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Your voice really matters. The Washington Coalition For Gifted Education sent the following message: The annual Washington State PTA Legislative Assembly will be held on October 18th and 19th. One […]
coalition for gifted
ACTION ALERT! – From The Washington Coalition For Gifted Education – April 22nd
Time is running out to get the HCP funding formula changed. The last bill alive is HB 2051, which was heard in the House Appropriations Committee this morning. Because of the short notice given on this bill HCP advocates were not able to testify. We need you to flood the House Appropriations Committee with messages before the executive session tomorrow (April 23) at 10:00am. So please get your emails and hot line messages in before then.
We oppose Section 3(10)( c) of HB 2051 for Highly Capable Program funding. The Legislature asked OSPI and the State Gifted Advisory in 2010 to define what constitutes a basic education program for Highly Capable students. These recommendations, including an appropriate state-level funding structure, were sent to the Quality Education Council which has three times adopted them and sent them to the Legislature.
Yet, Highly Capable is the only basic education program that has not received increased funding in the $1.3 billion McCleary appropriations proposals before the Legislature.
Highly Capable Programs are an integral part of basic education which means Highly Capable students as a class are entitled to a basic education. A basic education no matter what district they attend. Students who are sometimes identified as behavior problems in elementary school or who might become drop outs in middle and high school are often unidentified gifted students whose needs have not been assessed and addressed. Gifted students in small, rural, and high poverty school districts are entitled to the same opportunities for a basic education as those in urban and wealthy districts. Current funding levels do not provide this opportunity. Requiring parents of Highly Capable students to lobby their school board to ensure access to a basic education in NOT equitable, yet that is what the current level of state funding requires them to do.
Ask legislators to please fund Highly Capable Programs at the 5% of FTE level and at the hours recommended by the QEC. Providing Highly Capable Students a basic education is good for both the students and the State.
Please contact the members of the House Appropriations Committee as soon as possible. Use any of the information provided above to formulate your message. A list of committee members follows. Because using the Legislature’s email service requires you be a resident of the district, you will need to email each member separately. The format for names is FirstName.LastName@leg.wa.gov. It may be easier to use the Legislative Hotline: 1.800.562.6000.
If you do so, be sure to write out your message before placing the call. Operators take down your message verbatim and send it on to the legislators so having it written out before you begin ensures your message is clear and gets to the legislators as you composed it.
Ross Hunter, Chair
Timm Ormsby, Vice Chair
Gary Alexander, Ranking Minority Member
Bruce Chandler
J.T. Wilcox
Vincent Buys
Reuven Carlyle
Eileen Cody
Cathy Dahlquist
Hans Dunshee
Susan Fagan
Tami Green
Kathy Haigh
Larry Haler
Paul Harris
Zack Hudgins
Sam Hunt
Laurie Jinkins
Ruth Kagi
Marcie Maxwell
Dawn Morrell
Kevin Parker
Jamie Pedersen
Eric Pettigrew
Liz Pike
Charles Ross
Joe Schmick
Larry Seaquist
Pat Sullivan
David Taylor
Also, our Facebook and Blog pages have the committee members names as link in your email program. Will save you the effort of entering all of them yourself.
http://www.facebook.com/wagifted
http://wcge.wordpress.com
We really need you to make this effort!!!!
This may well be our last chance to influence the budget this session. Please contact the above legislators before 10:00am Tuesday morning!
Thank you for your advocacy for and support of our Highly Capable students.
Message from The Washington Coalition For Gifted Education – Jan. 19th
1. A lot has been going on in Olympia. The state Legislature appears to have organized itself and committee assignments have been made. Because there are so many newly elected Legislators and so many moving from the house to the senate, the committee make up is quite different this session. For the first weeks, committees are going into learning mode – getting up to speed on basic background, recent reports on various studies they have authorized, etc. and very little actual legislating.
If you are interested in which Legislators sit on which committees, go to http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rosters/CommitteeMembersByCommittee.aspx and search by committee or to http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rosters/CommitteeMembersByMember.aspx and search by name.
2. You might find state web sites in a state of flux as all the changes are made over the coming days so be patient. www.governor.wa.gov now shows Jay Inslee. The “Find my Legislator” page now shows the current (new) districts.
3. A report of great interest to gifted advocates has been submitted to the Legislature and is wending its way through hearings. Further action (including filing of specific bills to implement the recommendations) is not yet known. The Quality Education Council presented its Report to the Legislature on January 15th. The QEC is the body designated by the Legislature to organize the implementation of educational reform based on bills passed in recent sessions. This report is available at http://www.k12.wa.us/LegisGov/2013documents/QEC2013Report.pdf
The three state-wide gifted organizations have written to all legislators strongly supporting the QEC recommendations on the Highly Capable Program – pasted into the next paragraph – on page 14. We urge you to make this support the basis of your contacts with your Legislators in the coming months. We want to retain our status as a part of basic education and, if possible in this session, obtain a new funding formula. Input from advocates such as you can take us a long way toward achieving these goals.
Priority Area 3: Close the Opportunity Gap for Disadvantaged Students and Students of Color
5. The Legislature should support the strengthening of the Highly Capable Program to ensure that all students have equal access to it, consistent with the recommendations of the Highly Capable Program Technical Working Group**:
a. The Legislature should adopt a new and uniform definition of Highly Capable Program students, as provided in the Technical Working Group report to the Legislature; and
b. The Legislature should direct OSPI to create a common and consistent identification process for Highly Capable Program students.
c. The Legislature should direct OSPI to create rules that allow flexibility for small school districts to implement highly capable programs until the full funding recommendations* of the QEC can be adopted by the Legislature.
*“Full funding recommendations of the QEC” can be found on page 15 of the August 13, 2012 meeting materials, Past QEC recommendations http://www.k12.wa.us/QEC/PastMeetings/default.aspx
**The Highly Capable Workgroup report can be found online at: http://www.k12.wa.us/HighlyCapable/Workgroup/default.aspx in the right sidebar.
4. I hope that lots and lots of you are making plans to be in Olympia on Gifted Education Day, March 19, 2013. We’ll be in the Columbia Room of the Legislative Building beginning at about 8:30. Program is scheduled for 9:00 to 10:30 and then you are free to attend to the most important business of the day, talking with your legislators and educating them on the unique educational needs of highly capable students and why such programs benefit not only the individual student but society as a whole.
We’ll be providing you with a lot of material you can use in formulating your message – it is just a bit late in getting sent out due to some unexpected (aren’t they always unexpected) health problems of your correspondent and her husband taking up a lot of time just now and the big project contacting every individual legislator (147) with the statement of support of the QEC recommendations. 147 personalized emails takes a lot of time and effort!
5. This week the Coalition formally became a member of the Network For Excellence in Washington Schools (NEWS) the lead appellant in the McCleary case. The decision in that case calls for ample (full) funding of basic education and since HCP is a part of basic education (and is not amply funded) it seemed a good match for us to be part of the appellant group.
P.S. We’re up to 645 supporters on Facebook. We need to reach 750 before GEDay so if you are a user of Facebook, please “like” us now!
Message from The Washington Coalition For Gifted Education – June 7th
Fiscal Year 2013: Senate Subcommittee Meets June 12
The Senate subcommittee that handles education funding will be meeting on June 12 to recommend federal education program and research funding levels for fiscal year 2013.
As you know, the Javits Gifted & Talented Students Education Act (Javits) was de-funded in fiscal year 2011. This means that there is no funding for the National Research Center on the Gifted & Talented, and there are no 5-year grants to fund projects that yield best practices in identifying and serving underserved gifted students.
It’s a difficult funding environment – the impulse in Congress is to reduce, not increase spending for education. That’s why your messages to your Senators are so important. It’s critical that policymakers hear from the gifted education community about the need to support advanced students in federal education programs and research so that ALL students can make learning gains each year.
Please contact your Senators before noon on Tuesday, June 12, and urge him or her to make excellence a federal priority by supporting gifted and talented students, and the research needed to develop best classroom practices for this population of learners, in the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill.
Message from the Coalition for Gifted Education – January 7th, 2012
If you have been reading the newspapers the last few day, you know that there was a suit (McCleary v. State) about adequacy of state basic education funding before the state supreme court. That decision was handed down Thursday and was a major victory for the plaintiffs. The full decision can be found at http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/?fa=opinions.
In this decision are several items of interest and importance to supporters of appropriate educational opportunities for highly capable students.
• The court found that the new definition of basic education in ESHB 2261 is part of a comprehensive reform acceptable to the court in fulfillment of prior court orders. The inclusion of HCP in this definition is mentioned in several places.
• The court is going to retain jurisdiction over the case to ensure that the provisions of 2261 are fully implemented by the school year 2018, as set out in the law.
• The court reaffirms that “programs and offerings that fall within the legislature’s definition of ‘basic education’ are considered nondiscretionary and must be funded regardless of budgetary constraints.” ” State-level funding for ‘basic education’ is not subject to debate, even in times of budget shortfalls.” (Page 18)
• Unless the Legislature choses to change the definition of basic education (and the decision says such a change “must be accompanied by an educational policy rationale; the legislature may not eliminate an offering from the basic education program for reasons unrelated to educational policy, such as fiscal crisis or mere expediency,” page 54) HCP has a “safe harbor.” We are no longer at extreme risk every budget cycle.
Update message and sample letters from the Washington Coalition for Gifted Education
Sample Contact Letter
February 8, 2011 by David Berg
Parents and Friends of Highly Capable Children – We now need your help to save your child’s highly capable education for the next two school years, 2011-13.
Two proposals from the Governor would eliminate all Highly Capable Program (HCP) funding for this period. Meanwhile, the Governor has proposed increasing funds for other education programs during 2011-13. We’re asking the Legislature for equal treatment: Education programs must be funded equitably and proportionally. These are basic education dollars for highly capable students and programs. The mistaken perception that gifted kids are all upper-class, white, hardship-free, and disability-free has created an image hurdle for us in the Legislature. If your family’s story can balance any piece of that image, please include it!
We urge you to contact your legislators by Friday, February 11 – Gifted Education Day in Olympia. Two sample letters are below.
Remember to address emails, sign your name, and add your child’s story.
Please contact:
1. Your own legislators. Find them here: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/Default.aspx
2. Senator Ed Murray, Chair of the Senate Ways & Means Committee: murray.edward@leg.wa.gov
3. Senator Rosemary McAuliffe, chair of the Senate Early Learning & K-12 Committee. mcauliffe.rosemary@leg.wa.gov
4. Jill Satran, the Governor’s deputy chief of staff. We need to push back on the Governor!jill.satran@gov.wa.gov
Thank you! Your efforts to save HCP funding for the current school year have been working – now let’s do the same for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years!
(please see post for more details)
Message from the Coalition for Gifted
Welcome back for another year. This one promises to be full of twists and turns as the state struggles with budget shortfalls and gears up for implementation of education reform beginning September 2011.
Education Reform
Several groups are working on various aspects of ed reform. The one of primary interest to gifted advocates is the Highly Capable Program Technical Work Group. You can read about it at their web site http://www.k12.wa.us/HighlyCapable/Workgroup/default.aspx.
A number of individuals who are active in the Coalition are serving on the TWG. Members are listed on http://www.k12.wa.us/HighlyCapable/Workgroup/Members.aspx.
In addition, the Coalition is keeping a close eye on the work of the group. Their next meeting is September 16 at the Renton SD headquarters and Coalition representatives will be there both as participants and observers. We will keep you informed.