Last Chance to Be Eligible for State and Federal Discounts for Fiber Upgrades:
The E-rate Category 1 “Special Construction” program provides discounts for districts to upgrade their information technology infrastructure to fiber. As an incentive, ESE is offering to fund, pending authorization, the equivalent of 10 percent of the project cost with dollars from the Digital Connections Partnership Schools program, thereby triggering an additional 10 percent investment from the Federal Communications Commission, which administers the E-rate program. However, districts must act quickly, as this opportunity may not be available once the current E-rate cycle ends.
The Department will hold a webinar at 11:00 a.m. Wednesday, January 17, 2018 to share more information about this opportunity. Anyone with questions or who would like to know more about available tools and assistance should feel free to contact Kenneth Klau from ESE or Greer Ahlquist from the nonprofit EducationSuperHighway.
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VISTA Survey Coming:
The 2018 Views of Instruction, State Standards, Teaching, and Assessment (VISTA) surveys are about to launch. As in past years, the VISTA survey gives educators the opportunity to share their views on the implementation of five statewide initiatives. This year’s topics are: Massachusetts curriculum frameworks; the role of educator evaluation in educator growth; educator pipeline development (preparing, hiring, and retaining educators); social and emotional learning, health and safety; and ESE supports. A highlight of this year’s VISTA survey is a question that enables educators to suggest what the new commissioner should focus on early in her or his tenure.
All superintendents and principals will be invited to participate in the survey, which will open on January 16. The surveys will take respondents 20 to 30 minutes to complete.
The acting commissioner strongly encourages educators to share their voice with the state by participating in this important initiative. The Department uses educator feedback to improve statewide implementation; better target resources, grants and supports to Massachusetts educators; and inform policies. The results from the 2017 and 2016 surveys are available online.
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Guidelines for Preschool and Kindergarten Learning Experiences:
The revised Guidelines for Preschool and Kindergarten Learning Experiences is ready for piloting this winter. This updated version combines both the Guidelines for Preschool Experiences and the Kindergarten Learning Experiences into one document that is aligned with the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Office of Student and Family Support and the Department of Early Education and Care are seeking feedback on this resource from districts, schools, Head Start programs, licensed early education and care programs, and institutions of higher education. The pilot will run from January to April. Informational webinars on the pilot will be held at 9:00 a.m. and3:15 p.m. on January 29. Districts and programs that are interested in participating in the pilot are asked to register for one of the two webinars. Districts and programs that are interested in participating in the pilot but are unable to join the webinar should email Mary Jane Crotty at mjcrotty@doe.mass.edu.
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Student Government Day Will Be Friday, April 6:
Registration for annual Student Government Day closes on Friday, January 19, 2018, and spaces are filling quickly. A speech competition will be conducted to select this year’s student governor, who will give his or her speech on April 6. Also, the Student Government Day team is selecting the bills for the student debate during the simulated joint committee hearing and executive session. Information about the speech competition and the bills will be provided in an upcoming Update and posted on the Student Government Day website. Please email any questions to studentgovday@doe.mass.edu.
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Charter School Waitlist Report Update:
The Department recently released the updated 2017-2018 waitlist report. The report and appendix includes the number of students who applied for admission to a charter school for the 2017-2018 school year and were still waitlisted as of October 1, 2017. Of the 74 charter schools who submitted initial waitlist data in March 2017, 73 continued to maintain or created a subsequent waitlist in October 2017. The updated charter school waitlists contained 48,572 entries on all waitlists, representing 27,416 unique students. Of the 27,416 unique students, 21,083 students who newly applied for admittance to at least one charter for the 2017-2018 school year remained on a waitlist as of October 1, 2017. (The rest of the unique students are students who applied prior to March 31, 2014 and were put on a waitlist at a school that rolled them over onto their waitlist each year after that.) The October 2017 updated waitlist represents an increase of 852 newly applied unique students compared to October 2016.
Information on which town or city waitlisted students live in is available in Tables 4 and 9 in the report's Appendix (the orange worksheet tabs named “Oct17 Town” and “Oct17 Town x Grade”). Please note that the unique waitlist counts provided in this current report should be taken as ESE's best understanding and representation of demand for all charter schools in operation for the 2017-2018 school year rather than exact numbers of students willing to accept offers at each charter school.
For more information about the report, please contact Brenton Stewart at bstewart@doe.mass.edu or 781-338-3214 or the Office of Charter Schools and School Redesign at charterschools@doe.mass.edu or 781-338-3227.
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ESE Resource Corner
New policy brief available on class size in Massachusetts: The choices districts make about class size have real, though often hidden, costs. A new policy brief from the Office of Planning and Research aims to help inform those choices by summarizing the research evidence on class size and putting those findings into the Massachusetts context. Nationally, most studies in the modern educational context show small or no impacts of class size on student outcomes and no variation in impact across student subgroups. Class sizes in Massachusetts are relatively small, averaging around 20 students per class in ELA and mathematics courses. They also vary little across grades, with the smallest class sizes at the high school level, and are driven in large part by district characteristics such as overall enrollment, number of schools, and per pupil expenditures.
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- Grants to help students from Puerto Rico: The Baker-Polito Administration recently announced $60,000 in federally-funded, competitive McKinney-Vento Homeless Education grants to assist 12 school districts that are serving most of the Puerto Rican students who came to Massachusetts after losing their housing due to hurricanes. In the press release, Governor Charlie Baker said, “We are pleased to be able to award these important McKinney-Vento grants to a number of communities who opened their schools to those in need, and we look forward to working with the legislature to provide additional funding this fiscal year to any school district impacted by unexpected students."
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