Programs serving meals to low income families - Year 2015 (CA Dept of Education)

Programs serving meals to low income families - Year 2015 (CA Dept of Education):

State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Announces Updated List of 

Programs Serving Nutritious Meals to Low-Income Families

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today that disadvantaged families in California can now find updated lists of child and adult care centers offering nutritious meals at low- or no-cost through the California Department of Education’s Web site.

"I encourage low-income families to take advantage of these centers to ensure their children are well-fed and have access to nutritious food," said Torlakson. "Students have to be healthy to succeed in school, and a good diet is critical to good health."

The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is funded by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Nearly 5,000 local child care centers and 17,000 sponsored family day care home providers in California participate in the CACFP. These facilities provide nutritious food to infants, children, and adults. All children enrolled in these day care homes receive meals at no charge. Most participating child care centers also provide meals at no charge. In centers that have a separate charge for meals, participants may receive free or reduced-price meals.

Child care centers can provide free or reduced-price meals if families of children in their care meet household income eligibility guidelines. For example, a family of four earning $31,005 a year (up from $30,615 last year) can qualify for free meals and snacks. Also, a family of four earning $44,123 a year (up from $43,568 last year) can qualify for reduced-price meals and snacks. The Income Eligibility Scales for 2014–15 for free and reduced-price meals and snacks are attached.

Child care centers or day care home providers with children in households that receive California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids, CalFresh, Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), Kinship Guardianship Assistance Payment Program, Head Start, Early Head Start, or the Even Start Program are automatically eligible at the free rate. Adult day care centers with adults that receive CalFresh, FDPIR, Social Security Income, or Medicaid benefits are also eligible for reimbursement at the free rate. Institutions serve meals to all participants regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability.*

To find day care home sponsors in your area, visit the interactive CACFP Day Care Home Sponsors Web page and search by county. For a child or adult day care center, visit the interactive 2014–15 CACFP Center Sites Web page and search by county.



* The USDA prohibits discrimination against its customers, employees, and applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, age, disability, sex, gender identity, religion, reprisal, and where applicable, political beliefs, marital status, familial or parental status, sexual orientation, or all or part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program, or protected genetic information in employment or in any program or activity conducted or funded by the Department. (Not all prohibited bases will apply to all programs and/or employment activities.) If you wish to file a Civil Rights program complaint of discrimination, complete the USDA Program Discrimination Complaint Form  found online or at any USDA office, or call (866) 632-9992 to request the form. You may also write a letter containing all of the information requested in the form. Send your completed complaint form or letter by mail at U.S. Department of Agriculture, Director, Office of Adjudication, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410, by fax (202) 690-7442 or email at program.intake@usda.gov. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech disabilities may contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339; or (800) 845-6136 (Spanish).

Free Eligibility Scale: Meals, Snacks, and Milk

Household Size	Annual	Monthly	Twice Per Month	Every Two Weeks	Weekly
1	$15,171	$1,265	$633	$584	$292
2	20,449	1,705	853	787	394
3	25,727	2,144	1,072	990	495
4	31,005	2,584	1,292	1,193	597
5	36,283	3,024	1,512	1,396	698
6	41,561	3,464	1,732	1,599	800
7	46,839	3,904	1,952	1,802	901
8	52,117	4,344	2,172	2,005	1,003
For each additional family member, add:	$5,278	$440	$220	$203	$102

Reduced-Price Eligibility Scale: Meals and Snacks

Household Size	Annual	Monthly	Twice Per Month	Every Two Weeks	Weekly
1	$ 21,590	$ 1,800	$ 900	$ 831	$ 416
2	29,101	2,426	1,213	1,120	560
3	36,612	3,051	1,526	1,409	705
4	44,123	3,677	1,839	1,698	849
5	51,634	4,303	2,152	1,986	993
6	59,145	4,929	2,465	2,275	1,138
7	66,656	5,555	2,778	2,564	1,282
8	74,167	6,181	3,091	2,853	1,427
For each additional family member, add:	$7,511	$626	$313	$289	$145

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

“Opt out now”: The Seattle NAACP revives the legacy W.E.B Du Bois, demands an end to Common Core testing | Cloaking Inequity

“Opt out now”: The Seattle NAACP revives the legacy W.E.B Du Bois, demands an end to Common Core testing | Cloaking Inequity:

“Opt out now”: The Seattle NAACP revives the legacy W.E.B Du Bois, demands an end to Common Core testing

 Some civil right organizations are planning to come out for more testing in a letter circulating in DC this very moment. We must organize locally against Pearson and the testing movement. We must have conversation with our civil rights organizations locally. More soon from the Network for Public Education.

NAACP Seattle has taken a stand against high-stakes testing in Washington (Click on the links below the teacher recruitment thread).

They are also putting the pressure on local school districts to hire more teachers of color.

NAACP Confronts Local School Board
NBC News
NAACP members accuse the leaders of ‘America’s most diverse school district,’ of not doing enough to hire teachers of color during a heated board meeting. KING’s Natalie Swaby reports.
NAACP accuses local school board of racist hiring practices
Kiro7 News
Local NAACP president Gerald Hankerson said he’s fed up and wants to see drastic change. “We have given you countless recommendations,” he said. “We have met with you on countless occasions, and you still don’t seem to get it right.”
Hankerson said the organization has been meeting with the district for months to help it diversify its teaching staff.

NAACP confronts Tukwila School Board
King5 News
NAACP President Gerald Hankerson said after months of working with the school district, diversity is still a big problem. “You are the reason they are failing. You are stunting their academic growth,” said Hankerson. “You don’t even look like the kids that go to this school. You don’t even speak their language.”

NAACP Slams Tukwila School District On Minority Hiring
KUOW
The Tukwila School District boasts one of the most diverse student bodies in the state. But the NAACP of Seattle-“Opt out now”: The Seattle NAACP revives the legacy W.E.B Du Bois, demands an end to Common Core testing | Cloaking Inequity:

To Privatize or Not to Privatize

To Privatize or Not to Privatize:

To Privatize or Not to Privatize

By Victoria M. Young, Education News | Op-Ed

Let’s put these questions on the table: What attracts so many Americans to the idea that private companies can better run the public education system? How do they see this current trend as being best for the country?

Since public education is an institution that has served us well over time, privatization is a topic worthy of further consideration, discussion, and thought before we take further actions in the name of “education reform.”

The term “privatization” goes beyond the act of using public dollars for private services. We have always done that where and when necessary public services can’t be provided any other way. But that isn’t the limit of the privatization process our public education system is undergoing. We are allowing public policy to be developed that puts private interests (money) ahead of the public good. In this case, our education reform laws are putting the education-industrial complex ahead of the needs of school children, their families, and their local communities.

Another way of putting it is “privatization is the transfer of activities, assets and responsibilities from government and public institutions and organizations to private individuals and agencies” (Belfield/Levin). In an ideal world, the part about a transfer of “responsibilities” would hold true.

Hospitals and prisons are both examples of institutions where privatization was tried and continues to be tried with mixed results. Many are probably too young to remember when almost every community had a community hospital. Slowly and without fanfare, they disappeared from small town America as larger non-profit and for-profit hospitals took over. Many Americans now do not have the luxury of having a hospital nearby and hospital costs have risen.

Attempts to privatize prisons through the idea that private providers will be more effective and efficient sounded good to lawmakers in many states but proved more costly—in dollars and human suffering. Here in Idaho, we are now taking back our prison system from private operators.

In our complex education system, there are a variety of ways it is being privatized. A few examples include accountability schemes, performance related pay, contracting out services including to the technology industry, public-private partnerships (sounding innocent enough), allowing international capital in public education through such things as the Gulen charters and philanthropic efforts of all kinds — with good and bad results.

If this is all about results and there is conclusive evidence that privatization of whole systems of education does produce more effective and efficient means of educating all children, then we should go that route. But where is that proof?

It is only because I have a niece and two nephews raised and educated in Sweden in the 90’s that the situation in that country caught my attention. In a 2007 report called Hidden Privatisation, Sweden was one of the countries these researchers looked at because of its “extensive privatisation.”

My brother’s children were taught three languages, seemed to know a great deal of American history, and each became an adult with the skills to become independent and productive citizens. Back when they were in school, my brother seemed pleased with their schooling. More recently, he is complaining about how bad the education system is getting. Anecdotal opinion? Until the “tumble” of the last decade was officially recognized. “No other country has fallen so abruptly as Sweden in math over a ten-year span.” It takes a major long-standing disturbance in a system to move trends in standardized test scores.

The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, whose advocacy efforts focus on privatization, has been noted as a prominent force in the socialist country of Sweden.

So, how is this privatization process proceeding in the U.S.? Just like it has around the world as described in Hidden Privatisation — “camouflaged by the language of ‘educational reform’, or introduced stealthily as ‘modernization’.”

For America, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) used two very big drawing cards that profited education industry and furthered privatization— supplemental service providers and “choice.” Mandated standardized test scores, however arbitrary and meaningless in reality, were the basis for identifying the “underperformance” of students and schools thus defining “the need” for reform services and spawning parental competition for choices.

Parents choose schools based on the hope of better opportunities for their children. More and more, those opportunities depend on the integrity of non-profit and for-profit charter managers. And the supplemental services prescribed by law had no real accountability for results; that money is spent, the harm done.

The Obama administration Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) is more of the same in the name of “reform.” It promotes charter expansion, investment in data systems, new standards and tests, and promotion of “nonprofit” organizations for school turnaround, teacher and leader programs, and pushes a wide range of “granting” of our federal education dollars to the private sector industries.

In twenty years of funding these same experiments, we now have proof that these “reform” ideas are not the successes that promoters marketed to us. Costs in education have risen dramatically while improvements have been few. Given those facts, why are we pushing to further privatize our public school system?

Perhaps many do not know that growing privatization has been a result of education laws. And a growing number of ordinary Americans see or hear about problems with the public schools and have come to believe privatization is now the only way out. We have been sold on the idea that you can’t change the system and, admittedly, the system is known for its unwavering entrenchment.

I understand the frustration with the current system, but cannot answer for others when it comes to the question of why we are going this unproven route? If private companies fail, who will be responsible? Is it worth the risk especially when a better way to school improvement is known?

This article is a Truthout original.To Privatize or Not to Privatize:

Sweden Charter Schools' Epic Fail - urged to rethink parents' choice over schools after education decline | World news | The Guardian

Sweden urged to rethink parents' choice over schools after education decline | World news | The Guardian:

Sweden urged to rethink parents' choice over schools after education decline

OECD recommends comprehensive reform including revised school choice arrangements and more effective regulation

 Sweden has been urged to halt the steep decline in the international ranking of its schools by taking action to limit parents’ and pupils’ right to choose.

A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) recommends “a comprehensive education reform” to restore the Swedish system to its previous standards.

Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s education directorate, was scathing about the country’s “disappointing” performance, saying he had once viewed Sweden as “the model for education”.

“It was in the early 2000s that the Swedish school system somehow seems to have lost its soul,” he said at a press conference in Stockholm. “Schools began to compete no longer on delivering superior quality but on offering shiny school buildings in shopping centres, and I think that’s the issue we are really seeing.”

The call for “revised school choice arrangements” will have resonance in the UK, where the coalition government’s programme to launch free schools funded by public money was in part inspired by Sweden.

Since the 1990s, Sweden has allowed privately run schools to compete with public schools for government funds. Critics on the left blame the voucher system for declining results, saying it has opened the door for schools more interested in making a profit than providing solid education. Conservatives say students have been given too much influence in the classroom, undermining the authority of teachers.

The OECD report says: “Student performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) has declined dramatically, from near the OECD average in 2000 to significantly below average in 2012. No other country participating in Pisa saw a steeper decline than Sweden over that period.”

It warns that Sweden had “failed to improve its school system despite a series of reforms” and that a “more ambitious, national reform strategy is now urgently needed”.

The report calls for a range of measures including higher salaries, better training, and tougher entry requirements for the teaching profession; more centralised efforts to integrate immigrants into education; and a more active approach to improving performance from the country’s schools inspectorate.

Gustav Fridolin, Sweden’s education minister, welcomed the recommendations, saying that they would feed into Sweden’s ongoing review of education.

“We now have a good picture of the challenges,” he told Sweden’s Expressen newspaper. “The next step must be to put it in a Swedish context and set the Swedish goals which the OECD is looking for, as well as a detailed action plan to meet those goals.”

Schleicher argued that the high level of choice Swedish pupils enjoyed over which school they attended needed to be backed up by a more effective regulatory system.

“The more choices that parents have in a school system, the stronger and more robust the system needs to be,” he said.

The report blamed the system of school choice for the failure of almost half of children from immigrant backgrounds (48%) to make the grade in mathematics.

Rather than recommending rolling back Sweden’s system of free choice and competition in schools, however, it suggests that the country “revise school choice arrangements to ensure quality with equity”.

That would involve limiting the independence of free schools from local education authorities by bringing in new national guidelines to allow municipalities to “integrate independent schools in their planning, improvement and support strategies”.

The report also recommends helping disadvantaged families make better school choices, so that their children, as well as those from middle-class families, apply to the country’s more popular, better performing schools.

Finally, it suggests that municipalities restrict the ability of some parents to choose their children’s schools by introducing “controlled choice schemes that supplement parental choice to ensure a more diverse distribution of students in schools”.

Since taking office last October, Sweden’s Social Democrat-Green coalition has launched a review of Sweden’s education system, which will report next year, and pledged a major rise in teachers’ salaries in 2016.

Charter choices resegregate schools, advocates say

Charter choices resegregate schools, advocates say:

Charter choices resegregate schools, advocates say

 NEWARK, Del. -- Charter schools shouldn't be able to give enrollment preference to students who live within five miles of their campus because doing so is leading to resegregation, some lawmakers and advocates argue.

If a charter school has more applicants than seats, Delaware law currently allows charters to give preference to students who live within five miles of their building, as long as they include that preference in their charter.

The only charter that currently uses that preference is Newark Charter School, which has almost 2,000 students in grades K-10 and is expanding into a full K-12 school. Eastside Charter and the Delaware Met have approval to do so in their charter, but have not yet exercised it because they have not had more applicants than available seats.

Rep. John Kowalko, D-Newark, says Newark Charter's five-mile radius preference leads to de facto segregation because it is situated in a mostly white, more affluent area of town. Demand for seats in the school is so high — its test scores among the best in the state — that it routinely has lengthy wait-lists which, Kowalko argues, makes it all but impossible for a black, low-income student from Wilmington to get in.

"Newark Charter's a good school and it's not going anywhere," Kowalko said. "But we have to assure, because it is a school funded with public money, that there is equal access for every student."

USA TODAY

Shut down bad charter schools: Column

More than 65 percent of Newark Charter's students are white, while only about 11 percent are black, according to figures from the Department of Education. Only 7.2 percent of its students are low-income, and only 5.6 percent are special education.

Contrast that with the whole state of Delaware, in which only 46 percent of students are white and 31 percent are black, or the Christina School District, in which the school is housed, which is only 31 percent white and 39 percent black.

Statewide, 35 percent of kids are low-income, five times the percentage of Newark Charter. In Christina, 41 percent of students are low-income, almost six times as many.

Kowalko has proposed House Bill 83, which would eliminate charters' ability to give preference to nearby families. He has long criticized the five-mile radius provision, and is a frequent charter school critic.

Greg Meece, the director of Newark Charter, says he's "confused" as to why lawmakers would want to prevent charters from having a geographical preference when traditional schools have feeder patterns that are often smaller than five miles.

"The legislature listed this preference in order to keep communities together in order to encourage parent involvement in their schools and to mirror what is done in traditional schools," Meece said.

Meece argues it doesn't make sense to compare Newark Charter's student population to Christina's because the two are completely different. Christina's schools include many urban Wilmington students in addition to the Newark suburbs in which the charter is located.

"I think you look at the community our school was created to serve, we reflect that community very well," Meece said.

USA TODAY

More state takeovers of public schools possible

The debate over the five-mile radius preference fits into a larger discussion of whether charters are "re-segregating" Delaware schools by screening out low-income and minority students.

In December, the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in which they said more than three-quarters of all charters were "racially identifiable" as either mostly white or mostly minority schools.

"My thinking is that, although I don't think the five-mile radius is the most significant problem with the charter school law that is causing resegregation, I still think this is a good idea," said Kathleen MacRae, executive director of the ACLU Delaware.

MacRae said other enrollment preferences, like admissions tests or GPA requirements, are also causing re-segregation and won't be changed by Kowalko's bill.Charter choices resegregate schools, advocates say:

Schools Matter: Divide and Conquer: The Philadelphia Story

Schools Matter: Divide and Conquer: The Philadelphia Story:

Divide and Conquer: The Philadelphia Story

 Leading Philadelphia mayoral candidates Anthony Williams and James Kenney

Everyone concerned about corporate education reform and the influence of various venture “philanthropists” in their drive to privatize public schools should be following the Democratic primary on May 19^th for the next mayor of Philadelphia. Neoliberal and conservative financiers, in a drive to make Philadelphia public schools like the New Orleans school system, are investing millions of dollars in the mayoral race.

Most prominent is the Susquehanna Investment Group (SIG) that is funding state Senator Anthony Williams. SIG made aninitial investment of $250,000 for television ads at the beginning of his campaign. In the final weeks of the campaign, they have boosted their funding to $800,000 per week.

The Susquehanna Investment Group makes no bones that their goal is the privatization of public schools in Philadelphia. For a full description of SIG see #Hedgepapers No. 11 – High Frequency Hucksters

The other major contender in the Philadelphia mayoral election is Democratic City Councilman James Kenney. Kenney hasno problem with the expansion of charters as long as the state reimburses for their cost. 

Williams backers, beside the outside financial interests investing millions in Williams campaign, include Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, and union leadership of carpenter, sheet metal workers, laborers, operating engineers, and transit workers.

Kenney has been endorsed by much of the Democratic Party machine in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia local AFL-CIO leadership, including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and a carpenters union, State Representative Dwight Evansand a coalition of African American leaders.

The splintering of Philadelphia’s labor movement is in marked contrast to 1973, when the PFT was on strike for 7 ½ weeks, the top union leadership was jailed for contempt of court without bail, but the strike ended with a victory for the teachers as the city labor movement was preparing a general strike in support of the teachers.

On April 30^th, Philadelphia political activist Helen Gym, who is running on the Democratic ticket for a City Council-at-Large seat, criticized the Susquehanna billionaires for trying to buy Philadelphia’s election. Gym was viciously attacked at an April 30^th rally by Antony Williams for “duplicity” and a personal attack was made on some of her supporters. 

Williams was joined in the attack by School Reform Commission member Bill Green. Green is a former Democratic City Councilman who was appointed by former Governor Corbett to the SRC. Rather than administer the beleaguered School District, he is taking sides in the mayoral election to promote his privatization agenda and his attack on Philadelphia teachers. See Bill Green’s Education Agenda: Hidden in Plan Sight | Defend Public Education

On May 3^rd, Williams was endorsed by the Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer. They said the deciding factor was Kenney’s union support. Critics of the endorsement pointed out that the Inquirer is owned by Gerry Lenfest who is strongly pro-charter, a supporter of Teach for America,  and corporate education reform as a whole. Reports are that the endorsement caused a lot of dissention on the staff at the Inquirer. Asked if she was concerned, Williams campaign spokeswomen Barbara Grant said in a statement “that Kenney and his allies will learn that both the Inquirer editorial board and voters don't think that Kenney's union supporters "need a seat in the mayor's office."

Both State Senator Williams and State Representative Evans support the Education Improvement Tax Credit Program. This program is a form of voucher that gives businesses a tax credit for providing scholarships for students to attend private or parochial schools in leiu of paying state taxes that would be going to public schools. This method of circumventing the Schools Matter: Divide and Conquer: The Philadelphia Story:

http://helengym.com/

PAA opposes Common Core, PARCC and SBAC | Parents Across America

PAA opposes Common Core, PARCC and SBAC | Parents Across America:

 Parents Across America opposes Common Core, PARCC and SBAC

Parents call for an immediate moratorium on CCSS/PARCC/SBAC

After extensive research and discussion with our membership, Parents Across America (PAA) has taken a position against the Common Core State Standards and the related tests, called the PARCC and SBAC. PAA calls for an immediate moratorium on implementation of these programs.

We wish to place our position in the following context:

1) PAA is NOT opposed to learning standards or assessment. We believe it is important for school communities to have a shared vision and goals for student learning, and effective tools for monitoring student progress.

2) PAA is NOT opposed to federal involvement in public education. We believe that the federal government and the U.S. Department of Education have an important role monitoring and addressing issues of school resource equity and student civil rights, and researching and promoting best practices in education.

3) PAA recognizes that the push for national standards and tests did not start with CCSS/PARCC/SBAC. We acknowledge the real desire of many who support CCSS/PARCC/SBAC to improve the quality of education, especially for some of the nation’s neediest children. However, we believe such efforts are based on a faulty analysis of the challenges facing public schools and a disregard for the harmful and ineffective results of standardized test-based accountability.

We oppose the CCSS because they are not derived from any community’s shared vision of a quality education. We oppose the PARCC/SBAC assessments because they are products of the same companies whose tests are being rejected daily as time-wasting intrusions on real learning by growing numbers of parents, teachers, students, and administrators across the nation.

We oppose CCSS/PARCC/SBAC because we believe that they were designed to allow corporate interests easier access to the “educational marketplace” and to private student and family data. CCSS/PARCC/SBAC will provide new ammunition for the attack on teachers and the teaching profession when scores show even more “failing” students and schools. Ultimately, this new, even more coercive version of top-down, test-focused education will deprive too many of our most vulnerable children – children of color, children living in poverty, special needs students, English-language learners – of the empowerment and opportunity that deep learning and strong schools can offer them.

PAA calls for an immediate nationwide moratorium on implementation of CCSS/PARCC/SBAC. This moratorium will provide states and local districts the opportunity to step back from CCSS/PARCC/SBAC, allow for extensive public review and input on these programs, and decide for themselves, without federal intrusion, if or how these materials will be used.

We believe that, if used at all, CCSS should be considered as recommendations only in the development or revision of local standards, and that, if used at all, PARCC/SBAC tests should be voluntary for schools, teachers and students, and have no high stakes.

For more information, please see our fact sheet, “Common Core Basics,” and “Annotated References,” which provides extensive background information on our CCSS/PARCC/SBAC position. A downloadable version of our position paper is here. 

PAA has very different ideas about what’s needed in education than those embodied in CCSS/PARCC/SBAC. Please see our position paper, “What is a Quality Education?”

- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/paa-opposes-common-core-parcc-sbac/#sthash.lPT4DNAp.dpuf