Burbio School Tracker 5/14: 5% and Below

1. Burbio's School Board Meeting Tracker covers school board meetings for just under 2,000 school districts each month, representing over 50% of the K-12 school population. This week we explore how district priorities and terminology differ across geographies. For this exercise we searched school board meeting minutes going back to January 2024.  

In the charts below there are five geographies featured:  California, Florida, and Texas, plus a bundling of New England states (CT, MA, VT, NH, RI, ME), and southern states (AL, MS, NC, TN, SC). Districts surveyed cover well over half the K-12 population in each geography, with the exception of New England, where the reporting covers just under half. The charts below represent the percentage of districts that mentioned the terms at least once since January 2024. 

Note:  Georgia districts tended to mention all terms searched at a low level, so we left them out of the southern region as they skewed the figures. 

The first chart shows district mentions of SEL and related terms (e.g., social-emotional learning).  Note that New England and California districts refer to SEL at a dramatically higher level than the other regions:

The next chart is for mentions of Mental Health, which also included searches for therapist. While not as prominent, New England and California had much higher mentions: 

The next chart covers a basket of terms related to Security. In this case, Florida and Texas have the most mentions: 

Our final search this week is for terms about CTE and Career and Technical Education. Florida has the highest rate of mentions, while the South has more than New England and Texas:

2.  Burbio's State-Level Funding Tracker features state-specific grants for K-12 schools, covering all state departments, as well as Federal grants where states can tailor the criteria. Burbio has identified over 900 grants and the database is growing daily.  This week we wanted to highlight the different types of Pre-K and Early Childhood grants we see:

• Grants involving local community organizations:  In Maine the Public Pre-K Partnership Pilot Grant aims to "increase the number of eligible 4-year-olds attending high-quality public Pre-Kindergarten (Pre-K) programming in licensed community partner settings."   In Kentucky the Preschool Quality Partnership Grant awarded roughly $300,000 each to fifteen community partners. 
• Programs targeted to at-risk students, including the Kansas Preschool Pilot(KPP) Grant and Maryland's Prekindergarten Expansion Grant. 
• Initiatives targeting early literacy, including this from Nevada's Early Childhood Innovative Literacy Program program, Washington DC’s  Early Literacy Intervention Initiative and the Massachusetts Early Literacy Consortium Grant.
• Professional development initiatives:  Minnesota offers Grow your Own Early Childcare and Family Educators Grant, which invites districts and community organizations to “apply for a grant to host, build, or expand an early childhood educator preparation program" and Iowa provides the Credentials for Child Care Careers (C4) Grant, targeted to districts interested in partnering with a licensed child care center to provide service/practice hours to participating Career and Technical Education (CTE) students.
• Funding provided for straightforward program build-out, including Connecticut's Smart-Start, which is designed to expand pre-school access and recently awarded just over $3MM to 24 districts. 

3. Burbio will be shortly rolling out a Superintendent Turnover Tracker to allow clients to stay ahead of changes in this key leadership role by identifying and monitoring open positions. As we build out the database we wanted to further highlight two characteristics of the landscape: 

• A subset of districts that have experienced very high turnover in recent years.  Examples include Asheville City Schools, NC, with five full time and five Interim leaders since 2013;  DeKalb County GA school district, with seven Superintendents since 2013; Rochester City School District, NY now searching for their sixth Superintendent since 2016, and the City School District of New Rochelle, on their eighth Superintendent since 2015. 
• Superintendents where the new hire doesn't last very long.  Recent examples include Hutto ISD, TX, where the Superintendent resigned after 7 months on the job, and Charleston County School District, SC, where the Superintendent was forced out for changing the job role of a district employee without getting the Board's approval.