Board Update

Good Evening:

Hope you all are staying warm on this cold rainy evening! If you haven’t had the chance yet please check out my new and improved website at www.danlangshaw.com.
Communication with constituents is very important to me and on my website you will see that I have centralized a lot of useful information about me, the school board, and district. You can also like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter too.

LAST WEEK IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD

North Royalton City School District Performance Index Information
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) is giving parents, educators, and taxpayers a preview of a new approach for comparing academic performance among schools and districts. Effective September 2012, House Bill 153 requires all school districts and school buildings to be ranked using the Performance Index (PI) score. Such rankings will provide parents and taxpayers a new way to evaluate how local schools are performing while allowing educators to compare their performance with peers. The school district list will include all city, local and exempted village school districts as well as joint vocational school districts, community schools and STEM schools. The school building list will include all schools that are part of city, local or exempted village school. Each school is ranked using a PI score based on test scores from the 2010-2011 school year for the Ohio Achievement Tests (OAAs) and the Ohio Graduation Tests (OGTs).


North Royalton City Schools Performance Index Rankings

Middle School 94 of 578 84 percentile
High School 81 of 900 91 percentile
Elementary Schools:
Albion 13 of 1878 99 percentile
Valley Vista 70 of 1878 97 percentile
Royal View 60 of 1878 97 percentile

DISTRICT 70 of 1002 94 percentile

*Calculating the Performance Index
The performance index rewards the achievement of every student, not just those who score proficient or higher. Traditional school districts and school buildings, including community schools, earn points based on how well each student does on all tested subjects in grades 3-8 on Ohio’s Achievement Assessments and on the 10th-grade Ohio Graduation Tests. The higher the students achieve, the more points the district earns on the performance index. In fact, 74% of our students scored in the accelerated or advanced range. All assessments have five performance levels that include: advanced, accelerated, proficient, basic and limited. The percentage of students scoring at each performance level is calculated and then multiplied by the point value assigned to that performance level. The points earned for each performance level are totaled to determine each schools performance index score, where applicable. This all great news for our school district!


Ohio School Boards Association Joint Press Release on HB 136
I just wanted to share with a Press Release that was sent out by the Ohio School Boards Association on December 1st regarding HB 136 that you might find of interest.

Expanding voucher system would prove costly to taxpayers, public schools
COLUMBUS — Three statewide education management associations, the Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA), the Ohio Association of School Business Officials (OASBO) and the Buckeye Association of School Administrators (BASA), today released an analysis estimating costs for implementing proposed House Bill (HB) 136. HB 136 would dramatically change Ohio’s school voucher policy, a program that uses public tax dollars to subsidize private and parochial school tuition.
The analysis, conducted by ETPI consultants William Driscoll and Howard Fleeter, determined that HB 136 could create approximately $480 million in NEW costs for Ohio’s education funding system as the bill’s provisions are phased in over a very short period of time. The additional costs would come as students who already attend private schools suddenly become eligible for taxpayer-subsidized vouchers.
A bill touted by supporters as another education “choice” option for parents and students, HB 136 provides subsidies for parents who will not be making any new choices. The analysis found that the $480 million in new costs would result from the current private school population (based on 2010-11 school year enrollment figures) that would qualify for vouchers and continue as students in a school they were going to attend anyway. So, even if no public school students moved to a different educational “choice” by using a voucher, the state would need to find a way to cover this potential new expenditure.
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Expanding voucher system would prove costly 2/2/2/2/2
The ETPI analysis uses U.S. Census Bureau data on Ohio's distribution of family income to estimate how many current private school students could qualify and their voucher level. HB 136 has varying levels of voucher subsidies — from $2,313 to $4,626 — based on family income. Students from families with incomes of up to $95,000 would be eligible. The analysis breaks down the percentage of students that could qualify based on each income category. The $480 million estimate represents the total amount that private school students from all voucher levels could receive.
Ohio already has another statewide voucher/private school subsidy program for students based on the low performance of the public school building they would otherwise attend. About 15,000 students currently receive this subsidy, which costs taxpayers more than $71 million annually. (The $480 million cost is in addition to existing voucher expenses.) In July, the state dramatically increased the cap on how many of those vouchers it would subsidize to 60,000 for the 2012-2013 school year. The new program proposed in HB 136 would also be subject to the 60,000 cap, but the bill provides for that cap to be automatically increased based on student demand in any given year.
The analysis projects that by the 2016-2017 school year the cap could increase enough to include the nearly 140,000 private school students that ETPI estimates would be eligible for a subsidy.
The $480 million figure does not account for any additional students leaving public schools to attend private and parochial schools with the proposed new voucher subsidy, though the bill would allow students in any school district — regardless of the district’s academic performance — to attend a private or parochial school with taxpayer money.
Driscoll and Fleeter indicated that there is no way to predict the exact costs of implementing HB 136 and the actual number of students who would qualify. However, they are confident that their assumptions could closely resemble the effects of the bill if it passes. With the phase-in that allows current private school students to receive vouchers, it is clear there will be significant new costs. If a family’s income qualifies, the assumption must be that it will seek the voucher/subsidy.
With current economic conditions, Ohio’s scarce resources and recent state school-funding cuts, OSBA, OASBO and BASA are concerned about where the additional hundreds of millions of dollars would come from. The state would either need to find revenue to cover the new costs for students not currently in the funding system or pass the costs along to school districts. The associations said that neither of those options bodes well for Ohio’s public education system and its remaining students.
The three organizations have worked hard to mobilize their members around the state in advocacy efforts against HB 136. They have received copies of board of education resolutions and letters opposing HB 136 from nearly 200 school districts, with more coming in every day. The information in the ETPI analysis was commissioned to help school district leaders educate their own legislators about the negative effects HB 136 would have on Ohio public education.
BASA is a nonprofit professional organization of school system leaders, specifically, superintendents, central office administrators, building-level administrators, higher education administrators and faculty, graduate students and other educational personnel.
OASBO is a not-for-profit educational management organization dedicated to learning, using and sharing the best methods and technology of school business administration.
OSBA leads the way to educational excellence by serving Ohio’s public school board members and the diverse districts they represent through superior service and creative solutions.
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Keep Contacting Lawmakers on HB 136
Please continue to contact our lawmakers in Columbus and share with them your concerns about HB 136 and to tell them to vote No! There is still an effort to bring this to a vote in the coming months and we need to stop this bill!

State Senator Tom Patton
24th Senate District
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 466-8056
SD24@senate.state.oh.us

State Representative Marlene Anielski (Broadview Heights portion of our school district)
17th House District
77 S. High St
12th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Phone: (614) 644-6041
Fax: (614) 719-6956
district17@ohr.state.oh.us

State Representative Mike Dovilla
18th House District (North Royalton portion of our school district)
77 S. High St
12th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Phone: (614) 466-4895
Fax: (614) 719-6957
district18@ohr.state.oh.us


THIS WEEK IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD

This week there are various meetings and events.

The School Board will meet on December 6th for its’ Board Work Session at 6pm @ the North Royalton Board of Education Office Conference Room, 6579 Royalton Rd., North Royalton, OH 44133. The Board will be reviewing the December Regular Meeting agenda items, and such other matters that may come before the Board. (All North Royalton School Board Special Meetings, Board Work Sessions, and Regular Meetings are all open to the public to attend).

Weekly E-mail Updates
If you have any friends or neighbors who would like to receive my weekly e-mail updates please let me know and I will be sure to add them to my e-mail list.

Follow me on Twitter or stay in touch on my website
You can follow me on Twitter @Langshaw4board. You can also check out my website at www.danlangshaw.com

My Contact Info
If you ever have any questions or concerns please feel free to give me at call at 440-596-0078 or e-mail me at dan.langshaw@northroyaltonsd.org.

Have a great week!

Dan Langshaw
North Royalton School Board Member
440-596-0078
www.danlangshaw.com

“Putting Students First”