The State Board of Education (SBOE) began its full five day September meeting on Monday, Sept. 12, with a Learning Roundtable on Educating the Children of Poverty. Thirty-six speakers provided information and research during the day long roundtable. The importance of this issue is underscored by the numbers: in Texas today, 3.1 million public school students or 59 percent of all students are economically disadvantaged. Commissioner of Education Mike Morath set an important tone for the day when he emphasized that demographics isn’t destiny.
The quarterly meeting of the SBOE continued Sept. 13 – 16. Among the many agenda items, the SBOE approved a 3.7 percentage distribution rate from the Permanent School Fund for fiscal years 2018-2019. This would generate about $2.466 billion over the biennium and represents an increase of $350 million over the previous two-year period. The SBOE will take a final vote on the distribution at the November meeting. The per capita apportionment rate of $390.186 for expenditures from the Available School Fund for the 2016-2017 was also set.
The SBOE also approved an outline of the process to create a Long-Range Plan for Public Education which will include an18-member advisory panel.
The newly adopted Personal Financial Literacy course was added to the list of courses a district is required to offer at the high school level and updated course titles for Advanced Placement (AP) courses were approved. Additionally, the SBOE made each course a one-credit course, and added new AP Physics courses to align with courses recently revised by the College Board.
Click on the link for: Summaries of Board Action September 16.