New York Governor Cuomo gave his State of the State address on January 13th, mentioning numerous plans to increase educational opportunities for students in the state. He discussed community schools, preK programs, and increasing education funding. However, some education advocates have argued that the proposed funding increase still falls under what New York owes its public schools.
Community Schools have been getting a lot of attention as more and more districts try and implement them in an effort to mitigate affects of poverty on students' opportunities to learn. In Philadelphia, the Mayor-elect Jim Kenney has called for an increase of 25 community schools.
Last week President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law, replacing No Child Left Behind as the latest version of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. With any bill of this size and scope it defies easy description, and as one would expect given the political climate in Washington, DC, ESSA is a decidedly mixed law with the potential for both positive and negative effects.
On November 3, 2015, a tight race to achieve full funding of public schools across Mississippi was lost. Initiative 42, the ballot initiative for “better schools,” was a citizen-led campaign with bipartisan, grassroots support for fully funded public schools. Nearly 200,000 Mississippians from across the state signed a petition to place Initiative 42 on the ballot.
