Being a member of the Illinois Coalition of
Nonpublic Schools entitles you to receive this
issue of the Electronic Report.
The purpose of this Report is to provide brief
synopses of developments with the Illinois
Coalition of Non-Public Schools, legislative
updates, and information of interest to our
nonpublic school administrators. Additional
information may be obtained by following the
hyperlinks that are imbedded throughout the
Report.
ADVOCATING FOR
NONPUBLIC SCHOOLS
The annual membership drive for ICNS is
underway. School contacts should have received
an application for the 2007-2008 school year.
Membership dues are $50. Attached you will find
a form to use in renewing your membership. Think
about it. There are few organizations that
charge only $50 a year to be a member,
particularly one where the school receives
significant benefits.
Why join the Illinois Coalition of Nonpublic
Schools? The Illinois Coalition of Nonpublic
Schools (ICNS) is committed to communicate and
visibly participate in educational dialogue with
local, state and federal leaders on behalf of
nonpublic schools for our common purposes, needs
and concerns. We are committed to monitor
legislation affecting nonpublic schools at a
local, state and federal level. ICNS is the
voice of the nonpublic school community
representing twenty different nonpublic school
associations. Each month, as a member, you will
receive the Electronic Report as a means to keep
you informed about our work.
Print the
membership form and mail your annual dues in
today.
LIST OF STATE
MANDATES RELATED TO HEALTH & SAFETY
There are a number of state mandates related to
health and safety that our nonpublic schools to
must follow. As a school, you must collect, keep
and providing such evidence as required to
assure compliance with state laws,
administrative rules, or expectations of the
Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE).
1)
Background Check Mandate
a.
Collecting, keeping and providing
relevant information to conducting soon-to-be
required fingerprint based criminal records
checks with the Illinois State Police and FBI
i.
Cost of each record check will be $50 per
person – unlike public schools, nonpublic
schools do not have access to School Safety and
Educational Improvement Block Grant to help with
these costs
2) Complying with state mandate to keep
an Automated External Defibrillator on school
sites with indoor gymnasium and certain outdoor
facilities.
a. Purchasing AED (~ $1100)
b.
Training staff in AED use
c.
Maintaining AED through proper
maintenance and care
3) Fire and Health Safety Requirements
a.
The completion and submission of the
annual review form to the Illinois State Fire
Marshal, completion of required drills, design
and maintenance of a crisis plan and meetings
with local first responders and associated work
as required by the School Safety Drill Act
b.
Maintaining records of annual inspection
to ensure compliance with state and local fire
safety requirements
c.
Purchase, installation, and maintenance
of general safety equipment such as sprinkler
systems, fire doors, and intercoms and building
alarms
d.
Maintenance of Automated External
Defibrillators & Staff Training
4)
Health examinations and immunizations
a.
Collecting, keeping and providing evidence to
ISBE of compliance with Child Health Examination
and Immunization laws
i.
Health examinations and associated
immunizations required within one year of
entering kindergarten or 1st grade,
and upon entering 6th and then 9th
grades.
5) Dental examinations
a. Collecting, keeping and providing evidence
to ISBE of compliance with dental examinations.
Dental exams are required for pupils entering
kindergarten, 2nd and 6th
grades.
6)
Vision and Hearing Screening
a.
Facilitating tests and collecting,
keeping and providing evidence of compliance
with the Child Vision and Hearing Test Act.
i.
Vision screening is required in
Kindergarten, 2nd and 8th
grades
ii.
Hearing screening is required in
Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and
3rd grades
7)
Compliance with food service rules
established by federal and state government
a.
Including creation and maintenance of
Wellness Plans and proof of meeting specified
nutritional guidelines in food service
b.
Food service personnel certification,
record keeping and filing claims
8)
Collecting, keeping and maintaining
proper documentation and authorizations for
state requirement that certain allergy
medications be allowed and, in some cases
self-administered, in school
9)
Creating and distributing information to
parents on the Illinois Sex Offender Registry as
required by law
10)
Compliance with requirements to use the
School Incident Reporting System
a.
Several types of incidents are required
to be reported to local and state law
enforcement through a state board of education
and Illinois State Police web based application
11)
Nondiscrimination
a.
Required to identify and describe means
for complying with applicable federal and state
laws regarding nondiscrimination for students
and personnel
12)
Periodic state visits for Nonpublic
School Recognition
a.
Time spent preparing for and conducting
state recognition visits to ensure compliance
with state recognition Policies and Guidelines
b.
Coordinating teams to conduct the
recognition visits, which may include local
public school and/or regional office of
education staff in addition to state inspectors.
This information is shared with you because
in the first two weeks of October, efforts will
be made in the legislature to override the
Governor's recent vetoes of certain items in the
state's budget. This includes two programs
vitally important to nonpublic schools: $10.1
million in the School Safety Block Grant to help
our schools pay for state mandated health and
safety measures, and $14.1 million to increase
the transportation reimbursement to parents
forced to drive their children to school.
You are urged to
CALL AND/OR
WRITE your state representative and state
senator in the next two weeks and ask that they
commit to voting to override the Governor's
vetoes! You can send a letter along with the
information above related to the requirements
nonpublic school must comply with, as a way of
letting them know the importance of funding that
was included in the School Safety Block Grant.
A sample
letter is attached.
If you do not know who your state representative
and senator are, you can go to
www.ilga.gov,
click on Legislator Lookup in the lower right
hand column and plug in your street address.
(Legislative
information received from Zach Wichmann,
Associate Director for Education, Catholic
Conference of Illinois and Illinois Statewide
Management School Alliance)
POSTERS
No need to buy required posters. There are
companies out there who will tell you that you
do but these online posters meet the letter of
the law. They may not be laminated but they are
free. Use the following address for the Federal
Department of Labor and download the posters you
need to post:
http://www.dol.gov/osbp/sbrefa/poster/main.htm.
The posters you will need for your school are
the following:
· Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
· Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
· Job Safety and Health Protection
· Equal Employment Opportunity Act
· Notice to Workers with Disabilities
· Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA).
BACKGROUND CHECKS
Despite vetoing the money in the budget for
nonpublic schools to pay for health and safety
mandates, the Governor did sign Senate Bill
143. This is the bill that requires fingerprint
based criminal record checks for state
recognized nonpublic school employees, hired
after July 1 of this year. Here is the
Governor's Press Release:
http://www.isbe.state.il.us/news/2007/08-23-07_GOV.pdf
EDUCATION IN THE
NEWS
LATER SCHOOL STARTS GAIN POPULARITY
After a swing toward starting the school year
earlier, sometimes as early as the first week of
August, momentum has grown in several states to
begin school later in August or after Labor Day.
Pressure from parents and the tourism industry
has pushed 11 states to limit how early school
may begin, rankling school boards that want
local control and more time to prepare students
for state-mandated tests. This year, new laws
took effect in Florida, where the 67 public
school districts may not begin classes earlier
than 14 days before Labor Day, and Texas, where
the 1,033 public school districts may not begin
until the fourth week in August. In Michigan, a
law enacted last year said the 838 school
districts must begin classes after Labor Day.
Other states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee,
Alabama and Kentucky, are debating the start
date, reports Marisol Bello in USA TODAY. The
average school year, which each state
determines, is 180 days, the Department of
Education says. Parents don't want vacation time
with their children cut off so early, says Tina
Bruno of San Antonio, who heads the Coalition
for a Traditional School Calendar, which works
with parents in other states to push back the
start of school. Most schools start before Sept.
1, according to an annual survey of the nation's
14,000 public districts, conducted by Market
Data Retrieval, a research firm for companies
that do business with schools. Last year, 75
percent started before Sept. 1, compared with 51
percent in 1988. The tourism industry also has
pushed for change. It complains about lost
income and a lack of student workers when school
starts in early August.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-08-28-school_N.htm
DO CHARTER SCHOOL OUTPERFORM REGULAR SCHOOLS? IT
DEPENDS
Praised by some and scorned by others, charter
schools have long been hailed as the savior or
spoiler of public education in America. Now, a
study by California researchers trying to learn
at last which kind of public school works better
-- charter or traditional -- has reached this
Zen-like conclusion: It all depends. For
elementary schools, forget the charter. Go with
traditional. For middle schools, head to the
charter. For high schools, well, it's a toss-up.
And for those who are dead-set on sending their
children to a charter, the ones managed by a
company or a nonprofit organization generally
outperformed the ones run by local groups. With
the research still inconclusive and
contradictory, more research is needed, reports
Nanette Asimov in the San Francisco Chronicle.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/13/BAGQGQECQE1.DTL
WHY SCHOOL CHOICE IS PROVING TO BE SO HARD
While charter schools are getting mixed results,
as are the few public voucher programs now in
existence, choice is spreading. But it is doing
so slowly, writes Paul T. Hill in Education
Week. Districts, too, have been slow to improve
their own schools in response to the competition
from schools of choice. So it is right to ask
why everything once envisioned for the choice
movement is taking so long. The reason is that
building a system of choice on top of one based
on regulation is different from creating choice
from the ground up. It is time to acknowledge
that getting dramatic results from school choice
will be harder than expected --and that the
actions that must be taken will be more
difficult than some supporters had hoped. It is
now clear that schools of choice present some
challenges not adequately factored into the
original equation. For example: (1) They are
hard to run; (2) They are demanding places to
teach and aren't for everyone; (3) They can't
compete successfully with district-run schools
unless they get as much money as their
competition for pupils they educate; (4) They
need to prove themselves on the same tests and
other outcome measures as other schools; (5)
They need strong, not weak, government
oversight; (6) They do not automatically inspire
districts to improve; and (7) They segment the
market. Hindsight makes these conclusions
obvious. But together, they mean that schools of
choice have a tougher time than expected finding
leaders and teachers, getting the funds they
need to be run effectively, proving that their
programs work, and creating stable parent
clienteles. And the more that schools of choice
develop clear missions and specialties, the more
that they will be open to attack.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/09/05/02hill.h27.html
CONTACT US
If you have any questions, comments or need
information related to our efforts in supporting
nonpublic schools, feel free to communicate with
us by sending an e-mail to
ICNS
