a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District

Evie's Board Notes - FEB 2005

Work Session (Wednesday, February 9, 2005)

ONLINE PROGRAMS – We discussed Senate Bill 139, which in part proposes to create a statewide authority to oversee online educational programs (both "cyberschools" and programs providing supplemental online courses). The bill would make the authority a state agency like the Charter School Institute, which can make its own rules. The State Board of Education is unanimously opposed to creating this kind of agency for online programs; we believe CDE should be in charge of overseeing them. We are already in the process of developing special accreditation provisions for them.
CONVERSION OF UNSATISFACTORY SCHOOLS – We discussed House Bill 1216, which revises the process of dealing with schools that are rated Unsatisfactory for 3 years. Rather than requiring them to be converted in independent charter schools, selected by the SBE, the bill has the local district deal with the schools, and it applies the process only to the 10% lowest-performing schools in the district. It provides several different options, similar to those in NCLB, to "remedy" the low-performing schools. The SBE supports having a menu of options, but does not have consensus on whether the district should choose the option or the SBE.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND - The U.S. Department of Education made a monitoring visit last month. They criticized us for a number of things, such as not having a process for monitoring low-performing districts and for not having all ELL (English Language Learners) students take the CSAP. They want us to "beef up" our assessments of paraprofessionals. We clarified that districts are allowed to opt out of NCLB, choosing not to take Title I money. What they relieve themselves of is being officially designated as a district in need of improvement and doing a district improvement plan if they don’t make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), and providing supplemental services or transportation of students to higher-performing schools. They still must have their AYP calculated and reported, and they are required to comply with the Highly Qualified Teacher requirements.

SBE Regular Meeting (Thursday, February 10, 2005)

CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM - We approved amendments to the rules for this program, which allocates money to districts with urgent capital construction needs, based on the legislation passed to settle the Giardino lawsuit. After reviewing the rules passed by the SBE in August, Legislative Legal Services said that some revisions were necessary. One was to remove all references to back-up projects. When the SBE considered this revision last month, I asked if we had a choice about agreeing to it. The back-up projects are necessary in case projects on the approved list cannot be funded because they are contingent on a bond issue election that fails. Vody Herrmann, CDE director of School Finance, said that because I raised the question, she went back to LLS with this concern, and they agreed to restore some language about the back-up projects.
CCHE RESOLUTION – We discussed the request that Rick O’Donnell, the Executive Director of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, made of the SBE the day before, to sign onto a resolution about the importance of. higher education, which CCHE has asked various educational organizations to sign onto. One of the SBE’s concerns about the resolution is that the State Board of Education is not included in the list of key educational organizations mentioned in the resolution. Also, there were a few other amendments that we would like. Therefore, we decided to arrange a meeting with CCHE to discuss our amendments, and we agreed that we will not sign onto it unless the SBE is mentioned in it.

Charter School Appeals (Wednesday, February 9, and Thursday, February 10)

In the case of the Madison Charter High School’s appeal of the denial of their application by the Jefferson County School District, the SBE’s vote was 4 to 4 (Hudak, Middleton, Munn, and Polis – the Democrats – voted to uphold the district’s decision, and DeHoff, Littleton, Orr, and Suckla – the Republicans – voted to remand). Because there was not an affirmative vote to remand, the law requires that the district’s decision to deny the application be upheld.
In the case of the Colorado Arts and Achievement Academy Charter School’s appeal of the denial of their application by the Jefferson County School District, the SBE voted unanimously to uphold the district’s denial of the application.
In the case of the College Preparatory Charter High School’s appeal of the denial of their application by the Jefferson County School District, the SBE voted unanimously to uphold the district’s denial of the application.

UPCOMING EVENTS

February 16, 7:30 a.m. – The SBE is meeting with the Joint House and Senate Education Committees to discuss our report on the SARs (School Accountability Reports).
February 16, 1:30 p.m. – The HR-1 Hub Committee is meeting to discuss NCLB.
February 17, 6 p.m. – I am participating with the Colorado State Accountability Network (CSAN) to put on a Regional Accountability Conference at Littleton Public Schools, 5776 South Crocker Street in Littleton.
February 22, 6 p.m. – I am with CSAN again for another Regional Accountability Conference at Adams 12 Educational Services Center, 1500 East 128 Avenue in Thornton.
February 23, 7:30 a.m. – I am meeting with the Joint House and Senate Education Committees to review NCLB.
March 9, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. SBE Work Session.
March 9, 1:30 p.m. – Charter school appeal hearing of Lotus School for Excellence vs. Aurora Public Schools.
March 9, 3:00 p.m. – Charter school appeal hearing of Centennial Charter School vs. Centennial School District.
March 9, 4:30 p.m. – Charter school 2nd appeal hearing of Mountain Peaks Montessori Charter School vs. Jeffco School District.
March 10, 9 – 12 p.m. SBE Regular Meeting.
March 10, 10 a.m. – Charter school appeal hearing of New Vision Charter School vs. Thompson School District.
March 10, 1:00 p.m. – Zenith Academy of Sciences, Arts and Mathematics vs. Boulder Valley School District.
March 10, 3:00 p.m. – Charter school 2nd appeal hearing of Teddy Roosevelt Academy Charter School vs. Jeffco School District.

HUDAK’S BOARD NOTES – FEBRUARY 2005, PART 2

These are the highlights of what was covered at the State Board of Education’s annual Winter Retreat on February 11 and 12:

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The Board discussed whether Randy DeHoff being hired recently as the Executive Director of the Charter School Institute is a conflict of interest for him as a member of the State Board of Education. Since the Institute is a separate agency from CDE, in most cases it is not. However, he will have to recuse himself from any votes regarding districts having exclusive chartering authority, charter school appeals from districts without exclusive chartering authority, and charter school appeals from districts whose exclusive chartering authority is being challenged. Furthermore, he will have to be excluded from receiving information on lawsuits against the SBE regarding districts’ exclusive chartering authority. Currently, both Boulder Valley School District and Adams County School District 50 (Westminster) have sued the SBE for denying them exclusive chartering authority.

LEGISLATIVE AGENDA

We continued our discussion of key bills that are relevant for us and determined our positions on them or our strategies for dealing with them. One thing we confirmed is that we want our Legislative Liaison, Byron Pendley, to play a strong role advocating for us with the Legislature. The main bills we discussed were as follows:

HB 1216 - School Improvement Action - This is the bill about changing the process of converting Unsatisfactory schools. We agreed that there should be other options for dealing with chronically low-performing schools besides converting them to charter schools. We were not in agreement as to whether the decision about the “remedy” should be made solely by the local district or if the SBE should approve the decision.

HB 1164 - Achievement Exams in High School - This bill originally proposed to substitute the PLAN test for CSAP in 10th grade. It was amended to give districts a choice between these two tests. We agreed that the CSAP is what we prefer, and we hope the bill is killed.

CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP

We discussed how we should define what a “significant achievement gap” is, because we are required by SB 03-254 to define it in rule and design a program for assisting schools with a significant gap. There is a committee of CDE and SBE members working on devising a calculation for this. It is complicated and difficult to determine. There are many gaps to look at, because of all the subgroups and content areas. Gaps among subgroups of students in a school need to be determined differently from gaps among different schools. We decided that the 4 levels of proficiency on CSAP (Advanced, Proficient, Partially Proficient, and Unsatisfactory), which are used in the state accountability systems (SARs and Accreditation), should be used for the determination of a significant gap, rather than the 3 used for calculating Adequate Yearly Progress for No Child Left Behind.

NASBE LEGISLATIVE CONFERENCE

Our travel budget is running low as we near the end of the fiscal year, and there are 6 charter school appeal hearings scheduled during our Board meeting on March 9-10, which were scheduled before we realized that the NASBE (National Association of State Boards of Education) Legislative Conference is March 10-11 in Washington DC. Our leadership committee (the Chair, Vice Chair, Director of Board Relations, and Commissioner) decided not to reschedule the March meeting. Therefore, they decided that it would be fair for two of our members to attend the NASBE Legislative Conference, one Democrat and one Republican. DeHoff and I were the ones who were available and who had NASBE committee meetings to attend. However, DeHoff has since become unavailable, so I will be the only one going. It will be the first SBE meeting that I will miss in the 4 years since I was elected. Arrangements will be made for me to call in on conference call for the charter school appeal hearings.

SBE STRATEGIC PLAN FOR 2005-2006

We reviewed the Strategic Plan we had created two years ago and updated our goals and objectives for the next two years. This is what we drafted (we may refine the wording next month):

Goal #1: Fulfill our role as the state’s educational authority. Objectives: Lead the conversation about the evolution of the public education system; positively and pro-actively impact state and federal legislation; continue and strengthen our partnerships with and leadership of the educational community; and optimize and responsibly exercise our authority.

Goal #2: Maintain commitment to and support of accountability reform and accreditation. Objectives: Develop and advance a plan to close the achievement gap; prioritize, increase, and coordinate resources to support our field services; take leadership in the implementation, connection, and coordination of state standards; and advance the generation and utilization of relevant and objective data about public education.

Goal #3: Take a leadership role in improving the long-term financial stability of education funding. Objectives: Play a constructive role in developing a comprehensive school finance solution; continue our leadership in educating the public about the School Trust Lands; and participate in prioritization and protection of the budget, including libraries.

Goal #4: Improve educator quality, recruitment, retention, and placement. Objectives: Improve quality and accountability of preparation programs; and support professional development that increases student achievement through teacher quality.

Goal #5: Improve choice opportunities for Colorado students. Objectives: Increase access to online programs; increase accountability of online programs through accreditation; and support implementation of principles of accountability for all choice models.