Are we nervous yet?

I don’t know about you, but I am getting very nervous when I look around and see how the world is changing and morphing at warp speed.  In the middle of last school year, I saw the soon-to-be elected President of Turkey holding up a Coby android tablet device and saying that in his 4 year tenure ALL 16 million students in Turkey would have such.  Then last spring I saw the news reports out of South Korea stating two things:

• Seoul would have a citywide free WiFi system that was robust and could sufficiently handle the bandwidth issues
• South Korea is planning to have ALL of its students on fully digital textbooks by 2014-15.  These textbooks are not just “flat” versions like our hardcopy texts – but rather an enriched version that looks much more like Wikipedia, CK12 Flex Books, or the Houghton Mifflin FUSE products.

Meanwhile, we really haven’t adjusted much in California, other than our reducing commitment / investment in public education.  All of that was not too bad, until earlier this month when I came across another news article that talked about India where ¾ of the population makes less than $2 per day.  There are efforts to make sure ALL students have an iPad-type device to assist them with high levels of learning.  Impossible!  Yet the device has been developed, has a name, and sells for less than $50.  If all Indian children and students have one of these devices – do you think it will affect us, our competitiveness, our global stature, or our lives?

Triggers and December/January

The pressing question that many of us in public education in California are facing is what are the current year budget projections AND does the Governor et al “pull the trigger.”  As you might recall, when the budget for this school year was passed by the Legislature in the summer, it included what many of us perceived as $4 Billion in revenue that no one could explain.  In fact, the budget terms the $4 B as “unallocated revenue income.”  The stated plan, was that if the money doesn’t show up (according to either the Legislative Analyst Office or Dept. of Finance report in December), then the state has a Legislative obligation to make mandatory reductions in the budget in the middle of the year – i.e., “pull the trigger”.

So month by month, many of us have been watching the revenue reports to see what is likely to happen – as reductions in the middle of the year are about the worst nightmare that public schools can imagine.  As of last week, after 4 months, here is the situation.

John Chiang, State Controller, reports that we are now $1.5 Billion below revenue projections.  Additionally, and possibly even more troubling, is the apparent fact that the state has not made it’s promised reduction in expenditures – therefore, we are now $1.7 Billion OVER the budgeted amounts.  Obviously, the net effect is a loss to the budget of $3.2 Billion.  This is a report of the first 1/3 of the year (4 months), clearly things can improve in the final 2/3; however, if we had to “guess” the next 2/3 one would not be optimistic.

Net effect?  More reductions to local school districts either in the mid-year or in the next budget year (2012-13).

Statewide Assessment Measures

Much has been said about the pro and con of Common Core standards and whether we should or should not be involved.  Another piece of the puzzle is that regardless of which set of standards we in California choose – how would we know whether the standards have been achieved or not?  This is the assessment question that is currently resolved primarily through the State CST (California Standards Test) examination.

While there are several choices and we have bounced around a bit in California we currently seem committed to what is termed the Smarter Balance option.  This assessment package is interesting in that it promises a computer adapted assessment that will pinpoint the competency levels of students to a much higher degree.  Additionally, it should provide a much timelier response in results – so that we can actually use them in planning for the subsequent year.

While there remains much to be done with this issue, my understanding is that it is slated for full implementation in the 2014-15 school year (which is NOT far away).  Additionally, in an era when we are still trying to make CalPADS work statewide, this assessment will require a substantial upgrade in digital infrastructure statewide – at a time when we all have diminishing budgets.

My apologies again

Well, it has been a long time …and my sincerest apologies.  There has been a lot going on and we are short of key staff members.  In any case, a number of you have asked me why I have not been blogging – just ran out of time.  I was amazed and embarrassed as I went back and saw when my last posting had been.  In any case, I will try to get going again and not drop the ball as I have this fall.

On a timelier note, our Maintenance and Operations (M&O) folks did a tremendous job over this past weekend.  As you might be aware, there was a theft of electrical equipment at Fremont Elementary School that left the school in the dark with the potential for attempting to run school without electricity.  Through the great efforts of M&O and others, we were able to obtain the parts from the East Coast and get them installed and operational before Monday morning.  All of that is evidence of a great team and great commitment to the RUSD students and their learning.