Friday News Roundup

Here’s your Friday News Roundup!

Vermont Property Taxes Could Soar an “Unacceptable” 12% Next Year (Burlington Free Press)

Governor Greg Abbott Has a Sweeping Plan to Abolish Texas’ School Property Taxes. Would It Work? (The Texas Tribune)

This Vermont headline could include almost every other state in the country.

The cost of traditional public schools in this country is unsustainable. This is probably the biggest reason why it is inevitable that a new system of learning will be created in the not-too-distant future. The fact of the matter is, with artificial intelligence advancing daily, we can make our kids smarter and stronger for far less money than we are currently spending on our traditional K-12 system.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott is attempting to rid property taxpayers of any responsibility to pay for public schools. That may cost the state $17 billion. Where the Texas Legislature will find that money is currently unclear.

Unsustainable.

 Work Flexibility, Leader Stability Keys to High Teacher Morale (EducationWeek)

“’Historically, teaching was viewed as a very flexible job. But I think there’s been a shift [in perception] now that there’s much more remote work and more flexibility – because teaching is not very flexible,’ said Luisa Sparrow, a mom of two and special education teacher at Oliver Hazard Perry School, and recent recipient of a Massachusetts Teacher of the Year honor.”

But here’s the deal, there is no reason teaching can’t be a more flexible job, if we embraced anytime, anywhere learning. In addition to anytime, anywhere learning, increasing compensation to around $100,000 would increase teacher morale. Allowing adult learning leaders to control a budget of around $375,000 for 50 students would provide increased morale too.

Being able to teach and learn anywhere is possible these days, as well as increased compensation and allowance for adult learning leaders to create and administer learning budgets for their young learners.

So why aren’t we doing it?

After Deadlocked Supreme Court Case, More States Jump on Religious Charter Bandwagon (The 74)

It used to be that public funding could not be used to support religious schools. It appears that is no longer the case, or close to it.

“In Tennessee, the nonprofit Wilberforce Academy is suing the Knox County Schools in federal court because the district refuses to allow a Christian charter school. Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is on the school’s side. He issued an opinion last month that the state’s ban on religious charter schools likely violates the First Amendment.”

The trend to expand the use of public tax dollars to support other types of education beyond the traditional public school includes not only religious schools (potentially), but other private schools through education savings accounts or vouchers.

If states are going to support religious and other private schools with public money, they might as well go all the way and allow parents to use public funds for other types of educational costs – after school programming, microschools, homeschooling, and the list goes on and on.

To Ease Civil Rights Backlog, McMahon Orders Back Staff She Tried to Fire (The 74)

What a freakin mess.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has been trying to fire more than 250 Office of Civil Rights employees since March. Now it has been determined that the federal government needs those employees after all.

“…[T]he department is telling laid-off staff to report by this coming Monday to temporarily work through a backlog of civil rights complaints, according to an email sent out…”

What’s that line from Johnny Paycheck?

Is This the End of Kids on Social Media? (The Atlantic)

As of December 10^th, Australia will no longer anyone under 16 to have an account on TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, or basically any other platform an average teen might care about.

“…Other countries have attempted partial restrictions, but Australia’s Online Safety Amendment is the first real ban, and it comes with heavy fines for social-media companies that fail to comply. ‘Social media was a big social experiment,’ says Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, who is in charge of enforcing the law. ‘In some ways, this is an antidote social experiment.’”

ABPTL will focus more on this news out of Australia next week, but for now – are we really thinking government can put the social media genie back in the bottle?

That’s the Friday News Roundup for the week of December 9^th. Til Monday. SVB