Prepared Text for Board Meeting –
Marc A. Schare
David, I have three legislative
updates this evening.
The first has the
potential to be a whopper. In the lame duck session of 2006, the general
assembly passed SB311 which contained the Ohio Core provision. That bill also
contained language that mandated the State Board of Education to adopt a plan
that enables students to earn high school credit based on a demonstration of
subject area competency, instead of or in combination with hours of classroom
instruction. The State Board will adapt
the plan by March 31 and our district must phase in provisions starting in the
next school year – 2009-2010.
Not to be overly dramatic,
but this legislation could have a huge programmatic impact. If students can
start earning credit by testing out of required courses, what would that do to
our program? Do we add more electives? Do we downsize the high schools? What
would happen to the cocurricular program if kids started graduating early? Do
we offer a different model for earning high school credit, one based on service
or one based on the Linworth walkabout model. As we
think about high school renewal, the potential impacts of SB311 must be
considered. I will be attending a session of the State Board of Education that
will be held on February 11. At that meeting, the design team responsible for
the state regulations will be having a “conversation” to solicit ideas about
what the regulations should look like. In discussions with various people
inside and outside of the district, this legislation has been completely off
the radar screen of administrators, board members and the education community.
Time is short to be able to influence what may turn out to be, according to
OSBA, a major
change in K-12 education delivery.
Along the same lines of
unhelpful state mandates, I confirmed with OSBA that we are not the only school
district that is concerned that we may have to make painful cuts to our gifted
services program to comply with ODE’s ill advised,
one size fits all mandate. Once again, as we embark on our quest to solicit
money from the community, it is my hope that we identify these situations, lest
someone believe that their child is no longer receiving gifted services because
of something we did. Their anger should be directed at the State Board of
Education and while our current representative was not on that board when these
regulations were adopted, it would appropriate to offer her name and number to
parents who might erroneously believe that we are cutting services because of
anything that has to do with the levy.
My final legislative
update is more of an FYI. This board made the common sense decision to wait
until after the Governor speaks on Wednesday to make a determination of a
millage amount. On Friday, Senate President Bill Harris weighed in with this:
“In think there’s things that can be tweaked. But in my humble
opinion, I don’t want us to develop a new way of funding”
Since any real change to
the funding formula is likely to be negative for