The Board of Regents wants to spend $20 million on hybrid school for students in the juvenile justice system. That would be primarily online instruction, but with live teachers.
The board also wants to solve hurdles in the road to electric buses, and create a system that tracks students through their various schools and into careers to see if their education produced results.
The board voted unanimously on its 2024 budget requests at a meeting Monday.
On juvenile justice, Deputy Education Commissioner and CFO Christina Coughlin explained that the $20 million plan would be a partnership with the Office of Children and Family Services.
"The OCFS does run educational programming, but they know and have said to us that it could be better if it were an education program," Coughlin said.
The students involved cannot physically attend a public school. They are in a controlled setting under court orders. Some may be in juvenile detention centers, and others might be in court-ordered rehab facilities.
The board wants a program "that builds on our experience with virtual instruction," Regent Roger Catania said.
On electric buses, the Education Department needs help, he said.
The board wants to convene a work group to address "significant problems being faced by school districts making this transition," he said.
"The problems with power generation capacity, the long bus run distances and the impact of extreme weather ... All of these are aspects that rural districts are trying to figure out and are proving to be quite challenging," he said.
The board's top priority for the department is to improve old technology — at a cost of $4.3 million.
"These days we really need technology to guide our work and to ensure our staff are spending time doing the good work and not moving paper," Coughlin said. "We've also asked for investment in two major systems."
One IT system would help the department identify capacity in the special education system, to help get students into the right program. The ideal system would also integrate the spending reimbursements required to school districts for those programs.
In addition, the board wants a system that would track students throughout their academic life and into their chosen careers. The total budget request is $530,000, but the total project is estimated to cost $14.75 million.
"It's a major undertaking," Coughlin said.
But it's worth it, he said, because the state needs to know student outcomes.
"What happens to them when they're in the labor force?" Coughlin said. "Being able to connect that information to really help us design policies and programs that work for students is such a powerful opportunity."
The board won a $3.75 million federal grant that will cover part of the cost. The state approved $10.5 million for the effort years ago, so the board wants that funding released to start the project.
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