Category: Education

Missouri raises eyebrows with law against Facebook
friendships between teachers, students

Posted by mpoletti – August 3, 2011

Missouri has been in national headlines this week for enacting a new law that aims to put the kibosh on inappropriate teacher-student online relationships. Under the new law, those two groups can no longer be friends or otherwise communicate directly on Facebook.

The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, which takes effect Aug. 28, creates a range of rules for reporting and preventing sexual abuse of students. The crux of the law is that school districts must report any allegations of sexual abuse to state authorities within 24 hours, and they must disclose any suspected or known abuse by past employees to other public school districts that ask.

And then, in Section 162.069, there’s the mandate that’s garnered the nickname “the Facebook law” for this legislation:

By January 1, 2012, every school district must develop a written policy concerning teacher-student communication and employee-student communications. Each policy must include appropriate oral and nonverbal personal communication, which may be combined with sexual harassment policies, and appropriate use of electronic media as described in the act, including social networking sites. Teachers cannot establish, maintain, or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child’s legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian. Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student. Former student is defined as any person who was at one time a student at the school at which the teacher is employed and who is eighteen years of age or less and who has not graduated

This has raised a lot of hackles among teachers in the state. As this MSNBC article notes, one teacher in Joplin wrote on her blog that the new law forces her and other teachers to “trash years worth of work” in communicating with students via social networking “because all teachers are potential criminals.”

A teacher I know in the St. Louis area, who worked with high-schoolers earlier in her career and now teaches at the middle school level in a Catholic grade school, wrote on her Facebook page yesterday: “While I don’t typically friend my current students, am I really such a threat that this has to go into effect? Sorry to any former students because supposedly I should never have contact with you now.”

It’s worth noting that teachers are being encouraged to create public “pages” on Facebook to communicate classroom information and share school photos. I’m interested in seeing how those work out. But if their online presence involves one-on-one communication with students, it will run afoul of the new law.

The new law isn’t without precedent. Another MSNBC piece notes that Louisiana enacted a similar law in 2009.

Documents detailing MSIP 5 changes

Posted by mpoletti – July 28, 2011

Below are documents from the website of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, detailing changes to the Missouri School Improvement Plan, whose fifth iteration is scheduled for a State Board of Education vote next month. The participation of two Northeast Missouri educators — a building principal from Hannibal and the superintendent of the Knox County R-1 district — is detailed in this story.

Key changes that have rankled Missouri educators include more student assessments, decreased standards for physical education and art, and requirements for the percentage of students in a district who go on to earn an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. The review process for achievement in each district will also occur more frequently, moving up to an annual basis from a five-year basis.

All documents are presented here as PDF files; you’ll need a free PDF reader like Adobe Reader to open them.

Proposed rule in Missouri Register providing for MSIP 5 (starts on p. 37)

MSIP 5 Questions and Answers

Performance Standards Crosswalk: MSIP 4 to MSIP 5 — This gives the most details on the differences between versions of the MSIP.

Final numbers for Missouri state education funding

Posted by mpoletti – May 19, 2011

There has been much talk this year about what school districts, particularly in this rural corner of the state, can expect to see in the way of state funding cuts. As of May 6, the speculation ended. The Missouri House of Representatives and Senate finalized their operating bills for fiscal 2012, including K-12 education funding.

Numbers were available for the first time at Wednesday’s Hannibal Board of Education meeting, where a breakdown of finalized state education funding was included in a handy-dandy media packet. Here are the new numbers and how they compare to fiscal 2011 appropriations:

Foundation Formula: $3.004 billion (FY11: $3.004 billion)

Small Schools Program: $15 million (FY11: $15 billion)

Transportation: $107.798 million (FY11: $152.798 billion)

Early Childhood & Special Education: $144.66 million (FY11: $135.21 million)

Career Ladder: 0 (FY11: $37.467 million)

Career Education: $50.069 million (FY11: $50.069 million)

Parents as Teachers: $16.2 million (FY11: $13 million)

School District Trust Fund: $760.6 million (FY11: $760.6 million)

Virtual Education: $390,000 (FY11: $715,000)

These numbers echo what school districts have been told for several months: that foundation formula funding — those dollars distributed through the mechanism that, when fully funded, is designed to equalize education funding throughout the state — will be held flat. That’s good news for districts that were anticipating big cuts and had been advised to use their last shot of stimulus funding to make up the difference; now they’ll use that money as a surplus, essentially.

However, it’s not such good news for education fund watchers who had hoped the legislature would do something to address the formula’s inadequate funding. It’s been widely said that if the formula is not addressed within the next year, school districts will face a “funding cliff,” and rural districts will take it on the chin.

Elsewhere in the funding breakdown, the most noticeable cut is the elimination of Career Ladder funding, which provides financial incentives for teachers to tutor or perform other qualifying activities after school. Most of the districts in Northeast Missouri saw this coming. I’ve heard concerns from some, particularly in Lewis County C-1, that it will cut down on tutoring opportunities and potentially jeopardize the students who depend on those. It’s not clear how schools around the region will address that change.

Transportation funding also took a $45 million hit. That’s bad news for rural districts that have extensive transportation needs.

On the bright side, early childhood and special education funding jumped by more than $9 million, which seems to make sense given the increasingly high profile of special education. And Parents as Teachers got more than $3 million back of the massive cuts it previously had taken. Hannibal’s PAT director had noted earlier in the year, when talk of the new early childhood center first began to circulate, that it might all be for naught if the state zeroed out PAT, so this is very good news for them, although she said at Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting that the program would still love to get the rest of their funding back. (Who wouldn’t?)

So that’s the final word from Jefferson City. Time will tell, of course, how each district puts that money to use — and how each district faces next year’s very real threat of even greater cuts.

School stimulus funds in action

Posted by mpoletti – May 12, 2011

Much has been made of the $187 million in federal stimulus funds — owing to the so-called jobs bill — that public schools in Missouri received or are set to receive this spring, their final shot of money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. School districts initially had been advised to hold on to the funds for next year as the legislature slashed an equal amount of money from next year’s budget, but now that school funding has been held flat for next year instead, districts have a little more breathing room.

Canton R-V Superintendent David Tramel said Monday he would use some of that money, which has left the district with a surplus this year to the tune of more than $400,000, to plug a deficit next year. The Lewis County C-1 School District offered a more immediate take on their stimulus funds in a budget amendment approved Wednesday.

The budget amendment includes $41,450 in extra revenue labeled “Title I ARRA.” Lewis County C-1 receives Title I funding because of the proportion of students who receive free or reduced-price lunches, typically the benchmark for poverty. The Title I stimulus funding they received went primarily to employee salaries that are paid with Title I funding — many schools, for example, have reading teachers who focus on Title I students — allowing the district to reduce the money it had budgeted for those salaries. Other stimulus funds were directed to special education purchases. Meanwhile, the Central Office Purchase Service for Technology Improvement was padded.

Other changes in the budget were dollars moved among funds, with the exception of a district match for a grant awarded to the Family and Consumer Science department.

Seeing the much-ballyhooed jobs bill money in action in one of the most cash-strapped Missouri school districts we cover was an interesting glimpse into what this high-level legislative move means to schools and students on the ground.