News & Action Items

Help Find Co-sponsors for a Resolution on School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports
With the full support of the Disability Rights Network, the Education Law Center, The Arc of Pennsylvania, the Mental Health Association in PA, Public Citizens for Children and Youth, and the Pennsylvania Community Providers Association, Representative James Roebuck will soon be proposing a Resolution calling for the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee (LBFC) to study the use of School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports (SWPBS) in Pennsylvania and other states.

The resolution directs the LBFC to evaluate the effectiveness of SWPBS in states where it has been implemented, identify costs and existing funding sources, recommend how to expand and fund SWPBS in Pennsylvania, and compile and distribute a report for the House of Representatives. Representative Roebuck has issued a co-sponsorship memo which you can read here.

DRN, ELC, The Arc of PA, MHAPA, PCCY, and PCPA ask for your assistance in supporting the passage of this important Resolution. We urge you to take a moment, right now, to call or write your State Representative and ask that he or she sign on as a co-sponsor. This small investment of your time will make a huge difference!

FIND YOUR LEGISLATOR BY ZIP CODE, COUNTY OR MAP AT
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/find.cfm

ELC Releases Analysis of PA Empowerment Act Reauthorization
SB 1192 — the bill that would reauthorize the Education Empowerment Act — has serious flaws, according to an Education Law Center analysis. "The bill reflects an understandable impatience with the pace of education reform in Pennsylvania. But SB 1192 takes the wrong approach in addressing this difficult situation. The bill would impose empowerment status on dozens of school districts and hundreds of individual schools in additional communities. And the bill puts the state in charge of managing school-level reforms in all of these places. That won’t work."

Spotlight on: State Education Budget
Capitol The Education Law Center is examining the Pennsylvania Education Budget for 2010-11, from the Governor's initial proposals throughout the pending negotiations, and will provide a final, comprehensive analysis once the budget is signed. Go to our special Budget2010 page

Introducing: SchoolVictories.org

There’s a lot of good education advocacy and organizing work being done right here in Pennsylvania and in other states throughout the country. There’s also, though, a void in how good advocates and organizers connect to each other.

The Education Law Center, with the support of the Ford Foundation and the William Penn Foundation, has created a new tool to fill that void.

SchoolVictories.org is a tool to help you plan your school improvement work, share that work with others, and get inspired. It’s more than a Web site — it’s a new way to connect people and actions.

Whether you're working on a school funding campaign, advocating for smaller class sizes in your district, researching the new teacher contract, or simply looking to connect with groups working on the same issue, SchoolVictories.org can help.

Of course, not every advocacy or organizing action results in a victory. We know that. We also know we can learn a lot from each other by documenting and sharing the steps along the way. We know, too, that it's important to celebrate when our actions do result in a victory, and to chronicle when our actions do not, so we can all ultimately improve and strengthen our advocacy and organizing efforts.

Soon, SchoolVictories.org will expand to include other states, and advocacy and organizing groups can learn from and inspire school improvement work from coast to coast.

Several organizations, such as Good Schools Pennsylvania, the Easton NAACP chapter, and the Philadelphia Education Fund, have already joined SchoolVictories.org. Join them, and show the nation the great work happening in Pennsylvania.

ELC Attorney Averts Passage of Potentially Illegal Enrollment Policy

Photo:Ellen O'Connell/Hazleton Standard Speaker

Staff Attorney Maura McInerney recently attended a Jan. 28 meeting of the Hazleton Area School Board to voice ELC's opposition to the district’s proposed Registration and Admission Procedures. Initial drafts of the proposed policy — which required parents or guardians to provide documents such as a photo ID, medical information, and four proofs of residency — lack legal basis and in some places violate state and federal laws.

"As proposed, the enrollment policies impose excessive and in many cases insurmountable barriers for enrollment of the most educationally at risk students in the Hazleton community — children who are poor, those who are highly mobile, immigrants, and English Language Learners," McInerney wrote in a letter to the board.

The board stated at the meeting that they had recently revised the proposal, but McInerney insisted that they not vote on the revised policy without making it publicly available for review.

To learn more about the proposed Hazleton policy, read the following articles from the Hazleton Standard Speaker and The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader:

Hazleton Standard Speaker
Jan. 29, 2010
Admissions policy stalled

The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader
Jan. 29, 2010
Hazleton Area rejects dress code

Hazleton Standard Speaker
Jan. 26, 2010
Hazleton Area's residency criteria not a new idea

For more information on Pennsylvania enrollment law, visit our Residency & Enrollment publications page.

Education Law Center Attorneys in the News

Two recent news items feature quotes from Managing Attorney Nancy Hubley and Director of Policy Advocacy Baruch Kintisch:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Dec. 19, 2009
Somali refugee celebrates long road to citizenship

Lancaster Intelligencer Journal
Dec. 17, 2009
Special education funding formula inequity in action

Education Law Center School Reform Associate Honored for Advocacy Work

The Education Law Center's School Reform Associate Sandy Zelno received the Excellence in Advocacy Award on Dec. 7 from ACHIEVA, a western Pennsylvania provider of services and supports for children and adults with disabilities. The award honors Zelno's work on behalf of people with disabilities, particularly in the area of public education policy reform.

The event’s program praised Zelno for her history of working on education policy and school reform: “Through her broad-based statewide and local advocacy work over several decades, she has provided technical assistance to help motivate grassroots activists to shape public policy—especially that which directly impacts disadvantaged students.”

ELC Co-Director Examines Legal Rights of English Language Learners
The December 3, 2009 Summit on Education Excellence for Latino Students featured Education Law Center Co-Director Len Rieser examining current problems and possible solutions regarding the legal rights of English language learners.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Governor's Advisory Committee on Latino Affaris, and the Center for School and Communities sponsored the Summit.

To view the PowerPoint presentation featured in this session, or to learn more about this topic, please visit our publications and law and policy pages on English Language Learners.

PA Department of Education Releases Guide to Student Enrollment
The Education Law Center has been working with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to require local school districts to enroll children in school quickly. The Department has issued new guidance, in the form of a Q&A, on school enrollment rules. The Questions and Answers are provided to assist parents, school districts and charter schools in the student enrollment process.

Training Materials from the Education Law Center
The Education Law Center recently provided a telephone conference and Webinar training on Section 504, a federal civil rights law that can help children with disabilities get the accommodations, supports, and services they need in school, even if they do not qualify for special education. View the full presentation, a sample letter to request a 504 Plan, and an example of what a 504 Plan looks like.

State Budget News: Stimulus Funds Keep PA School Improvement on Track
The Governor and the General Assembly, with some help from the federal stimulus package, agreed to a 2009-10 education budget that maintains the new adequacy formula adopted in 2008, provides new resources for local improvements to basic education programs, and keeps the state on track toward the long-term objective of more equitable state funding for public education. Read more...

Education Law Center sues PA Dept. of Ed. and local school district for violating federal law
The Education Law Center filed a lawsuit Oct. 6, 2009 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania seeking to prevent the disenrollment of four children from Allegheny County’s Carlynton School District.

Joining the Education Law Center in this complaint is the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

“The economic crisis has forced some Pennsylvania families out of their homes, but it should not force children out of school,” said Education Law Center Attorney Nancy Hubley. “The law protects the rights of homeless children to attend public school.”