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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate this week passed a bipartisan juvenile justice bill, years in the works, that aims to secure greater protections for at-risk youth. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse announced Tuesday that the Senate that night passed by unanimous consent the measure, which he wrote jointly with Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa. Whitehouse and Grassley have been pursuing its passage since 2014. If enacted into law, the proposal would require states to comply with its...

NEW YORK — The price paid by inmates who are behind bars extends far beyond prison walls. A new report finds nearly half of all adult Americans have had a family member incarcerated at some point in their lives. Research from FWD.us and Cornell University shows 113 million adults in the U.S., or 45 percent, have had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night, and minorities are disproportionately affected. One in seven adults have had a family member locked up for more...

Since our nation’s founding, public education has been central to advancing both our democracy and our economy. The founders, from Jefferson to Adams, saw schools as places in which active citizens and contributors to the nation’s development could be formed. They envisioned education as a source of opportunity and upward mobility, and as a unifying factor across society. Sadly, today, public education is too often a source of controversy and division, with an excessive focus on test...

In the past 30 years, increasing evidence shows that adverse childhood experiences (often referred to as "ACEs") can have lingering effects, impacting people's health and life outcomes for decades to come. Because surviving a difficult childhood has such powerful lifelong repercussions, many institutions—from courts to medical clinics—rely on a brief, 10-question ACE questionnaire to determine people's childhood hardships. The higher the score, the more likely someone is to show its effects,...

The National Association of School Nurses (NASN) is a fascinating place to see what is most pressing in our profession on any given day. The community message boards are filled with conversations about the challenges and opportunities in school nursing. A very interesting topic was introduced by Donna Lyman, a school nurse from Baltimore, MD. I have never met Donna personally, but she was the very first person who was kind enough to comment on the first blog post I wrote, so I have a special...

December 14, 2018, marks the sixth anniversary of the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty children and six school staff were killed that morning. Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) is a grass-roots organization that was formed by parents in response to the unimaginable tragedy in an effort to prevent other parents from experiencing the devastation of losing a child to gun-related deaths. The Sandy Hook Promise Mission: Prevent gun-related deaths due to crime,...

For the past 25 years, Master Life Coach, Transformational Talk Show Host, Speaker, and Singer & Songwriter, Mary Giuliani has dedicated her personal and professional life to inspiring and empowering her audience to listen to their hearts and be true to themselves so they can create lives they truly love.

The rapid rollout of a hugely ambitious plan to reduce elementary school class sizes in California over two decades ago should serve as a cautionary tale for how quickly the state should implement universal preschool, a long-sought-after goal of children’s advocates and their allies in the Legislature. It may also give incoming Gov. Gavin Newsom some cover for not moving aggressively to implement universal preschool, which he said he was committed to on the campaign trail. He articulated...

The baby girl was born on a Sunday. By Tuesday, she was suffering from opiate withdrawal. Exposed to drugs in her mother’s womb, she could not sleep. Inconsolable, her high-pitched cries racked her tiny body. At 4 days old, a nurse administered the first dose of methadone to ease the infant’s distress. Sedated, the newborn sleeps in a darkened nursery on this drizzly spring day. Electrodes attached to her chest and fingers monitor her heart and respiratory rate. [For more on this story by...

It took years for Tasreen Khamisa to move from anger to forgiveness for the person who killed her brother, Tariq Khamisa, during a 1995 robbery over pizza in North Park. For her father, compassion came quickly — the ability to see victims on both ends of the gun fired by his young son’s killer. The gunman, Tony Hicks, was a skinny 14-year-old in junior high. He was also a gang member. [For more on this story by TERI FIGUEROA, go to...

Call to action- Fathers and Families Coalition of America is nearing the 20th Annual Families and Fathers Conference, March 4-7, 2019 in Los Angeles, California with a comprehensive program that hosts presenters from the United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Bolivia and throughout the United States. We are providing the conference information for your consideration to participate. We are asking you to share this conference information with your community...

A look at raw numbers of who is most likely to be suspended from school indicates that black students and students with disabilities* are at the top of the list. For example, 23 percent of black students and 18 percent of students with disabilities were suspended from high school during 2011-12 school year, compared with fewer than 7 percent of white students overall. Combine the categories of black and disability with gender and the statistics are even more troubling. Almost 34 percent, or...