Civic education: Board of Ed

Sagan: not doing a good enough job
some disagreement on adoption of report
have heard frustration on not pushing this hard enough
Chester: appreciate "benign neglect...it could have been a lot worse"
"we're looking at our staffing across the board"
have lost a substantial number of positions between end of RTTT and early retirement
heavily dependant on federal dollars
no general curricululm item in state budget, one for literacy, some for math
"piece together the curriculum work that we do from a variety of funding sources"
of items, none more important than statewide advisory councils
commit to coming back to you with more on this
"my experience is advisory councils generally don't propel themselves"
"we do not lack for advisory committees that have been established through statute...over 20 that are statutorially required"
Willyard: state advisory council meeting with stakeholders, would like to see that happen
"don't want to see that go untouched"
Sagan: offer from Kennedy Institute
"never want to look a free meeting space in the..."
Stewart: excited about having students take some leadership role in civics education
but needs stronger department support
"pretty much every year there are bills filed all around civics education"
McKenna: Board endorsed the recommendations, but now it's as if we're only going to do one
"public education was created to educate engaged citizens"
17% of 18 year olds vote
"if we can't make this a basic tenet of what we do, I don't know what we can make a basic tenet"
"I think this is critical"
"have had literally hundreds if not thousands of people engaged in this
seldom we have people offering to help us and us saying no
"I think it's the wrong answer"
either come back in October or create an advisory committee of the Board to follow up on this work
"students are out in front of us"
Basically, we're got early retirement and #RTTT coming home to roost here. Civics ed being held up by lack of DESE staff.
Sagan worried that subcommittee will come back with another endorsement but without staff to implement
McKenna: have had some suggestion of resources
Sagan: "we all agree, this is just too urgent"
Craven: from years in the budget world, Legislature looks askance at these one-off things
look at my daughter's schedule and has some holes in her schedule where she could participate in something like this
should have committee of the board
how much money would be involved in this? Satisfactory start to this
Chester: ask Board to indulge me in: this is a very deserving area, "there are a lot of deserving areas that are not in the budget"
lists teacher prep, social-emotional areas
commit to be back on how to move this ahead
Sagan: one of the items that the budget committee will work to move ahead
Peyser: this is really about mobilizing our resources
"I don't think this is saying we're not doing it"
asks that assessment be added to history and social sciences review of frameworks
McKenna asks that this be on next agenda

Side commen: this was all just about DESE fudning for implementation: what about DISTRICT funding for implementation?