Tagged With "School Board"

Thank you for presenting this testimony to City Council. I'd love to know how they reacted, and what type of questions they may have had for you.

Hello Nick, City Council reacted with much interest, and maybe a little surprise, and (I am hoping) eventually some follow through and action. Time will tell. Their questions to-date are all about statistics, or quantitative research learning. I take the fact that they are even asking questions, as a hopeful positive signal. Daun

Thanks, Daun. This does sound hopeful; I wonder if if/how our ACES community can help maintain some momentum with keeping local politicians engaged?

Great question ! Not sure yet. Thinking . . . I'm a little sensitive about being too aggressive, too fast.

This is a very exciting project! Thank you for tackling such an important process and opening it up to all members! A question that is coming up in our city/county ACEs Connection groups is how to effectively engage local Board of Supervisors through awareness building, advocacy, and funding for trauma-informed systems change, with the additional intent of advancing to statewide policy change. Since your project addresses many issues of system/organizational change, I also wanted to make...

Quoting: "This bill would instill trauma-informed and focused policies, procedures and practices inside the classroom, such as requiring newly elected school board members, educators and other school staff members who have direct contact with children to complete training on trauma-informed approaches to education." Hmmm, great start towards the goal ! Meanwhile, we must all realize that State "requirements" imply a large cascade of change at ground level. We all need to acknowledge, up...

The Philadelphia Board of Education is holding an open public hearing Thursday afternoon, one of two that it is required by the City Charter to conduct annually on general topics. The three-hour meeting, which starts at 4 p.m., has no agenda except hearing from speakers. Student activists plan to renew their calls for police-free schools. Many others have registered to air their concerns about the conditions under which schools will resume in the fall, said Board President Joyce Wilkerson.

Teachers, counselors, parents, and national activists added their voices to students’ call for “police-free schools” at a general public hearing held by Philadelphia’s Board of Education on Thursday. The board holds two of these hearings annually, as the City Charter mandates; the only agenda for the meetings is to hear speakers. At the hearing and at a virtual “rally” held during the hour before, members of the Philadelphia Student Union and their allies repeatedly said that reform of the...

School police will no longer patrol city public school halls come September. Instead, “school safety officers” in less severe uniforms and with different job descriptions will be stationed throughout the Philadelphia School District. The move comes amid local and national pushes to remove police from schools. A handful of big-city districts, including those in Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, and Oakland, have severed or backed away from relationships with police departments in the wake of the...

July 27, 2020 As a companion to Governor Tom Wolf’s multi-agency effort and anti-stigma initiative, Reach Out PA: Your Mental Health Matters, the Office of Advocacy and Reform (OAR) is releasing the “Trauma-Informed PA” plan to guide the commonwealth and service providers statewide on what it means to be trauma-informed and healing-centered in PA. This plan is the result of four months of work from OAR and the Trauma-Informed PA Think Tank, formed in February. The think tank was made up of...

In 2012, Greater Richmond SCAN and five other community partners hatched a one-year plan to educate the Richmond, Virginia, community about ACEs science and to embed trauma-informed practices. Eight years later, the original group has evolved into the Greater Richmond Trauma-Informed Community Network (GRTICN) with 495 people and 170 organizations. And they're just scratching the surface.

When students came to class in person, the private St. Malachy School in North Philadelphia was equipped with a robust emotional support program to help kids deal with trauma. The 11th and Thompson building offered its 275 students access to a space called the Peace Room. It was stocked with bean bag chairs, books, music, snacks — even an elliptical, in case they needed to get some energy out. There were two full-time staffers working the room at all times, one of whom is a counselor. When...

Can universal ACEs screening be equitable? A conversation about concerns and solutions. When: Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2-3:30 pm PDT/5-6:30 pm EDT This webinar explores what it takes to ensure that equity is built into the process of screening and providing support for families who have experienced trauma and want help. REGISTER HERE Background At the beginning of this year, California, through the ACEs Aware initiative began rolling out universal screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs),...

By Mary Chris Jaklevic, JAMA, December 16, 2020 As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) surged last spring, pediatric surgeon Ala Stanford, MD, heard from Black residents in her hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who had symptoms but were hitting roadblocks in getting tested. Some lacked a physician’s referral. Others were turned away because they didn’t arrive in a car or didn’t meet criteria for testing. Testing sites were clustered in affluent White areas. Black residents, who were...

A webinar offered by the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) Thursday, September 30, 1:30 - 3:00 pm EDT Register today . Addressing the mental health needs of child care providers and children in care is vital in the face of the pandemic, a population-level traumatic event. CTIPP is offering a "plug and play" framework to ease the process of developing a continuum of training, reflective coaching, and consultation to build the capacity for supporting relational health...

To mark the anniversary of the passage of the landmark legislation of the Georgia Mental Health Parity Act, we are sharing a letter written a year ago by Roland Behm, Co-founder of the Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership, Board Member and Former Board Chair, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Georgia Chapter. The letter is to his son, Kyle, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2010 as a junior in college and died by suicide in August 2019.