OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The seemingly endless stalemate over the capital budget is frustrating school districts and attempts to expand the state's preschool program.
More than $1 billion in the budget is for school construction, including in many rural districts in need of renovations such as the Reardan-Edwall School District. Marcus Morgan, the superintendent there, said no major work has been done to the district's buildings in forty years.
He said after 11 failed attempts to pass bonds, it finally looked like Reardan-Edwall was going to get the funds it needed in the capital budget. But those dollars are locked up, and so Morgan said the district went looking to borrow money on the commercial market to keep its project on track.
"The commercial lenders have looked at our books and say, 'Well, your books look fine, you're in great financial shape, but honestly, I don't know that we can trust the Legislature to ever pass a capital projects budget. And you don't have the capacity to pay it off if they don't. So, it's not you, it's just kind of like the Legislature's kind of crazy,’” Morgan said.
State Republicans refuse to pass a budget until the Legislature finds a fix to the Supreme Court's Hirst decision, which deals with water rights in rural parts of the state. Morgan said a solution to the Hirst decision is critical, but he thinks lawmakers should de-couple the issues.
State Democrats have raised the prospect of a special session to reach a deal in December, after the election is validated.
This was also the first year preschools in Washington state were set to get funding to expand, with the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program's goal to reach every child by 2022. They still have a long way to go.
Katy Warren, deputy director of the Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP, said the state recognizes facilities are a major barrier for reaching children, but the work to get buildings ready can't get started. She said the lack of a capital budget hurts building efforts in rural areas the most.
"If you look at a rural area, they may have some empty storefronts, but those storefronts might have asbestos in them or they might just be completely unsuitable,” Warren said. “And you have to be able to renovate spaces so that you have little, tiny toilets for children and so that you can meet health requirements."
ECEAP largely supports kids from families who might not otherwise be able to afford preschool or child care. Warren said there's a reason the state has decided to invest in early education: these programs get kids school-ready and actually save for the state money down the line.
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It's estimated that nearly half of all schools in the country don't have enough teachers. To help change that, the University of Texas in El Paso offers a residency program to help ensure that first-time teachers succeed.
The "Miner Teacher Residency" gives students in the College of Education an opportunity to work in elementary and middle schools alongside working teachers.
Clifton Tanabe, dean of the UTEP College of Education, was part of a recent national roundtable discussion on ways to solve the teacher shortage, and said the program gives future educators the skills they need to be ready for their first day of class.
"A third grader in a first-year teacher's classroom is only going to get to do third grade once, but that teacher will be able to do the third grade again and again," he explained. "So, we want them ready for that first group of third graders that they take on."
Tanabe added nearly half of the students enrolled in the program are first-generation college students and 70% are bilingual. He adds that mirrors the population of students in the public school system in El Paso, where 90% of the students are Hispanic. Most of the new teachers remain in the area, he said.
Many school districts have been forced to leave positions open, or fill them with teachers who are not fully certified. Some rural Texas districts have gone to a four-day school week. And some teachers are leaving the profession, citing increased workloads, low pay and concerns about safety.
According to Tanabe, teacher retention is directly related to being successful in the first two years on the job - and the UT program addresses this.
"So, folks who graduate from our residency model in their first and second years in teaching are set up with an instructional coach who's from the university, from the College of Education, to work with them on individualized instructional improvement," he continued.
The residency program is in its sixth year. It currently has 62 teachers working in five different school districts in the El Paso area.
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Ohio's Black students are more likely to face excessively harsh discipline practices such as expulsion and suspension, according to a recently released report from the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio.
The data show out-of-school suspensions and expulsions rose in every grade level from kindergarten through twelfth grade in the 2022-23 school year, compared with the previous academic year.
John Standford, state director for the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio, said economically disadvantaged students comprised 83% of all out-of-school suspensions.
"School districts really have to pay closer attention to the data and really screen the data, review the data, on a regular basis to really begin to address the issues of inequities," Standford urged.
Last year saw 174,000 cases of total suspension or expulsion among low-income students compared to 35,000 cases among students who do not qualify as economically disadvantaged. According to the report, Black females in Ohio were six times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than their white female peers. Black males were also more than four times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white male peers.
Kim Eckhart, research manager for the fund, said she understands the difficulties teachers face. She hopes the report encourages districts across the state to support schools with the resources and time needed to address behavioral problems restoratively.
"We need schools to be supporting teachers with additional time and space," Eckhart contended. "So that there is capacity to address these things, rather than just kicking the student out of the class, kicking them out of the school."
School discipline practices are also linked to Ohio's alarmingly high chronic absenteeism rates. According to the report, missing as little as two days of school per month can lead to chronic absence. More than 26% of Ohio students -- more than 400,000 children -- were chronically absent from school in the 2022-2023 school year, up by nearly half from the 2018-19 school year.
Disclosure: The Children's Defense Fund of Ohio/KIDS COUNT contributes to our fund for reporting on Children's Issues, Education, Health Issues, and Hunger/Food/Nutrition. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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Idaho lawmakers are considering a measure that would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses.
Critics say it could keep potential students from attending school in the state. Senate Bill 1357 would prohibit the use of state funds for DEI, and DEI offices from operating at colleges and universities.
Nick Koenig is a PhD student in geography at the University of Idaho.
"These positions that are trying to be taken away from this bill are specifically to foster student success on campus," said Koenig, "not just for students from marginalized groups but also just the totality of the campus community."
Lawmakers supporting the bill say eliminating DEI programs would save the state more than $3 million.
But Koenig said the consequences of eliminating these positions will have ripple effects. He said he spoke with the LGBTQ office at the University of Idaho before deciding to attend.
"The person I originally chatted with before coming to this university," said Koenig, "if her position was just not there, I would not have come to this university at all."
Koenig said the legislation would also make it hard to recruit people to colleges and universities in Idaho.
"People go to school say that they can see themselves as COOs or as teachers or as sociologists or as geographers, like in my case," said Koenig, "and if I saw that they're actively trying to remove me as a queer person from the state then, yeah, why would I want to spend four years in a state that wants to remove me as a person?"
Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.
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