Young People Lead: A Youth Mandate for Presidential Candidates
Endorsed by more than a hundred youth organizations and their allies, including the Schott Foundation, "A Youth Mandate for Presidential Candidates: Permanently Dismantle The School-to-Prison-and-Deportation Pipeline" was released today: the boldest intervention in the education justice space so far in the 2020 political discussion:
A Strike for a Loving CityFor more than three decades, Black and Latinx students, parents, educators, and communities have organized to dismantle the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline. The school-to-prison pipeline is the combination of policies and practices that punish, isolate, marginalize, and dispossess Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immigrant, young people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ young people from accessing nurturing and supportive learning environments and instead funnel them into the criminal legal system. For immigrants and undocumented young people, school push out can result in detention and deportation. The U.S. Department of Education (US DOE) has advanced efforts of local school districts to create learning environments that are hostile to students of color and intertwine the criminal legal system with public education. The current U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice (US DOJ) have supported the exponential growth of “No Excuses” charter schools, provided school districts with military grade weapons, and established grant programs contributing over $1 billion to “school safety” funding, subsidizing more than 7,240 school-based police officers leading to the criminalization of students of color.A 2018 report by the Government Accountability Office found that Black students are overrepresented in every disciplinary category, including arrests, referrals to law enforcement, suspensions, and expulsions. The disparities were widespread and persisted across the country. Nationwide, Black students are only 15.5 percent of all students, but account for nearly 35 percent of school-related arrests. Students with disabilities are 12 percent of all students, but accounted for 27 percent of the students referred to law enforcement or arrested in school. There is no substantial evidence that police and hardened security measures make schools any safer. However, there is evidence CONTINUE READING: Young People Lead: A Youth Mandate for Presidential Candidates | Schott Foundation for Public Education
More than 30,000 educators and support staff, Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU members, are walking out of public schools in Chicago starting today:
The strike comes on the heels of other teacher strikes in Oakland, Los Angeles, Colorado and Virginia earlier this year, and is CTU's first since its eight-day strike in 2012, when teachers sought higher wages, fair teacher assessment and job security, among other issues. Community support is once again strong in the city today as the union seeks higher pay and benefits, fully staffed schools and smaller class sizes.
Continuing a trend over the past several years, greater cooperation and coordination between educators and social movements has resulted in a sea change in both understanding and action. Schools don’t exist as islands, but impact and are impacted by the economic and political climates that surround them. Students don’t come into classrooms as blank slates, but carry with them all the advantages and disadvantages they live with beyond the schoolhouse.
The Schott Foundation has since its founding built bridges across multiple constituencies, organizations and advocates in the greater education justice movement — many of whom didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye. That’s why, for example, we are a founding partner of the pathbreaking Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, which works as a common table around which labor, parent, youth and community groups can find and pursue unifying goals.
To systematize this greater, holistic understanding of public schools and movements working to improve them, we released the Loving Cities Index. The Index measures access to 24 community and school-based supports, from clean air to unemployment, from healthy food to public transit. A key measure is access to housing: if families don’t have a stable and predictable roof over their heads, children can’t properly learn in class.
Chicago alone has nearly 17,000 homeless students. To that end, CTU has raised an innovative demand during their current contract negotiations with Chicago Public Schools (CPS):
CTU wants language added to the contract that would direct CPS to provide housing assistance to new teachers, and hire staffers to help students and their families who are in danger of becoming homeless. The union also wants to ensure housing for the city’s homeless student population by 2020 through Section 8 voucher programs and CONTINUE READING" http://schottfoundation.org/blog/2019/10/17/strike-loving-city
