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LETTERS 96 |
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Letters 96 March 11, 1996 Hon. Sheldon Silver Dear Speaker Silver: EPP is in receipt of a summary of the governance plan jointly proposed by yourself and Steve Sanders and have distributed copies of it to our member organizations. Although we have not yet fully analyzed all aspects of your proposal, we did want to write to commend you for including some of the measures that EPP has long supported. Specifically, we are pleased to see that you would retain a central system for allocating funds to schools to ensure an equitable distribution of resources. Likewise, we support your call for a "transparent" budgeting system and creation of an "Education Revenue Account" as a means of safeguarding monies earmarked for education. The creation of the post of district fiscal officer to monitor school spending is an added safeguard we welcome. In addition, EPP has long advocated giving districts monies for minor building repair and maintenance, thus we agree with your "repair and building supply fund" provision. One of our major concerns is that school councils and the newly restructured Board of Ed be charged with improving the academic achievement levels of students as their top priority. To us, this would mean that every level of governance would know how the bottom and top quartiles of students in their school compare with their peers on the state level on standardized tests and other assessment measures. Under the current governance system these discussions rarely occur and are, instead, delegated to the chancellor or superintendent. We would like to see the legislation you propose rectify this deficiency. Because the Educational Priorities Panel is a coalition whose focus is chiefly budget issues, there are many other aspects of your plan around which we have no consensus. However, we all agree that the above-cited proposals, if implemented, would result in a more fiscally sound and accountable school system. In the coming weeks you should be hearing from some of our member organizations regarding other provisions in your proposal. Enclosed you will find a copy of EPP's recently adopted statement on governance for your review. Please note that EPP strongly believes that the issue of adequate resources to support instruction is inextricably linked to any discussion of governance and school improvement. Therefore, we look forward to working with you in the near future on school funding. Sincerely,
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POLICY ON USE OF
MATERIALS ON EPP WEB SITE: Individuals and organizations are free to
reproduce and/or forward information contained on our web site without
prior permission, but we ask that the Educational Priorities Panel be
cited as the source of the information. For puposes of clarity, we recommend:
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