HERMISTON, Ore. - The Oregon Education Investment Board (OEIB) is asking for public input on the topic of school funding in a series of community forums this month. The first is this evening in Hermiston.
The board's Education Funding Team has already drafted some recommendations to Gov. Kitzhaber, and Hermiston high school teacher John Larson says he will comment on several of them. Larson says he does not like the idea of compensating school districts with a single block-grant amount for special education instead of an amount per student. He is also concerned that the board itself is costing the state money.
"I'll talk about some of the things that I've experienced with my students, and why that funding needs to be funneled to the classroom, not to some agency that's going to try and oversee the outcomes."
The OEIB wants to shift Education Service District (ESD) money to fund new Student Achievement Centers. Larson says ESDs allow small schools to share services such as speech therapy when they cannot afford full-time specialists. He fears that changing the system could be a disservice to students in rural districts such as his.
The OEIB has focused on raising the targets for student performance by asking every school district to draft "Achievement Compacts." However, the board acknowledges that the schools do not have enough money to make the changes needed.
Parent Susan Barrett with the "Save Our Schools" coalition says volunteers from her group have been at every OEIB meeting. Their impression is that the discussions are not getting to the heart of the problems schools are facing, she says.
"They have consultants come out who talk about 'return-on-investment dashboards' and the need for $50 million for new databases, while our kids are in overcrowded classrooms and the staff that is working with students keeps getting cut."
This week, there will also be OEIB forums on Wednesday in Eugene and on Thursday in Portland. Parent and PTA member Scott Overton says he'll attend on Thursday night. He admires some of what the board is doing, but says he also has concerns.
"They're raising the bar, which I think is very appropriate. We want every child to succeed, but there's not a lot of money coming back to make these great changes. And, so far in the compacts, they haven't really included parent voices."
Next week, there are forums in Salem, Medford and Coos Bay, and at the end of the month in Bend.
The Hermiston forum is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Hermiston High School, 600 S. First St., Hermiston. Other forum dates and places are available online at www.oregon.gov.
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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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