The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
CABE stays course on legislative agenda
Focus is on equity, smart spending
NEW HAVEN — Leadership of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education is pursuing a policy agenda in 2018 that continues to focus on special education, school funding and the achievement gap.
For at least the third year, CABE is advocating for more stable funding, diversity in Connecticut’s school boards and among teachers and fewer state mandates that interfere with local innovation.
“Clearly the stability of funding for education remains our highest priority,” said Patrice McCarthy, deputy director and general counsel for CABE, in a meeting with the New Haven Register’s editorial board.
One of the biggest issues facing school board pocketbooks is the rising cost burden of special education, she said.
Statewide, special education students represent about 13.4 percent of the overall student population, said CABE Senior Staff Associate Sheila McKay, but the funding from the national government has not kept pace. Across the state, she said, between 20 and 25 percent of school budgets go to special education costs.
One solution CABE sees to address the growing costs of special education is creating legal pathways to collaboration between school districts.
Regionalization, McCarthy said, “is a very cumbersome, complicated, lengthy process” that links school districts to one another in a way that makes divorcing difficult to do once school districts are linked.
If school districts were able to make memorandums of understanding to collaborate on certain issues, without violating collective bargaining agreements, schools could pool resources to better handle burder some costs, CABE says.
Presently, school districts often share back office functions like IT and payroll services, but they are prohibited from sharing staff and programs that
would be mutually beneficial and impact schools at the student level, CABE contends.
CABE’s agenda also will continue to pursue increasing the diversity within school boards and teaching staff.
“We’re trying to get our heads around how we can help other towns increase their diversity so their boards will look more like the citizens in their towns,” said Donald Harris, first vice president of CABE.
A survey led by the University of Connecticut’s education school on the racial makeup of the state’s school boards and teachers had “putrid” results, Harris said.
The state’s certification program is among the most rigorous in the nation, and CABE staff said they would like to see more work done around incubating future teachers of color from within the school systems.
“We want to give those students the supports they need,” McCarthy said.
Another constant listed on the CABE policy agenda is to “address the achievement gap.”
According to state Department of Education data, the four-year graduation rate for white students increased 1.2 points in five years, whereas its grown 5.8 points among black students and 7.8 points for Hispanic students. However, there is a 13.7 point gap between white and black students and a 16.1 point gap between white and Hispanic students.
In 2017, more than twothirds of white students met or exceeded their goal on the English portion of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium exam, whereas less than onethird of black and Hispanic students did the same. In math, more than half of white students met or exceeded the goal benchmark, and less than a quarter of black or Hispanic students accomplished that.
The CABE 2018 legislative document notes its priorities with regard to the achievement gap include encouraging the state to:
⏩ Invest in programs that promote cultural competency and the hiring and retention of educators from diverse backgrounds.
⏩ Continue to increase access to early childhood programs.
⏩ Provide an accountability system that supports personalized learning to accelerate and enhance student achievement and support low performing students.
⏩ Expand interagency access to mental health and drug use prevention services for youth.
“CABE urges boards of education to provide strong leadership to raise student achievement, and to create a school climate that fosters academic and personal development,” the organization’s 2018 agenda says.
Further, the group supports the state’s efforts “to address and solve the issues of social and economic isolation in the areas of housing, transportation, employment, access to health care and social services.”
Harris said in his hometown of Bloomfield, a focus on data has been effective at turning the district around.
“If we are testing for skills students need to have, there’s nothing wrong with testing,” McCarthy said. “We are meeting the needs of more of our students than we ever have before, but we still clearly have the achievement gap and that’s got to be an ongoing focus.”
When asked about CABE’s legislative victories, given its repeated priorities, McCarthy said loosening high school graduation requirements to allow districts more flexibility and reducing professional development mandates that did not allow much time for districts to offer individualized instruction were victories for the group in the last legislative session.
On the agenda item on “civility” the organization notes it “urges public officials at all levels of government to model civil discourse in their deliberations, allowing for the thoughtful, beneficial productive exchange of ideas and perspectives. CABE urges school boards to provide opportunities
for students to develop their skills in conflict resolution and consensus building, and for school board members to model these skills in their own conduct.