TheHill.com Superintendent overseeing Parkland schools offers resignation after perjury charge BY JORDAN WILLIAMS - 04/28/21 12:34 PM EDT 58 7 Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Just In... Biden White House touts diversity of appointees after 100 days ADMINISTRATION — 11M AGO Autistic teen model scores campaigns for Gap, Levi's and Under Armour CHANGING AMERICA — 11M 34S AGO Cheney preparing for 'challenging' primary battle CAMPAIGN — 13M 56S AGO The evolution of 'defund the police' OPINION — 17M 8S AGO VIEW ALL Superintendent overseeing Parkland schools offers resignation after perjury charge © Getty Images The superintendent of the school district overseeing Parkland schools has offered to resign amid a perjury charge. Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie offered to resign during a school board meeting Tuesday evening amid scrutiny over his handling of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 students. “If the environment is not as such that I can do my very best, I'm willing to discuss a path to a mutual agreement of separation,” he said during the meeting. view article

Aiming to upend policies that have disproportionately punished Black students, the Dallas Independent School District is moving to rewrite its school disciplinary code, ending suspensions for low-level infractions like disrupting class or using profanity.  Instead of kicking students out of school, the district plans to use digital tools that have become part of school life during the pandemic to create in-school “Reset Centers” where students can Zoom into classes and access mental health professionals and teletherapy.  If approved by the Dallas school board as expected, the new policies in Texas’ second largest school district would be unprecedented in the state and one of the most progressive discipline reforms in the country, education experts said. view article

States that are facing delays in allocating billions of dollars in coronavirus-relief funds meant for schools have until Friday to provide an explanation to the Education Department.  States that are having a difficult time disbursing to school districts hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid from the most recent coronavirus relief package are running up against a Friday deadline to explain to the Education Department why that's the case.    (27) view article

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WIAT) — A former Alabama school superintendent and two educators have pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the Alabama State Department of Education by falsely inflating the number of students enrolled in public virtual schools. Thomas Michael Sisk, 55, was previously the superintendent of Limestone County Schools and pleaded guilty along with Gregory Earl Corkren, 56, of Tuscaloosa; and David Webb Tutt, 61, of Uniontown. view article

Jill Underly, the Democratic Party-backed superintendent of Pecatonica School District, defeated Deb Kerr, the Betsy DeVos-backed former Brown Deer Schools superintendent, Tuesday to become the state’s top education official. Underly’s campaign spent seven times what Kerr’s campaign spent. Outside groups spent almost four times as much on ads in Underly’s favor than in Kerr’s favor. The American Federation for Children, a lobbying group founded by the family of former President Donald Trump's Education Secretary DeVos, poured money in on Kerr's side. The level of spending — over $1 million in ads alone — was unprecedented for a Wisconsin superintendent race. view article

Three federal stimulus packages passed during the pandemic included more than $19 billion for Texas public schools, but state leaders have yet to distribute the money. Local districts say they need it to cover pandemic-related costs.  For more than a year, the federal government has been pumping billions of dollars into school districts across the country to help them meet the demands of the pandemic. Most states have used that pot of stimulus funds as Congress intended: buying personal protective equipment for students and teachers, laptops for kids learning from home, improved ventilation systems for school buildings to prevent virus transmission and covering other costs.    (08) view article

The latest ploy of the billionaires pushing their version of “reform schools” is to fund faux grassroots parent organizations, like the “National Parents Union.” The media refer to them as “family-led.” Like the Walton family? In Rhode Island, as Massachusetts professor Maurice Cunningham demonstrated, a parent group demanding charter schools suddenly popped up, called “Stop the Wait, Rhode Island.” These moms somehow had the money to commission a statewide poll. view article

New Jersey’s South Orange-Maplewood Public Schools District is in an uproar: Parents and district representatives insist it’s safe to reopen, but teachers union leaders claim conditions are too dangerous. A group of parents felt strongly enough to form a group called SOMA for Safe Return to School; its mission is “a safe return to our public schools to accommodate as many students as possible, while prioritizing the most vulnerable and supporting our teachers.” SOMA’s website has a countdown clock that says (as of this writing) it’s been 352 days and 22 hours since all children were educated in classrooms. I spoke to one of SOMA’s founders, parent Julie Fry, who described to me the latest events and what she sees moving forward. view article

The Senate voted 64-33 Monday to confirm Miguel Cardona as education secretary — the final hurdle before the former Connecticut state chief is sworn in to lead the U.S. Department of Education.  Speeches ahead of the vote focused on Cardona’s strengths as a former teacher, principal and state leader.    (03) view article

A law enforcement officer was shot and killed in New Orleans on Friday night, reportedly while trying to escort the suspect away from a high school basketball game. The suspected gunman was reportedly in custody. The slain officer was identified as Martinus Mitchum, 38, according to NOLA.com. Teams from Carver and Warren Easton high schools were meeting in a playoff game at Carver High School when the suspect tried to enter, FOX 8 of New Orleans reported. view article

Texans in more than 100 counties can begin applying for federal assistance to help them recover from last week's massive winter storm that caused widespread power outages, water disruptions and building damages from burst pipes.  And the number of counties whose residents qualify for such aid could grow "as more work is done to evaluate need," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.  Gov. Greg Abbott's office announced Monday 31 additional counties whose residents can apply for assistance. That is in addition to the 77 counties President Joe Biden's administration included in a major disaster declaration this weekend. (You can find the counties whose residents can apply here). view article

After a monthslong push to defund the police in California’s largest public school system, trustees of the Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday approved a plan to cut 133 police positions, ban the use of pepper spray on students and divert $25 million to programs supporting students of color. view article

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It's the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."  view article

A Mississippi school district has been ordered to desegregate its schools after what the Justice Department called a five-decade-long legal battle. The Cleveland School District, about two hours northwest of Jackson, was told that it must consolidate its schools in order to provide real desegregation for students in the city of about 12,000. view article