Tag: James Sherlock
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Government Attacks on Parental Choice in Virtual K-12 Education in Virginia. Chapter 7: Recommendations
by James C. Sherlock Recommendations. Where to begin? First things first. Day one, as Governor-elect Youngkin likes to say… Stop the continued expansion of Virtual Virginia. We know hardly anything about it, and what we do know is not encouraging. We don’t have Virtual Virginia kids’ SOL scores; We do have parental survey data that have…
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Government Attacks on Parental Choice in Virtual K-12 Education in Virginia. Chapter 6: The State Experiments with the Educations of More than 12,000 Children
by James C. Sherlock If parents asked their local schools for a full-time virtual K-12 (FTVK12) option for this school year, they were presented with only the VDOE option, Virtual Virginia, unless their district runs such a program itself, as a couple of them do. Virtual Virginia is, thus, nearly the only virtual education option offered…
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Government Attacks on Parental Choice in Virtual K-12 Education in Virginia. Chapter 5: Driving Out Commercial Providers
by James C. Sherlock There was plenty of VDOE-computed “capacity” in Richmond Public Schools (RPS) to accommodate out-of-district students for purposes of their being taught by the leading MOP provider. (MOP’s are the privately-run, state-funded “Multidivision Online Providers” of educational services which are a legal option for parents of Virginia school kids.) Then RPS suddenly…
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Government Attacks on Parental Choice in Virtual K-12 Education in Virginia. Chapter 4: Demand and Supply
by James C. Sherlock The demonstrated demand this school year for publicly-funded full-time virtual K-12 (FTVK12) education in Virginia has been about 17,000 kids. That figure does not include the home-schooled kids ineligible for public funding support, discussed below. While that is a big number, it represents less than 1.5% of the 1,251,970 kids …
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Government Attacks K-12 Public Education in Virginia – Chapter 3: The Elusive Costs of the Government Option
by James C. Sherlock The publicly funded competitors to VDOE-run Virtual Virginia provide VDOE-approved curricula and courses delivered by VDOE-certified teachers employed by highly experienced and nationally prominent companies regulated by VDOE. You get the point: VDOE oversees its competitors. And it knows what they are paid by the government. My very rough estimates indicate that a full-time,…
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Government Attacks K-12 Public Education in Virginia – Chapter 2: The Regulatory State
by James C. Sherlock The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) both runs its own virtual school and regulates that school’s competitors. The Virginia way. Mark Zuckerberg can only dream. Virginia’s privately run, state-funded, multidivision online providers (MOPs) constitute the major competitors to VDOE’s own Virtual Virginia, its state-run virtual school. Virginia law positions MOPs as…
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Government Attacks on Parental Choice in Virtual K-12 Public Education in Virginia – Chapter 1: Teacher shortages
by James C. Sherlock A great deal of the increase in demand for full-time virtual K-12 (FTVK12) education is driven by rising teacher shortages in the brick-and-mortar schools. I am not talking about COVID quarantine or other illnesses, but rather endemic shortages. Jobs that cannot be filled. And may never be. We have well-founded fears…
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A Price of COPN — Sentara Pleads COVID Capacity Shortages
by James C. Sherlock Sentara Health, once described by The Washington Post as “playing COPN like a violin,” yesterday went statewide with an acknowledgment that its system is out of capacity for many who seek its help. On a Zoom press conference yesterday, Sentara reported seeing a huge surge in hospital admissions. Hospitalizations have more…
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Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the LCPS Board
by James C. Sherlock The Loudoun County School Board has announced that it has appointed Jeff Morse of the Dulles district as its new chairman for the 2022 calendar year. Turns out Jeff was its former Chairman in 2017-2019. He was elected with five votes for and four abstentions. But whatever works. Jeff’s home page…
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Medical Facility State Inspector Shortfalls An Urgent Matter for the Governor and General Assembly
by James C. Sherlock Virginians are blessed to have a person running the Department of Health Office of Licensure and Inspection (OLC) who may be the best public servant in the Commonwealth. She desperately needs help to do the work she is assigned in order to protect us. Kim Beazley, the Director of that Office,…
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Another Brick in the Wall Around Sentaraland
by James C. Sherlock Which one of these doesn’t match? Story in Virginia Business Dec. 20: EVMS, ODU and Sentara sign health center agreement. Eastern Virginia Medical School, Old Dominion University and Sentara Healthcare entered into a memorandum of understanding Friday to work toward a collaborative academic health center…. That’s right. EVMS and ODU are…
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Virginia State and Local Agencies Must Spend Federal Coronavirus Relief Funds by December 31
by James C. Sherlock State and local governments are awash in billions of dollars of federal funding with various federal expiration dates if not spent. The General Assembly set its own deadline. Recipients have to spend federal money allocated by the General Assembly by Dec. 31 or lose it back to the Governor for repurposing.…
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Virginia No-Limit Campaign Laws = Tax Exemptions for Partners in Venture Capital Firms
by James C. Sherlock Updated Dec 14 at 10:19 AM I just spent some spare time browsing through the Virginia tax code. (I know, get a life.) Lots of interesting items in there. Some tax exemptions make sense for the best interests of the state. Some don’t. This case benefits a very few people a…
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A Naval Officer Prepares to Repel Boarders
by James C. Sherlock Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced he has put $8 million in his new budget to transport illegal immigrants to other states and D.C. He listed Delaware and Martha’s Vineyard as potential destinations. This of course will be Florida’s response to the Biden administration flying 70 planeloads of illegals into the state…
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Protecting Stable Governance — Virginia vs. the Federal Government
by James C. Sherlock An opinion piece by Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post was headlined, “No one in their right mind would design a government that works like ours.” She meant that her preferred changes to American governance were stymied by Senate rules. The “no one in their right mind” was a tell. Anyone…