As warmer weather is ending, sadly, so is our fall programming. Fall Policy Masterclasses have concluded with flying colors. Nearly 120 legislators, upper management executive staffers, and individuals from the private sector gathered for three unique intensive classes, each a regionally focused policy topic. We are already looking forward to and planning our next Policy Masterclasses for 2024!
We are also proud of our newest class of graduates from the 2023 Center for the Advancement of Leadership Skills (CALS)! The class of twenty-eight elected officials and executive staff spent five full days in stunning Paris Landing State Park just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, developing their leadership development, hearing from world-class speakers, and making lasting connections.
We look forward to seeing more of our members during our official state visits, which will be announced very soon!
Always remember that CSG South is a simple call or email away and we are always here for you.
Cody Allen, CSG South Senior Policy Analyst, testified to the Oklahoma legislature and highlighted different guidelines states have placed on AI technologies.
Full recording: https://sg001-harmony.sliq.net/00282/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20231016/-1/72499?startposition=20231016144202&mediaEndTime=20231016150835&viewMode=3&globalStreamId=3
Members of the The Council of State Governments’ Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee met in October as part of an ongoing partnership among states and the U.S. Department of Energy. Through the CSG-led interstate committee, legislators and representatives from the Midwest’s state executive branches work across state lines on issues related to the DOE’s transport of radioactive waste and materials, including possible shipments of spent nuclear fuel, through the region.
At their recent meeting, members discussed the inspection processes for highway and rail shipments; learned about a proposed, private interim storage facility in New Mexico where used nuclear fuel from U.S. nuclear plants could be shipped and stored; and toured DOE’s Waste Isolation Plant in New Mexico.
The committee also elected officers at its fall meeting. They are shown in the picture to the right: Tad Rumas of the Ohio Public Services Commission will continue to serve as co-chair, and the new co-chair is Mark Paulson of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Swisher, the iconic family-owned brand of more than 150 years, committed $500,000 to the continued construction of the Emerald Trail, a 30-mile pedestrian and bicycle route system connecting downtown Jacksonville, Florida, with neighborhoods, schools, parks, restaurants, businesses and more.
Public assistance benefit programs offer a safety net to more than 37 million low-income families. Yet, despite even the smallest increase in income or assets, individuals or families may be disqualified from certain programs. This sudden disqualification is a benefits cliff.
Elected educators’ policy work places students first
By Maggie Mixer and Abeer Sikder
From classrooms to Capitols, a nationwide community of state leaders serve as educational advocates on their chamber floors. They drew inspiration from real-world experiences and outstanding students that left lasting impacts during their previous — and even ongoing — careers as teachers, professors and school administrators.
Despite having a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences, the policy work of nine state legislators is rooted in one common cause: students.
Kentucky Rep. Kim Banta, a former teacher, principal and assistant superintendent, noted that educators are deeply in touch with their communities and the day-to-day challenges faced by students and their families.
“Teaching is an amazing boot camp for most other things that you can do in life that might be stressful or difficult,” Banta said. “[Educators] have their fingers on the pulse of what the struggles are, what problems people are having … because you see every single segment of society [in schools].”
The 17-year teaching career of California Sen. Susan Rubio went beyond the classroom, as she helped students and their families navigate housing and food insecurity, language barriers and more.
“As an educator, I was exposed to so many of the issues our community members were facing,” Rubio said. “Early on, a few families came to me for support and help outside the classroom, letting me know they didn’t have funding for supplies … and I would try to connect them with [other] resources [too].”
Rubio said soon after she learned the true scale of the problem “and, as a teacher, [she] could only do so much.” Rubio decided she wanted to help her community from a broader platform. With access to more resources, she launched her first political campaign. Prior to joining the California Senate, she served Baldwin Park, California, for 13 years as a city clerk and city council member.
Other state leaders, such as Virginia Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, were driven to run for office due to specific challenges experienced in the classroom as an educator. Hashmi, who was professor at Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Virginia, also founded the college’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. After teaching for nearly 30 years, she put her name on the ballot because she “saw the state government pulling funding and resources away from students and families, and [she] knew that we could do better for thousands of deserving students.”
Current and former students have been a continuous source of inspiration for these elected officials. While most gave up being full time educators to hold elected office, many still teach part time or make guest appearances at their district’s schools and agree that it remains one of the best parts of their jobs.
Indiana Sen. Andrea Hunley, who taught high school English before her 10 years as a principal, recounted being inspired by students organizing against gun violence, high schoolers’ talented navigation of artificial intelligence programs and a third-grade class’s sit-in protest for more recess time. According to Hunley, students’ creativity and enterprise are “leaps and bounds ahead of us” and ahead of the legislation currently in place.
Hunley’s experiences drove her not only to serve as an elected official but to also always focus on creating broad and innovative policy because “we’re legislating for the future and for future generations.”
“It’s like our legislation never caught up to where our kids are,” Hunley said. “If we legislate in a way that we think like teachers … we plant seeds for today so that they can bloom tomorrow. We would legislate very differently as we think about generational impact, which is what teachers do every single day.”
Once elected, many of these legislators continued to draw substantive lessons, as well as inspiration, from their time as educators. Among the most important skills, though, was interacting and communicating with others in an effective manner.
Hashmi compared serving constituents and students, discussing the importance of being “timely, responsive and informed about how to resolve constituent concerns.” She added that it has improved her ability to engage with colleagues as she strives to “focus on the nuances of arguments” and “bring as much background and information as [she] can to influence the understanding of others.”
Pennsylvania Sen. Dave Argall took a unique path compared to most other legislators, entering elected office before becoming an educator. While serving in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and later in the Senate, he took night classes for 13 years to earn his master’s degree and doctorate in public administration.
As an instructor, Argall returned to teach night classes as a state and community college instructor. It was there he acquired the ability to concisely present complicated issues to his constituents.
“When you’re meeting with college students one night a week for 15 weeks, you learn how to condense a lot of information.” Argall said. “I think that practice has been really helpful to me [when] meeting with constituents at town hall meetings.”
Listening respectfully is another side of communication legislators learned from their classroom experiences. Indiana Sen. Fady Qaddoura teaches courses on civic engagement and executive leadership as an adjunct faculty member in Indianapolis. In his experience, receiving critique on projects in academia as a doctoral student and researcher taught him the important role that diverse perspectives play in the process of creating high-quality work.
“[This perspective] helps us build bridges of trust among legislators to understand that when we raise a question or concern, it is not politically motivated,” Qaddoura said. “It comes from a genuine concern about the policy that is being debated or discussed.”
Qaddoura’s approach helped shape how he interacts with other senators and last year contributed to colleagues nominating him for the Indiana Senate’s annual civility award.
Similarly, Iowa Sen. Jeff Taylor — even as a member of a majority caucus — said he works to listen to everyone on the Senate floor. After many years as a professor, academic and author, he believes that there is always more to be learned from others.
“I make it clear [to students] that they’re free to disagree if they don’t see things the way I see it; I’m not going to hold it against them,” Taylor said. “I think I borrow that approach of fairness and objectivity from the classroom while on the Senate floor and in committee meetings.”
Rubio found that her experiences listening to and balancing the different perspectives of 30 students in a classroom greatly informed her ability to “create policy that’s sensitive to everyone’s needs.” In a large, diverse state like California, this crucial skill has helped her understand where her community fits in massive, statewide bills.
Many legislators who held administrative positions, like principals and superintendents, reflected on how listening was one of many skills they learned as educators that improved their ability to collaborate, especially with colleagues across the aisle. Banta and several of her colleagues with backgrounds in education work hard to build consensus, which she attributed to their experiences in education environments where “it was never my way or the highway.”
“We [educators] tend to listen a little bit better and we tend to be problem solvers and we try to get everybody on board,” Banta said. “You always have to work with people and come to some kind of consensus [as a principal] and I think that transfers right into this job.”
Wisconsin Rep. Dave Considine described how the goal of educational environments and improvement, not perfection, informed his approach to collaboration. Considine, a special education teacher for nearly 30 years, credits the patience he has brought to the Legislature for enabling him to stay focused on moving forward — no matter how slowly.
“[Politics can be] a step forward, then maybe a step or two back, and then another big step forward, and then maybe half a step back,” Considine said, drawing parallels to his teaching tenure. “You don’t change behaviors overnight. That was my specialty, and so I’m used to that.”
For many legislators, education offered an avenue to acquire strategies now utilized for policy development. Curriculum development is among those strategies. Often data driven, this specific process is one that helped prepare many of the nine legislators for life in office.
According to Delaware Rep. Sherae’a Moore, a former English teacher, data-driven curriculum development “translates well into the legislative process.”
“Evidence-based policymaking is crucial for achieving effective and equitable outcomes and [limiting] unintended consequences,” Moore said. “By being on the front lines, we understand that the educational systems are intricate, involving multiple stakeholders and layers of governance. This experience prepares us to navigate complex policy landscapes as we are the ones witnessing the impact of policies directly in the classroom.”
Moore has integrated this approach into her work in the statehouse by using “data to drive any type of decision making, before [she] even drafts legislation,” to ensure that the policies she proposes fit the needs of her constituents.
Educational experiences can also form legislators’ outlooks on the connections between different issues. Argall described sharing the view of his predecessor — another long-time educator — on the “spaghetti bowl theory of government” that “everything is related to everything.”
For Argall, the perspective of his predecessor impacted his approach to identifying and creatively addressing problems. In 2003, After seeing the “very tight correlation” between the availability of good jobs and a community’s education level as a community college instructor, he organized the conversion of an abandoned junior high school into a community college center.
“The building had been around since, I think, the 1920s, and was just sitting kind of sad, empty and beginning to deteriorate,” Argall said. “Sometimes in this job, you just need to bring the right people to the table.”
Through the combined efforts of the community college, the local government, Argall’s office and a private foundation, they not only converted the building into a new education center but also funded the incoming class’s tuition.
“I can still see the faces of the parents when [former Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker] made the announcement about free tuition for two years,” Argall said. “The parents understood the power of that moment and we literally changed lives that day.”
The project helped “breathe new life” into local students’ futures and the surrounding community, a central goal of Argall’s efforts around Pennsylvania, which have also included a series of anti-blight laws.
The transition from education to elected office was not necessarily a career switch for these nine legislators. Rather, it presented a new side of the same path of service that they were already walking. Education placed them on the front lines of their communities and helped teach them how to effectively work with and for others — lessons that they have brought into elected office to continue to serve current and future generations.
“We give that level of support to our kids because we genuinely, and in a loving and compassionate way, want our kids to be better than us,” Qaddoura said. “Imagine if you can extend that feeling — to give them the best of who you are so that they can live better lives — to the rest of the population and to your fellow citizens.”
Every state in the Midwest has a poverty rate lower than the U.S. average, and Wisconsin and Minnesota have among the smallest percentage of residents living at or below the poverty threshold set by the federal government, the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau show.
When using the supplemental poverty measure, or SPM, the rates in this region range from a low of 5.1 percent in Wisconsin to a high of 8.0 percent in Michigan. The SPM has become a preferred way of gauging poverty because it takes into account several factors that the “official” poverty measure does not — for example, government programs that assist low-income families, geographic variation in housing expenses, state and federal taxes, and work and medical expenses.
Among U.S. states, California has the highest percentage of residents living in poverty (13.2 percent).
Part of a U.S. Census Bureau study released in September, the state-by-state data are based on poverty rates in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The same study also compares changes in national rates between 2021 and 2022, a period in which the number of U.S. residents living in poverty increased significantly, as measured by the SPM. That’s due in large part to the end of pandemic-
related government policies that had expanded the reach of child tax credits, earned income tax credits and health coverage.
Here are some notable national trends and statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau report:
The overall SPM poverty rate was 12.4 percent in 2022; that is a year-over-year increase of 59 percent.
The SPM child poverty rate more than doubled: 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022. Among married-couple households, the rate in 2022 was 7.6 percent, compared to 22.6 percent for female-headed households and 14.7 percent for male-headed households.
In 2022, the most significant government programs moving individuals out of poverty were Social Security (28.9 million people), refundable tax credits (6.4 million) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (3.7 million). On the flip side, medical expenses moved 7.1 million people into poverty.
The Overseas Voting Initiative continues to conduct research, analyze Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act voter data, and cultivate dialogue surrounding innovative strategies to enhance voter accessibility through the act.
The OVI is a collaboration between The Council of State Governments and the Department of Defense Federal Voting Assistance Program focused on improving voting access for U.S. military and overseas voters.
Service members, their families and other U.S. citizens residing overseas face many challenges when trying to obtain and cast their ballots in U.S. elections. Service members deployed to remote areas, students studying abroad or government workers working abroad in difficult-to-access locations must overcome hurdles to exercise their right to vote. Mail operations can be intermittent or even nonexistent in some locations. Power, and therefore access to electronic communications, can also be unreliable.
Voters facing any of these challenges are protected under the Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which is also commonly referred to as UOCAVA. UOCAVA was enacted by Congress in 1986 and provides U.S. citizens and their eligible family members a legal basis for absentee voting requirements. Each U.S. citizen abroad faces unique challenges, making it difficult for both the voter and election officials.
The Overseas Voting Initiative works with local and state election officials who comprise its OVI Working Group. The Working Group is divided into subgroups that focus on specific areas of interest centered on improving voting accessibility for UOCAVA voters. Through these subgroups, the OVI has conducted research, promoted technology and policies, informed state policymakers about overseas voting issues, and shared best practices with state and local election officials and other stakeholders. Some critical areas of research include:
UOCAVA balloting solutions.
Improving communications and connections between UOCAVA citizens and their election offices.
Making voter registration easier for UOCAVA citizens.
Considering how DOD digital signature capabilities can facilitate document signing by certain UOCAVA voters.
Examining how the ballot duplication process can be improved through transparent standard operating procedures and new technologies.
In addition to these areas of research, the OVI has also created a data standard for the Election Administration and Voting Survey, or EAVS, Section B Data. This standard allows election officials and the Federal Voting Assistance Program to conduct a deeper analysis of UOCAVA voter behavior. The Working Group analyzes and makes recommendations for changes to EAVS Section B Data to improve the survey to serve the voters and election officials better.
Now in its 10th year, the OVI has conducted more than 27 Working Group meetings in 14 states and U.S. territories, one U.S. Embassy, and visited 11 military installations. In early spring 2024, the OVI will be releasing a series of modules identifying best practices for communicating with military service members, their families and citizens living abroad.
With the release of the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress scores, the pre-pandemic cracks in educational performance were widened for the U.S. to see. Already behind other leading countries’ performance, the nation’s report card illustrated a historic decline in student performance and learning loss during the past two years of disruption – in addition to more than a decade of downward trends. While tragic, this crisis provides a unique once-in-a-generation opportunity for policymakers and state education leaders to innovate and rethink existing education models.
Southern state legislators and staff joined in Atlanta for the “Leveraging Learning Loss” Policy Masterclass. Twenty-three legislators and staff from 12 CSG South member states – Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia – participated in the Masterclass. First Lady Marty Kemp of Georgia and 2023-2023 SLC Chair Craig Blair, Senate President and Lieutenant Governor of West Virginia, provided pre-recorded opening remarks.
Over three days, participants engaged in programming covering myriad topics and issues across the education policy spectrum. Briefings included NAEP 101 training, strategies for addressing chronic absenteeism, examples of successful learning acceleration and recovery programs using federal funds from three Southern states, the often-overlooked aspects of early childhood and special education, and how to use data in education policy decisions. Attendees also visited the Georgia Department of Education to speak with Georgia State Superintendent of Education Richard Woods and heard from the Office of Rural Education and Innovation team. They were also given a tour of the Gold Dome and the history of the Georgia Capitol by Representatives Matt Dubnik, Chris Erwin, and Senator Clint Dixon. Experts from several prestigious organizations briefed attendees, including the following:
National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB)
FutureEd
Tennessee Department of Education
Georgia Tech Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC)
National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE)
Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice School System
Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning
Georgia Foundation for Early Care + Learning
Former State School Superintendents from Mississippi and South Carolina
Georgia Department of Education’s Office of Rural Education and Innovation
Georgia General Assembly’s House Education Appropriations and Education Committee and Senate Education Committee
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration,
Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network
Florida Department of Education’s Division of Accountability, Research, and Measures’ Office of K-12 Assessment
Education Commission of the States (ECS)
Hosted by CSG South, participants in this Masterclass increased their knowledge of education policy and examples of state solutions by interacting with subject matter experts and colleagues from other Southern states. Participants also engaged in a breakout session where working groups collaborated to identify up to three priority areas in education policy. The CSG South Education Committee will further develop these member-generated policy recommendations moving forward.
Participants in this Masterclass included:
Representative Rhonda Baker, Oklahoma, Chair, CSG South Education Committee
Senator Ghazala Hashmi, Virginia, Vice Chair, CSG South Education Committee