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June 21, 2022
SCHOOLbusiness news CONGRESS PROMISES TO COOPERATE ON K-12 RECOVERY SUPERINTENDENT / CBO Leaders of a newly launched Public Schools Caucus in Congress plan to mount a bipartisan effort to rethink public education in the wake of COVID and the educational challenges it exposed. The group’s work will center on reversing the learning loss students suffered during remote learning, teacher absences and other disruptions of the pandemic, according to a report by District Administration. The goal is to rebuild public schools to provide all students with pathways to economic and social mobility. The caucus will seek to leverage K-12 innovations that proved successful during the pandemic to build more resilient schools and improve student outcomes. Year-round schooling is one model the caucus may examine. Giving teachers more flexibility over instruction is another concept that would benefit students and potentially stem the tide of teacher shortages, some experts say, as the K-12 system has become “federal Department of Education-focused,” leading to a one-size-fits-all approach in many classrooms. Other teacher retention and recruitment measures could include loan repayment, scholarships, increasing pay, revising credentialing requirements and examining how much districts pay teachers vs. administrators. Also being discussed are expansion of vocational pathway programs such as the dual degree P-Tech program initiated by IBM. High school students can earn associate’s degrees and a head start into employment with the tech giant. And charter schools and parental choice have roles to play in K-12’s recovery from the pandemic. Some have pointed to New York City’s carefully regulated and nonprofit charter systems, such as the Success Academy, which predominantly serves students of color and low-income populations.
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Registration Opens October 19! Start planning now to take advantage of... Early bird pricing through January 25 Associate Member Committee Scholarships Hotel rooms at CASBO block rates Call for Content Bring your expertise and share your experience in school business! If you have an idea for an educational topic that will offer perspective and growth to school business professionals, we want to hear from you!
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SCHOOLbusiness news NATION’S 3 LARGEST DISTRICTS EXPERIENCE DATA BREACH SUPERINTENDENT / TECHNOLOGY / RISK MANAGEMENT A major cyberattack that ensnared New York City Public Schools has now affected the Los Angeles Unified School District. The data breach from the cyberattack on Illuminate Education has reached districts in at least six states: Colorado, Connecticut, California, New York, Oklahoma and Washington, according to a report by K-12 Dive. The LAUSD data breach occurred in December and January, and was reported in late May, according to the California Department of Justice. No additional details regarding how many students’ information was compromised or the type of data that had unauthorized access was provided. As more districts continue to discover they’ve been affected by the Illuminate Education data breach, the New York City Department of Education has confirmed that NYC schools stopped using Illuminate Education products following the data compromise of about 820,000 of its current and former public school students. The LAUSD notification regarding the data breach at Illuminate Education, a California-based company that provides software to track grades and attendance, means the top three largest school districts in the nation – Chicago, NYC and Los Angeles – have all recently been impacted by vendor-related data breaches. Chicago Public Schools learned in May it faced a data breach in a separate incident that compromised the information of nearly 500,000 student records after a December ransomware attack on nonprofit edtech provider Battelle for Kids. Illuminate Education’s products reach 17 million students in 5,200 schools and districts nationwide. There are likely more surprises from the Illuminate Education data breach still to be revealed, experts say. The NYC Department of Education said Illuminate Education promised it would encrypt student information in a data privacy and security agreement with the district. However, the department said the vendor did not do so when the cyberattack happened in January. As districts are increasingly at risk for student data privacy issues from growing reliance on edtech tools, experts continue to advise district leaders to take inventory of their edtech, know their state and federal laws and thoroughly read a company’s terms of use.
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June 21, 2022 MAINTENANCE OF EQUITY FINAL RULE EXTENDS DEADLINE, CLARIFIES REPORTING SUPERINTENDENT / CBO / FINANCIAL SERVICES A long-awaited U.S. Department of Education final rule for the American Rescue Plan’s K-12 maintenance of equity provision, published earlier this month, clarifies requirements states need to follow to ensure districts are not making disproportionate budget and staffing cuts at high-poverty schools. The rule extends until July 8 the deadline for when states must publish information on school districts that are exempt from the requirement. It also addresses how state education agencies can report on district-level compliance. Some state and local school systems have said the rule’s reporting requirements, which only apply to the school year just ending and next school year, are burdensome, but many agree with the push to increase equitable practices. Some advocates also hope the rule initiates efforts for longer-lasting fiscal approaches that eliminate disproportionate practices for per-pupil funding and full-time staffing. Congress included the maintenance of equity provision in the ARP legislation in March 2021, and since then, the Education Department has issued various guidance and technical assistance. The department received 12 comments during a public comment period for the proposed rule. One concern voiced by commenters, according to the Education Department, is a too-tight deadline for states to publish district-level maintenance of effort data on the state website regarding which districts are exempt from the requirement. That concern left to the shift in the deadline from March 31 to July 8, 30 days from the rule’s publication in the Federal Register. The Dec. 31, 2022, deadline for fiscal year 2022 will not change, and the department acknowledges the reporting for maintenance of equity “may not align with per-pupil expenditure data published for Title I, Part A report cards.” It adds that the equity reporting “simply allows, but does not require, LEAs [local education agencies] to use such expenditure data for the purpose of demonstrating compliance with the maintenance of equity requirements.” The department also explained that districts can rely on allocations or budget data to make a determination of whether they maintained equity. Because states collect and finalize per-pupil expenditure data on different timelines, states can request a “reasonable extension” beyond Dec. 31, 2022. ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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CASBOinsights CASBO MEMBERS HELP MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN BUDGET PROPOSALS LEGISLATIVE UPDATE When the legislature announced their budget plan on June 1, 2022, there were several items that would impact education and school business. The legislative plan serves as the basis of negotiations with the Governor leading up to the June 15 deadline to pass a budget bill. The final budget will come by July 1, 2022, when the legislature and the Governor settle on their differences. As CASBO’s Legislative Committee and Governmental Relations team monitored and took positions on budget proposals , we asked you, our members and school business leaders, to use your voice and advocate for sound policies that would benefit and support your LEAs and communities. Over 100 of you answered the call using our new VoterVoice platform, which amplified our shared message and connected you directly to your elected officials. This easy-to-use tool just needs your zip code to send a pre-written message, making advocacy a simple task with big results.
“This was so easy to use and customize!” “Great addition to the [advocacy] work.” Over the course of 5 days, we had 431 messages sent to 98 state assemblymembers, senators and the Governor, and within 24 hours we began making a difference in what the outcome of these proposals can look like. Your voice and your efforts made a difference! As we continue to monitor both the budget and legislative process, watch your emails and casbo.org for more updates and future calls to advocate. Your partnership in advocacy is valuable and impactful; help create the changes needed in school business today and for the future.
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CASBOinsights NEW DIGITAL FORUMS ON THE HORIZON FOR CASBO MEMBERS NETWORKING At CASBO we’re always listening to our members to better understand their needs in school business and beyond, then working to meet those needs. Over the course of the pandemic, we heard your call for a virtual space to meet with your colleagues to network, vent, share your experiences and gain insight into your profession from another angle, so we launched the first of our Professional Roundtables. The CBO Morning Roundtable is a complimentary forum that quickly became a popular spot for CBOs and other leaders to bounce ideas around, get another perspective, or simply shoot the breeze about the everyday aspects of leading a successful local education agency. We followed that up with a highly sought-after topic: the Women in Leadership Morning Roundtable. Co-hosted by CASBO member and Northern Section President-Elect Lisa Gonzalez, Ed.D and CASBO CEO Tatia Davenport, this monthly forum presents a series of women leaders from across the business world, including a recent session with Terilyn Finders, Director of Communications at Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost LLP on effective board presentations. If you missed that particular event, we encourage you to watch the recording. All are welcome in this complimentary forum where anyone can participate in an open line of communication — this is an inclusive space for anyone interested in becoming a true ally for their teammates in a leadership role! CASBO Professional Councils (PCs) are now looking to the future and preparing several new roundtable topics for our members, including Accounting, Financial Services, and Human Resources. Watch your inbox for these sessions to be launched over the summer and bring your insight and inquiries. When we offer our expertise and open ourselves to new ideas, we can be sure we’re doing our best for schools and school business in California.
These upcoming discipline specific venues will be open to all employees of current CASBO Organizational Subscribers. Not currently a CASBO subscriber? We encourage you to join or renew today to gain access to these forums and a host of additional benefits.
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June 21, 2022 DON'T MISS THE BUS - LAST STOP FOR THE TRANSPORTATION LEADERSHIP ACADEMY PROFESSIONAL DEVELEOPMENT The Northern California Transportation Leadership Academy (TLA) begins on August 26, but registration ends on June 30!
Register Now If you’re someone who aspires to become the transportation leader in your LEA, this is your last chance for the year to get the deep understanding and comprehensive training of our wellrounded professional development program that’s designed to set you on your road to success as a CASBO-certified Director of Transportation. Held one weekend each month for 10 months, this course offers you the essential instruction you need to enhance your career and boost the capacity of your local education agency. The TLA is designed to give you an understanding of the dedication, care and compassion necessary for leadership, as well as the tools necessary to thrive in the transportation discipline. Topics include: School bus laws and regulations governing operations, instructor certifications, driver training, and vehicle maintenance. Budget and finance issues, including the Standardized Account Code Structure reporting system, operational and capital budgeting, purchasing, inventory, payables, and payroll. California Education Code, employment best practices, employee evaluations and leaves, collective bargaining, and conducting investigations. Legal issues including ethics, sexual harassment training, child abuse reporting, citizen complaints, district policies, board relations, the Brown Act, student discipline, and more. School bus operations, best practices and comparative metrics relative to vehicle maintenance, facility operations, dispatch and routing, appropriate staffing, driver training, and record-keeping; and General management topics such as business writing and presentation skills, enhanced management and situational leadership skills. In order to be considered "registered" , CASBO requires payment in full at checkout. See our Terms and Conditions for details. ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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LEADERSHIPtrends HOW TO BUILD AN EXECUTIVE PRESENCE COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUES If you’ve ever asked a senior leader or a mentor what it takes to rise to the C-suite, their answer has most likely included “executive presence,” in addition to timing, experience, networking and confidence, writes Dina Smith in Harvard Business Review’s Ascend newsletter. Even if you’ve never received feedback like this, it’s worthwhile to consider the impression you’re making on others – through your attitude, body language and confidence (your entire being, really). The good news is that anyone can build executive presence. With a little effort, you can improve yours. Rely on feedback Start by actively soliciting feedback on your presence. Especially if you lead, or aspire to, understanding your impact on others is essential. Ask your manager, direct reports, colleagues and mentors questions such as: How would you (briefly) describe my style of presence? What’s your general perception of me? What can I do to communicate with more impact? Tune into how you communicate Beyond the words you choose, consider how you use your voice and your accompanying nonverbal behaviors. Do you make good eye contact, project your voice and stand up straight? Or do you speak softly or avert your gaze? Are you dressed in a way that fits the situation and matches the image you want to project? Your voice, nonverbal behaviors and appearance are all a part of your message and contribute to your presence – so be authentic to yourself, but also to the kind of leader you aspire to be. To increase your awareness of your communication style, request trusted colleagues to observe you in a meeting and provide feedback immediately afterwards. If they provide entirely positive feedback, thank them, then ask, “What are two things I could do differently next time to be more impactful?"
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June 21, 2022 When tasked with giving a presentation, consider having a colleague take a video or record yourself on Zoom. There’s nothing like seeing yourself on camera to highlight aspects of your communication that might be distracting or diminish your message. You may also be pleasantly surprised to see that the nervousness you feel on the inside doesn’t manifest on the outside. Experiment with new behaviors Based on the feedback you received, choose just one or two presence-building behaviors to practice. For example, if you received feedback that you often seem flustered in meetings, you might practice behaviors that signal composure such as using more pauses in your speaking and keeping your body more still. You might also watch a leader you admire who owns the room when speaking. Study what they do that makes them so effective and then try it on for size. It’s also helpful to build a few minutes into your schedule before important meetings to recall and visualize how you want to show up. Because our neurons interpret imagery as equivalent to a real action, visualization helps us act in ways consistent with what we imagined.
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LEADERSHIPtrends THE SECRET SCIENCE BEHIND SMALL TALK WORKPLACE SOCIOLOGY Ever feel like you know someone after exchanging just a few words? There’s a lot behind that phenomenon, from speech rhythms to body language and even breathing, according to Dan Bullock and Raul Sanchez in Fast Company. It’s easy to overlook the importance small talk, something that’s deeply rooted and a habitual part of our social fabric. But it turns out that small talk inspires much more than trivial babble, often setting in motion some of our most-valued relationships. Studies show that small talk is responsible for nearly one-third of our speech, even if some cultures participate in it more than others. Being custodians of our own conversations by using small talk allows us to tap into relationship dimensions of power, solidarity, formality and function using what linguists call topic management to lead conversations toward intended outcomes, like business or networking pitches. We often think the objective of our workplace conversations is to impart information, however, conversations also serve the purpose of maintaining relationships that stem from a deeper subset of linguistics called phatic communication. These synergistic forms of chitchat complement social and cultural considerations, rather than simply functioning to open dialogues. And there’s science behind the importance of these engagements. You may wonder why you sometimes feel like you’ve known a person after only exchanging a few words. The familiarity has its roots in interpersonal synchronization, where speech rhythms, walking patterns and even breathing match with those of others simply from our shared perceptions that we notice as we acquaint ourselves with each other. Findings from Princeton University on the act of human communication and storytelling revealed a powerful phenomenon called “neural coupling,” where our brains essentially get in sync during the act of storytelling. Researchers monitored audience members and storytellers via MRI machines and found that their brain waves synchronize during a powerful story, revealing that stories are one of our most powerful transcultural ingredients for communication.
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June 21, 2022 Think of a networking situation where you jump-start a conversation with phrases like “Have you ever . . .”; “What if . . .”; and “Did you know that . . .” To make use of this information, be sure to approach small talk by forging a mind-to-mind connection with stories that: Bond you with others over a professional, social or personal cause (pinpoint a shared value such as empathy, integrity, and honesty and then build a story around it). Illustrate a skill, method or process important for personal growth (stories make things easier to remember just as with Isaac Newton and the apple). Highlight how to overcome a shared challenge (think of powerful decision-making moments in your life that have the potential to inspire your counterpart to make similar decisions in their lives).
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LEADERSHIPtrends 3 TECHNIQUES TO DERAIL PROCRASTINATION THIS WEEK’S LIST It’s human nature to put off uncomfortable or undesirable tasks. But if something is a legitimate priority, we’ll have to get it done eventually – and sooner is better than later. Harvard Business Review’s Dorie Clark has a lot of strategies that can help you stop procrastinating. In her new book, The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a ShortTerm World, Clark lays out strategies we can use to “trick ourselves” into getting started on projects that might feel onerous or overwhelming, but really need to get done. Here are three techniques to try: Start with easy behavior change. Instead of focusing on the enormous task ahead of you, Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg suggests creating “tiny habits” that are so minuscule and doable that they’re impossible to resist.” When he wanted to create a flossing habit for himself, he decided to floss just one tooth. Because getting started is often the hard part, once you’re flossing that one tooth, it becomes far easier to keep going and floss them all. The goal is that for any activity where you feel nervous or averse, lower the bar and find a small way to begin. If you find yourself overwhelmed by your inbox, try replying to just one email. If you’re uncomfortable at a networking event, go up to just one person and introduce yourself. Commit to a deadline. Sam Horn was a successful author and speaker – and she couldn’t figure out how to take a break. “For decades, I had associated a full calendar with financial stability,” she said. “It was a measure of my success.” And that’s exactly what she’d optimized for, booking her schedule so full, she was on the brink of exhaustion. After one particularly brutal trip, she decided to realize a dream that she’d been pushing off for years: She wanted to spend a year traveling and working from the road. Most critically, she gave herself a deadline. For any major project, whether it’s starting a new business, or applying for an award or signing up for a course or a graduate program, she says, “If you do not have a date on the calendar, it is not getting done. Because life will intervene and you’ll say, ‘OK, well, not now, later.’ And then you set up that loop.”
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June 21, 2022 She ran into plenty of obstacles on her path to becoming a digital nomad, from incredulous friends (“Sam, are you sick?”) to fears that her business would suffer if she went on the road. “Yet it happened,” she says, “because I circled October 1 on my calendar and made a vow to be out the door on that day.” Her biggest lesson? “A pre-commitment needs to have metrics if it’s going to succeed.” Make it an experiment. The key to overcoming this hurdle and getting started is lowering the stakes in our own mind, so we can actually get started. If we view a project as a defining moment in our lives, of course we’ll hesitate: If I don’t get the pitch deck right, no one will invest in my startup, and my entrepreneurial dreams will fail! Instead, we need to reframe our actions as an experiment, because it eliminates the risk of failure. Failure is upsetting to so many of us because it implies finality. You tried to accomplish something, and it didn’t happen. But an experiment, which you recognize from the beginning has an uncertain outcome, can hardly be called a failure. You know it’ll take multiple iterations to get the result you want, and you set your expectations accordingly. Instead of becoming a podcaster for life, you commit to one season of six episodes. Even if no one listens, or you realize you don’t enjoy it, you haven’t failed: You’ve gotten data that helps you refine your approach, so you can succeed in the future. When the pressure is off, it’s a lot easier to motivate ourselves to get started.
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June 21, 2022
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