October 2017

Growing up in foster care in Los Angeles , Johna Rivers didn't always get the opportunity to express her creativity. Once she got older, Rivers wanted to offer something for kids like her. So she founded a film festival to tell their stories. Now 24, Rivers is the founder and executive producer of the three-year-old Real to Reel Global Film Festival . It began in October 2015 as a way to showcase films produced by youth ages 14 to 23 that shine a light on social issues. The film festival is...

Today, Cummings leads a circle of drummers that include a handful of young men who are incarcerated for offenses like stealing a car, petty theft, substance abuse and delinquency. "I want them to know who they are, to find their identity," Cummings said. "Music is a healing weapon." Cummings is a teaching artist with the Rhythm Arts Alliance, a group that works with incarcerated youth in camps overseen by the Los Angeles County Probation Department. Last week, Cummings' group and other arts...

Last year, San Francisco began using an algorithm to assess whether someone accused of a crime and awaiting trial is safe to be let out of jail. Fifteen months later, prosecutors say the risk assessment tool appears to be working: According to information provided to KQED by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, just 6 percent of defendants who were released from jail based on the “public safety assessment,” or PSA, over those 15 months committed a new crime; 20 percent failed to...

For months, the NBC4 I-Team has been investigating the United States Immigration Court system, as part of a project involving NBC stations across the country. We found a situation so dire even some judges agree justice is not being served properly. A lack of resources has led to a backlog of hundreds of thousands of immigration cases that is keeping families -- and entire communities -- in limbo. Data reviewed by the I-Team shows that the Immigration Court is taking more than twice as much...

In evaluating school performance, registered voters in California say creating a safe and positive school environment is far more important than higher scores on standardized tests, according to a Berkeley IGS/EdSource poll. Voters also express considerable concerns about bullying, school fights and other forms of intimidation or violence on school campuses, along with harassment that students experience through social media. These are among the principal findings of the poll to be released...

This map shows the percentage of homeless students as reported by California's more than 10,000 schools. To see each school's location and data, click the + sign. In 2016-17, just over 200,000 students, or 3 percent of all students, reported living conditions counted as homeless: motel, shelter, trailer park, car, park, emergency housing or - due to economic hardship - with friends or family. The map's colors reflect the percentage of homeless reported by each school from 0 (green) to...

Across California there are just over 200,000 students in kindergarten through high school who meet the legal definition of being homeless by living in shelters, cars, hotels, mobile homes, or - out of economic hardship - with friends and relatives. The housing crunch in the San Francisco-Bay Area accounts for at least 15,000 of those students. Here EdSource reporter Sarah Tan tells the story of one teenager who knows all about not having a place to call home. To listen to Sarah Tan's audio...

According to the most recent data released by the California Department of Education, schools are getting better at identifying their homeless students, but more than 2,700 of the state's nearly 10,500 schools still report zero. That means homeless students in those districts who have not been officially identified are not receiving specialized assistance, as required by state and federal law. School districts appear to be getting better at identifying and reporting homelessness in their...

The San Francisco Bay Area, with its Teslas, tech start-ups and $3,700 one-bedroom rents, is one of the most affluent regions in the country but also home to nearly 15,000 homeless children. Most of the students are in the urban areas, but they also live in the wealthy enclaves. They're in Menlo Park, they're in the San Ramon Valley, they're even in Ross in Marin County, where the median household income tops $200,000. And they're most certainly undercounted: parents report to schools...

As California's housing costs continue to soar, more and more children like Alison are suffering the severest of consequences: No place to call home. Since 2014, the number of homeless children in California has jumped 20 percent. In the most recently released data, 202,329 young people are living in cars, motels, shelters, on the street or in crowded homes shared with other families. That's just over 3 percent of the enrolled K-12 students, more than twice the national rate, but the actual...

This month, Los Angeles County is rolling out a new approach to the longstanding issue of how to find homes for its most difficult to place foster youth. Los Angeles County has set up a 90-day pilot program to bolster placement efforts by bringing youth and their caseworkers to child dependency court where a judge will oversee the placement process. "They're at high risk of CSEC involvement, they're at high risk of homelessness, and they're at high risk of getting involved in the juvenile...

Researchers have documented what childhood trauma translates to later in life. Studies carried out by Kaiser Permanente call these incidences adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Like a scorecard for a patient's health history, the higher ACE score an individual has, the more health problems they're likely to develop as adults, with higher likelihood of everything from heart disease to chronic depression to attempting suicide . Increasingly, teachers are asking that in addition to...