North Carolina's Durham Public Schools was closed on Monday due to a lack of available drivers. Another district is potentially cutting routes dramatically to compensate for staff shortages.
The number of students in Houston ISD has been on a downward slide since the COVID-19 pandemic. That enrollment decline continued this school year, and the expansion of a controversial reform program could make things worse.
"We have not yet arrived but we are certainly on our way," is how Superintendent Michael Daria describes, enthusiastically and honestly, the progress students are making at Tuscaloosa City Schools in Alabama.
We're not going to string you along with a lot of build-up here (pun intended): The average age of schools in the U.S. is nearly 50 and more than a third of the buildings were built before 1970.
Many districts say they're still struggling to make ends meet as $1.3 billion in federal pandemic relief funding expires, and other costs, like health insurance premiums, soar.
Six teacher associations’ presidents, representing a total of around 4,200 teachers, have written a letter detailing concerns over the accuracy of documents posted. The letter, which they say they plan to send to Rokita, says the portal may put teachers at risk by providing a forum for posters to share teachers' personal information, such as their names and home addresses, in some of the documents uploaded to the new portal.
Senate Bill 88, which majority Republicans on Tuesday passed out of the Senate Education and Youth Committee on a party-line vote, now says private schools would have to obtain written permission from all parents before instruction “addressing issues of gender identity, queer theory, gender ideology, or gender transition.”
For the first time in the state’s history, any family can apply for an Opportunity Scholarship to cover K-12 private school costs, regardless of their income.
The requirement was implemented to comply with the Parental Rights in Education law, which was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022. Supporters say it gives parents greater control over their children’s education, while critics call it the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
