Latest news with #BoardofEducation
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Motion for detention officers' pay raise fails
Lee County Commissioner Samantha Martin's attempt to find funding to raise the pay grade of detention officers fell short Monday at a workshop on the proposed 2025-26 budget. The vote came after Sheriff Brian Estes addressed the board on the needs of the Sheriff's Office to help with the county's growing population. A primary area of concern, he said, is the salaries for detention officers. They are paid less than road deputies but face similar, if not more harmful conditions, Estes said. He asked for two more detention officers, but the positions were not funded. Estes also asked commissioners to consider moving detention officer positions two grades up on the county's pay scale. That would put their salaries one step below those of deputies. It would cost $256,535 to make that move, Estes said. 'That's a move that will take the department in the right direction,' he said. 'With two pay grades, it would help to move people to different divisions, putting them one pay grade under deputies.' Martin asked if there was a way to find funds by looking at the budgets for departments. One area she suggested was the money set aside for travel. That pays the expenses for employees and commissioners when they attend educational and certification events. Some are local while others are out of state. 'We might consider tightening up the budget to find the money,' Martin said. She then made a motion to have County Manager Lisa Minter go through the budget again to find available money. Board Chairman Kirk Smith pointed out that the budget is to be adopted at the commissioners' Monday meeting. It must be completed by June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Martin's motion failed by a 5-2 vote. A discussion on increasing compensation pay for the Board of Education members was pulled from the agenda. The commissioners had asked school board member Eric Davidson to bring information regarding compensation pay in the region, but he did not attend Monday's meeting. On June 2, the commissioners voted to approve a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment for school board members, according to an email from county spokeswoman Hailey Hall. They rejected a motion to raise their salaries to the same as the county commissioners. Minter took time to address a post that appeared on Facebook last week questioning tax revenues for the county. 'It has been brought to my attention that School Board member Alan Rummel has made a statement in a Facebook post that the county has been underestimating tax revenues by $10 million annually,' she said reading from a memo issued the commissioners. Rummel, who was at the meeting, stood up and vehemently denied making the allegation. He did post on Facebook last week, but did not make a statement about the revenues. He cautioned residents about incorrect information that may be spread and encouraged them to call school board members to confirm the data. The confusion, Minter said, resulted from comparing revenue from governmental activities to those for the general funds.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Defying Morrisey executive order, WV board of ed directs schools to follow existing vaccines law
A child under 12 years old receives a dose of Pfizer vaccine as part of the COVID-19 immunization campaign on Jan. 18, 2022 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. (Pedro Vilela | Getty Images) West Virginia school officials will instruct public schools to follow the state's existing vaccine laws, going against an existing executive order from Gov. Patrick Morrisey that students be exempted from the requirements based on their religious beliefs about the shots. At its regular meeting Wednesday, the state Board of Education signed off on directing Superintendent Michele Blatt to issue the vaccine mandate guidance to county school boards. West Virginia state law allows only medical exemptions to school-required vaccines, making the policy one of the strongest in the country. Morrisey issued an executive order earlier this year requiring the state to allow religious exemptions. Speaking at the school board meeting, Sean Whelan, Morrisey's general counsel, told the school board there's been a misunderstanding about the basis of Morrisey's executive order. The governor isn't second guessing science or defying a law passed by the Legislature, he said. 'Instead, he is reading that vaccine law together with another law, the Equal Protection for Religion Act of 2023, which prohibits government action that substantially burdens a person's exercise of religion unless it serves a compelling government interest and is the least restrictive means of achieving that interest,' he said. 'That language mirrors the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which federal courts across the country have described as a super statute, displacing the normal operation of otherwise applicable federal laws.' The executive order applies only to the state health officials under Morrisey's purview, and the governor is not ordering the Board of Education or county school boards to do anything, Whelan said. 'But he is asking for your partnership and support in applying the Equal Protection for Religion. Act that has been on the books since 2023 and until he came into office, wasn't applied,' Whelan said. 'That law should be applied as written, and when it is, it requires the religious exemptions to compulsory vaccination that the health department provides.' State lawmakers this year did not pass Senate Bill 460, which would have made the religious exemptions part of state law. Despite the bill not passing, Morrisey's executive order stands. The state Department of Health had approved approximately 300 religious exemptions as of late last month. The difference between the governor's order and state law has led to a fractured response from schools. Blatt issued a memo May 2 to county superintendents recommending that students not be allowed to attend schools next year without the required vaccinations but rescinded the guidance before the end of the day at the governor's request. Some private and religious schools opted not to follow the governor's order. Last month the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia and legal advocacy organization Mountain State Justice filed a lawsuit asking the Kanawha County Circuit to compel the state's Department of Health and Bureau for Public Health to stop complying with the executive order. In a statement Wednesday, Morrisey spokesman Alex Lanfranconi said the school board is 'trampling on the religious liberties of children, ignoring the state's religious freedom law, and trying to make the state an extreme outlier on vaccine policy when there isn't a valid public policy reason to do so. This decision isn't about public health — it's about making West Virginia more like liberal states such as California and New York,' he said. The Department of Health will continue to grant religious exemptions, he said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
School choice policies evolved from supporting Black students to subsidizing middle-class families
Originally developed as a tool to help Black children attend better schools, school voucher programs now serve a different purpose. (Drazen via Getty Images) School voucher programs that allow families to use public funds to pay tuition to attend private schools have become increasingly popular. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia currently operate voucher programs. In addition, 15 states have universal private school choice programs that offer vouchers, education savings accounts and tax credit scholarships. Indiana's new state budget funds universal vouchers in the second year. More states are considering school choice and voucher programs as the Trump administration advocates for widespread adoption. School vouchers have a long history in the U.S. The first vouchers were offered in the 1800s to help children in sparsely populated towns in rural Vermont and Maine attend classes in public and private schools in nearby districts. After the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which justices ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, segregationists used vouchers to avoid school integration. More recently, school voucher programs have been pitched as a tool to provide children from low-income families with quality education options. As a scholar who specializes in education policy, law and politics, I can share how current policies have strayed from efforts to support low-income Black children. Research from education history scholars shows that more recent support for school choice was not anchored in an agenda to privatize public schools but rooted in a mission to support Black students. Over time, as school voucher policies grew in popularity, they evolved into subsidies for middle-class families to send their children to private and parochial schools. School choice policies have also expanded to include education savings account programs and vouchers funded by tax credit donations. Vouchers can redirect money from public schools, many of which are serving Black students. States looking to add or expand school choice and voucher programs have adopted language from civil rights activists pushing for equal access to quality education for all children. For example, they contend that school choice is a civil right all families and students should have as U.S. citizens. But school voucher programs can exclude Black students and harm public schools serving Black students in a host of ways, research shows. This impact of voucher programs disproportionately affects schools in predominantly Black communities with lower tax bases to fund public schools. Since the Brown v. Board ruling, school voucher programs have been linked to racial segregation. These programs were at times used to circumvent integration efforts: They allowed white families to transfer their children out of diverse public schools into private schools. In fact, school voucher programs tend to exacerbate both racial and economic segregation, a trend that continues today. For example, private schools that receive voucher funding are not always required to adopt the same antidiscrimination policies as public schools. School voucher programs can also negatively impact the quality of public schools serving Black students. As some of the best and brightest students leave to attend private or parochial ones, public schools in communities serving Black students often face declining enrollments and reduced resources. In cities such as Macon, Georgia, families say that majority Black schools lack resources because so many families use the state's voucher-style program to attend mostly white private schools. Moreover, the cost of attending a private or parochial school can be so expensive that even with a school voucher, Black families still struggle to afford the cost of sending children to these schools. Research from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., shows that voucher programs in Ohio result in majority Black school systems such as the Cleveland Metropolitan School District losing millions in education funding. This impact of voucher programs disproportionately affects schools in predominantly Black communities across the U.S. with lower tax bases to fund public schools. Another example is the Marion County School District, a South Carolina system where about 77% of students are Black. Marion County is in the heart of the region of the state known as the 'Corridor of Shame,' known for its inadequate funding and its levels of poor student achievement. The 17 counties along the corridor are predominantly minority communities, with high poverty rates and poor public school funding because of the area's low tax base due to a lack of industry. On average, South Carolina school districts spent an estimated US$18,842 per student during the 2024-25 school year. In Marion County, per-student funding was $16,463 during the 2024-2025 school year. By comparison, in Charleston County, the most affluent in the state, per-student funding was more than $26,000. Rather than focus on school choice and voucher programs that take money away from public schools serving Black students, I argue that policymakers should address systemic inequities in education to ensure that all students have access to a quality education. Establishing restrictions on the use of funds and requiring preferences for low-income Black students could help direct school voucher policies back toward their intent. It would also be beneficial to expand and enforce civil rights laws to prevent discrimination against Black students. These measures would help ensure all students, regardless of background, have access to quality education. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
CBS News
11-06-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Bill banning teaching antisemitism vetoed by Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, who says it's actually an attack on educators
Phoenix — Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has vetoed a proposal that would have banned teaching antisemitism at the state's public K-12 schools, universities and colleges and exposed educators who violate the new rules to discipline and lawsuits. The proposal would have prohibited teachers and administrators from teaching or promoting antisemitism or antisemitic actions that create a hostile environment, calling for the genocide of any group or requiring students to advocate for an antisemitic point of view. It also would have barred public schools from using public money to support the teaching of antisemitism. Educators would have personally been responsible for covering the costs of damages in lawsuits for violating the rules. Hobbs, a Democrat, said Tuesday that the bill, also known as the "Antisemitism in Education Act," wasn't about antisemitism but rather about attacking teachers. "It puts an unacceptable level of personal liability in place for our public school, community college, and university educators and staff, opening them up to threats of personally costly lawsuits," she said in a statement. "Additionally, it sets a dangerous precedent that unfairly targets public school teachers while shielding private school staff." Hobbs described antisemitism as a very troubling issue in the U.S., but said students and parents can go through the state's Board of Education to report antisemitism. The measure cleared the Legislature last week on a 33-20 vote by the House, including a few Democrats who crossed party lines to support it. It's one of a few proposals to combat antisemitism across the country. Democrats tried but failed to remove the lawsuit provision and swap out references to antisemitism within the bill with "unlawful discrimination" to reflect other discrimination. The bill's chief sponsor, Republican Rep. Michael Way, of Queen Creek, called the veto "disgraceful," saying on the social media platform X that the legislation was meant to keep "egregious and blatant antisemitic content" out of the classroom. "To suggest that it threatened the speech of most Arizona teachers is disingenuous at best," he added. Opponents said the bill aimed to silence people who want to speak out on the oppression of Palestinians and opened up educators to personal legal liability in lawsuits students could file. Students over the age of 18 and the parents of younger pupils would have been able to file lawsuits over violations that create a hostile education environment, leaving teachers responsible for paying any damages that may be awarded, denying them immunity and prohibiting the state from paying any judgments arising from any such lawsuits. Last week, Lori Shepherd, executive director of Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center, wrote in a letter to Hobbs that if the bill were approved it would threaten teachers' ability to provide students with a full account of the Holocaust. Under the bill, "those discussions could be deemed 'antisemitic' depending on how a single phrase is interpreted, regardless of intent or context," she said. The bill would have created a process for punishing those who break the rules. At K-12 schools, a first-offense violation would lead to a reprimand, a second offense to a suspension of a teacher or principal's certificate and a third offense to a revocation of the certificate. At colleges and universities, violators would have faced a reprimand on first offense, a suspension without pay for a second offense and termination for a third offense. The proposal also would have required colleges and universities to consider violations by employees to be a negative factor when making employment or tenure decisions. Under the proposal, universities and colleges couldn't recognize any student organization that invites a guest speaker who incites antisemitism, encourages its members to engage in antisemitism or calls for the genocide of any group. The Anti-Defamation League reported that the U.S. saw the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in 2024 since the organization started keeping records 46 years earlier, CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO-TV noted. Thirteen organizations, including the Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center, signed and sent a letter on Friday to Gov. Hobbs, asking her to veto the bill, KPHO added. Elsewhere in the U.S., a Louisiana lawmaker is pushing a resolution that asks universities to adopt policies to combat antisemitism on campuses and collect data on antisemitism-related reports and complaints. And a Michigan lawmaker has proposed putting a definition of antisemitism into the state's civil rights law.
11-06-2025
- Politics
Arizona governor vetoes bill banning teaching antisemitism, calls it an attack on educators
PHOENIX -- Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has vetoed a proposal that would have banned teaching antisemitism at the state's public K-12 schools, universities and colleges and exposed educators who violate the new rules to discipline and lawsuits. The proposal would have prohibited teachers and administrators from teaching or promoting antisemitism or antisemitic actions that create a hostile environment, calling for the genocide of any group or requiring students to advocate for an antisemitic point of view. It also would have barred public schools from using public money to support the teaching of antisemitism. Educators would have personally been responsible for covering the costs of damages in lawsuits for violating the rules. Hobbs, a Democrat, said Tuesday that the bill was not about antisemitism but rather about attacking teachers. 'It puts an unacceptable level of personal liability in place for our public school, community college, and university educators and staff, opening them up to threats of personally costly lawsuits," she said in a statement. "Additionally, it sets a dangerous precedent that unfairly targets public school teachers while shielding private school staff." Hobbs described antisemitism as a very troubling issue in the U.S., but said students and parents can go through the state's Board of Education to report antisemitism. The measure cleared the Legislature last week on a 33-20 vote by the House, including a few Democrats who crossed party lines to support it. It's one of a few proposals to combat antisemitism across the country. Democrats tried but failed to remove the lawsuit provision and swap out references to antisemitism within the bill with 'unlawful discrimination' to reflect other discrimination. The bill's chief sponsor, Republican Rep. Michael Way, of Queen Creek, called the veto 'disgraceful,' saying on the social media platform X that the legislation was meant to keep 'egregious and blatant antisemitic content' out of the classroom. 'To suggest that it threatened the speech of most Arizona teachers is disingenuous at best,' he added. Opponents said the bill aimed to silence people who want to speak out on the oppression of Palestinians and opened up educators to personal legal liability in lawsuits students could file. Students over the age of 18 and the parents of younger pupils would have been able to file lawsuits over violations that create a hostile education environment, leaving teachers responsible for paying any damages that may be awarded, denying them immunity and prohibiting the state from paying any judgments arising from any such lawsuits. Last week, Lori Shepherd, executive director of Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center, wrote in a letter to Hobbs that if the bill were approved it would threaten teachers' ability to provide students with a full account of the holocaust. Under the bill, 'those discussions could be deemed 'antisemitic' depending on how a single phrase is interpreted, regardless of intent or context,' she said. The bill would have created a process for punishing those who break the rules. At K-12 schools, a first-offense violation would lead to a reprimand, a second offense to a suspension of a teacher or principal's certificate and a third offense to a revocation of the certificate. At colleges and universities, violators would have faced a reprimand on first offense, a suspension without pay for a second offense and termination for a third offense. The proposal also would have required colleges and universities to consider violations by employees to be a negative factor when making employment or tenure decisions. Under the proposal, universities and colleges couldn't recognize any student organization that invites a guest speaker who incites antisemitism, encourages its members to engage in antisemitism or calls for the genocide of any group. Elsewhere in the U.S., a Louisiana lawmaker is pushing a resolution that asks universities to adopt policies to combat antisemitism on campuses and collect data on antisemitism-related reports and complaints. And a Michigan lawmaker has proposed putting a definition of antisemitism into the state's civil rights law.
