Education

NC education leaders ask General Assembly for $32M more to pay for school bus gas

The current state budget provides schools with $2.30 per gallon toward fuel costs. But diesel prices have been higher than that for months.
Posted 2022-05-04T22:49:14+00:00 - Updated 2022-05-05T19:30:55+00:00

The North Carolina General Assembly should provide $32 million for a school bus fuel reserve to help pay for rising diesel costs, the State Board of Education said Thursday.

Rising diesel costs will cost North Carolina schools tens of millions of dollars more this year.

The General Assembly will begin a short session later this month.

Without the extra help, counties would be left to cover any shortfalls.

"That will be a hardship for some districts," especially large counties with significant miles to cover, Board Vice Chairman Alan Duncan said.

The current state budget provides schools with $2.30 per gallon toward fuel costs. But diesel prices have been higher than that for months.

The war in Ukraine has only made it worse, and prices hit $3.50 per gallon last week, according to the state Department of Public Instruction

“Every $0.10 increase is a $2 increase to the state,” Jamey Falkenbury, DPI’s director of legislative and community affairs, said during a board committee meeting Wednesday.

DPI estimates the excess cost now tops $32 million. That money, if granted by lawmakers, would go into a fuel reserve for school systems to tap if they run out of money.

DPI has already made $4.6 million available from its excess transportation funding for schools to apply to use. Through mid-April, only 77 counties had indicated their shortfall, which collectively totaled $5.75 million. That doesn't reflect the state's 23 other counties or shortfalls not yet incurred before the school year ends. Official expect the need will be much higher.

DPI is pushing for $20 million to cover other plans in the short session, and the State Board of Education tacked on two of its own in the overall package its responsible for sending lawmakers and the Office of State Budget Management. The request for school bus fuel will be sent separately.

Some of the requests, detailed farther down, are:

  • $14 million for 115 more literacy coaches and nine regional literacy support coaches employed by DPI
  • $4.4 million for a school psychologist internship program
  • $254,000 for two more staff in the Office of Charter Schools
  • $123,000 for a DPI employee dedicated to improving outcomes for American Indian students
  • $18 million for full funding of low-performing schools turnaround efforts
  • $15 million for 115 more social workers

The last two requests were recommended by the State Board of Education but opposed by DPI. The State Board of Education is who decides what to ask lawmakers for on its own behalf and also on DPI's behalf.

Superintendent Catherine Truitt said DPI did not have the human resources staffing to hire 51 new people, as would be required by full funding of the low-performing schools turnaround program.

Truitt also said the state didn’t have a complete grasp of which school districts were most in need of social workers and noted some were likely in greater need than others. That would make it difficult to determine which school districts should receive funding — and how much funding — for social workers.

“We need to have a better understanding as a department what the personnel challenges are in each of the districts, because I don’t know what they are right now,” Truitt said. She said a request would be better in a long session, especially because schools have already used federal COVID-19 stimulus funds to hire 300 social workers in recent months.

Board Member Wendell Hall said schools will ultimately need permanent increases in social work staffing. He said students have been struggling with mental health and a loss of caregivers to COVID-19.

“Is this going to be a one or two year venture? No, it’s going to be a marathon,” Hall said.

124 more literacy coaches

The Department of Public Instruction would move some existing instructional coaches to focus on other schools, while providing about the state’s low-performing elementary schools with access to an early literacy coach.

A total 115 early literacy coaches would cover about 100 low-performing elementary schools, and instructional coaches would be moved to the higher-level low-performing schools.

Another nine regional coaches would support the more local coaches.

The measure is needed, Superintendent Catherine Truitt said, because low-performing schools need extra help to support their implementation of the state’s new approach to literacy.

In the next two years, all current pre-kindergarten through fifth grade teachers will receive dozens to more than a hundred hours of training on how to teach children to read. The training, called Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, is a purchased training based on a body of research known as the “science of reading” to that focuses on how the brain processes language. It’s more phonics-based and de-emphasizes “cueing,” which refers to using pictures or other clues to help someone recognize a word.

New school psychologist internship program

School psychologist Interns would work at North Carolina schools while completing their university degrees and, ideally, stay on as employees of those schools once their internships conclude.

The internship program could help improve the pipeline of school psychologists in the state by attracting school psychology students at universities in other states to come to North Carolina, DPI Director of Legislative and Community Affairs Jamey Falkenbury has said.

Even with funding for 115 more school psychologists this year, Falkenbury said schools have struggled to hire school psychologists.

Funds for school psychologists became available in January.

Hiring school psychologists has a variety of challenges that extend beyond funding for positions for them. School psychology degree programs require more intensive supervision and years of work than other psychology programs, and North Carolina universities have few new openings for students each year.

On top of that, school psychologist advocates have long criticized the low pay of school psychologists in North Carolina, which tops out tens of thousands of dollars below other states’ or what other employment sectors offer people with doctoral-level psychology degrees.

Some internships exist in North Carolina, but the state itself does not run a program.

State data on school psychologists, funded from a variety of sources, show 800 school psychologists employed this year.

That’s about typical compared to recent years.

To meet the nationally recommended ratio of students to school psychologists, the state would need to hire at least 2,000 more.

New staffer dedicated to American Indian students

The annual State Advisory Council on Indian Education report found continued disparities between American Indian students and the overall student population.

Graduation rates for the 2020-21 school year were 83.4% for American Indian students and 87.0% for students overall. Short-term disciplinary action was taken that year against 189 for every 1,000 American Indian students, compared to 214 for Black students, 64 for Hispanic students and 54 for white students. Between 15.9% and 43.8% of American Indian students passed end-of-course and end-of-grade tests, far below the scores for white students, most of whom passed the exams.

The council recommended creating a state-level employee who can help coordinate efforts to improve outcomes for American Indian students, having leaders and educators take cultural and historical training to help in those efforts, advocating to reduce technological barriers that exacerbated the impact of COVID-19 school closures and health precautions, and eliminating the 34 school mascots that still appropriate American Indians and their cultures.

Board Member Olivia Oxendine said the report concerns her, especially the student data.

"These gaps are not closing," Oxendine said.

Education leaders need to be talking with school boards and principals about helping Native students succeed, she said. If they don't read when they're young, they likely won't read when they're older, she said.

"This report just doubles our commitment to addressing those gaps," Board Member Jill Camnitz said.

More charter school support and oversight

The Office of Charter Schools has eight employees, a total that hasn’t really changed in the past 20 years, despite the number of charter schools more than doubling during that time, to 203 today.

Amy White, chairwoman of the board’s Education Innovation and Charter Schools committee, pleaded with the board Wednesday to increase staffing for the office by two.

“We are beating the dead horse for you today,” White said, noting the years of board members lamenting the office hasn’t added staff. She said Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools and Wake County Schools each have just under 200 schools and asked whether those school systems would find eight employees sufficient to oversee them.

“I would personally say two is not enough if we want to do this well, but two will move the needle,” White said. The office is doing excellent work but not everything they need to be doing, she said.

In the past year, the State Board of Education has revoked two charters for financial mismanagement and another charter school voluntarily closed after being investigated for financial fraud. Only 23 charters have been revoked in 25 years of charter schools existing, an average of about one per year. In the past year, three have been revoked. In addition to the two demonstrating financial mismanagement, a third charter school that hadn’t opened yet had its charter revoked related to its failure to open.

115 more social workers

The State Board of Education’s proposal would add 115 new social workers, though not necessarily one for each school district.

The request also asks the General Assembly to consider that half of the state’s social workers with master’s degrees aren’t paid extra for their advanced degree. It also suggests exploring a program to boost the state’s pipeline of school social workers, like the school psychologist internship program.

The proposal states the funding would begin “with the schools in greatest need based on key school data sets.”

The state’s schools employ about 1,300 social workers, and have been able to hire about 300 using temporary COVID-19 stimulus funds, according to Superintendent Catherine Truitt.

Truitt said, last she knew in December, eight school districts had no social workers and some had about 30 social workers. Data haven’t been collected since, Truitt said, while schools are continuing to use stimulus funds to hire social workers.

The state would need 6,000 total school social workers to meet the ratio of one for every 250 students, as recommended by the National Asosciation of Social Workers and the School Social Work Association of America. North Carolina’s current ratio, using the 1,300 social worker figure, is one school social worker for every 1,154 public school students.

Amy White was the only board member to say she dissented to this recommendation.

White said she didn’t think the state had enough information yet to make more specific recommendations about which schools needed social workers and how many they needed.

Waiting until a long session of the General Assembly, after seeing how schools use their stimulus funds, would be wiser, White said.

Most, though not all, stimulus funds last through Sept. 30, 2024.

Board Vice Chairman Alan Duncan said the state’s need for more permanent school social workers is apparent based on the wide gap between the state’s ratio of students to social workers and the recommended ratio.

With the pandemic’s stressors on top of that, kids are in needs and have suffered badly, Duncan said.

“We need our social workers to help alleviate that suffering,” Duncan said.

Temporary contracts, which are common using federal funds, haven’t been a major deterrent to hiring social workers so far, if 300 have bene hired with stimulus money, Truitt said.

“It doesn’t strike me as strategic or financially responsible to ask in a short session when we have money to move us past even a long session,” Truitt said.

Duncan said the board can find common ground with Truitt’s concerns. He added that schools also need to be cautious and thoughtful with their stimulus money, since it is one-time funding that won’t expire for more than two more years.

“It would not be wise to spend all of the money right now,” Duncan said.

North Carolina schools received nearly $5.8 billion from the three federal stimulus packages. It’s not clear how much of that money is spoken for.

North Carolina schools had spent $2 billion in stimulus money, through March 31 of this year. That doesn’t mean the remaining $3.8 billion is available, however.

Schools have plans for more programs and for continued employment of people they’ve hired using the funds, effectively tying up those funds in future years. It’s not clear how much money is tied up, on top of the money that has already been spent.

The state readily makes spending data available for public examination but does not include data on how much money schools have been approved to spend or how much money hasn’t been spoken for at all.

Most of the stimulus money will last through Sept. 30, 2024, so just a few hundred new hires may have more than two years remaining on their contracts, reflecting tens of millions of dollars that would not be considered spent but would not be considered available, either.

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