No Justice, No Excellence | Teacher in a strange land

No Justice, No Excellence | Teacher in a strange land

No Justice, No Excellence

Like most of America, I’ve been glued to the Derek Chauvin trial, watching the evening highlights, nail-biting Tweets–Why is this taking so long? —and cable news analyses. Have we moved forward as a society? Are we, if not woke, at least emerging with new awareness, from centuries of abusive and racist behavior?

Yesterday, before the verdict was announced, I caught the end of an on-the-street reporter’s comments, and she said school leaders–she called them ‘assistant principals’–were on the street with their HS students, awaiting the news, and chanting ‘You can’t stop the revolution.’

The reporter seemed surprised that school administrators would be positive about a student walkout, rather than threatening to put these uprisings on students’ permanent records. Students, it seems, in MN at least, have become more specific and articulate in their demands.

At Minnetonka High School, in Minnesota:

The district has followed through…adding hate symbols to the list of items banned in school dress codes, expanding its reach in hiring to target more diverse job candidates and creating an online reporting system for incidents of harassment and discrimination.

Students see the district’s unwillingness to acknowledge the specific pain or concerns of Black students, or students in other groups, as evidence that leaders haven’t or don’t CONTINUE READING: No Justice, No Excellence | Teacher in a strange land

Lauren Hadi Joins the Schott Foundation as Senior Vice President of Advancement | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Lauren Hadi Joins the Schott Foundation as Senior Vice President of Advancement | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Lauren Hadi Joins the Schott Foundation as Senior Vice President of Advancement

New York, NY – The Schott Foundation for Public Education is pleased to announce that Lauren Hadi has joined our team as Senior Vice President of Advancement. In this role, Lauren will guide the Foundation’s work with our philanthropic partners to channel more resources to the education justice movement and our grassroots grantee partners.

Lauren brings more than 20 years of experience in the education nonprofit sector, a career dedicated to improving educational opportunities for underserved students.  Prior to joining Schott, she spent more than 10 years at Room to Read where she served as the Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships. During that time, Room to Read expanded its work from nine countries in Asia and Africa to 18, including expansion to the Middle East, Caribbean, and Latin America. Lauren joined Room to Read in Hong Kong in 2010 and as the Development Director for Asia Pacific leading business development in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan for four years before returning to New York.  

Before moving to Asia, Lauren worked at the College Board in New York overseeing the grants and advocacy team dedicated to initiatives focused on equity and access. She worked on the College Board’s public school projects to promote college readiness for all students. Early in her career, Lauren was the Director of Education Programs at the Committee of 200, a Chicago-based membership organization of top women entrepreneurs and corporate executives in the U.S.

Lauren has a bachelor of arts from the University of Rochester and a master of public administration with a concentration in education policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

“We are excited to welcome Lauren to our team,” said Schott President and CEO John H. Jackson. “Along with her passion for equity and public education, Lauren brings valuable experience and expertise to integrate into our core work of bridging philanthropic and advocacy partners to increase the education justice movement’s resources, capacity and reach, thereby augmenting both partners’ impact on providing all children an opportunity to learn and thrive.”

Lauren Hadi Joins the Schott Foundation as Senior Vice President of Advancement | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Weighing a Transformative Model for Youth Justice - LA Progressive

Weighing a Transformative Model for Youth Justice - LA Progressive

Weighing a Transformative Model for Youth Justice

Last year, Los Angeles County supervisors called on a panel of judges, prosecutors, public defenders and youth advocates to reimagine a juvenile justice system and report back. 

Now, the results are in, and the 150-member group is calling for an entirely new approach: Instead of surveillance and incarceration, teams of counselors, mediators and community members would help respond to crises and guide youth who commit crimes toward restorative justice and job opportunities.

Under the plan expected to be heard by the Board of Supervisors in the next month, the county’s two remaining juvenile halls and its six detention camps would be shut down, with most young people instead housed in “Safe and Secure Healing Centers.” Only those found to have committed the most serious and violent offenses would be held in locked facilities, but they would be reconstructed with a less prison-like and more therapeutic design.

As a result, the juvenile probation department would end its troubled tenure overseeing thousands of young people, replaced by a system driven by a “care first, jail last” philosophy local leaders have said they are committed to enacting.

Kent Mendoza of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition. Image courtesy of the Division of Youth Diversion and Development.

At an initial cost of $75 million, a new youth development department would be charged with diverting many more youth out of the justice system altogether and would oversee community-led “Youth Engagement and Support” teams to provide crisis response and community supervision. 

Should the plan proceed, the jobs of more than 3,400 probation employees who now oversee roughly 530 young people ages 12 to 17 in the county’s juvenile detention facilities and another 4,600 who live at home under department supervision CONTINUE READING: Weighing a Transformative Model for Youth Justice - LA Progressive