Conservatives Sweep School Board Races Across Florida

School boards in five Florida counties flipped to conservative majorities Tuesday with help from the endorsements of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.

Miami-Dade County, Sarasota County, Duval County, Martin County, and Clay County held school board elections. The conservative school board candidates in the five counties won their races, resulting in a flip in the majority on these school boards.

April Carney, endorsed by DeSantis, narrowly defeated incumbent Elizabeth Andersen, who was backed by Duval Teachers United and the Duval County Democratic Party, according to First Coast News. A video of Andersen calling a black conservative mom a “token person” surfaced on Aug. 14, sparking backlash from the mom and her attorney.

Roberto Alonso of Miami-Dade County was appointed to the school board in 2020 by DeSantis and defeated his two opponents, claiming an open seat on the board, according to the Miami Herald. Monica Colucci, endorsed by DeSantis, beat incumbent Marta Perez.

Tim Enos, Robyn Marinelli, and Bridget Ziegler all claimed a seat to the Sarasota County school board on election night, the Herald Tribune reported. All three candidates were endorsed by DeSantis.

Amy Pritchett, the co-chair of the local chapter of Moms For Liberty, a group that focuses on increasing parents’ involvement in their students’ education, won a seat on the Martin County school board by 337 votes, according to Treasure Coast Newspapers. Jennifer Russell was endorsed by DeSantis and won her race, claiming 56.26% of the vote.

Clay County’s Erin Skipper, endorsed by DeSantis, won 55% of the vote to win a seat on the school board, the First Coast News reported. Ashley Hutchings Gilhousen was up for reelection and claimed 69% of the vote.

The 1776 Project PAC, a group focused on school board elections and ending critical race theory, endorsed Carney, Alonso, Colucci, Ziegler, Enos, Marinelli, Pritchett, Russell, Skipper, and Gilhousen.

“The 1776 Project PAC worked to reach out to Republicans who typically vote in presidential elections but miss these important off cycle elections,” Aiden Buzzetti, head of coalitions and candidate recruitment for the 1776 Project PAC, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “By increasing voter turnout and focusing on the issues happening at their local school board, we were able to move voters to the ballot box to cast their vote for conservatives.”

Moms For Liberty did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. DeSantis’ office pointed the Daily Caller News Foundation to a Tuesday press release that called the governor’s interventions “the most significant effort by a governor to endorse, train and invest in school board candidates across the nation.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/08/24/conservatives-sweep-school-board-races-across-florida

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UK: Teenagers with Covid-inflated GCSE grades ‘struggle with A-Levels’

Some teenagers are struggling on A-Level courses that are too difficult for them after they got inflated GCSE results last year, the head of a London college group warned.

Sam Parrett, group principal of London South East Colleges, said more 16 year olds stayed on at school sixth form last year after getting better grades than they expected, but too many are now on courses that may not be “the best choice for them.”

Grades spiralled during the pandemic after they were decided on by teachers. But this year’s GCSE results, released on Thursday, are expected to show a drop in the number of top grades after students took exams for the first time in three years.

Dr Parrett said around 200 fewer 16 to 18 year old students enrolled at London South East Colleges, which has campuses in Bromley, Bexley and Greenwich, last year which is a drop of five per cent and the first decrease for ten years.

There was also a large reduction of more than 600 fewer students needing to retake GCSE maths and English when they started their college courses.

Dr Parrett said: “[The drop in numbers] is likely to be the result of school leavers achieving higher grades through the teacher assessed grades system than they were perhaps expecting to. They then chose to stay at their school sixth form to take up A Levels, rather than moving to college to pursue a more vocational route.”

She added: “This has inevitably led to some students struggling on academic A-Level courses that perhaps weren’t the best choice for them, their interests or their abilities – made even worse by the significant period of lost learning they experienced due to Covid.”

She called on students who get lower grades than expected on results day to consider vocational courses. She said: “Our message for young people and their families expecting results [on Thursday] is to please not worry. There are so many options at Further Education colleges like ours to gain qualifications that will lead you directly into higher education and into great employment.”

GCSEs are graded from 9 to 1 in England with 7 the equivalent of a low A and a 4 to a C. Experts have predicted that about a quarter of a million fewer GCSEs will reach at least a grade 4 which is considered a pass mark, compared with last year. This will still be about 260,000 more than in 2019 when exams were last taken.

Lee Elliot Major, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter, said: “The impact on their lives of not having this now-accepted standard pass will be significant because it often means they leave school without having enough basic functional skills and the qualifications needed by employers.

“My research shows teachers identify those likely to struggle to get to grade 4 level during their early years of education, yet too many of these children fail to progress.” The NSPCC said there has been a 20 per cent rise in the number of 16, 17 and 18 year olds phoning Childline because of worries about exam results this year compared to last year.

Shaun Friel, Childline Director, said: “Most students receiving their GCSE results this year will have had little to no experience of sitting an exam in a formal setting, particularly as there’s been a lot of uncertainty on whether these exams would even take place.”

https://au.yahoo.com/news/teenagers-covid-inflated-gcse-grades-051233448.html

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School districts move to ease teacher stress, burnout

With Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” blaring in the background, about 20 New Hampshire educators grabbed wooden sticks and began pounding their tables to the beat.

Emily Daniels, who was leading a two-day workshop on burnout, encouraged the group including teachers, school counselors, occupational therapists and social workers to stand up inside a hotel conference room. Before long, the group was banging on walls and whatever else they could find. Laughter filled the air. A few started dancing.

“Rhythm making offers the body a different kind of predictability that you can do every single day,” said Daniels, a former school counselor who created The Regulated Classroom which trains teachers on how to manage their own nervous system and, in turn, reduce stress in the classroom.

The training session is part of a growing and, some would say long overdue, effort to address the strains on educators' mental health.

Addressing the mental health challenges of students coming out of the pandemic has emerged as a priority for schools nationwide. Many districts, facing hiring challenges, see tending to the educators as a way to help them help students and to retain them, amid stressors that range from behavioral problems to fears of shootings.

School districts have provided increased mental health training for staff, classroom support as well as resources and systems aimed at identifying burned out teachers and getting instructors connected to help.

Karen Bowden-Gurley, a fifth grade teacher, said she attended the New Hampshire training because of teacher burnout, but she also feels student burnout.

“The demands on all of us were really high and we were trying to make up for lost time for the couple of years that they fell back on their curriculum. But we forgot that they haven’t been in school for a couple of years so they missed that social-emotional piece. We are dealing with that in the classroom.”

In a survey by the Rand Corporation, twice as many principals and teachers reported frequent job-related stress as other working adults. A study from a coalition of mental health organizations of New Orleans found educators working during the pandemic reported rates of emotional distress similar to health care workers — 36% screened positive for anxiety, 35% for depression and 19% for post-traumatic stress syndrome.

“It’s all pretty bad,” said Leigh McLean, the primary investigator at the Teacher Emotions, Characteristics, and Health Lab at the University of Delaware School of Education, who has found levels of depression, anxiety and emotional exhaustion among elementary school teachers that are 100% to 400% higher than before the pandemic.

She saw those issues increasing the most among early career teachers and teachers of color.

“So it seems like the patterns among teachers are mirroring inequities that we’re seeing in the general population with underrepresented groups being hit the hardest, which is really unfortunate,” she said.

Some districts have or are planning to invest federal COVID-19 relief money in teacher mental health, seeing it as a way to also improve the classroom environment, boost retention and ultimately benefit the students themselves. Among the states singling out teacher mental health as priorities are Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

The Atlanta school district launched a service with Emory University using federal funds to provide mental health services. Dubbed Urgent Behavioral Health Response, it funds 11 clinicians from Emory who provide emotional and behavioral assistance during school hours for struggling school employees.

A Delaware district, meanwhile, hired two social and emotional learning coaches who work to address problems teachers are having in the classroom.

“If you can imagine a teacher has a classroom where students are engaged, they are helping each other and there is a positive supportive culture, their job satisfaction is likely to be higher,” Jon Cooper, the director of the Colonial School District’s health and wellness division. “They are less likely to leave the profession, and in turn, that supports their well being.”

Houston, which started building calming rooms where students can go to decompress, is hoping to do the same for teachers, according to Sean Ricks, the Houston Independent School District’s senior manager of crisis intervention, noting that he has seen a “significant rise in teachers that were in distress.”

The rooms would be different from the traditional teacher break rooms and a place where teachers could go during time off to “calm down and chill out,” Ricks said, adding they could have “could have some aromatherapy, maybe some soft music.”

“We want them to be able to understand that we have to take mindfulness breaks and self-care breaks during the academic day sometimes,” Ricks said.

An elementary school in Indiana starts the week with Mindful Mondays, where teachers guide their classes in deep breathing techniques. There are also Thoughtful Thursdays, where a student is called on to write a letter to a staff member to show appreciation, and Friday Focus, when students and teachers talk about self-care.

“My teachers know when they need to take breaks throughout the day I want them to take those breaks,” said Allison Allen-Lenzo, the principal at O’Bannon Elementary School.

A growing number of groups offer training that incorporates breathing exercises, yoga, gentle movements and meditation.

https://au.yahoo.com/news/school-districts-move-ease-teacher-111356945.html

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