Saturday, June 29, 2013

"reduce the mountainous regulatory obligations"

It's about time! The Milford Daily News reports on a new proposal to address the unfunded mandates that school districts are forced to implement. The focus of the article is on Framingham and doesn't reference Franklin. However, this has long been a complaint of the School Committee and district officials here so I am sure that Franklin will be following this closely.
"We need relief," said Framingham School Committee Chairwoman Beverly Hugo, who wrote the original draft and testified at Thursday's public hearing. "Some of these (mandates) are redundant or duplicative." 
While some of the requirements - which in recent years have been introduced to address bullying, teacher evaluations, and school nutrition, among other issues - may be necessary to some degree, she added, "there's no analysis that shows whether these reports (submitted by schools) improve student achievement or services to children in the classroom." 
What is known, Hugo said, is the cost to districts to fill out thousands of pages of paperwork that are required by the mandates. Framingham, for instance, had to hire several vice principals in recent years to keep up with the greater workloads created by the state's new teacher evaluation system.

Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x853679261/Bill-takes-aim-at-unfunded-mandates-for-school-districts#ixzz2XbFTz67L



Related posts:

Earlier this month "Area school officials are concerned the mandates, including a new teacher evaluation system, additional training to educate English Language Learners (ELL) and new fingerprinting requirements, are too much, too soon."
http://www.franklinmatters.org/2013/06/in-news-unfunded-mandates-structurally.html
Reporting on truancy was touted in 2012
http://www.franklinmatters.org/2012/08/another-unfunded-mandate.html

A listing of state unfunded mandates posted in 2010
http://www.franklinmatters.org/2010/05/state-education-mandates-collection.html

Reporting on bullying was added in 2009
http://www.franklinmatters.org/2009/11/another-unfunded-mandate-coming-down.html


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