State Board Adopts White Paper

At a study session on Tuesday and its regular meeting on Wednesday, the Kentucky Board of Education heard presentations and took action on a number of items.

The board agreed to adopt a white paper called Goals and Guiding Principles for Accountability in Kentucky’s Public Education System. The board agreed to incorporate language related to international and national benchmark attainment and to reinforce differentiated teaching and learning. The board also discussed a separate Program Review for world languages. The document will serve as a foundation piece on which decisions will be made regarding the new public school accountability model required by 2009’s Senate Bill 1.

The board also had discussion on the preliminary regulatory language for Kentucky’s new accountability model and on remaining accountability issues.

The board gave final approval to state regulation 702 KAR 7:125, which relates to pupil attendance. Changes to the regulation include:

• Beginning with the 2010-11 school year, attendance calculations will change from Full Time Equivalency (FTE) to whole day/half day. Daily attendance will now be represented as 0%, 50% or 100%. There will be no changes in the way daily attendance is entered at the district level. This change is a technical correction to show that 35% absent is a Tardy, with the student receiving a full day of attendance.
• The requirement in the regulation for districts to submit copies of their written nonresident pupil contracts to KDE has been removed, as this is not required by statute. The change in the regulation would require that contract information be kept on file at both the attending and resident districts.

The definitions for student ethnicity have been changed to align with those required by the federal government for state and federal reporting purposes.

The board also discussed the identification of low-achieving schools and districts in corrective action status under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, along with the provisions of KRS 160.346 and the related regulations that affect these schools and districts.
The board took the following actions:

• approved district facility plans for the Breckinridge County, Carroll County, Scott County, Washington County and Frankfort Independent school districts
• approved a district facility plan amendment for Taylor County
• approved 2010-2011 local district working budgets

approved a waiver of state regulation 702 KAR 5:060, Section 6 (2) for the Ft. Thomas Independent school district

The board presented three awards at this meeting:

• the Kevin M. Noland Award to Sally Sugg, former director of the KDE Division of District 180
• the Joseph W. Kelly Award to Helen M. Carroll, manager of Community Relations for Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing, North America, Inc.
• the Dr. Johnnie Grissom Award to the LaRue County school district

The board heard presentations on the following items:
Program Reviews

• National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) Obesity Prevention Project Grant
• Students with Disabilities: Focus on Closing Achievement Gaps
• the designation of an agent to manage high school interscholastic athletics
• revisions in Kentucky High School Athletic Association (KHSAA) bylaws
• the commissioner’s and board’s expenses

The Kentucky Board of Education’s next regular meeting is scheduled for February 1 in Frankfort. More information about the board is available here.

SOURCE: KDE Press release