Among the agenda items slated for the January 13th Board of Education meeting: approving the school system’s legislative priorities for the upcoming State Legislative Session. CSD’s Courtney Burnett summarized the district’s three key priorities in a note to the Board thusly…
Priority 1: Funding- specifically restore the austerity reductions.
- We have provided 4 examples of funding shortfalls- transportation, nurses, textbooks or instruction materials and teachers. In each of these examples we have provided the amount of money we receive from the state, how much CSD actually spends and the difference in the amounts.
- When the amount of the “difference” from just these 4 categories is totaled, it equals $3.9 million or 7.5% of the CSD operating budget.
Priority 2: Special Education Graduation Requirements
- We would like the state to review the current graduation requirements and find options to help more students graduate.
- We have provided an example of graduation requirements from North Carolina as well as listed other states that are good examples.
Priority 3: Increase Flexibility for High Achieving Districts
- CSD is a charter school system and has contracted with the state to receive increased flexibility for meeting the accountability measures set forth in the charter. CSD has proven that the system can meet and surpass the accountability measures. We ask for increased flexibility in return for high performance.
- Specifically, we would like to have flexibility in the areas of evaluations and testing.
You can also review a draft of CSD’s 4 page handout on the subject, which goes into more detail on the system’s priorities this year and includes background data visuals like those shown above and below.
