Category: Education

Gifted Education Hearings Loom In Pa.

Gifted Education Hearings Loom In Pa.— Members of the House voted unanimously, last week, in support of a resolution that calls for a study of gifted education in school districts throughout Pennsylvania, reports State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129)

House Resolution 139 tasks the nonpartisan Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to conduct a comprehensive study of the process for identifying children as gifted; the process for developing and implementing gifted individualized education plans; the programs and services provided to gifted students; the cost of providing such programs and services; and a demographic breakdown of the children who benefit from such programs and services. The resolution directs the committee to report its findings to the House Education Committee this fall.

In addition to House action on gifted education, the speaker of the House this week appointed four House members to the new Special Education Funding Commission, formed as a result of Act 3 of 2013. The speaker appointed Representative Bernie O’Neill (R-Bucks County), Representative Michael Peifer (R-Monroe/Pike/Wayne counties), Representative Mike Sturla (D-Lancaster), and Representative Mark Longietti (D-Mercer County). Additional members of the commission include the majority and minority chairmen of the House and Senate Education committees, four members of the Senate, the secretaries of Education and Budget, and the deputy secretary for elementary and special education.

The commission will hold public hearings this summer to work to develop a new special education funding formula. It has until this fall to recommend a new funding formula to more effectively pay for special education throughout the state.

 

Gifted Education Hearings Loom In Pa.

Common Core Makes Your Child But A Number

The children of Pennsylvania have been assigned unique, irremovable numbers that will track them from pre-k through college and career, activist and educational expert Dr. Peg Luksik told a packed house at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Newtown Square.

The assigning was part of a Common Core plan adopted by the state Board of Education in July 2010. Every teacher has also been assigned a number she said.

“They can track down who’s doing and who’s not. There are repercussions for those that don’t,” she said.

Common Core is the attempt to impose a national education standard, usurping state authority and local control. Mrs. Luksik said that despite insistent claims to the contrary by its proponents it is a federal mandate — she noted the distribution of federal money is tied to its approval — and mandates a curriculum in the fields of English, math, biology, history and civics.

She said the mandates will include teaching population control ethics and unquestioning acceptance of man-made global warming.

“If you could pull your child out of public school, do it now,” she said. “If you are a teacher stay as long as you can in the system and fight it out.”

But she pointedly noted that those in private schools and charter schools and even homeschoolers will be eventually ensnared as well, since the GEDs required by the homeschooled
will be be based on Common Core as will school accreditation and teacher
certification.

She mocked how the new policy was being marketed noting the way its proponents used the word rigorous.

“When you use rigorous over and over again, it’s not accidental.”

She said the program was pushed by corporate titans such as Bill Gates and was designed to create workers rather than thinkers.

She said, however, this rather Orwellian concept can be defeated with a simple resolution passed by the state legislature, and hearings by skeptical committees have already started.

Mrs. Luksik’s talk was sponsored by the Delaware County Patriots. Joanne Yurchak of the group began the night describing how she attended one of those state committee hearings. She said that the Democrats seemed even more hostile to the plan than the conservative Republicans.

 

Common Core Makes Your Child But A Number

Common Core Makes Your Child But A Number

Sneaky New Fed School Policy Topic

Sneaky New Fed School Policy Topic — The Common Core State Standards Initiative, which is an attempt to  nationally unify state educational standards, will be the subject of a May 20 talk by Pennsylvania educational activist Dr. Peg Luksik.

Concerns that she will address include the transfer of the authority that state governments and local school districts have over education to the federal government.

The event will be held at The Knights of Columbus Mater Dei Hall, 327 N. Newtown Street Road (Route 252), Newtown Square, 19073. It starts at 7 p.m. and is sponsored by The Delaware County Patriots.

Call 610-572-3442 for  information or questions.

 

Sneaky New Fed School Policy Topic

Hearing On Bullying Bill in Pa. House

Hearing On Bullying Bill — The House Education Committee, last week, recently held a hearing on legislation aimed at protecting students who are the targets of school bullies reports State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129).

House Bill 156, the Pennsylvania Safe Schools (PASS) Act, would require all teachers to undergo a bullying prevention training program every five years and also require acts of bullying be reported to the state.

Pennsylvania is currently ranked by the U.S. Department of Education as having one of the most insufficient anti-bullying laws in the nation.

 

Hearing On Bullying Bill

House Bill Gives Vets In-State Tuition

House Bill Gives Vets In-State Tuition — The State House sent to the Senate last week legislation to grant in-state tuition rates to eligible veterans, their spouses and dependents at Pennsylvania’s public institutions of higher learning, says State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129).

House Bill 472 would apply in-state tuition rates of Pennsylvania’s state-owned and state-related universities and community colleges, such as Kutztown University, to eligible veterans seeking to study in Pennsylvania.

Currently, a full-time semester at a state-owned university averages $4,310 for Pennsylvania residents, while an out-of-state veteran would pay $9,223 for tuition at the same university.

The bill aims to level the playing field for veterans who, because of the nature of military service, may not have residency status in the Commonwealth.

House Bill Gives Vets In-State Tuition

House Passes Special Ed Bill

House Passes Special Ed Bill — The Pennsylvania House voted unanimously last week in support of legislation to address the state’s distribution of special education funding, reports State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129)

House Bill 2 would create a 15-member legislative commission on special education funding to develop a new formula for distributing any increases in funding over the levels distributed in the 2010-11 school year.

The commission would be expected to develop a more effective funding formula that must meet certain requirements, including: establishing three cost categories for students receiving special education services, ranging from least intensive to most intensive; obtaining a student count for each school district averaged for the three most recent school years to correspond to each cost category; assigning a weight to each category of disability; and developing a fair system for distributing increases among school districts to determine the amount of funding that each school will receive under the new formula.

In addition, the commission would be required to issue a report of its findings no later than Sept. 30.

Currently, state funding for special education is distributed based on an estimate that special education students make up 16 percent of the overall student population in each school district.

House Bill 2 now goes to the Senate for consideration.

 

House Passes Special Ed Bill

Pennsylvania House Scholarship Applications

Pennsylvania House Scholarship Applications  — High school seniors can now apply for a Pennsylvania House of Representatives Scholarship to help cover the costs of higher education, says state Rep. Jim Cox (R-129)

Each year, two students preparing for post-secondary education are awarded four-year scholarships. The program is privately funded by individual and corporate donors. No tax or other public funds are used.

The program is open to graduating high school seniors who are Pennsylvania residents with plans to attend a Pennsylvania college, university or career school as a full-time student. Students must have attained a minimum 3.0 cumulative grade point average in high school in order to be eligible for the scholarship. A student’s commitment to community, leadership qualities, extracurricular activities and financial need are also taken into consideration.

The scholarship program is administered through the Foundation for Enhancing Communities.

To apply, students can find at application at Cox’s  website   under the Student and Teacher Resources tab. The application deadline is March 1.

Scholarships are awarded through an independent panel of judges chosen by the foundation.

 

Pennsylvania House Scholarship Applications

Pennsylvania House Scholarship Applications

Why PA Has School Strikes

Taxpayer activist Bob Guzzardi informs us that Mike Vereb, member of Republican State House leadership and the representative for the 150th District, has taken $16,500 since 2008 from PSEA-PACE, which is the public school teachers’ union.

Guzzardi notes that members of House Republican Leadership with exception of Sandra Major (R-111) caucus chairwoman have received substantial payments from PSEA-PACE. For more information  visit  https://www.campaignfinanceonline.state.pa.us/pages/CFReportSearch.aspx

And this is why commonsense educational and tax reform never seems to prevail in Pennsylvania.

Why PA Has School Strikes

Why PA Has School Strikes

The Anti-Education Prevailing Wage

The Delaware County Daily Times (Pa.) published this letter by Lisa Esler in response to an article regarding the rejection of a resolution by the Penn Delco School Board to ask the state legislature to end the mandate requiring school districts to pay a “prevailing wage” for public works of greater than $25,000. This means that to bid on these jobs contractors must pay a wage that “prevails” in each reason. This “prevailing wage” is determined by the state’s Department of Labor and Industry.

One should also note that contractors are also required by federal law to pay “prevailing wage” on all projects which receive in excess of $2,000 of federal funding.

It is well understood that this significantly inflates the cost of public works and the burden on the taxpayer.

And we wonder why our lives are getting harder while the lives of the politically connected are getting easier.

Lisa is a member of the Penn Delco School Board and the Delaware County Patriots.

Here is her letter:

This is in response to the article concerning the prevailing wage resolution which was voted down 6-2 by the Penn Delco School Board.

Prevailing wage inflates the cost of school construction projects costing the taxpayers from 10 to 30 percent for these projects. This money would be better used to help in the education of our children. The school board’s responsibility is to represent the children and the taxpayer, not to pay inflated prices for construction or represent any group of constituents directly.

Many of these same construction companies would do the work for less but are bound by this law (unfunded mandate) which was created by bureaucrats in Harrisburg who continue to feed off of union contributions for their elections. Other school boards in the state have passed the same or similar resolutions, including two in Chester County with a 9-0 vote.

The Pennsylvania School Board Association, which most school boards are members of, including Penn Delco, has said that prevailing wage is the number one unfunded mandate from Harrisburg and provided a similar resolution encouraging school districts to pass.

Legislation from Harrisburg ties the hands of school boards from making financial decisions that would benefit those they represent and legislators continue to put their own personal gain above their constituents. This is seen not only with the prevailing wage law but their unwillingness to end teacher strikes in Pennsylvania as well as deal with the pension crisis which they were well aware of years ago and were not willing to deal with until it hit “crisis status.”

The question remains, who does Harrisburg really represent if common-sense legislation is ignored? And what responsibly does the school board have in shedding light on important legislation that benefits both children and taxpayers?

Lisa Esler

Aston

Anti-Education Prevailing Wage

Anti-Education Prevailing Wage