of Wisconsin's schools has reached a 'critical point.' 'With the next state biennial budget, we have a chance — a real chance — to finally catch your school districts up and to give them what they need to thrive,' Underly said. The pleas from rallygoers come as the budget writing process picks up in the state Capitol. Evers introduced a state budget proposal last month that would invest an additional $3 billion in K-12 education, and Republican lawmakers, who have said Evers' proposal costs too much and therefore isn't serious, are preparing to write their own version. Jeff Pressley and Joni Anderson, members of the Adams-Friendship School Board, and Tom Wermuth, the district's school administrator, spoke to the repetitive and divisive nature of the school referendum process. 'We're on the treadmill for referendum endlessly. We live literally paycheck to paycheck or referendum to referendum,' Pressley said, adding that the state's funding formula is the problem with school funding. The state's complex school funding formula takes into account a combination of state, federal, and local aid. Of the funding, local property taxes and state aid are the two largest sources of revenue for schools, but school districts are restricted in how much they can bring in by state revenue limits. Revenue limits were adjusted for inflation until 2010 and since then, lawmakers have only sometimes provided increases. Currently, school districts receive a $325 increase annually in their per pupil revenue limits. Referendums are a way for districts to exceed their revenue limits, and schools have begun relying on them increasingly to meet costs. Last year, a record number of school districts went to referendum. 'The funding formula in the state of Wisconsin worked significantly better from 1993 to 2010. During that time period, school districts were provided inflationary increases to the revenue limit…' Wermuth said. 'Right now, we're operating on a $3 million a year referendum. We're in the second year of a four-year, non-recurring referendum… even with our referendum, we're about $1.2 million dollars behind inflation. Like most districts, we can't get off that treadmill.' Pressley said lawmakers have made school boards and districts the 'villain' by forcing districts to have to go to voters to meet costs. 'We have a lot of retired people on fixed incomes. Almost 50% of our funding for our schools comes from local property taxes. So, who's the bad guy? It's not the people in this building, it's the people at the school district because you raised our taxes,' Pressley said. Wermuth said he practically isn't an educational leader anymore. 'I am a financial expert. I study spreadsheets and cannot get off selling referendums to the public,' Wermuth said. He added that the process is 'incredibly divisive' and that 'at some point in time, the tolerance is just not going to be. It's not going to exist, regardless of what we try to do.' Freshman Rep. Angelina Cruz (D-Racine) said that the problems facing school districts aren't 'unsolvable.' She said the state's estimated $4 billion budget surplus could be used to help fund school districts, that the state could tax its wealthier residents to help afford costs and stop funding private school vouchers at the expense of public schools. She said that the recent budget proposal from Gov. Tony Evers was a good starting point as it includes raising the special education reimbursement to 60%, increasing per-pupil revenue and investing in student mental health services, universal free school meals and literacy education. Cruz called on people to continue to speak up for better school investments — even as Republican lawmakers are likely to throw out all of Evers' proposals. 'There is an appetite to fully fund our schools, and when the proposal comes back to not do that, you need to continue to show up, and use your voices to advocate for our kids,' Cruz said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Lafayette Parish School System celebrates Public Schools Week with events across parish
The Lafayette Parish School System celebrates educators, students and advocates during Public Schools Week Feb. 24 to 28. From having the No. 1 school in Louisiana with Early College Academy to surpassing pre-pandemic performance in math and reading to future growth of the schools, LPSS said it has a lot to celebrate this school year. 11 a.m. Monday: Alice Boucher PreK Lunch and Learn 1 p.m. Monday: Evangeline Elementary Black History Month Celebration 8:15 a.m. Tuesday: Duson Elementary Black History Month Program 3 p.m. Tuesday: Lafayette Middle Black History Legacy Walk 3:30 p.m. Tuesday: Cafe Meeting - Evangeline Elementary School 8 a.m. Wednesday: Lafayette High School Black History Month Program 9 a.m. Wednesday: Live Oak Elementary - Black History Month Program(K-2nd) 1 p.m. Wednesday: Live Oak Elementary - Black History Month Program(3-5) 1:30 p.m. Wednesday: JW Faulk Musical/Dance Performances 2 p.m. Wednesday: Scott Middle World Language Immersion Academy Black History Program 8:30 a.m. Thursday: Green T. Lindon Black History Month Gallery 1 p.m. Thursday: Paul Breaux Middle School Program commemorating African Americans and Labor 8 a.m. Friday: Paul Breaux Middle students will hang all the art pieces they painted through an art grant. They have worked for at least two weeks to complete the project. 8:30 am. Friday: Yee-Haw! Prairie Elementary's 3rd Grade Musical 11 a.m. Friday: Author, Ernest Hill Event at Northside High 1 p.m. Friday: Baranco Black History Month Program 2 p.m. Friday: J Wallace James Mardi Gras Parade 2 p.m. Friday: Alice Boucher Mardi Gras Parade This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Lafayette Parish School System celebrates Public Schools Week
