Tagged With "Districts Rethink Suspensions"

By Theresa Harrington, EdSource, April 17, 2020 Even before the coronavirus struck, many families in Oakland Unified struggled to get by. But with residents forced to stay home and non-essential businesses closed, circumstances have turned dire. In response, many educators and community members are going far beyond their normal duties in these far-from-normal times. They are helping needy families with food, financial aid and technology through donations and fundraising campaigns. At some...

Khiyloe Singsay, 15, is tall and slender, with a gentle and quiet demeanor. But Singsay’s neighborhood in Long Beach is anything but gentle and quiet. “Definitely a lot of gang violence and poverty,” Singsay said. “A lot of the [youth], they want to act cool so then they try to be part of a gang, which leads them to selling drugs, or claiming [territory], which leads to them getting beat up.” Singsay attended a summer camp that is trying to help young men like him grapple with ideas of...

By Claudia Page, California Children's Trust, April 10, 2020 The nation’s health care system is in the midst of unprecedented transformation as it responds to the COVID-19 crisis. The crisis provides an opportunity to rethink care for the state’s most vulnerable children and youth who receive behavioral health services through Medi-Cal and the health and human services safety net. In this brief, California Children's Trust outlines three specific and immediate actions counties are taking to...

By Jill Haley, The Union, November 13, 2019 As the cost of college continues to skyrocket, many families are scrambling to find ways to fund their children’s college education. Federal and state scholarships and grants can be of tremendous help, but usually don’t fund the total cost, and not everyone qualifies. This is when families look for outside scholarships to help with college costs. Students in Nevada County are extremely fortunate to be part of a generous community who donate...

Students start each day with meditation During her first year as principal of Suisun Elementary in Suisun City, Calif., in 2014 Ann Marie Neubert suspended 102 students — out of a student population of 550 —for disrupting their classes. It was a serious problem, but the school’s teachers didn’t know what to do. “[Teachers] felt like they were using all the tools in their toolbox and it wasn’t changing behavior,” she recalls. Ann Marie Neubert Too many students were spending too much time out...

Since its inception in May 2017, the #FreeBlackMamas program has spread to an impressive number of cities across the nation. According to program organizers, in slightly more than one year, over 14,000 people have donated to bring nearly 200 mothers home to their families and communities in the cities of Oakland, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg, Montgomery, Memphis, Durham, Atlanta, Houston, New York City, Little Rock, Charlottesville, Charlotte, Kinston, Birmingham, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St.

By EdSource, November 4, 2019 From Sonoma County to Simi Valley, fires forced hundreds of thousands of Californians out of their homes in October. In this week’s podcast, reporter Sydney Johnson shares what she found at evacuation centers in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, where she spoke with college students worried about how they will make up lost time. Also, with a big decline in out-of-school suspensions for disruptive behavior, some districts are looking at ways to transform how they handle...

YWFC sponsored Sister Warriors meeting When she was 15 years old, Lucero Herrera was put in a rehab program by San Francisco’s Juvenile Court because she was getting drunk regularly. And in doing so, the court failed to explore the root of her drinking. Had they done so, she said, they would have found that anger and trauma were lurking underneath, driven by her ACEs: adverse childhood experiences. Lucero Herrera "Why did they put me in a drug program when I had an anger problem? I went...

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, February 10, 2020 Geovanna Veloz, a senior at Mission High School in San Francisco, has always known she wants to be a nurse. What she didn’t know was how to get there. Her parents couldn’t help much. Immigrants from Mexico, they speak limited English, work long hours and don’t have much experience with education. Neither went to high school at all, in fact. Enter the school’s academic counseling staff. They ensured that Veloz took the right classes and helped her...

By Theresa Harrington and Ali Tadayon, EdSource, June 10, 2020 Amid calls to defund municipal police in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, two Oakland Unified school board members are pushing to eliminate the district’s police force. This is an acceleration of a demand that dates back nine years, when activists began calling on the district to dissolve its police department after a black student was shot and killed by a district police sergeant. The proposal by board...

By Michael Burke, EdSource, June 11, 2020 A movement to reform California public school policing and drastically rethink school safety is quickly gaining momentum amid nationwide protests against police brutality following the killing of George Floyd. In Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco, administrators and school boards are under pressure from community groups who are renewing demands for police-free schools and calling on districts to instead hire more counselors and other...

By Diana Lambert, Ed Source, July 17, 2020 Eureka Union School District’s seven campuses in Placer County may seem a little unfamiliar to students when they return to school on Aug. 13. The district, which serves 3,345 students at schools in Granite Bay and Roseville, will reopen its campuses — barring any major spikes in the number of coronavirus cases in their communities. But things will be a lot different from years past. Students will have lunch and spend recess with the same group of...

By Ali Tadayon, EdSource, August 5, 2020 West Contra Costa Unified is rethinking what it means to keep students safe after its school board voted in June to end contracts for campus police officers starting next school year. It’s a re-evaluation other California districts are making as well, following protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in May as well as students saying armed police officers make them feel less safe at school. Instead of relying as much on police,...

Expansion of School-Based Health Services in California: An Opportunity for More Trauma-Informed Care for Children , is a paper that describes a new opportunity for California to leverage federal funding to provide physical, mental, and behavioral health services in schools to Medicaid-enrolled students experiencing trauma and violence. It explains a newly approved Medicaid State Plan Amendment (SPA) that allows school districts – known as local education agencies (LEAs) – to access more...

Amid the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice, we’ve seen how untenable and inequitable our society’s way of life has become. If we are to truly build back better — a phrase coined by disaster relief experts and championed by many, including President Joe Biden, during 2020 — then we must also build a better, braver philanthropy: one that eschews tinkering around the edges of a broken system, for supporting ambitious new solutions that shape new systems where everyone has a right...

Futures Without Violence (FUTURES) is excited to share A Road Map for Ending Domestic Violence in California: A Life Course Approach to Prevention with the ACEs Connection community. The Road Map , a policy paper supported by Blue Shield of California Foundation, draws upon our work at FUTURES as well as research and study on best practices for preventing violence. It presents four evidenced-based prevention and intervention strategies to prevent and end domestic violence in California:...

San Mateo County, CA — The Bay Area Geographic Leads Consortium, which consists of five Bay Area county offices of education, including the San Mateo County Office of Education, released a joint report with WestEd highlighting the needs of students experiencing homelessness during the pandemic. The white paper, Addressing the Needs of Students Experiencing Homelessness During the COVID-19 Pandemic , features promising strategies that schools in each county have put in place to provide...

FEBRUARY 8-10, 2022 Join us for some or all of this inclusive 3-day online event featuring conversations, meditations, and panel discussions with 40+ experts in healthcare and mindfulness. All summit content will be available to view through February 20. Welcome to the Healing Healthcare Global Mindfulness Summit Our healthcare industry has been delivered to the edges of its capacity by this global pandemic. The successive waves of grief, PTSD, and burnout caused by COVID have yet to be...