Many of us have gone from not paying attention to being stunned by what happens in Topeka. We would love to be able to sit in committee hearings more often, but our jobs and family responsibilities make that impossible; live streaming would shine a light on these meetings where much of the work of the legislature takes place. Our own Devin Wilson is featured in this article. When the bill comes up again this year, please make sure your legislators know you support letting Kansans see their legislature at work. “Wilson became politically aware and began following Statehouse...
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Legislative panel focusing on finding efficiencies, again
While we absolutely support efficiency in our schools, we think the legislature keeps hoping in vain that Kansas school funding issues will be solved by finding efficiencies that have somehow eluded them in the past. We had the governor’s efficiency commission in 2012 and the K-12 student performance and efficiency commission in 2014, neither of which identified major efficiencies that weren’t already being used in Kansas schools. Now the state has hired a consulting firm for $1.6 million to identify efficiencies in Kansas government, including public schools. Despite all of that, the new K-12 student success commission is...
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Leave a Comment Olathe NEA rebuts Rep. Schwab email statements
We have done a few posts on the email Rep. Schwab sent directly to Olathe teachers, which attacked Superintendent Berry and contained multiple misstatements of fact. Olathe NEA has done a great job of rebutting some of his assertions, and we are sharing that piece below. We will add that we think the actions of the Kansas legislature, which over the past couple of sessions have included multiple attacks on teachers and their unions in the form of funding limitations, bad bills and offensive comments, has had much more to do with teacher morale than Dr. Berry’s comments...
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Leave a Comment Ed Berger on saving public schools in Arizona
We face these same issues and same opponents in Kansas. We find it beyond ironic that the very same people who argue for increasing efficiency and consolidation in Kansas public schools also argue for greatly expanding charter schools in Kansas and removing the provisions that have kept charters in our state from having the massive fraud and abuse issues created in other states that have proceeded down that path. From Diane Ravitch’s blog, “Ed Berger says that if schools are judged by who chooses them, the people of Arizona have spoken: 85% of the state’s children are in...
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