State Board of Education Vision:Every public school student in North Carolina will be empowered to accept academic challenges, prepared to pursue their chosen path after graduating high school, and encouraged to become lifelong learners with the capacity to engage in a globally-collaborative society.
State Board of Education Mission:The mission of the North Carolina State Board of Education is to use its constitutional authority to guard and maintain the right of a sound, basic education for every child in North Carolina Public Schools.
Friday, June 24, 2022
Highlights:
John Locke Foundation-Shaftesbury Society: Making Up for Lost Time – Students and School Shutdowns - As schools across North Carolina focus on efforts to recover ground lost over the past two years, Superintendent Truitt will share her vision, called Operation Polaris, aimed at achieving gains for public education in the state. Dr. Corn will share a report recently released by the Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee on NCDPI’s Impact of Lost Instructional Time Analysis. Using these findings, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction seeks to better understand learning recovery and acceleration programs that are most needed and highlight those that have best served students.
Key findings from the statewide summary report are available here, and the NCDPI press release is available here.
Public Schools Matters: Episode 6 - A Conversation With The State Superintendent Of Public Instruction- The NCASA Advocacy Team speaks with North Carolina State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt on the school year that just ended, lessons learned, and what’s next for public education in North Carolina.
WASHINGTON – Today, Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Ranking Member John Boozman (R-AR), along with House Committee on Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA 03) and Ranking Member Virginia Foxx (R NC-5), announced an agreement to help school and summer providers keep kids fed. The Keep Kids Fed Act will provide important funding and flexibility for communities to provide children healthy meals this summer and provide support to schools and daycares to respond to supply chain challenges and high food costs for the coming school year.
“Time is running out! My agreement with Senator Boozman, Representative Scott and Representative Foxx will help keep kids fed and is fully paid for,” said Senator Stabenow. “With 90% of our schools still facing challenges as they return to normal operations, this will give our schools and summer meal programs much-needed support to deal with ongoing food service issues. Congress needs to act swiftly to pass this critical help.”
“As I visit with our school nutrition professionals, it is quite clear that they need continued flexibilities to cope with ongoing supply chain issues. I am pleased that after lengthy bipartisan negotiations we were able to come to an agreement to extend the waivers in a manner that is fully paid for,” said Senator Boozman.
“While the country is on the road to recovery, many schools are still struggling with supply chain shortages and other increased costs that will make it more difficult to serve meals next year. This bill provides additional assistance to ensure that students can get the nutrition they need to help them learn and grow,” said Representative Scott. “While this bill does not go as far as I would like in supporting our nation’s students, it is a meaningful step in the right direction.”
“The bipartisan Keep Kids Fed Act will empower schools to weather supply chain problems and inflation with targeted and temporary aid to schools,” said Representative Foxx. “This budget-neutral legislation will also put our country’s school nutrition programs back on the right track and keep the permanent pandemic narrative from being used to expand school meal programs beyond their intended purpose.This legislation will uphold our responsibility to taxpayers and abide by the principle that aid should be targeted and temporary while also helping students truly in need.”
More than 900,000North Carolina students rely on the nutritious meals and snacks served during the school year through the School Breakfast, School Lunch, and Afterschool Meals Programs. When school is out, Summer Nutrition Programs provide free, nutritious meals for children and adolescents ages 18 and younger.
As part of recovery from the ongoing pandemic, more families are struggling with hunger. Assistance with outreach regarding summer meals is needed to ensure no child goes hungry. To find free, nutritious summer meals near you for kids and teens who are ages 18 and younger:
Text "Food" to 304-304 for information in English or “COMIDA” to 304-304 for information in Spanish.
Additional information regarding N.C. Summer Nutrition Programs may be found on the NCDPI, Office of School Nutrition website. Citizens and organizations interested in getting involved as sites, activity providers, or volunteers should contact the NCDPI Summer Nutrition Programs Team at summernutritionprogram@dpi.nc.gov.
WRAL.com - NC Capitol Travis Fain June 22, 2022: The well of doomed ideas: 1,800 bills sitting as NC General Assembly nears session end - The odds are long for most bills still sitting in the queue at this point of the legislative session. Leaders hope to wrap their business by early next month, and there are more than 1,800 bills pending. More than half of them are sitting in the House or Senate rules committees.
The good news: Rules committees are usually the last stop before bills hit a chamber floor and move toward becoming law.
The bad news: They’re also a parking garage. If your bill gets filed and, one day later, gets sent to a rules committee, it’s probably not going anywhere else.
K-12 Public Education Bills with Action (June 20 - 24)
NCDPI and the NC Collaboratory, a policy research center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are leading a joint $6 million effort to spur research on the impact of COVID-19 on student learning and the evaluation of existing policies and programs aimed at overcoming those challenges. This month, a funding opportunity was released seeking proposals from academic researchers in institutions of higher learning across the state. Working alone or in collaboration with stakeholder groups, applicants will be able to request a minimum of $150,000 and maximum of $500,000 for up to two years for projectsaimed at helping educators and students recover from pandemic-related disruptions.
A full list of initiatives, as well as important questions that NCDPI is hoping to answer, is available in the funding opportunity instructions.
EdNC Staff: Dudley Flood Center announces Jeanes Fellows Program - Earlier this month, the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunityannounced the creation of the Jeanes Fellows Program, which is “designed to provide consistent and intentional infrastructure to support community-school relationships using an equity lens.” “When reimagining education, we must provide proven solutions of success with students and educators grounded in research and data to effectively contribute to the constitutional mandate of a sound basic education,” said Deanna Townsend-Smith, senior director of the Flood Center. “Research shows a diverse teaching workforce benefits every student and contributes to maintaining the dignity, respect, and well-being of students and the school communities supporting them each day.”
US DOEPress Office June 23, 2022: The U.S. Department of Education Releases Proposed Changes to Title IX Regulations, Invites Public Comment- Today, in celebration of the 50th anniversaryof Title IX – the landmark civil rights law that has opened doors for generations of women and girls – the U.S. Department of Education released for public comment proposed changes to the regulations that help elementary and secondary schools and colleges and universities implement this vital legislation.
The Department’s proposed Title IX regulations will be open for public comment for 60 days from the date of publication in the Federal Register.
Additional information on the proposed rule, including a summary with background information and a fact sheet, is available here.
The unofficial version of the proposed rule is available here.
