Recent News

Thank you to those of you who participated in our recent event. I have included the slides that I used during my introduction and look forward to seeing many of you again at future events.

Open to view slides.

Please contact me if you have any questions.
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Dorothy Battenfeld, University Liaison
California Association of IB World Schools
707-528-6818
[email protected]
http://www.cawsib.org/

CAWS is pleased to present our Calendar of Events for this academic year. In addition to our annual Fall Forum, Spring Seminar and IB Training we are expanding our offerings to include a diverse array of both in-person and virtual opportunities. These events are designed to support best practices and foster innovative collaboration within our community. They will be hosted by global, regional and local IB leaders, CAWS Board Members, IBEN trainers, Orange County Department of Education Coordinator and CAWS vetted vendors

This roundtable was a resounding success in introducing participants to Mariam Choi,  Robin Oliver, and IB Educators who share like goals. 

Attached is the padlet created that we will continue adding to as we share best practice throughout the year.

Open this page to meet some of Students of the Year.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Global Conference will take place in Washington, District of Columbia (DC), from 25-28 July 2024.

Our theme for 2024: Inspiring learners, realizing potential

Summary of Important Take-Aways 

Board approves Accountability Workplan for 2024 Dashboard and authorizes continuing work for future dashboards. The Board adopted a unit of measurement for the science indicator as well as approved how high school scores will be combined and the inclusion of a participation rate in the science indicator results.

As an International Baccalaureate school, Pacific Beach Middle requires students to complete community service hours each year.

Sixth-grade students document 10 hours, seventh-grade grade will need 15 hours, and eighth-grade students are required to complete a minimum of 20 hours that become their community service project. Eighth-grade students can complete an individual project or work in groups of two or three to meet their community service project requirements.

Our roundtable event yesterday with Kelsey Day provided excellent practical information, direction and support for the IB Programme Development Plan launched in 2020. Kelsey is happy to share her PowerPoint slides and audio of our meeting through this email.

Although we were tipped-off that this May Revision Budget would have less detail than usual, we did not expect virtually no detail on Proposition 98 or K-14 funding. There are probably several reasons for this, including that: the Summary was released early because Governor Newsom plans to be at the Vatican next week to discuss climate change; negotiations are ongoing regarding the January proposal to adjust and reduce the Prop 98 Guarantee by over $8 billion in the prior budget year (2022-23); many difficult compromises with the Legislature remain on the budget as a whole, and the extent to which Prop 98 will be part of the solution to balancing the budget.

The Legislature recently advanced bills dealing with charter school data, homework, and student-involved incidents while halting bills related to the science of reading, early enrollment in transitional kindergarten (TK), and school resource officers.

Last Friday was the deadline for bills that would have a fiscal impact to pass out of their first policy committee. As expected, very few bills were stopped this early in the process, although many were heavily amended.

Last week, both the Senate and Assembly Education committees dispensed with their first hearings to consider newly introduced bills in 2024. Altogether, the two committees heard over 45 bills. We wanted to highlight a few of the major bills that passed and will now move on to the next steps in the legislative process. You can also find a list of all the actions taken by the committees here.

There appears to be some confusion regarding proposed Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant (LRE) trailer bill language that is related to a recent lawsuit settlement agreement. While we do not have all the answers yet, we can clarify that (1) there is not a new $2 billion pot of funding related to either LRE or the settlement and (2) neither the trailer bill language nor the settlement proposes to scoop up money from some LEAs and/or students and provide it to others.

On Friday, February 16, 2024, the California Department of Finance (DOF) confirmed that state general fund revenues as of January 31 came in $5.9 billion below the Governor’s budget projections for the current fiscal year. Obviously not good news, but also not surprising in the context of the views shared by the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) in their November and most recent February forecasts.

Yesterday, our team finished sending our Changes in Law summaries, outlining new laws impacting schools. We want to make sure you have links to all sections.
Curriculum and Instruction, Early Childhood,Governance and Operations, Human Resources, School Facilities, School Finance, School Safety, Student Services, Technology, Transportation and a Full Report with links on the following page.

Fall greetings! Two additional courses have been UC A-G approved with honors weight effective this school year.
- Digital Society IB HL2
- Design Technology IB HL1

Although the UC A-G Course Management Portal (CMP) is closed for this year, you can make retroactive changes to your school A-G list when the CMP opens February 1, 2024. Please see the online UC A-G Policy Resource Guide for instructions.