In Case You Missed It – June 24, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"...we already have school choice and always have. We have a requirement in most states that each child must get some sort of education, but how the child gets that education is a parent's choice. Public, private, parochial, religious, home-- you can choose the school you want. But that's not what modern choicers mean by school choice.

Instead, they use the term "school choice" as a blanket term to cover a whole bunch of ideas that are not actually school choice.

Instead, "school choice" refers to a constellation of policies aimed at directing taxpayer dollars into the pockets of private operators." -- Peter Greene at Curmudgucation in Stop Calling It School Choice

THIS WEEK IN ATTACKS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

Moms on a Mission

How the Right Exploits ‘Moms’ to Privatize Education

From The Progressive

Moms are allegedly at the center of a rightwing campaign attacking public schools and advocating for school vouchers. The latest entry in the “moms space” is called Moms on a Mission, which the organization’s website reveals is an offshoot of the Betsy DeVos-controlled American Federation for Children (AFC).

Moms on a Mission joins the better-known Moms for Liberty (M4L), which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as an extremist group. Yet while M4L and similar groups have tried to depict themselves as a grassroots movement, Moms on a Mission doesn’t hide the fact it is a masquerade for billionaire privatization schemes and Republican politics.

Betsy DeVos has long been affiliated with rightwing Christian campaigns to decimate public schools and redirect funds to voucher programs, charter schools, or religious schools. She was former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, but at M4L’s 2022 national summit, she called for the abolition of that very department.

The debut of Moms on a Mission was announced in an email from AFC’s National Director of Communications Strategy, Elizabeth BeShears. BeShears previously worked at Americans for Prosperity, Charles Koch’s dark money nonprofit. Koch and DeVos are political allies on education.

In 2018, Koch announced a move into K-12 politics, with a billionaire compatriot describing it as the “lowest hanging fruit.” Nicole Neily, another Koch operative, runs M4L’s close ally Parents Defending Education, which supports book bans and opposes the factual teaching of racism and school policies to ensure all students feel welcome.

DeVos’s influence entirely depends on her wealth...

Taxpayers funding private schools

Christian Nationalists Are Opening Private Schools. Taxpayers Are Funding Them.

From Mother Jones

...In addition to its thrumming weekly worship sessions and its blockbuster events, the church has another project: Dream City Christian Academy. The K-12 private school, which serves nearly 800 students, is part of Turning Point USA’s Turning Point Academy program, a network of 41 schools that describes itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God and preserve the founding principles of the United States through influencing and inspiring the formation of the next generation.” Dream City Christian Academy promises to “Protect our campus from the infiltration of unethical agendas by rejecting all ‘woke’ and untruthful ideologies being pushed on students.”

This politically charged approach to education likely isn’t for everyone—and because it’s a private school, it doesn’t have to be. Except for one thing: Dream City Christian Academy is one of a growing number of religious schools that are supported by public funds.

In 2022, Arizona became the first state in which all students are allowed to use state vouchers to cover a portion of tuition at any private school, secular or religious. Through Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, each participating family receives about 90 percent of the money the state would have spent on the child’s public school education—around $7,000 per student per year—for private school tuition. For the 2024-2025 school year, the Dream City Christian Academy annual tuition ranges from $10,450 in elementary school to $13,999 in high school—so families of the school’s nearly 800 students can use state funds to pay for between half and two-thirds of their tuition bill. Dream City Christian Academy received almost $1 million in tuition voucher money last year, the Arizona Republic recently reported.

It's not a choice

Stop Calling It School Choice

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

When framing a debate, it helps to pick just the right names. Just ask the folks who decided to call their respective sides "pro-life" and "pro-choice."

One of earliest victories for education privatizers was to coin the name "school choice." I don't know if somebody cleverly designed and tested it, or they just sort of stumbled over it, but it's a handy piece of coinage.

The Google Ngram for American English shows barely in use up through the mid-1980s, when it suddenly rocketed up the charts (aka immediately after the release of A Nation at Risk, A Nation at Risk, the Reagan era hit job on public education). That peak comes at 2001, then a steady drop since that year.

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of those instances are actually a misuse of the term. Because the privatization and reformster movements have got us using "school choice" to mean what it does not mean.

Crossing the line

Louisiana Requires “10 Commandments” in Every Public School Classroom

From Diane Ravitch

Louisiana became the first state to enact a law requiring that the “Ten Commandments” be displayed in every public school classroom. Others have proposed such laws, but they didn’t pass. Governor Jeff Landry, who is Catholic, signed the law in a Catholic school, which is somewhat strange since the law applies only to public schools.

The New York Times reports that the bill is part of a larger agenda to turn the U.S. into an explicitly Christian nation. Despite the fact that the Founders wrote extensively against religion controlling the state and said in the Constitution that there could be no religious test for office-holders, the religious right continues to shove their religion—and only their religion—on everyone else

LOCAL AND INDIANA NEWS

NACS proposes 9th elementary school, natatorium, and more in 10-year plan

From WANE.com

On Thursday, Northwest Allen County Schools (NACS) met to discuss their strategic ten-year plan.

The NACS Senior Leadership Team presented the plan to the NACS Board of School Trustees, highlighting various projects to address the district’s growing population.

A new elementary school was suggested during the meeting. This would be the ninth elementary school in NACS.

“Right now, we’re at 86.1% capacity at all of our elementary schools,” NACS Superintendent Wayne Barker said. “The optimum operating capacity we’ve been told for a long time by demographers and those that work in schools is you really only want to be around 85% capacity. Because once that happens the demands on people and challenges for student learning become much more complicated.”

SACS Board of Trustees officially approves district’s superintendent pick

From WANE.com

Southwest Allen County Schools (SACS) will officially have its new superintendent at the helm starting July 1.

The SACS Board of Trustees unanimously approved Kent DeKoninck as SACS’ new superintendent during the district’s school board meeting Tuesday evening.

Tuesday night, WANE 15 spoke with DeKoninck after the meeting, about how he is committed to the district and the district’s needs...

Democrat Jennifer McCormick taps former Indiana Rep. Terry Goodin for lieutenant governor

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

...“I’ve traveled to many parts of the state in the last two years, and I was troubled by what I saw. In county after county, small towns and small cities seem to be going out of business,” Goodin said. “Unfortunately, the current leadership in our state seems to be okay with this as they have implemented no real policies that will rebuild our small communities, our rural communities … We can do better than that in Indiana, folks.”

He said change starts with education reforms, creating more union jobs and ensuring Hoosiers get “equal pay for equal work.”

“This race we’re getting ready to undertake is between those who have a vision for a great future for our state, or those who simply want to be stuck in the past,” he said.

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – June 17, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The expansion in voucher programs is part of a broader move in some states toward more government-sponsored religion inside public schools. New laws allow schools to hire chaplains for counseling…. In West Virginia, a new law allows teachers to discuss alternative theories to evolution. Seven states have passed measures mandating elective courses focused on the Bible… In Oklahoma, the state Supreme Court in April considered what would be an unprecedented step toward the mingling of church and state in education, weighing whether the state could directly fund what would be the nation’s first religious charter school." -- Washington Post writers, Laura Meckler and Michelle Boorstein quoted in Erasing the Line that Separates Church and State in Education

SEPARATING CHURCH AND STATE IN EDUCATION

Erasing the Line that Separates Church and State in Education

The Indiana voucher plan is essentially a money laundering scheme for religious schools. The state supreme court claimed that since the tax money used for vouchers really belongs to the parents of children, there is no conflict between church and state. However, the parents don't see the money from the voucher. The so-called "money from the parent" goes directly from the state treasury to the private school.

From Jan Resseger

It has become acceptable for states to award tax funded tuition vouchers to private schools that teach religious doctrine. In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has ignored the First Amendment Establishment Clause and declared that if states permit private schools in general to accept state funded tuition vouchers, the state’s exclusion of religious private schools would violate the free exercise of religion.

The shifting legal prioritization of the Free Exercise Clause over the Establishment Clause has not happened by accident. Activists have worked with far-right legal firms to bring a succession of legal challenges, with each lawsuit designed to shift the Supreme Court’s interpretation a little farther away from protecting the separation of religion and government. In an earlier report this spring, Meckler laid out some of this history: “In recent years, religious activists have succeeded in tearing down what had been a clear delineation between public funding and religious education. In three (of the most recent) significant rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court found that religious institutions may not be excluded from taxpayer-funded programs that were available to others. In a 2017 case, the high court ruled that a church-run preschool in Missouri was entitled to a state grant that funded playgrounds. In 2020, the court ruled that Montana… include religious schools in a program giving tax incentives for supporting private-school tuition scholarships. And last year, the court said that a Maine voucher program that sent rural students to private high schools had to be open to religious schools.”

Peter Greene: Putting Chaplains in Schools is a Very Bad Idea

The current majority on the Supreme Court seems to deny that the First Amendment contains an "Establishment Clause."

From Diane Ravitch

Peter Greene describes the new movement to place chaplains in schools to act as mental health counselors. The politicians behind this demand want Protestant evangelical chaplains, no doubt, but the schools will have requests for all sorts of religions. Not only from the myriad Protestant sects, but from Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Unitarians, Buddhists, Hindus, and many others. There would certainly be a need for three Jewish chaplains: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. And every other religion will have divisions that must be addressed. Will there also be mental health counselors for kids who don’t want a chaplain?

CHARTER DISTRICT FAILS

All Charter District Opens Public School

Just because you went to school doesn't mean you know how to teach. Just because your community had a school doesn't mean that you know how to run a school. There is a reason that educators are trained in schools of education.

From Tom Ultican at Tultican

Desires of New Orleans residents were ignored. Neoliberal billionaires were in charge. In all the excitement, few noticed that these oligarchs had no understanding of how public education functions. They threw away 200 years of public school development and replaced it with an experiment. The mostly black residents in the city were stripped of their rights.

Thousands of experienced black educators were fired and replaced by mostly white Teach For America teachers with 5 weeks of training. Instead of stable public schools, people were forced into unstable charter schools. Instead of professional administration, market forces drove the bus!

Clearly, the all charter school system is a failure.

TAX MONEY, MY MONEY

Whose Money Follows The Child?

"...everyone in the country benefits from sharing space with educated co-workers, neighbors, and pretty much everyone else we have to deal with. Everyone shares the cost..." Everyone reaps the benefit.

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

The suggestion that vouchers are simply a means of giving parents back their own money to spend on education as they see fit--that's absurd. Our entire public education system is funded on the theory that everyone in the country benefits from sharing space with educated co-workers, neighbors, and pretty much everyone else we have to deal with. Everyone shares the cost.

It's odd that so much of the voucher crowd is also the "taxation is theft" crowd, because voucher funding requires the voucher holders to take tax dollars from their neighbors while stripping those neighbors of any say in the kind of education those dollars will be spent on. That includes spending my neighbor's tax dollars on a school that would forbit, bar, eject, and demonize those neighbors and their children.

Your money should follow my child.

"Just give us back our tax money, and I'll get my kids the education I want and everyone else can get the kind of education they want," is top-grade bullshit. The only people who it even sort of works for is the folks living in very expensive houses. For everyone else, the end result is some kind of lower tier cheap crappy school--or getting your neighbors to chip in.

Your money should follow my child.

Or maybe we could pool all our money and set up a system to take care of all the children.

LOCAL NEWS

Fort Wayne Community Schools board begins interviews to fill vacancy

Rohli Booker gave up her seat on the FWCS school board to claim a City Council seat. The FWCS board is interviewing for her replacement.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Fort Wayne Community Schools board Tuesday began interviews with four candidates seeking to serve the remainder of former member Rohli Booker’s term.

Antonette Payne was the only applicant for the open District 4 seat to be publicly interviewed Tuesday night...

SACS board responds to questions about proposed superintendent contract

From 21 Alive

Southwest Allen County Schools is one of the largest districts in our area and the SACS Superintendent is a high-profile job.

Tuesday night, leaders moved one step closer to filling that critical position.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – June 10, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The addition of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is one more step we can take to have a real impact on the lives of our youngest (community members),” [said Allen County Commissioner Rich Beck]. “We are ready to engage our community in securing funds not only to launch the program but to sustain it in the long run.”

Donations can be made at acpl.info/imaginationlibrary or at any branch." -- in Allen County Public Library fundraising for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

LOCAL NEWS

Allen County Public Library fundraising for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

In 1995, Dolly Parton launched the Imagination Library in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she was born and raised. She was inspired by her own father’s inability to read or write and determined that there had to be a way to help children fall in love with books. The program sends free books to children from birth to age five and helped to inspire a love of reading in the lives of the children in the mountains of her youth. Now, with your help, the same program is coming to Fort Wayne...

From Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Allen County Public Library is using Dolly Parton’s favorite children’s book – “The Little Engine That Could” – as the inspiration for its next fundraiser, its executive director said.

“What did the train say? ‘I think I can,’ ” Susan Baier said during a Thursday news conference. “I think we can as well. I think Allen County can make this a reality, and we are asking all of you to get the momentum going.”

The library’s staff announced a new $100,000 fundraising campaign with the Allen County Public Library Foundation to bring Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to local children. The program gives one free book each month to children from birth to age 5.

The library needs to raise money to fund the program’s launch and sustain the first two years.

Click to donate to the Imagination Library at ACPL.

FWCS expands Peacemaker program after success at South Side

From The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Next week, more than 60 Fort Wayne high school students will begin training with a local nonprofit on how to cultivate a culture of peace at their school during the 2024-25 school year.

Alive Community Outreach’s Peacemaker Academy started as a nonviolent leadership development program at South Side High School. Since 2021, school officials say the Alive initiative has contributed to a reduction in fights, late arrivals and disruptive conduct.

In February, the Fort Wayne Community Schools board awarded Alive a $500,000 contract to expand the Peacemaker program to North Side, Northrop, Snider and Wayne high schools with money from the school district’s recent Safer FWCS referendum.

Subsequent contracts will come to the school board yearly, Matt Schiebel, FWCS’ executive director of safety and community partnerships, told The Journal Gazette’s Ashley Sloboda. He said the district will evaluate the program’s progress annually and make adjustments as needed.

A STUDENT SUCCESS STORY

Man with Sixteen College Degrees Can’t Read

Check out this fascinating article…

From Nancy Flanagan who blogs at Teacher in a Strange Land

I mostly stay out of the Reading Wars. Not because I don’t have opinions on reading instruction. I emphatically do. I avoid the controversy because—as a lifelong music teacher—expressing that opinion inevitably leads to a pack of Science of Reading enthusiasts pointing out that I am not a reading teacher, and therefore what do I know?

This is deeply ironic, as those same SOR fans also spend lots of time criticizing experienced reading specialists. Also–I have taught in the neighborhood of 4000-5000 kids, over 30+ years, to read music, relying on a wide array of pedagogical techniques. But that form of reading instruction evidently carries no water with the SOR bullies.

I was intrigued today by a story in NY Times Magazine about Benjamin Bolger

NEW ORLEANS CHARTER DISTRICT

After a 7-year experiment, New Orleans is an all-charter district no more

This excellent article summarizes how the marketplace system fails children.

After a 7-year experiment, New Orleans is an all-charter district no more.

From Route Fifty

In August, New Orleans Public Schools will open a district-operated school named for Leah Chase, a late civil rights activist and revered matriarch of a culinary dynasty. The school will eventually serve 320 students from pre-K through eighth grade, with an emphasis on the city’s culture and history. Located in a historic building, it will replace the failing Lafayette Academy Charter School

As they hire Leah Chase’s teachers, pick its uniforms and curricula and arrange for transportation and lunches, district leaders are also creating the administrative jobs other school systems rely on to oversee individual buildings. These central office departments will make it easier for NOLA Public Schools to open more “direct-run” schools, Superintendent Avis Williams says.

You read that right: New Orleans’ love-it-or-hate-it, seven-year experiment as the nation’s first all-charter school system is coming to a close. Going forward, it will act both as a charter school authorizer and an old-fashioned school district.

INDIANA DIPLOMA CHANGES

‘You are hurting the future of the state’: Educators share views on Indiana’s proposed high school diploma changes

Listen to educators!

From 21 Alive

“You are hurting the future of this state in more ways than one with these proposed changes,” a teacher said. “You pay little to no regard to those in the trenches who have to figure out the logistics and add more to their overflowing plates to carry out your ideas.”

Back in March, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) announced a proposal to change the number of high school diploma options from four down to two. They say the consolidation is part of an ongoing effort to rethink the high school experience making it more career-relevant and learner-centric.

In the proposal, Indiana’s future diplomas would include the Indiana GPS (Graduates Prepared to Succeed) Diploma, a more flexible version of the current Core 40 diploma, and the Indiana GPS Diploma Plus, a work-based learning approach. IDOE says the new diplomas will align with the state’s current graduation pathways and the five characteristics of the Indiana GPS model.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – June 3, 2024

Here are links to articles from the last two weeks^† receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The rise of vouchers is especially damaging given that we now know what does boost educational outcomes: more spending on public education. Leaving these potential gains on the table and promoting voucher programs instead of investing in public education demonstrates that kids’ education is not a priority." -- from Vouchers undermine efforts to provide an excellent public education for all

INDIANA VOUCHERS

Indiana's 2023-24 Voucher Report is out now. Here are three articles about the findings.

Indiana: Vouchers Gain Momentum as Income Limits Are Removed

From Diane Ravitch

Indiana started small with vouchers. They were supposed to “save poor kids from failing schools.” But it was the old camel’s-nose-under-the-tent routine. The real goal of voucher advocates was not to help poor kids escape “failing schools,” but to subsidize upper-middle-class and wealthy families who already had children in private schools.

And although 87% of Indiana’s students are enrolled in public schools, the Republican governor and legislature continue to expand the voucher program.

A new state report described the voucher expansion. Mind you, no one claims that students are getting a better education in nonpublic schools, just that are getting public money to subsidize the costs.

439 million ‘dollars to discriminate’

From Steve Hinnefeld at School Matters

Indiana’s 2023-24 voucher report is out, and the results are what we expected. The program, which provides state-funded tuition vouchers for students in private schools, got a lot bigger and a lot more expensive with legislation that made nearly all Hoosier students eligible.

It enrolled a record 70,095 students, a 31% increase over the previous year. And the cost to taxpayers ballooned to $439 million, some 40% higher than in 2022-23.

Indiana private school voucher participation sees historic boost, according to new report

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

Indiana’s private school voucher program enrollment jumped about 32% in the most recent school year, marking a historic single-year jump, according to the state’s latest voucher report.

The state-funded program enrolled a record 70,095 students in 2023-2024, costing taxpayers $439 million — which is around 40% higher than the $311 million spent on vouchers in the year prior.

MORE ON VOUCHERS

Vouchers undermine efforts to provide an excellent public education for all

Vouchers harm schools and students.

From Economic Policy Institute

Since the early 2000s, many states have introduced significant voucher programs to provide public financing for private school education. These voucher programs are deeply damaging to efforts to offer an excellent public education for all U.S. children—and this is in fact often the intention of those pushing these programs.

TEXAS BIBLE CURRICULUM

Texas education leaders unveil Bible-infused elementary school curriculum

Texas injects religion into its public schools.

From Dallas Weekly dot com (DW)

...Districts will have the option of whether to use the materials, but will be incentivized to do so with up to $60 per student in additional funding...

...an initial review of the proposed state textbooks show that religious materials feature prominently, with texts sourced from the Bible as the most heavily used...

RELIGIOUS CHARTERS

What Would Religious Charter Schools Mean for Public Education?

More on public dollars used for religious purposes...

From Education Week

The charter school movement was once the golden child of the U.S. education reform world, celebrated and bolstered by billionaire philanthropists and by politicians of both major parties. But charter schools are in the midst of radical changes and are confronting an increasingly unstable alliance supporting them.

ALFIE KOHN

The Siren Song of “Evidence-Based” Instruction

Education lecturer and author Alfie Kohn writes about evidence-based instruction. There's thoughtful information here that can be used to analyze the current "science of reading" fad.

From Alfie Kohn

I’m geeky enough to get a little excited each time a psychology or education journal lands in my mailbox. Indeed, I’ve spent a fair portion of my life sorting through, critically analyzing, and writing about social science research. Even my books that are intended for general readers contain, sometimes to the dismay of my publishers, lengthy bibliographies plumped with primary sources so that anyone who’s curious or skeptical can track down the studies I’ve cited.

Why, then, have I developed a severe allergy to the phrases “evidence-based” and “the science of…” when they’re used to justify certain educational practices? It took me awhile to sort out my concerns and realize that these terms raise five distinct questions.

1. What kind of evidence?

INDIANA NEWS

Indiana’s new diplomas emphasize flexibility for older students, but some requirements are controversial

From Chalkbeat Indiana*

A proposed redesign of Indiana’s high school graduation requirements to emphasize student choice and work-based learning has drawn concerns from educators who say it’s too much change too soon.

LOCAL NEWS

Public meetings scheduled to approve new SACS Superintendent

This is a video report on a series of public hearings for SACS proposed superintendent.

June 11 at 7 PM, Administrative Conference Room
June 18 at 6 PM, School Board Meeting
July 1, First day on the job if approved

From 21 Alive News

Southwest Allen County Schools announces new superintendent

From WANE.com

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — Southwest Allen County Schools has announced that a new superintendent will take over for the district starting July 1 after Dr. Park Ginder announced his retirement after the 2023-2024 school year.

The SACS Board of Trustees has named Dr. Kent DeKoninck as the next superintendent of the SACS district.

Fort Wayne, IN

*Note: Financial sponsors of Chalkbeat include pro-privatization foundations and individuals such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, Gates Family Foundation, The Walton Family Foundation, and others.

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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