TOP NEWS The Washington Post The state is giving teachers a 20 percent raise by 2020 and investing an additional $138 million in schools — an outcome that only partially met educators’ demands. Read more>> From DA Magazine Steven Blackburn Schools have started fine-tuning their automotive tech programs to make them ideal vehicles for STEM instruction. Read more>> MLive.com An initiative to develop teacher leaders in three high-poverty districts is seeing positive results in achievement, improved knowledge and instructional skills of peer teachers, and culture, officials say. Read more>> The Denver Post Teachers in Pueblo, Colorado, plan to walk out of school Monday, starting the first teacher strike in Colorado in a quarter century. They will picket several schools with the hope of getting Pueblo School District 60 to agree to a 2 percent pay raise and better benefits. Read more>> WRAL Joining Durham schools, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools has canceled classes on May 16 as hundreds of local teachers plan to take the day off to lobby lawmakers for better pay. Read more>> St. Louis Post-Dispatch A few of the district’s lowest-performing schools will become “consortium schools.” They will be freed from district rules and structures related to academics and operations, which means they will have autonomy in decisions such as setting their own curriculum and school day length, paying staff and spending money. Read more>> Ocala.com The local olice chief says law is clear: The district is on the hook for the cost of officers at all schools, including charter schools and alternative learning sites. But Marion County School District officials say charter schools receive state security funding and should pay for school resource officers. Read more>> The State Faced with an alarming shortage of teachers, South Carolina districts are taking unusual steps to fill vacancies — recruiting in other parts of the country, buying homes for teachers and funneling non-education professionals into the classroom in a matter of weeks. Read more>> CBS News A Wisconsin high schooler is fighting to wear shirts with images of guns to school. Matthew Schoenecker says his T-shirts reflect his personal beliefs, but after the Parkland school shooting, administrators at his high school said his shirts were inappropriate and that he could no longer wear them. Read more>> OPINION Associated Press via SFGate They are the "good guys with guns" the National Rifle Association says are needed to protect students: a school police officer, a teacher who moonlights in law enforcement, a veteran sheriff. Yet in a span of 48 hours, the three were responsible for gun safety lapses that put students in danger. Read more>> The New York Times On the Upper West Side, a middle school principal stood before a crowd of angry white parents—furious about a plan to help the poorest students gain access to some of the city’s most desirable schools—and told them they were wrong. Read more>> Green Bay Press Gazette Typically struggling with inadequate funding, providing a quality education in small, rural districts like Goodman-Armstrong Creek School District, with 113 students, takes creativity — whether it's finding grants to support programs or asking hunters to donate deer legs for biology class dissection lessons. Read more>> The News Tribune Since 2014, chronic absences, defined as missing 18 or more days, have gone up in the district by two percent. A marginal increase at first glance, but one missed day of school for any student could mean a lost step in math, reading or science. Read more>> INDUSTRY NEWS Vegas PBS/Nevada Learning Academy Vegas PBS, through a state grant for distance education, has partnered with Nevada Learning Academy to provide online career pathway courses for students to prepare for certifications in health science, IT and business management. Read more>> Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Writable Writable’s capabilities will be integrated with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Collections ELA program for grades 6-8, establishing a single hub for Collections’ writing assignments and applying Writable’s suite of peer and educator feedback tools, formative and summative assessment practice, and more. Read more>> Telcom & Data The PENTON Emergency Notification Systems for Schools is an audio distribution system for public address and evacuation purposes which rest on an ethernet/IP networking architecture. The system is capable of making live paging calls in to the class room and initiating prerecorded notification messages. Read more>> ✭ Visit the District Administration's PR Portal ✭ | 