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Saturday Open Thread

In an astonishing ruling, a federal judge said that "Access to literacy"is not a constitutional right.  The ruling, not so ironically, came from Betsy DeVos' home state, Michigan.  From the NY Times:

Do students at poorly performing schools have a constitutional right to a better education?

On Friday, a Federal District Court judge in Michigan decided that they did not when he dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed by students at troubled schools in Detroit.

The suit, filed in September 2016, argued that students at some of the city’s most underperforming schools — serving mostly racial minorities — had been denied “access to literacy” because of underfunding, mismanagement and discrimination.

In his decision on Friday dismissing the suit, Judge Stephen J. Murphy III said that “access to literacy” — which he also referred to as a “minimally adequate education” — was not a fundamental right. And he said the lawsuit had failed to show that the state had practiced overt racial discrimination.

In his decision, Judge Murphy agreed that state officials bore some responsibility for the quality of education in the district. He also agreed that giving students the opportunity to learn to read was “of incalculable importance,” adding that some level of literacy was necessary for voting, applying for a job and securing a place to live.

“But those points do not necessarily make access to literacy a fundamental right,” he said.

From NPR, Virginia passes a law to suppose mental health education in schools.

This week, New York and Virginia become the first two states to require mental health education in public schools. This comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report a 30 percent rise in suicide rates in the U.S. in the past two decades. 

Vashon Island teachers voted to accept a 10% raise from their district.  From the Vashon Beachcomber:

Vashon public school teachers will see their salaries increase an average of 10 percent in the next school year, after union members approved a one-year collective bargaining agreement with the Vashon Island School District.

The previous contract had called for a 4 percent increase next year, but the negotiation process was re-opened to provide for increased money coming from the state through the McCleary funding plan. The negotiation process was not a simple one, district and union leaders agree, and resulted in the salary increase for teachers — deemed important by both sides — as well as cuts to a variety of programs, ranging from supplies to clubs.

One issue, raised in this article, that applies to all districts is figuring out how much each district will receive from the McCleary ruling.

District officials have said they will not have any. The extra money they are receiving from the state is offset by cuts from the federal government and local levy funds, former Superintendent Michael Soltman said. As a result, he said the district is left with a $1.4 million increase over last year’s budget — the amount the district would have received without McCleary money and only enough to cover the previously agreed upon 4 percent increases.

Leaders of the teachers’ union, the Vashon Education Association, disagree. They say because of information they have received from Washington Education Association (WEA), they believe that Vashon is getting more money than district leaders have presented. As a result, it took some time to try to reconcile the different information, understand the complex budgeting process and come to an agreement.

This may be an early warning for what happening during teacher negotiations for Seattle Public Schools.

Now, Soltman said, negotiations, like those on Vashon, are going on throughout the state.
“The big winners are settling easy because they have the money. The losers are going to have very challenging negotiations because they will be forced to reduce staffing and programming to increase compensation, like we were,” he said.

Both he and Macomber said they talked to Vashon’s legislators repeatedly about the regionalization issue, but the situation was not addressed. They will try again in the next legislative sessions, as will island teachers, Granum and Berliner said.

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