2016 State Board of Education Legislative Agenda
Last modified
Aug 10, 2016 06:05 PM
Vision: Every public school student will graduate ready for post-secondary education and work, prepared to be a globally engaged and productive citizen.
Mission: The State Board of Education has the constitutional authority to lead and uphold the system of public education in North Carolina.
Goals:
- Every student in the NC Public School System graduates from high school prepared for work, further education and citizenship.
- Every student has a personalized education.
- Every student, every day has excellent educators.
- Every school district has up-to-date financial, business, and technology systems to serve its students, parents and educators.
- Every student is healthy, safe, and responsible.
Action Items:
- Professional Development/Educator Effectiveness: Invest in our teaching workforce and leadership. Enhance Educator Effectiveness through proven measures of training:
- Professional Development that improves student outcomes
- Distinguished Leadership in Practice
- Intensive Coaching for “D” and “F” schools
- Teacher Leaders/Teacher Pay: Maintain and improve our state’s commitment to the teaching profession.
- Boost teachers’ salaries to #1 in the Southeast.
- Institute targeted Master’s and Doctoral Pay.
- Ensure a high-quality, sustainable NC teacher recruitment plan.
- Allow measures of local discretion on any differentiated pay pilot.
- Increase Principal/Assistant Principal Pay:
- Pull average salaries out of the bottom rankings in the region.
- Provide more Assistant Principal positions in each district.
- Textbooks/Digital Resources: Reinstate the textbook funding level to $77.16 per student (from $29.05 in FY 2015-16).
- Digital Learning: Provide the support and infrastructure necessary to reach the Digital Learning goal of 2017 set by the General Assembly.
- Secure classroom technology needs during implementation of the Instructional Improvement System within Home Base.
- Manage delivery of instructional tools and resources for the Home Base system, accessible by all 115 school districts and charter schools.
- NC Virtual Public School:
- Increase staffing capacity to accommodate increased demand for new course development and innovation.
- Exempt NC Virtual Public School from the Umstead Act for both short- and longterm sustainability.
- Instructional Supplies: Reinstate the per student funding level to $59.33 (from $28.38).
- Turn Around Low-Performing Schools: Continue proven support for principals, teachers and superintendents in lowest achieving schools and districts.
- Invest in NC’s District and School Transformation model for, at minimum, the lowest 5% of schools and 10% of districts.
- At minimum, remove “D” Schools that Meet Growth from the state law definition of “low-performing schools.”
- A-F School Performance Grades: At minimum, continue the 15-point scale for the 2016- 17 school year.
- School Calendar Flexibility:
- Allow alignment of the school calendar with that of community colleges and universities to enhance learning opportunities.
- Permit schools given a “D” or “F” under the A-F School Performance Grades law to adopt a modified calendar.
- Early Childhood Education:
- Lift unnecessarily-doubled regulatory scheme off of public Pre-K classrooms.
- Increase slots for more at-risk children to be served in Pre-K.
- Improve continuum for Early Childhood Education delivery.
- Child Nutrition/School Nurses:
- Invest in the child nutrition NC Procurement Alliance (where every $1.00 invested saves LEAs $6.00) and support further implementation of the Child Nutrition Program standards.
- Increase number of School Nurses (progress toward nationally-recommended ratio of 1 nurse:750 students; NC’s current ratio is 1:1,112).
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