Public Policy and Legislation

Image: COURTESY: ASPIRE PUBLIC SCHOOLS To read more of Cora Palma's article, please click here. Those of us who work in schools don’t need statistics to tell us that our children are in crisis; the research corroborates our lived experience. Since 2017, rates of anxiety and depression among California’s children have shot up by 70% and one-third of California adolescents experienced serious psychological distress between 2019 and 2021, including a 20% increase in adolescent suicides. The...

Photo: Rachel Zein for the Texas Tribune Author: Brian Lopez, August 11, 2022 Author of 'Critical Race Theory' Ban Says Texas School Can Still Teach About Racism For the past year, Texas educators have struggled with a new law targeting how history and race are taught in the state’s public schools. Now, eight months after the enactment of a law designed to de-emphasize the role of slavery and racism in American history in Texas social studies classes, state Sen. Bryan Hughes , R-Mineola, the...

Trauma-sensitive educators told us that no matter how the remote learning is taking place across the district, (from direct instruction online as a class group, to remote learning with no face-to-face contact with a teacher or peers, etc.), having a regular time several times a week set aside for students to talk with their teachers —whether it be face to face, on a device or voice only on a phone— is critically important to buffer the traumatic impact of the current situation. Being able to...