Not long after new college students have finished choosing the college that is right for them, they are asked to declare an academic major. For some students, this decision is easy, as their majors may have actually influenced their choice of college. Unfortunately, this decision is not always an easy one to make, and college students frequently change their minds.

The phenomenal growth in artificial intelligence tools has made it easy to create a story quickly, complicating a reader’s ability to determine if a news source or article is truthful or reliable. For instance, earlier this year, people were sharing an article about the supposed suicide of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s psychiatrist as if it were real. It ended up being an AI-generated rewrite of a satirical piece from 2010.

Tiaja Gundy was just 19 years old when she started working at Federal Hill House, an early learning center in Providence, Rhode Island. It was 2016, and back then, she lacked experience and expertise working with young children. She had no intention of staying in the field long-term.

But the work grew on her. Gundy started out as a “floater,” helping with infants, toddlers and preschoolers as needed. She found she loved being around children.

As years passed, Gundy gained experience, and she moved into an assistant teaching position in a toddler classroom. Yet she was still missing some of the critical knowledge about child development that would allow her to continue growing in her career.

In 2021, Gundy recalls, one of her supervisors pulled her aside, and said, “You’re very promising. I know you can go farther in this field,” then told her about an interesting opportunity.

Rhode Island was launching a registered apprenticeship program for early childhood educators. With her employer’s support, Gundy would get to continue her paid teaching job as she took college courses, pursuing a Child Development Associate (CDA), a nationally recognized credential for those who work in early care and education settings. It would set her up to one day become a lead teacher. The apprenticeship would come with guaranteed wage increases, too.

The thought of balancing both work and school again was daunting, Gundy admits, but she was encouraged by her colleagues and excited to deepen her understanding of early childhood education. She decided to apply.

For decades, apprenticeship has been a popular career pathway for occupations such as electricians, plumbers and carpenters. In early care and education, however, there was limited uptake of the model.

Recently, that has changed — and fast. A decade ago, only a handful of states had registered apprenticeship programs in early childhood education. Five years ago, that had risen to about a dozen. As of last year, 35 states had an apprenticeship program for child care and early childhood education, and another seven states were developing them, according to a report published by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) in 2023.

In 2021, the last year for which there is available data, early childhood education was one of the five fastest-growing occupations for apprenticeship, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“There’s just been an explosion,” says Linda Smith, who authored the BPC’s apprenticeship report last summer and has since joined the Buffett Early Childhood Institute as director of policy. “It is happening all over this country.”

Explaining the ‘explosion’

Smith sees at least two reasons for the emergence and rapid growth of this model in early childhood education.

The first is that more federal funding has become available in recent years. At least 10 states are using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars to build or expand their child care apprenticeship programs, and 13 are using Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five funds. As many as 15 states are using money from the Child Care and Development Fund, which received a $15 billion boost under ARPA.

The second reason is that there is increased awareness of how essential and how endangered the early care and education sector is.

“We’re in a tough spot right now with child care in this country,” Smith says soberly. “We have a workforce problem on our hands. Everyone is crying for child care workers. They can’t fill jobs. Wages are low. Child care programs can’t compete with big box stores, fast food, you name it.”

Broad recognition of that reality, Smith says, made policymakers and other leaders more willing to invest in the early education workforce.

It also helps, she adds, that people understand what apprenticeships are. It’s a well-established model that they can visualize and — importantly — measure.

Randi Wolfe, founder and executive director of Early Care and Education Pathways to Success (ECEPTS), an organization that provides training and technical assistance to get programs registered as apprenticeships, believes this model is proliferating in early care and education because it’s a natural fit for the field’s workforce development needs.

The early care and education workforce, Wolfe points out, is mostly made up of low-income women, and they are disproportionately women of color, immigrants, non-native English speakers and first-generation college students.

“Asking those people to do an internship that is unpaid creates unintended inequity,” Wolfe says. “From day one, an apprentice is a W-2 employee. There is no such thing as an unpaid apprentice.”

It works well for both educators and early learning programs, she adds. Early childhood educators who can’t afford to miss out on wages while they earn a degree get to do both at the same time — and at little or no cost. They get raises throughout the apprenticeship and, in many cases, are eligible for a promotion once they complete it.

Their employers, meanwhile, end up with highly skilled teachers who, after investing significant time and energy into their careers, are more likely to remain in the field.

“They’re the best qualified candidate,” Wolfe says of apprentices. “You’ve trained them. You’ve grown them.”

For early learning programs, better-qualified teachers can also help them move up the scale on their state’s quality rating system. Higher quality ratings are tied to higher subsidy reimbursement rates in many states. In short, apprentices help a program’s bottom line.

All of these outcomes support children and families, who benefit greatly from having teachers who provide high-quality, research-backed care and education.

The nuts and bolts of apprenticeships

To be considered a “registered” apprenticeship, programs must meet a number of criteria and get approval from the U.S. Department of Labor or a state apprenticeship agency. All registered apprenticeships have a sponsor, such as a community-based organization, a workforce intermediary or a business, that manages program operations. Registered apprenticeship programs have a few other key ingredients:

• Employers must partner with apprentices, allowing them to learn while they earn. In early care and education, the employers are early learning programs.
• Apprentices must receive on-the-job training with opportunities to practice their new skills in context. Many programs pair apprentices with a mentor to fulfill this goal.
• Apprentices must receive instruction related to their industry. In early care and education, that happens in a classroom setting, often at a community college but at four-year institutions too. Employers are expected to provide support and flexibility so apprentices can attend classes and complete coursework.
• Apprentices are guaranteed incremental wage increases as their knowledge and skills grow. This is a huge win for early educators, who have some of the lowest wages in the country, but also a point of tension for programs, which are seldom in a financial position to pay staff more.
• Apprentices must receive a credential. In early education, that is usually a CDA or an associate degree, and sometimes a bachelor’s degree.

Despite the many criteria, there is still some flexibility for individual apprenticeship programs to put their own spin on the model.

In Rhode Island, where Gundy apprenticed, the program is exclusively for infant and toddler teachers, often the “least educated and least compensated” faction of the early childhood workforce, says Lisa Hildebrand, executive director of the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children, which helped develop and implement the program, in partnership with a state agency, and now manages it.

There is a notion in the field, Hildebrand says, that if you start out as an infant or toddler teacher, you can get more training and education and then “move up” to teaching preschool.

“It’s almost like a promotion,” she says, because preschool teachers typically earn more money and command more respect.

But that dynamic leads to the high turnover of infant and toddler teachers, which, given the challenges many programs already face with hiring and retention, and the legal requirements around staff-to-child ratios, can result in classroom closures and reduced slots for the youngest children. It certainly has in Rhode Island.

“The waiting list for infants and toddlers is absolutely astronomical,” Hildebrand says, acknowledging that’s true outside of Rhode Island too. “It is reaching critical levels at this point.”

With additional funding on the way, the apprenticeship may soon expand to preschool teachers, among whom there is ample interest, Hildebrand notes. But right now, Rhode Island is focused on retaining the teachers who are in the highest demand.

Minnesota’s registered apprenticeship program, which launched in summer 2023, includes a strong mentorship component. Each apprentice is paired with a mentor, often a colleague at the program where they work, says Erin Young, who manages the program for Child Care Aware of Minnesota.

“That’s the secret sauce,” says Young. “That’s the magic.”

Mentors, who receive 24 hours of free training, guide apprentices through questions and topics ranging from children’s behavioral challenges, to curriculum implementation, to family engagement. That can be especially helpful for apprentices who are still quite new to the field of early childhood education, Young explains.

“It’s nice to have someone say, ‘It’s OK.’ ‘Try this.’ ‘Start here,’” Young says. “Having a mentor at the beginning of my early childhood career would’ve been a huge help.”

The mentorship made an impression on Katelyn Sarkar, an apprentice who graduated with her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education leadership in June.

Sarkar’s mentor would observe her in her classroom at a Head Start program in Rochester, Minnesota, then offer feedback and suggest strategies for her to try. “As an early childhood educator, I grew so much more in my skills because of that,” Sarkar shares.

Next up, Young is developing an apprenticeship model for licensed family child care providers, a group that is currently left out of most registered apprenticeship programs, despite being the “dominant form of care in rural Minnesota,” Young says, and an option preferred by many families.

“If it gets approved, that’s a really big win,” Young notes. “It opens the door for other states to do it.”

No such thing as a silver bullet

Although many early childhood advocates view the apprenticeship model as a promising strategy for workforce retention and improvement, they’re also quick to caution against overweighting its potential.

“In early childhood, we tend to [want] a single solution to a complex problem. That does not work. The problems of child care in this country are very complicated,” says Smith of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. “Apprenticeships are never going to be the only answer.”

The model, while exciting, has its limitations, Smith adds.

Right now, apprenticeship cohorts tend to be quite small, with around five to 25 early childhood educators enrolled. Rhode Island graduated 16 apprentices in its pilot cohort and has another 17 enrolled now. Minnesota had 19 apprentices enrolled as of June.

That’s because apprenticeship programs are demanding, resource-intensive and very costly.

In Minnesota, for example, where early childhood apprenticeship costs fall on the high end, Young budgets $20,000 to $24,000 per apprentice per year. Apprenticeships there run for at least two years, she says.

That estimate includes covering 85 percent of the cost of college tuition and books, as well as giving apprentices an annual $2,000 stipend to help with transportation, internet access and their remaining 10 percent of tuition costs, and awarding them a small bonus at the end of their apprenticeship year.

It also includes an annual $5,000 stipend to employers to offset the costs of hosting an apprentice. In Minnesota, employers chip in the final 5 percent of tuition costs, and they are expected to give apprentices a $1 an hour raise at the end of each year, which typically works out to be about $2,000 a year, Young says. It can be hard for employers to budget for that right away, she notes. Mentors also receive a $3,500 annual stipend.

It’s expensive, to be sure, but Minnesota recently received $5 million from the state earmarked specifically for apprenticeships, Young says.

“There’s not going to be one silver bullet,” Young acknowledges, “but professionalizing the field, reducing turnover and increasing compensation is going to have to happen, and I am hoping the data will show this is one positive strategy that moves the needle on that.”

Now 27 and finished with her apprenticeship, Gundy has received her CDA and been promoted to lead teacher in her toddler classroom. She’s also pursuing her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.

“It was nice to get the science behind what I did,” Gundy shares about her apprenticeship experience. “It answered ‘why’ — why are we doing it this way, why is play important. … It helped me be an overall better teacher.”

This story was originally published by The 19th

Both of these issues were called out in a June undercover investigation by The 74 that revealed rampant enrollment discrimination against older immigrant students. These newer findings show many such barriers remain in various parts of the country. 

Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights and Massachusetts Advocates for Children asked the state attorney general’s office on Aug. 28 to investigate Saugus Public Schools for practices they say single out immigrant children: The school system currently bars entry to students whose families did not complete the annual town census. 

While local census data collection is mandatory in Massachusetts, lawyers say it can’t be tied to student enrollment. 

“With school starting in Saugus this week and the School Committee digging in its heels, it is imperative that the Attorney General intervene,” Erika Richmond Walton, an attorney with Lawyers for Civil Rights, said in a statement last week. “No child in Massachusetts should be denied the right to an education based on exclusionary policies.” 

In an earlier interview, attorneys said that the district also applies overly-stringent residency and proof-of-identity requirements that make it difficult for children — especially immigrants — to register, violating their rights under federal and state law. 

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Saugus Public Schools, 11 miles north of Boston, served 2,462 students in 2023, up from 2,297 two years earlier. In the 2023-24 school year, English was not the first language of 31% of Saugus students and 13% of students were classified as English learners.  The district was 29.6%  Hispanic in the 2022-23 school year, slightly higher than the state at 24.2%. 

The 74’s enrollment  investigation also found that some school personnel who were willing to admit an older immigrant student wanted to severely limit his participation, including allowing him to take only ESL classes. Researchers in Oregon looked at the practice they call exclusionary tracking in their own state and Michigan. 

Analyzing statewide data from the 2013-14 to 2018-19 school years, they found that just 55% of English learners in Oregon were enrolled in all the required core classes compared to 69% of those students who had graduated from the English learner program and 67% who were never enrolled in it.

In Michigan, 66% of English learners were enrolled in all of the core classes compared to 71% of former English learner students and those who were never enrolled in the program, according to the most recently available statewide data from the 2011-12 to 2014-15 school years. Under federal law, public schools must ensure that English learners can “participate meaningfully and equally in educational programs,” including having access to grade-level curricula so they can be promoted and graduate.

Researchers said race and socioeconomics were critical factors in exclusionary tracking, noting that English learners in Oregon were more likely to take standalone English language development classes and live in poverty than those in Michigan. 

“The scope of the problem is pretty large,” said Ilana Umansky, an associate professor at the University of Oregon who co-wrote the report. “It’s so important that kids can get through high school and graduate with a regular diploma.”

Immigrant advocate Adam Strom called the actions in all three states an outrage.

​​”Exclusionary tracking and denial of registration for immigrant students not only violate their legal rights,” he said, “but also rob the entire school community of the rich cultural and intellectual contributions these students offer.”

Unwelcome to America

Senior reporter Jo Napolitano spent nearly a year and a half calling 630 high schools around the country trying to enroll a 19-year-old newcomer whose education had been interrupted after the ninth grade. Napolitano posed as the student’s aunt and told schools “Hector Guerrero” had recently arrived in their district from Venezuela with limited English skills. 

Hector was turned away 330 times, including more than 200 denials in the 35 states and the District of Columbia where he had a legal right to attend based on his age.

Those who refused our test student predicted that he would not graduate, a factor that should not have played a part in such a decision, several state education department officials said. Thirteen states and three major cities have now said they are taking action to bolster newcomer students’ educational rights as a result of The 74’s reporting.

Three schools in Massachusetts, where students have a right to attend until age 21, denied our test student and two more said they were likely to. Education officials there told The 74 last month they would call those districts to discuss the findings, but planned no other statewide corrective measures.

Saugus schools Superintendent Michael Hashem’s secretary, Dianne Vargas, handles enrollment in the North Shore district. She told The 74 last week that its policies are lawful and that she’s in regular contact with the state education department and state attorney general’s office. 

She maintained that the requirement that “(f)amilies who move to Saugus must complete the Town of Saugus census” to be eligible to register their children is waived for incoming immigrant students and that the rules were in place before August 2023, when the attorneys say they were adopted.

But, she said, the district does require other forms of paperwork — all meant to protect these students’ welfare.

“We want to make sure they are with a parent or guardian — that they actually have someone who is caring for them so we don’t have doubling up and people aren’t passing children around,” she said. “We have a good amount of scattered living or sheltered students who are refugees or migrants and they cannot be left without guardianship. We have a translator … we have everything up to date and make sure these people feel welcome.”

She said her office asks for — but does not require — a birth certificate and medical records. But Diana I. Santiago, a senior attorney and director at Massachusetts Advocates for Children, said Saugus’s enrollment policies effectively barred at least two immigrant families from enrolling their children in a timely manner, resulting in “substantial time” out of school. 

The enrollment policy warns that parents, guardians or any others who “violate or assist in violation of this policy by submitting false documentation, aiding, abetting or conspiring to admit a child as a student of Saugus Public Schools, shall be subject to all applicable criminal and civil penalties.” 

It also pledges that if a student’s family moves out of the district during the school year, that student’s “immigration records required by law, shall be transferred immediately to the school in the city or town where they are residing.”

It’s unclear why the district would be in possession of a student’s immigration records. Schools cannot, under federal law, turn away students based on their immigration status, although conservative forces are now looking  to challenge those protections.

Closing doors

Santiago described the language used throughout Saugus’s enrollment policy — including terms like “legal residents” and “immigration paperwork” — as coded and meant to target the city’s growing immigrant community. 

“It’s just inserted there as another way to try to keep students out, especially immigrant students,” she said. 

Massachusetts is generally considered a national leader in education. The state attorney general’s current guidance to school districts on its website said it’s critical they “ensure that all children residing in their jurisdictions have equal access to public education” by allowing them to enroll and attend school without regard to race, national origin, or immigration or citizenship status. They must also avoid information requests “that have the purpose or effect of discouraging or denying access to school” based on those factors.  

In another Bay State case that set off alarms in late July, Norfolk Town Administrator Justin Casanova-Davis said a change in the state’s emergency shelter system meant children temporarily housed at one location “will not be enrolled in Norfolk Public Schools or the King Philip Regional School District.” After pushback from immigrant advocates, he reversed the statement. 

The 74’s investigation revealed a litany of ways that districts make enrollment arduous or unwelcoming for immigrant students. A principal in Green River, Wyoming, said our test student could be admitted but “wouldn’t get to participate in extracurriculars,” while a Caldwell, Idaho, principal said he would “maybe” allow him to enroll in math and science classes, but not English or history.

The Oregon researchers said the practice of keeping English learners out of core classes is significant and undermines Lau v. Nichols, a pivotal 1974 Supreme Court case that requires districts to meet their students’ language needs. 

Umansky and co-author Karen D. Thompson, associate professor at Oregon State University, have spent years researching educational inequity for English learners.

Thompson said exclusionary tracking goes against high schools’ mission to graduate students college and career ready. Improved teacher training, added instructional time and an adequate number of school counselors, they said, can boost student access. 

“We want students who are classified as English learners to be able to learn and thrive and have all of the opportunities they can,” she said. “If their access to core content is restricted, some future doors might be closed to them.” 

Although a new report indicates an ongoing nationwide drop in the number of children who participated in free summer meals last year, data shows Indiana bucked the trend with more Hoosier kids receiving lunches in 2023 than in 2022.

The report released Tuesday by the Food Research & Action Center revealed (FRAC) that 170,926 fewer children benefited from meals served through the Summer Nutrition Programs in 2023 compared to the previous year. That means only 15.3 children received summer lunch for every 100 who received a free or reduced-price school lunch during the previous school year.

But in Indiana, more than 72,000 children participated in free summer lunches on an average day in July 2023 — a nearly 33% increase from 2022. By comparison, 17.3 Hoosier kids ate summer lunch for every 100 who participated in the free and reduced program during the academic year.

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Participation rates for breakfast still show room for improvement, however. According to FRAC’s analysis, 15,157 Hoosier children received breakfast on an average day in July 2023. That’s an increase of about 11.4% compared to July 2022, but still far less than during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, for example, 73,666 Hoosier kids received free breakfast during the summer.

The overall 2023 participation boost follows a drop in 2022 — though there were previous summer meal increases in 2020 and 2021.

Child nutrition waivers issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture make free meals available at summer meal sites, often located at schools and community centers.

Access was expanded during the pandemic, and until 2023, federal waivers allowed meal sites to operate in all communities and offer meals that families could pick up and take home off-site consumption. Most sites have since reverted to pre-pandemic operations, meaning fewer kids can access free meals.

FRAC, a national nonprofit that aims to reduce poverty-related hunger, releases its summer nutrition report annually. Data is delayed a year however; the newest report highlights summer lunches in 2023, and 2024 numbers won’t be available for another year.

“The summer should be about play, adventure, and friends, not rumbling stomachs. Summer meals help keep hunger at bay, so that children can enjoy their break and return to school in the fall healthy and ready to learn,” said Crystal FitzSimons, interim president at FRAC, in a statement.

“Maximizing the opportunities available this summer and beyond will be critical to ensuring that children have the nutrition, and the education and enrichment programming, they need to learn and thrive,” FitzSimons continued. “Now is the time to recommit to ending summer hunger, and more must be done.”

Numbers improve, but still low overall

Across the country, most other states saw a decrease in the average daily participation in summer lunch in July 2023 compared to July 2022, according to FRAC.

Nationwide participation for lunch in July 2023 was slightly higher than pre-pandemic levels: 30,533 additional children participated in July 2023 when compared to July 2019, the last summer before the pandemic.

Participation for breakfast in July 2023 was 15.9% lower than July 2022, with 287,096 fewer children participating in 2023, according to the FRAC report.

Even so, Indiana ranked bottom in the country for the ratio of kids who ate both free lunches and breakfasts. Out of every 100 students who ate a summer lunch, only 25 were also served a free breakfast, according to the FRAC data.

Nutrition advocates emphasized that many Indiana families continue to struggle with hunger and food insecurity.

FRAC, specifically, is calling on federal lawmakers to make summer meals “more accessible,” including by making more communities eligible to provide summer meals, allowing all sites to serve three meals (instead of two), streamlining operations so summer sites can operate after school and on weekends during the school year, and providing more funding for summer programs, “so that more children have access to the meals and the educational and enrichment activities they need during the summer to return to school well-nourished and ready to learn.”

Summer meal options

The two federal summer nutrition programs — the Summer Food Service Program and National School Lunch Program — provide funding to serve meals and snacks to children at sites during summer vacation or the extended breaks of year-round schools. The programs also can be used to feed children during unanticipated school closures.

The SFSP is a federally-funded, state-administered program that reimburses approved program operators who serve free, healthy meals and snacks to children under age 18 in low-income areas when school is not in session.

Sponsorship is open to public and private nonprofit groups, including local governments, summer camps, religious organizations and recreation centers. Organizations may also consider partnering with an existing sponsor, such as a school corporation, to serve students in areas where kids lack good nutrition during the summer months.

Separately, the NSLP is available for schools that operate summer school. Only the students enrolled in summer school can receive a meal, however.

The latest FRAC report indicates the number of SFSP sponsors and sites was practically the same from July 2022 to July 2023. The data shows there were 164 sponsors and 810 sites statewide that provided summer meals in July 2023.

To complement summer meals, the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program, a new permanent program, launched this summer.

Thirty-seven states, including Indiana, are participating, according to the USDA. Eligible families received $120 in federally funded grocery benefits on an EBT card for each school-age child who is eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.

Some 669,000 school-aged kids in Indiana were eligible, according to FRAC. It’s not yet clear how many actually participated.

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and X.

Josh Arrowood carries his .22-caliber handgun most everywhere he goes in his rural Tennessee community — to church at Freewill Baptist, at the Food City store where he shops for groceries, and in the Greene County Courthouse, where he serves as a commissioner.

A new state law that passed this spring would let him, under certain conditions, carry the gun at his workplace, too — South Greene Middle School in Greeneville, where he teaches world history to sixth graders. And Arrowood, who’s had a handgun permit for 15 years, is open to doing so if it can provide an extra layer of security against a school shooting.

“I was in high school when Columbine happened,” he said, recalling the 1999 massacre at a Colorado high school. “And I remember kids putting things like a bat or a baseball in their backpacks so they could try to protect themselves if a shooting happened in their school.”

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A gun, at least, “gives a teacher a chance if there’s an armed intruder,” he said.

But between concerns about his personal liability and ambivalence about the new law from local school leaders, he won’t be carrying his pocket-size gun to class this school year.

And because of the way Tennessee’s new law was written, he said, “I don’t expect anybody to take advantage of it.”

Indeed, for all the protests and discord over the legislation before it passed, there’s little talk among school districts or educators about using the option to arm teachers or staff as the new academic year begins. Not a single school system has indicated that it’s planning or working to train employees to carry a gun voluntarily under the new law, according to dozens of school and law enforcement officials contacted by Chalkbeat.

Then again, no one can be sure, since the law doesn’t require local officials to report whether they are deploying the option in any of their schools. And any documents that kickstart the program at the local level aren’t open to the public.

But the law does lay down a set of conditions for a teacher to be able to carry a gun in school, including a training requirement, a mental health evaluation, and a signed agreement between the superintendent and principal, plus written authorization from local law enforcement.

And there’s another big hurdle: a provision that assigns teachers sole liability for anything that might go wrong with their gun, including an accidental shooting, or their failure to prevent a tragedy.

The tepid response to the law signals a disconnect between educators and lawmakers on whether more guns in schools make them safer, or could accidentally cause more harm. There’s concern about shifting even more responsibilities to teachers, turning schools into prison-like environments, and unwittingly disrupting an educational climate that should be welcoming and supportive. Tennessee’s urban communities are especially desperate to get guns and gun violence out of their schools.

School shootings spur efforts to arm teachers

After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in Newtown, Connecticut, where a shooter slaughtered 26 people, including 20 children, dozens of states introduced legislation to arm teachers and staff. More than 30 states now allow it under certain conditions, according to the Giffords Law Center, which tracks gun laws.

In Tennessee, which has some of the nation’s most permissive gun laws, the legislature passed a 2016 law to let some school employees carry a gun in certain rural counties to try to bolster security at remotely located schools without an armed school resource officer. But efforts by local law enforcement to obtain liability insurance to train school staff proved to be a stumbling block.

Former Rep. David Byrd, a Waynesboro Republican and retired school principal who sponsored the measure for Wayne and Pickett counties, said he still supports the strategy, but is not aware of any school employee who has carried a gun under that law.

In 2018, after another mass school shooting killed 17 people and injured 17 others in Parkland, Florida, Rep. Ryan Williams began his annual quest to revise and expand the law across Tennessee.

A Republican from Cookeville, about 80 miles east of Nashville, Williams said he was motivated, in part, by concern about his own two children who, at the time, attended a 2,400-student public high school with one school resource officer and dozens of potential points of entry. He argued that teachers need “more than a stapler” to protect their students and themselves if locked in a classroom with a shooter in the building.

But each year, Williams faced resistance from top law enforcement organizations such as the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association, the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol. They worried that teachers carrying guns could lead to even more gun-related deaths or injuries in a state that already has a higher-than-normal rate of accidental shootings.

Then came the deadly 2023 shooting at Nashville’s church-run Covenant School, where a shooter murdered three children and three adults before being killed by police.

Mass protests erupted, with thousands of students, parents, and educators flooding Tennessee’s Capitol to demand tighter gun laws and reduced access to guns.

Among other things, they wanted to roll back a 2021 law that lets the majority of Tennesseans carry a loaded handgun in most public places without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety. And they sought laws that would keep guns away from people who may be experiencing a mental health crisis.

The Republican-controlled legislature, however, went a different way, rushing to adjourn after prioritizing measures to further fortify the state’s K-12 campuses. A $230 million investment in school safety paid for security upgrades at public and private schools alike, and most significantly, included funding to place a full-time SRO in every public school across Tennessee.

Against that backdrop, Williams resurrected his bill to let Tennessee school employees voluntarily carry guns under certain conditions.

His co-sponsor, Sen. Paul Bailey, argued the law was needed to provide an armed presence on every campus, especially in rural areas that serve a third of the state’s students. On the Senate floor in April, the Sparta Republican said nearly a third of the state’s 1,800-plus public schools still didn’t have an armed SRO, partly due to a shortage in the profession.

It’s hard to know whether those numbers were accurate, or still are. Under Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, the state stopped sharing school security data publicly.

Williams revised their bill to tighten the standards for who could carry and under what conditions — satisfying the state’s law enforcement groups which, for the first time, took a neutral position on the bill this year.

Carrying a gun would be allowed only if the local school superintendent, principal, and law enforcement official agree. A school employee who volunteers to carry must hold an enhanced permit, complete 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, and pass a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

Liability provision for armed employees could be a barrier

However, even for school employees who can meet those conditions, taking a gun to school became significantly less attractive under one more provision.

The law makes the armed employees solely liable for how they use, or fail to use, a handgun in school. Meanwhile, if a civil lawsuit is filed, the statute shields the school district and local law enforcement agency from having to pay monetary damages.

Liability is now part of the discussion for anyone dealing with the prospect, or the aftermath, of a school shooting. In addition to the pursuit of stricter gun laws, litigation and even criminal charges have become part of the healing and recovery process for survivors, family members, and community leaders seeking to hold people beyond the shooter accountable for anything that may have contributed to the bloodshed.

After the 2022 rampage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, for instance, families of the 19 victims sued police over the botched response, and also reached a $2 million settlement with the city, including the promise of higher standards and better training for local officers. In Oxford, Michigan, families of four high school students killed in a 2021 shooting there accused the school district of negligence in a lawsuit, and prosecutors charged the parents of the young shooter for failing to keep a gun away from him.

Liddy Ballard, state policy director at Brady, the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention organization, said Tennessee’s liability provision should be a red flag for any school employee interested in carrying a gun. Her group opposed the law and lobbies instead for gun safety legislation that is proven to reduce gun violence, such as extreme risk protection orders and expanded background checks, both of which Tennessee lawmakers have rejected.

“This bill is outright dangerous,” Ballard said, “but state lawmakers knew that from the beginning. Why else would they include an immunity clause for local education agencies that dissolves accountability when a teacher’s firearm is misused or falls into the wrong hands?”

The state’s two largest teacher organizations, which also opposed the legislation, agree that placing the liability burden solely on individual educators is a non-starter — or at least should be.

“As teachers consider the risks of carrying a firearm on school grounds, they need to know that it is unlikely they could obtain insurance coverage that would offer them any sort of protection should a claim be made against them,” said Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association.

Secrecy is another pillar of the law.

In an effort to deter potential intruders who wouldn’t know which adults at school might have a gun, the law is built, in part, on the idea of confidentiality. Its provisions provide a veil of secrecy if a school superintendent and principal sign a written agreement to implement the policy — and anonymity for the person they authorize to carry or possess a firearm on school grounds.

Parents don’t have to be notified if their child’s teacher is carrying a concealed handgun, nor do educators if someone in their building is armed besides a law enforcement officer.

A district’s required notification to local law enforcement officials is not open for public inspection, nor are any other documents, files, or records related to carrying a weapon on school grounds under the law.

“The way it’s set up, there’s really no way to know” how many faculty or school staff members are carrying a gun, said Jeff Bledsoe, executive director of the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association. “It’s up to the local level to decide.”

Memphis school district says no. Some others aren’t saying.

Before and after the law was enacted, numerous local officials, particularly in the state’s largest cities and towns, announced they would not seek to arm school employees. Most said they already have a trained law enforcement officer in each of their schools.

“Schools are for learning, and emergency situations should be handled by trained officers,” said Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr., in a joint video announcement with Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins and interim Police Chief C.J. Davis in May. Memphis has long struggled with the presence of guns around its schools and neighborhoods.

Feagins said it more bluntly in their announcement: “We will not allow teachers to carry guns in our schools.”

But some school leaders, especially in the state’s rural areas, have been less vocal in recent months about their plans.

“Most districts don’t want anything to do with this policy,” said Gary Lilly, executive director of the state superintendent organization.

“A few have said maybe, just to keep their options open,” he added. “You can make the case that not announcing your plan is a way to keep bad guys from knowing either way, so there’s a bit of a deterrent.”

For some that are holding off, it may just take time for local officials and school employees to evaluate whether to take advantage of the law.

“This is all new, so some folks may be waiting and watching,” said Bledsoe, who leads the sheriffs’ organization.

Williams, the House sponsor, said he’s not surprised at the cool early reception, including in his own district, given that Tennessee is a diverse state with unique local needs and cultures that take time to sort through.

“Unfortunately, if we do have another active shooter in our state and something happens close to home, I think people would reevaluate their stance and consider doing it,” he said.

JC Bowman, who leads Professional Educators of Tennessee, has a different concern.

“My fear is that we’re opening up a Pandora’s box,” Bowman said. “What happens if our state budget gets tight? Will we starve our school safety money for SROs and turn to this?”

For Arrowood, who also has three school-age children, the issue is keeping kids safe at school in his rural corner of northeastern Tennessee.

Two years ago at a basketball game at his school, for instance, a parent came out of the stands and pulled a knife on a coach. No one was injured, and the parent left before the school’s SRO arrived on the scene, but “in situations like that, you never know,” he said.

Arrowood said he’s never had to use the gun he usually carries when he’s out in his community. “The goal is to never have to draw it,” he said.

He wouldn’t hesitate to use it at school, though, if he were allowed to carry it there and an armed intruder got inside, especially if something happened to the school’s SRO.

“Around here, people are used to guns. They’ve grown up with them. They’re hunters,” Arrowood continued. “But some people also fear guns, and a healthy fear of guns is a good thing. I guess it’s a balance.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

An audit of the Oregon Department of Early Learning and Care found the agency could benefit from stronger oversight and equity training to improve governance of the state’s early learning system.

Auditors’ findings, issued in a letter from the Secretary of State’s audits division to agency director Alyssa Chatterjee on July 24, align in part with critiques of the department voiced by current and former staff in an InvestigateWest investigation published in March. Employees sounded alarms — including one who contacted Gov. Tina Kotek — about what they saw as the agency’s failures to foster equity, retain leaders and manage programs that serve Oregon’s lower-income families.

Auditors spoke to at least three of those employees to learn more.

Their final recommendations urge agency leaders to regularly review disciplinary decisions made by child care licensing investigators to ensure they are being made fairly; expand required equity and bias trainings; and improve coordination between regional and statewide authorities and among the various preschool and child care programs that the department manages.

Agency leaders said they welcome the feedback and are already working to implement some of the recommendations.

“One of DELC’s values is continuous improvement,” said Kate Gonsalves, spokesperson for the Department of Early Learning and Care. “In particular, Director Chatterjee valued the recognition of the intentionality that went into the launch of DELC. We are proud of this intentionality and appreciative of the chance to have this review so early in the agency’s tenure.”

The audit examined how smoothly the early learning division transitioned out of the state education department into an independent agency. The Department of Early Learning and Care launched July 1, 2023, and auditors monitored its performance throughout its first year.

Rather than complete a full audit, which takes longer and typically looks at established government practices and protocols, the audits division conducted its analysis in real time, so the findings would be available to the agency in a time frame that allowed leaders to act on them, said Laura Kerns, spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office.

“The benefit of a real-time analysis is that we can get in at the beginning before too much has happened and provide feedback as programs are being shaped and controls are being established,” she said. “Simply put, we hoped our review would help (the early learning department) get off to a good start as a new state agency.”

“We also decided to send a letter instead of doing a full audit because we found DELC was generally on the right track,” Kerns said. Valeria Atanacio was promoted to tribal affairs director of Oregon’s early learning department in 2022. A year later, she was demoted, with little warning, she said. (Amanda Loman/InvestigateWest)

The letter noted the department’s success in taking over management of programs and responsibilities previously handled by other departments, including the Employment Related Day Care subsidy that helps families afford child care. It is a more than $400 million program that is in high demand; since November 2023 thousands of families have been waitlisted. Reducing that waitlist is a high priority for staff.

However, the audit said the agency’s recordkeeping and budgeting practices could be improved: One example auditors pointed out was the decision to pay providers of Preschool Promise, the state’s free preschool program, during the pandemic without any enrollment requirement, in order to prevent closures. Preschool Promise is one of the early learning department’s marquee programs, but has come under fire from legislators and the public for under-enrollment, which some employees told InvestigateWest was partly due to mismanagement.

“When auditors asked for documentation to show when and why the initial decision was made and how it was communicated to providers and the public, DELC staff were unable to provide that information,” the letter states. “The pandemic was a chaotic time; it is in these crucial times agencies should provide assurance and accountability for their decisions.”

In a letter responding to the audit, Chatterjee said the programs division will improve such documentation. The agency also launched a data dashboard to track Preschool Promise enrollment throughout the year and assist in reallocating spots where they’re most needed, and it reinstated enrollment minimums for providers to receive state money.

The agency also implemented a new equity training program for managers in February, and is considering making the training mandatory for all staff, Chatterjee said. Training is one of several strategies mentioned in the agency’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Plan that was announced in early July.

The department also is completing a “culture assessment” initiated in the spring shortly after InvestigateWest’s reporting was published “to gain a deeper understanding of our workplace dynamics,” Chatterjee said. Leaders expect to review the results of that assessment in the fall, she said.

This story was originally published by InvestigateWest, an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Northwest. Reporter Kaylee Tornay covers labor, youth and health care issues. Reach her at 503-877-4108 or kaylee@invw.org. On Twitter @ka_tornay.

Virginia students’ reading and math assessments for the 2023-24 school year saw some improvement over last year after months of recovery efforts, according to data released by the Department of Education Tuesday. However, pass rates in other subjects are still behind results from the 2022-23 school year.

Pass rates for grades 3 through 8 in reading, math, and science Standards of Learning tests all showed increases statewide by at least 1%. Writing showed the highest increase — 17 percentage points — while history and social science saw little gain, less than a percentage point.

The Standards of Learning tests (SOLs) are used in Virginia to measure student learning and achievement in mathematics, reading, science, writing, and history and social science. Testing was suspended during 2020-21, when many schools around the state stopped in-person instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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In 2023-24, roughly 71% of Virginia students passed the math tests compared to 82% before the pandemic. On reading tests, 77.5% of students overall passed compared to 73% before the pandemic.

The administration has regularly pinned the results of the learning loss on prior Boards of Education that changed the state’s standards of school accreditation and lowered the scores required to be considered proficient in a certain subject, on student assessments. Democrats and previous board members have defended such decisions.

“Every single one of our data releases is a snapshot into a motion picture, and I’m pleased today that the motion picture will, in fact, show that a ship that was off course has been turned around, and that we are seeing progress,” said Gov. Glenn Youngkin, “but we will also say today that we have a long way to go.”

Last September, the administration, troubled by the significant learning loss in reading and math, dedicated $418 million through the 2025-26 school year to the problem. The administration launched “high-intensity” tutoring programs and the “ALL IN VA” plan to focus on attendance, literacy and tutoring.

Statewide, schools hired additional tutors, extended instruction time before and after school, and focused on using the state’s free personalized supplemental math and reading resources.

The data showed a 16% reduction in students chronically absent in 2023-24 compared to the previous year. Students are chronically absent if they have missed at least 18 days of instruction for any reason, including excused and unexcused absences.

Data shows pass rates statewide increased for economically disadvantaged students, English learners and students with disabilities over the previous two school years.

Mixed results between counties

However, school divisions have had mixed results with pass rates.

Fairfax County, the largest school division in Virginia, maintained similar pass rates in reading, math and science over the previous two school years, but experienced significant drops in writing, and history and social science by at least 20 percentage points each.

Craig County, one of the smaller school divisions in the commonwealth, saw increases in all five subject areas.

The administration also praised school divisions such as Bath and Brunswick County Public Schools.

Between 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, Bath saw a 19% increase in reading scores and Brunswick saw a 21% increase in grades 3-8 math pass rates.

With schools facing the threat of All In VA funding ending in two years, Kristy Somerville-Midgette, superintendent of Brunswick County Public Schools, recommended superintendents work with their school boards, and local government and “be creative” with their funding and “look for opportunities to best serve students.”

Levi Goren, a policy director at The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, said in a statement that the increases in pass rates are “great” and the success is likely connected to the recent increases in state support for students. Support for students facing “higher barriers,” such as students from low-income families, students with disabilities, and English language learners, is still needed, Goren added.

“While today’s scores were promising for some of these students, we know that one strong year of improvement cannot make up for the continued impact of years of insufficient funding,” Goren said. “Sustained increases in state funding would help lift test scores and other outcomes for students facing greater barriers.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and X.

Students who started school during or after the COVID-19 pandemic have a harder time saying goodbye to their parents when they drop them off, Plains Independent School District Superintendent Robert McClain said.

Third graders are behind in their reading, teacher Heather Harris said, so the district hired a reading specialist to work with their youngest students.

They’re also struggling in math, San Antonio ISD Superintendent Jaime Aquino said.

“When I go into classrooms of students who are currently fourth graders or fifth graders who were either kindergarten or first grade [during the pandemic], you can see that there is a lack of mathematical fluency around basic facts,” he said.

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Texas school administrators, educators and education policy experts say they’re seeing troubling signs that students in the earliest grades are not doing as well academically as children who started school before the pandemic. State and federal officials devoted significant resources to help students affected by the pandemic but they mostly focused on older children whose schooling was disrupted. Experts worry that the state’s youngest students will have a harder time catching up without intervention.

A recent study by Curriculum Associates Research looked at national academic growth trends in the last four years and compared them with pre-pandemic data. It found younger students — like those who were enrolled in kindergarten or first grade in 2021 — were the furthest behind in both reading and math compared to their peers before the pandemic.

According to the report, those students may be struggling because of disruptions in their early childhood experiences, difficulties building up foundational skills like phonics or number recognition, problems engaging with virtual learning during the pandemic or insufficient resources being devoted to help children in the earliest grades.

Aquino, San Antonio ISD’s superintendent, said attendance in early grades is lower than before the pandemic, which is impacting foundational learning.

“We told families to stay home during the pandemic. Now we’re sending the message: You have to be in school,” Aquino said.

Low pre-K enrollment during the pandemic may be another factor. Children who attend pre-K are nearly twice as likely to be ready for kindergarten, said Miguel Solis, president of the education research nonprofit Commit Partnership.

In the school year 2019-2020, there were 249,226 students enrolled in pre-kindergarten in Texas, according to state data. This number dropped by nearly 50,000 in the following year.

Low academic attainment can compound in ways that become increasingly difficult to fix. Harris, the Plains ISD teacher, said it’s hard for third-grade students who fall behind to catch up because their teachers will likely not be able to spend much time helping them develop foundational skills they already should have learned.

“Pre-K through second, you’re learning to read, and then third grade on up, you’re reading to learn. So there’s that huge switch of what you’re teaching,” she said.

Mary Lynn Pruneda, an education analyst at the public policy think tank Texas 2036, said the Curriculum Associates Research study raises concerns about young learners but it’s difficult to pinpoint the impact in Texas because of a lack of data.

“We have very limited data on how younger students are doing that’s consistent across grade levels,” Pruneda said.

Without data to help diagnose the problem, students are being set up for continually low results in the state’s standardized test, she said.

There are some indications of how the problem might be manifesting in Texas. In Dallas County, for example, declines in math and reading scores between 2023 and 2024 were most acute among third graders, who would have been in kindergarten during the pandemic, Solis said.

Solis said the state needs to start collecting literacy data for early grades to identify students who are not on track and intervene. He’s hopeful because some lawmakers in both the Texas House and Senate have already expressed interest in taking a close look at how young students learn foundational skills, he said.

“We can’t wait until the third grade STAAR to see how younger students are progressing,” he said.

Pruneda said one step Texas can take to start reversing the trend is raising spending in public education — something educators are desperate for — to help school districts hire and retain the best teachers possible. The superintendents of both Plains and San Antonio ISDs said it is imperative for the Texas Legislature to approve a significant funding boost next year after lawmakers failed last year to do so amid the fight over school vouchers.

High-impact tutoring, like the one legislators mandated for grades 3-8, may also help early-grade students, she said.

The full program is now LIVE for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Explore the program featuring more than 100 unforgettable conversations on topics covering education, the economy, Texas and national politics, criminal justice, the border, the 2024 elections and so much more. See the full program.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/09/texas-early-childhood-education-pandemic/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

COLUMBIA — Fewer than half of South Carolina third- through eighth-grade students can do math as expected for their grade level, according to test scores released Friday.

State education officials hope to improve scores with a new $10 million program to hire math tutors, improve training and pay for resources.

A similar program has helped improve reading scores in recent years, though across the board, test scores are “still not where we need to be, period,” said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

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On average, the percentage of students who ended last school year reading on grade level was barely over half, according to the state Department of Education.

Students’ scores on the math portion of the required annual SC READY test remain behind where they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2019, 45% of third- through eighth-graders statewide could perform grade-level math, compared to 2024, when 42% of students met expectations. The scores also worsen the older students get. In third grade, about 54% of students were ready to advance to the next grade level, while only 30% of eighth graders met that benchmark.

That leaves high school teachers trying to catch students up to speed, since math skills build each year, said East, a high school science teacher in Rock Hill.

Meanwhile, reading scores have surpassed their pre-pandemic levels, though they remain low. This year, 53% of students met expectations in reading, compared with 45% before the pandemic. State education officials have set a goal that 75% of students test on grade level in both subject areas, though there’s no longer a year for meeting that goal.

Statewide improvement in reading may have come from the Palmetto Literacy Project, East said.

Starting in 2019, a clause in the state budget directed the department to set aside up to $14 million each year to hire reading specialists, train teachers and provide more resources to schools with particularly low scores.

The department hopes to boost math scores using a similar program. With $10 million in this year’s budget, education officials plan to hire math-specific tutors, buy better textbooks and resources, and improve training for teachers at schools where at least one-third of students fall in the lowest category of scores.

“South Carolina’s mathematics scores have consistently lagged and remain stubbornly below even anemic pre-­pandemic levels,” the department wrote as the reason for the program when requesting the money.

Whether or not that program proves effective will depend on how the department spends the money and how long it continues, said Patrick Kelly, a lobbyist for the Palmetto State Teachers Association. Math scores are not likely to improve immediately as schools work to implement the program and students learn the skills, he said.

“Turning around math scores isn’t as easy as turning on a light switch,” Kelly said.

While virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic likely played a role in students’ low test scores, it’s not the whole story, East said.

In math, which remains below pre-pandemic numbers, part of the dip could come from residual effects of students not learning fundamentals online. But most students should have had the time to recover, East said.

“We’ve been back at school for two years now,” East said. “I don’t know that we should still see scores where they are.”

Another likely culprit is an ongoing shortage in teachers, she said. The state had more than 1,300 open positions for teachers, counselors, librarians and other education professionals in February, according to a report from the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement. That was down from a record high of more than 1,600 vacant positions when the school year started.

As teachers take on bigger classes, students are more likely to miss out on one-on-one instruction, said Kelly, who’s also a high school teacher in Richland Two. Other classrooms may rely on a long-term substitute who doesn’t always know the subject material or how to teach it, he said.

“You have large pockets of students in this state that are either in overcrowded math classes or in classrooms without a certified teacher at all,” Kelly said.

Poorer districts are more likely to feel those effects. Fewer resources often means fewer certified teachers, fewer options for struggling students and larger class sizes, leading to lower test scores, East said.

Some districts react to low test scores by requiring more tests, but that should not be the case, Kelly said.

Testing often takes away time during which students could actually be learning skills, and the scores are not always an accurate reflection of how well a student is performing. Instead, schools should focus on proven ways to best teach the material, he said.

“The goal is not to reach an abstract number,” Kelly said. “The goal is to help each student reach their potential.”

Students in Fort Mill (York 4) posted the best scores in the state.

Across fourth through eighth grades, at least 75% of the district’s students could read on grade level, and 76% of third-graders met math expectations. The fast-growing school district just south of Charlotte also posts the state’s lowest poverty rate, with 21% of students living in poverty compared to a statewide average of 62%, according to state agency data.

SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on Facebook and X.

Mayor Eric Adams poured cold water Tuesday on an imminent citywide school cellphone ban, citing a number of remaining obstacles and saying the city is “not there yet.“

“There will be some action in the upcoming school year, but the extent of a full ban, we’re not there yet. We want to make sure we have parents on board,” Adams said at a press briefing Tuesday in response to a question from Chalkbeat.

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“The previous administration attempted to do this, and they had to roll back,” Adams added, referencing a previous cellphone ban instituted by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, then overturned by his successor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio. “I don’t want to go backwards after we make a determination.”

Adams’ comments significantly dial back the message that schools Chancellor David Banks offered just months ago about the likelihood of a citywide school cellphone ban.

“You’re going to hear, within the next two weeks, the big announcement, but I will tell you we are very much leaning towards banning cellphones,” Banks said on June 26.

But with just over a week before the start of the new school year, city officials haven’t shared any updates, leaving many parents and school staffers craving details. Adams said the city is still ironing out a number of the wrinkles that would make instituting a citywide school phone ban complicated.

“Once you use … the terminology that it is a full ban coming from the chancellor, there’s a lot of things that will kick into play, including [United Federation of Teachers],” Adams said Tuesday. “Who pays for the pouches? What mechanism is being used? So we’ve been doing a lot of reviews.”

Some educators and advocates have also raised questions about if and how the Education Department will offer schools guidance on discipline for students who don’t comply.

Several principals familiar with Education Department plans told Chalkbeat last month that education officials were floating a plan to have a ban take effect in February, though it’s unclear whether that timeline is still under consideration.

States and districts across the country have moved towards mandating cellphone bans amid rising concerns about their role in distracting students during class and harming kids’ mental health. New York governor Kathy Hochul is also considering taking statewide action and is currently soliciting input.

Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest school system, recently decided to move forward with a district-wide school cellphone ban.

Hundreds of New York City schools already have their own cellphone bans. Many use Yondr, a company that produces magnetized cloth pouches that can be locked and unlocked by schools for students to store cellphones during the school day. But such systems can be expensive, and one of the big open questions about a citywide cellphone ban is whether the city would provide extra funding to schools to help collect phones.

Many other city schools that historically have not fully banned phones are moving towards adopting their own cell phone-free policies, but enforcing those policies comes with significant logistical challenges and staffing needs.

Passing a systemwide school cell phone ban would also require changing the chancellor’s regulations, which would need approval from the Panel for Educational Policy, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.

Adams said the city is trying to learn from the approaches of city schools that have their own cellphone bans and are enforcing them effectively.

“We’re learning from those who are already doing it,” Adams said. “We do have schools in the city that are doing it on their own, and so we want to make sure we get it right.”

Julian Shen-Berro contributed.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Alabama lawmakers set out guidelines for developing a new funding formula for public education in the state at a meeting Thursday.

The Legislative Study Commission on Modernizing K-12 School Education Funding had a second meeting to learn more about a weighted student funding model, part of conversations about whether to adopt a new funding model.

Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, the chair of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, laid out “basic assumptions” on a slide in determining a new model: “1) Funding aligns with student needs;” “2) All districts will see increased per-pupil funding;” “3) School systems will receive more flexibility in allocating the funding they receive through the state’s funding formula;” and “4) Systems will retain control over local funding. Local dollars will not shift from one district to another.”

“This is a good faith effort to try to understand what other states are doing, to see if after 30 years of the current education funding model, we need to take a different approach and modify what we do,” said Garrett. “We’ve communicated there’s no decisions have been made. There’s no preconceived ideas.”

Alabama’s current system is a hybrid-foundation model, which allocates resources based on a formula of students and faculty. The funding is tied more to a headcount than the needs of students, while the costs of individual students can vary based on need.

Alabama is in a minority of states that still uses that model, compared to a student-weighted funding model, which aims to allocate money based on need. At the first meeting, Garrett said that a lot has changed in the 30 years since the current model was adopted, and they are looking at options.

Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee, told reporters after the meeting that they would not be moving local funds around.

“That money would remain with the locals to determine how they spend it,” he said.

Asked if that meant that some districts could be seeing smaller amounts of state funding allocated if a new model is adopted, Orr said it was too early in the process to say.

“We’d have to see because the economy is growing, we’ve got larger reserves and so it’s premature to say something,” he said.

Alabama’s constitution limits local governments’ ability to tax, and a series of amendments passed in the 1970s known as the Lid Bills capped assessments of properties, particularly for homes and farms. County governments, particularly in rural areas, often struggle to raise adequate revenue for education.

Jennifer Schiess, senior partner and practice lead for policy and evaluation at Bellwether, an education nonprofit, said in a presentation to lawmakers that the state’s current funding model was inflexible.

“Resource based formulas like Alabama’s really center funding conversations on inputs and that kind of specifies a particular mix of personnel choices, a particular mix of instructional choices that essentially is a template, a one size fits all approach for all districts, and doesn’t really enable districts to make choices based on their individual student populations,” she said.

Scheiss presented four takeaways from her presentation: Alabama’s foundation program hasn’t kept up with inflation and doesn’t address student needs; more investment in education leads to better outcomes; student weight-funding formulas address adequacy, student needs, accountability and transparency better than other models; and other state examples can inform a potential new Alabama one.

“We’re seeing stronger outcomes tied to increased funding,” she said. “So it’s just something to think about as you think about sort of the future workforce, these as a state as well, and that’s part of what this investment is buying.”

Alex Spurrier, associate partner with Bellwether, told lawmakers that different states have different models.

Student weights can be attached to items like English as a second language or special education that would lead to more money being allocated to the school system.

Tennessee, Spurrier said, has 10 different tiers for weights, ranging from 15% for special education consultation services to 150% for homebound, hospitalized or residential services.

Lawmakers asked the Bellwether representatives questions throughout the process, with Orr asking questions about the use of money, such as spending money on sports rather than academics, or a gaming of weights. He also asked about accountability for achievement.

Orr told reporters after that it was important to him that they don’t give districts more money and get the same outputs.

“If the expectation is that your student population requires additional funding to improve their outputs or their academic standard or the academic achievements, then we are going to have that expectation if we give you these extra dollars,” he said.

Orr said that he didn’t think they would “not rip the band aid off” like Tennessee and Mississippi and that it would be more a long term process. He said they wanted to lay out the facts for the committee.

He said that details about filling funding gaps would come if the Legislature decides it’s something they want to pursue.

“Then it’s up to the consultants to bring various models for us to look at and then see what we’re interested in going forward,” he said. “So we’ve not looked at those models yet.”

The committee plans to meet again in October.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on Facebook and X.

OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy envisions a world in which artificial intelligence bots can be made into subject matter experts that are “deeply passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient and fluent in all of the world’s languages.” Through this vision, the bots would be available to “personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand.”

Last spring, the St. Louis Public Schools parent had to drive his four children to different schools after the district’s bus contractor quit in May. It wasn’t uncommon for some of his kids to miss the first class of the day because of the trek across town. This summer, Dorsey was hoping the new school year would bring improved transportation. Instead, he is once again in the driver’s seat — which he fears will hinder his children’s education.

“I have to make sure everybody gets to school on time. I don’t want them to miss any more time in class,” Dorsey said. “So it’s just going to be a real hectic time in the morning — just trying to move through traffic and hustle and bustle.”

Dorsey is one of thousands of St. Louis parents — and millions more nationwide — who have had to scramble to make alternative plans for their kids because of bus driver shortages. 

An August survey of 400 school districts by HopSkipDrive, a national student transportation company, found that 91% reported being impacted by a bus driver shortage in 2024. The numbers were 92% in 2023 and 88% in 2022.

About 60% said shortages had forced them to cut back on bus services. More than a third (38%) of the districts said staffers are taking time away from their jobs to drive school buses or vans.

“My fear is that at some point we are going to cross the point of no return,” said Keith Galloway, a senior vice president with Student Transportation of America, in an Aug. 7 podcast.

“We have to somehow figure out how we will continue to partner with school districts, keep our costs under control and also be in a position where we can recruit and retain school bus drivers, mechanics, dispatchers and managers to operate the business,” he said. 

In St. Louis, after the bus company pulled out last spring, district officials cobbled together an emergency transportation plan involving yellow buses, taxis and private rideshare cars from nearly 20 vendors.

On Aug. 19, the first day of school,  roughly 6,400 students were supposed to be transported by yellow buses, 6,200 by cabs or rideshare cars and 1,450 by public transit. But the day before, three bus vendors canceled their commitments, leaving more than 1,000 students in limbo.

In lieu of bus transportation, some parents received temporary gas cards, according to the district. Dorsey was one of them — his 10th grader at Nottingham CAJT High School was assigned to a bus, while his eighth grader at Compton-Drew ILC Middle School received a $25 gas card. His other two children attend charter schools.

“The card probably won’t last two days of picking up and dropping off,” Dorsey said.

He said he adjusted his work schedule so he can bring his children to school, but picking them up will be a problem. His shift starts at 3 p.m., so he either will have to get to work late or take his kids out of class early.

“I know it’s going to be a lot with the upcoming school year, especially with these kids trying to figure out how to ride public transportation or even jumping in a cab with a stranger,” Dorsey said. “It’s going to be hard for the parents to instill that confidence in their children. It’s going to be hard for the parents to even try to make sure that their children are at the bus stops and get to work. It’s a lot for us right now.”

The HopSkipDrive study also surveyed 500 parents and found 79% said they are managing school transportation on their own and 62% said driving their children has caused them to miss work. About 63% said their kids would miss less school if more convenient transportation were available.

HopSkipDrive is one of the rideshare vendors that recently partnered with St. Louis Public Schools to cover transportation. Earlier this year, Patricia Ludwig left her job as a bus driver in the St. Louis area to become a driver with HopSkipDrive because of her arthritis. 

Ludwig said the job is easier because she uses her own car. She uses company software to pick up as many routes as she wants and transports only a few children at a time. Ludwig said she drives kids of all ages.

“You can offer certain things you can’t offer with the school bus, because it’s a much more personalized and intimate experience,” Ludwig said. “You’re not on a bus with 30 to 70 other kids, right? You’re just with three or four children. It’s much more like carpooling.”

Drivers with HopSkipDrive go through a rigorous background and certification process, and their cars have to be inspected, according to the company. Drivers communicate directly with parents, pick up children at their door and can wait for students if they are running late.

Square Watson, chief operations officer for St. Louis Public Schools, said at an Aug. 13 school board meeting that the district is ensuring safety for students using rideshare companies and public transit by patrolling routes, monitoring driver progress using GPS and stationing volunteers at stops. All vehicles transporting children require windshield decals, and drivers have to wear identification badges.

Officials haven’t said how long the district will use rideshare companies or taxis. Watson said the district hopes to bring on more traditional school buses as the year continues.

“Everyone is in this together as we arm up and get ourselves ready for the start of school. Will it look ugly? Yes,” Watson said. “I mean, we’ve got lemons and we’re making lemonade.”

Many college students don’t have enough time for their studies. This “time poverty,” as we call it, is often due to inadequate child care access or the need to work to pay for college and living expenses.

Christian Sherrill was trying to corral the attention of 150 students wrapping up a classroom activity and chatting with each other about their results. A handful were getting water refills, others were checking their phones.

“If you can hear my voice, clap once,” Sherrill’s voice boomed. A few people clapped, the room quieted slightly. “If you can hear my voice, clap twice.” More eyes turned toward the presentation screen. Most — not all — of the conversations subsided.

The activity was a personal budgeting exercise, and Sherrill’s lively pupils were all teachers themselves, from middle schools and high schools around Connecticut. They’d gathered in a New Haven conference center on a sunny summer day to try out lesson plans, ask questions and gain the confidence they’d need to teach a newly required course to their students: personal financial management and financial literacy.

Gov. Ned Lamont signed legislation last year requiring the half-credit course in order to graduate from the state’s public schools. At the time, he called it “one of the most important instructional tools that we can give young people to achieve economic independence and stability throughout their lives.”

In testimony supporting the bill, state Treasurer Erick Russell noted that many high schools in the state already offered a personal finance course as an elective, and the state Board of Education had published curricula for the program. But none of the schools with courses already on the books were in Connecticut’s largest cities, Russell pointed out, “which only serves to exacerbate gaps in achievement and wealth.”

In the year since the legislation passed, those districts have been working to catch up. 

They’ve received support from nonprofit groups like California-based Next Gen Personal Finance, which offers free lesson plans and professional development seminars for teachers — like the one in New Haven last week. The organization held 15 such workshops, dubbed “FinCamp,” around the country this summer; Connecticut’s was the largest.

Roughly 60 teachers in attendance received a $500 stipend to be there, funded by a separate nonprofit, Connecticut Financial Scholars. That organization, which started in Philadelphia, recently set up shop in Connecticut, where it’s working to expand financial education offerings beyond the semester-long requirement — including things like summer enrichment and entrepreneurship training for students, as well as financial empowerment workshops for parents. The group targets its efforts in lower-income, higher-need school districts.

“You have big school districts who have to teach this, and their teachers have never taught this before. That’s a huge access and equity issue,” Nancy Kail, program director for CT Financial Scholars, said. Her organization aims to fill that gap. Kail was on site at the Next Gen Personal Finance “FinCamp” last week to observe and offer teacher support. 

The personal budgeting exercise, a lesson NGPF calls “Budget Frenzy,” kicked off the day’s proceedings.

Each student was told to imagine themself at 22, living with a roommate (some teachers groaned audibly). They were given a personal budget, somewhat arbitrarily, and instructed to decide whether they’d spend that money on a series of 30 items that appeared one after the other on the presentation screen. 

The items ranged from going out to lunch with friends to buying a new smartphone to getting an oil change. And some of them, like the oil change, had more expensive consequences later on in the game if the player had chosen not to spend money on them. 

“Budgeting decisions have consequences,” Sherrill sing-songed as he clicked to the next slide.

After the activity, Sherrill passed the mic around to a few teachers who had ideas about how to customize the game for their students — adding things like streaming subscriptions or going to the nail salon. He showed the teachers where to find materials for the lesson plan on NGPF’s website, along with other lessons in the budgeting module.

Cynthia Lisinicchia, a math teacher at Bridgeport Military Academy, said she was “really interested” in the financial literacy curriculum because she doesn’t want her students to start off on the wrong foot — like she feels she did. Lisinicchia said she signed up for a credit card when she was in college not knowing much about how they worked, and she bought a brand new sports car after graduating without negotiating on the price. 

“All the things I did not know, oh my gosh!” Lisinicchia said. “So I’m always telling my students the key isn’t how much money you make, it’s what you do with the money that you have. You’ve got to start out not making mistakes.”

Lisinicchia and her fellow teachers had the chance to try out another lesson, focused specifically on how credit cards work, later that morning.

NGPF instructor Amanda Volz told the teachers to put themselves in the mindset of one of their students and think of “a big-ticket item” they might want to buy with a credit card, then search the internet to figure out what that item generally costs. Next, using a free online tool, they were told to enter the price, the credit card interest rate (Volz suggested 19.9%) and a minimum monthly payment (either 3% of the purchase price or $25, whichever was higher). The tool calculated how much it would cost to pay off that purchase, as well as the difference between that total and the item’s original pricetag.

In the case of the $900 iPhone Volz used as an example, the interest added up to $421. “I hear some reactions to that,” she said, smiling. “And hopefully, maybe your students would have some reactions to that.” Volz then adjusted the monthly payment to $50 and interest dropped to $177. “A little aha moment,” she said. 

Gwen Rice, a math teacher at West Haven High School, chose a pair of $350 Beats by Dre headphones — which she said are popular with her students — and ran the numbers. They would take 17 months to pay off, with $51 in additional interest.

Rice said she has used the tool in her classes before. She’s now developing an “Intro to Investing” course and she’s exploring additional curriculum to integrate into that program.

At a reception following the FinCamp seminar, Treasurer Erick Russell made an appearance and thanked the teachers for their work. He said, for him, the new state requirement was “personal.”

“There are a lot of things I look back on and wish I knew a little earlier. I wish I had courses like this when I was in high school so I didn’t make some of the silly mistakes that many people do. I wish I knew that about compounding interest. I wish I knew about different ways to finance my future education,” he said. 

“There’s a lot that you learn about in school that you kind of finish your class and you’ll never think about it again,” he said. “The tools that you learn around financial education are things that we all use and build on every single day.”

This story was originally published at CT Mirror

With more than $680,000 in grant funding available this year for Arkansas schools and the launch of a volunteer program to help students complete new graduation requirements, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has brightened its spotlight on conservation education.

Both efforts help to build long-term support for conservation, which is one of the parameters the commission uses to measure its success, spokesperson Randy Zellers said.

“Right now there are boys and girls who want to know more about the outdoors, but their schools may not have the resources available to truly devote toward anything outside of core curriculum,” Zellers said. “These grants and volunteer opportunities give them the means to expand their educational offerings and capture the interest of some of those students.”

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The $682,472 in available funding comes from boating and wildlife fines collected in fiscal year 2024 and any unspent money from schools in previous years. The funds stay within the county where the fines were collected and the amounts vary.

The variance tends to correlate to the public recreation opportunities offered in each county, Zellers said.

Arkansas County, which includes Stuttgart, a renowned duck hunting destination, accrued the most fines at $36,170, according to the Game and Fish Commission. The next highest amount, $26,563, was collected in White County where bass, crappie, bream and catfish are popular catches in Bald Knob Lake.

“However, increased opportunity doesn’t always lead to an increase in wildlife violations or fine money collected,” Zellers said. “One egregious incident with a poacher being caught with multiple violations at once may result in thousands of dollars in fines on its own.”

In the coming weeks, applications for grants will be available through the Rural Service Division, which is part of the Arkansas Department of Economic Development. Grants can be used to fund programs such as Youth Shooting Sports and Archery in the Schools.

The money can also be spent on projects like butterfly habitats and field trips to nature centers, hatcheries or wildlife management areas.

“The experience may vary from student to student, but teamwork, leadership and long-term commitment are all traits developed through conservation education opportunities,” Zellers said.

Approximately $537,000 was awarded to schools last year. Approved items included bee houses and hummingbird feeders for a pollinator garden at Dewitt Elementary school, construction materials for an outdoor classroom at a Bradley County school and animal skins, track and skull replicas in Franklin County.

Current applications are open through Oct. 3.

Volunteer program

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission also recently announced a new volunteer program aimed at helping high schools students complete 75 hours of community service hours, which is now a graduation requirement under the LEARNS Act.

Along with many other changes the sweeping education law brought upon Arkansas schools last year, the LEARNS Act implemented a community service requirement for all students, unless they secure a waiver. Reasons for obtaining a waiver could include major illness, homelessness or if the student is a primary contributor to their household income.

In March, Arkansas Department of Education Deputy Commissioner Stacy Smith said the new graduation requirement would help students build pride in and connection to their communities.

Each district is allowed to define what community service can include, though the policy must be posted to the district website, require an adult to sign off on the student’s community service hours and include preparation, action and reflection components required for a student to receive credit.

The Arkansas Game and Fish program opens the door to students who are “interested in giving back to conservation as well as their community,” according to a press release. School district officials will need to submit a request to register for opportunities before students can participate.

“We’re trying to offer a variety of experiences so students can find something they can enjoy doing and feel like they contributed once the work is done,” said Leah Hughes, the commission’s volunteer program coordinator. “Having worked at many of our events myself, I can tell you that it can be so fun and fulfilling that you might have a hard time stopping at those minimum hours required.”

Volunteer opportunities will give students a peek into the everyday tasks of those who work for the commission with activities such as trail cleanups, fishing derbies and archery tournaments.

“Conservation education is paramount to the [commission’s] mission of conserving and enhancing wildlife and their habitats while promoting sustainable use, public understanding and support,” Zellers said. “It’s not just about hunting and fishing, but about all aspects of conservation, responsible water usage, understanding our role in the world around us and how what we do affects everything downstream from us.”

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on Facebook and X.

A partnership between The Innovation Project and North Carolina Central University (NCCU) is providing $1.5 million in scholarship funding for aspiring principals from small, high-need North Carolina school districts.

The Recruitment, Retention, and Promotion of Effective Educators scholarship initiative covers the cost of a two-year Master of School Administration degree program. This includes tuition and a salary for their full-time principal internship, which is completed during their second year. Funding for the scholarship comes from grants, one via the U.S. Department of Education and another from N.C. Department of Public Instruction.

“This partnership underscores our shared dedication to advancing educational equity and excellence and preparing our aspiring leaders to lead with integrity,  purpose, and through innovation,” NCCU MSA Program Director Portia Gibbs-Roseboro said.

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The Innovation Project is a nonprofit that connects school district leaders throughout the state with the purpose of inspiring change and equity.

Sharon Contreras, CEO of The Innovation Project, said that with strong support, great teachers can become great principals.

“The interview process was especially dynamic and illuminated those candidates with the potential to do the work our students need and deserve. I’m thrilled with the outcome and I look forward to seeing these professionals advance in their careers and continue to serve in smaller districts,” Contreras said.

Candidates were selected to be in the scholarship program’s first cohort after nominations, applying, and a group interview process. The 16 scholarship recipients are listed below.

• Cecelia Aguilar, Warren County School District
• Trevor Beverly, Lexington City Schools
• James Brown, Warren County School District
• QuaShana Brown, Edgecombe County Public Schools
• Sylvia Carver, Elizabeth City – Pasquotank Public Schools
• Wilonda Gillespie-Cates, Vance County Public Schools
• J’Vonn Davis, Elizabeth City – Pasquotank Public Schools
• Megan Gentry, Mt. Airy School District
• Pamela Jordan, Warren County School District
• Ashley Knowles, Sampson County Schools
• Brandon Powell, Sampson County Schools
• Jennivise Lindsay, Vance County Public Schools
• Kenya Raynor, Edgecombe County Public Schools
• Elaine Reales, Mt. Airy School District
• West Scherer, Asheboro City Schools
• Danielle Wissner, Elizabeth City – Pasquotank Public Schools

The cohort members will begin classes in the upcoming fall semester. In addition to their course work, recipients also committed to a five-year service obligation.

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Ohio’s largest school district recently started using surveillance software on students’ devices.

Columbus City Schools partnered with Gaggle — a Texas-based student safety technology company that provides constant surveillance — at the end of last school year, district spokesperson Jacqueline Bryant said in an email.

“This is an added layer of security to ensure students are not visiting unapproved sites,” she said in an email. “Gaggle employs advanced technology and human insight to review students’ use of online tools 24/7/365 days a week and provides real-time analysis, swiftly flagging any potentially concerning behavior or content; this includes signs of self-harm, depression, substance abuse, cyberbullying, or other harmful situations.”

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Gaggle is currently partnered with about 1,500 school districts across the country, but would not answer how many of those districts are in Ohio, Gaggle spokesperson Shelby Goldman said.

“We have a practice to not answer questions about specific school districts,” she said in an email.

Ohio’s three largest school districts — Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati — use Gaggle. Cleveland did not answer questions the Ohio Capital Journal sent about Gaggle.

Cincinnati Public Schools started using Gaggle in 2013 and it is active for all grades, according to the district. It costs the district $323,780 to use Gaggle.

“Cincinnati Public Schools prioritizes the safety and well-being of its students and staff, and utilizes Gaggle to monitor threats for individual student safety and the safety of each school community,” according to the district. “The District monitors content on District-provided devices and applications based on specific language and phrases, generating trigger alerts for review, rather than continuous monitoring.”

Gaggle, which started in the 1990s, monitors school platforms such as Google Workspaces and Microsoft Office 365, but does not look at students’ personal email addresses or private social media accounts.

“Gaggle is an early warning system that identifies children in crisis so that schools can intervene before a tragedy happens,” Goldman said in an email. “Gaggle partners with school districts to help them monitor student activity on the technology (devices and accounts) provided by the school district.”

The company estimates it helped save 5,790 lives from 2018-23, according to their report from last fall.

“We believe finding the right balance between monitoring for safety purposes and protecting student privacy and confidentiality is important, and we’re committed to continuing to support districts in achieving both,” Goldman said in an email.

Gaggle uses Artificial Intelligence technology to spot things that could be an issue and a Human Safety Team reviews them before contacting the school.

“Our reviewers are looking at the context to determine if an item is related to an actual concern or maybe a simple reference to something that is harmless when in context,” Goldman said in an email.

Gaggle can flag things as early warning signs or an imminent threat, which is treated with a higher level of urgency. It altered Ohio school districts to 1,275 student incidents that required immediate intervention in 2021, according to an October 2022 Facebook post from Gaggle.

Columbus City Schools, which has about 47,000 students, is implementing Gaggle in middle and high schools. Students can’t opt out of it.

The district signed two contracts with Gaggle — the first for $58,492.40 in January and $99,180 in June, according to school board documents.

During the district’s Gaggle pilot from April 2022 to December 2023, 3,942 pieces of content were looked at by Gaggle’s Safety Team which led to 226 “actionable student safety concerns that were sent to Emergency Contacts,” according to a school board document.

Even though Sharon Kim’s two students are in elementary school and won’t yet be affected by the district’s Gaggle implementation, she is concerned about the district using surveillance technology.

“School should be a safe place for our kids,” Kim said. “They spend so much time in their lives at school, it should be a place where they feel safe, not where they feel like they’re being monitored and surveilled every single minute of the day. I really feel that this kind of surveillance is a huge hindrance to that.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and X.

The branch filed a complaint Aug. 19 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against 34 school districts in the city and county of St. Louis because of disparities in reading proficiency for Black students.

It’s the second time the St. Louis NAACP is bringing student literacy into the spotlight. Earlier this year, the organization launched a campaign called Right to Read that also focuses on improving reading scores for Black students in city and county schools.

Adolphus Pruitt, the organization’s president, said federal officials will assess the complaint, and if it’s within the office’s jurisdiction, will launch an investigation to determine whether the argument is valid.

In the complaint, the organization said low reading proficiency rates for St. Louis Black students “underscores the urgent need for targeted interventions in the region’s schools.”

“The districts are facing one of the steepest post-pandemic climbs, with significant learning losses that require immediate and sustained attention,” it said. “Addressing these challenges will require a comprehensive approach, potentially involving increased funding, innovative teaching strategies, enhanced support services and community engagement to improve educational outcomes for the region’s students.”

If the complaint is valid, the office “would ask the school districts to take certain actions to remediate things,” Pruitt said. “We’re very early in the process.”

In 2023, reading proficiency scores were at 42% for all Missouri third graders, but only  21% for Black third graders, according to state data.

In St. Louis Public Schools — one of the districts included in the complaint — 14% of Black third graders scored as proficient in reading on standardized tests, versus 61% of their white classmates. The district didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

The chapter is calling on community members to help boost student literacy. At a press conference Aug. 20, representatives asked the public to support existing reading programs, create new initiatives and dedicate personal time to participating in literacy activities with children.

Pruitt said that since the filing, he has heard mostly positive feedback from local nonprofits and educators.

“They’ve called in and said, ‘We think you’re doing the right thing. We’re glad to see it.’ Of course, we got some comments from people who say we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Pruitt said. “That’s especially with some of the districts that are predominantly white. Even though their kids — Black or white — are performing poorly.”

In addition to the 34 districts, the complaint names the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Pruitt said state education officials have to be kept accountable along with schools for low reading scores.

“They’re the ones who make sure that the districts are performing,” he said. “It’s like an employee is doing something that they’re not supposed to be doing, and you got a supervisor that’s managing him — well, you have to look at the management.”

The department recently focused on improving literacy in a comprehensive plan called Missouri Read, Lead, Exceed, which aims to increase evidence-based literacy instruction — part of the science of reading. The state also passed a literacy law last year, requiring schools to create success plans for students with reading deficiencies.

The St. Louis NAACP’s Right to Read is designed to help close the literacy gap between Black students and the state average. There’s a focus on third grade because research has found that 1 in 6 children who aren’t reading proficiently by then won’t graduate from high school on time.

Pruitt said that by 2030, the NAACP branch wants all children in the city and county of St. Louis to receive the materials and support they need to help get them reading well by third grade. But he realized the Right to Read campaign wouldn’t achieve that goal without help from the Office for Civil Rights.

“We just need to get more people involved in doing certain things,” Pruitt said. “We [filed the complaint] because once we saw the enormity of the problem, Right to Read —  strictly on an emotional and volunteerism point — is not going to work.”

Access to in-school mental health support varies dramatically along class and race lines, with Black and low-income families far less likely to report their child’s school offers counseling and other support but are more likely to use them than their affluent, white peers. 

Just 29% of Black families and 37% of low-income families report that their child’s school offers mental health services, compared to 52% of white families and 59% of the most affluent, according to the Nation’s Kids at Risk report released last week by University of Southern California researchers. Lower income families reported using in-school mental health services more than five times as much as those with the highest incomes. 

“We often talk about mental health struggles today with teens as kind of one issue and often in generalities,” said  lead author and USC researcher Amie Rapaport. “… I’m hopeful that differentiation will help inform interventions and services to help kids that are most in need.”

The survey of 2,500 families is the latest national attempt to show the “very clear link” between poor mental health and chronic absenteeism. Over one in five children considered chronically absent, missing 10% or more of a school year, experienced conduct problems, like losing temper or fighting with peers. About one in ten report emotional or peer struggles. 

Across the country, more than one in four kids were chronically absent by the end of 2023. 

Researchers acknowledge the absences themselves may be creating more emotional distress, negatively impacting how students feel about themselves as learners. Regardless, the currently or on-track to be chronically absent students group struggled emotionally or behaviorally three to four times more than their peers with good attendance. 

“There are kids in need that aren’t being reached,” Rapaport said. 

Among all families, one in five would have used services had they been available, though Black and Hispanic families show the highest desire. Of all families receiving services, roughly 3 in 4 are “satisfied,” saying they help. 

Teen girls, between 13 and 17, struggled most with depression and anxiety symptoms, but Black and Hispanic girls appear to be struggling less than their white and Asian peers. Pre-teen boys, particularly Black boys, are experiencing the most conduct concerns, such as increases in fighting, lying, cheating, distraction, bullying and stealing, the report found, adding detail to recent CDC reports about increases in violence and bullying. 

The findings came as somewhat of a surprise to Rapaport, who expected mental health struggles to be more evenly distributed across age and gender; and because  student mental health was a priority for many districts nationwide in spending federal pandemic relief funds in the last few years. 

She explained the disparities may have to do with access to information and care – whether or not schools are adequately reaching parents about what resources are readily available, or curbing long waiting lists. 

 “Clearly, policy can help better target mental health supports to meet the needs of the children who could benefit from them the most,” the report stated, calling the patterns “unfortunate.”

The report released by ImpactSTATS, Inc. and The BEE Collective used National Center for Education Statistics data to compare how often students were being excluded from school as a disciplinary measure at predominantly white versus Black Charleston schools in the 2022-23 school year.

To zero in on the treatment of young students, researchers considered only those schools that offered pre-kindergarten programs. Of the 42 schools in the study, 33 encompassed grades pre-K through 5; six went from pre-K to grade 8; two were pre-K to kindergarten and one school taught pre-K to second grade.

Of those schools, the ones with more than a 51% Black student population isolated children from learning settings for disciplinary reasons at a rate of 98.2 removals per 1,000 students, according to the report. This was seven times greater than the 14.1 removals per 1,000 students at majority white early-grade and elementary schools — and more than double the districtwide rate of 42.7 per 1,000 students.

Exclusionary discipline could include in-school or out-of-school suspensions and expulsion. When looking just at out-of-school suspensions in Charleston, the racial disparity by school population soared, according to the study released earlier this summer.

Students in majority Black schools faced out-of-school suspension rates of 78.8 per 1,000 students in the 2022-23 school year compared to 11.9 suspensions per 1,000 students for those in predominantly white schools. 

The districtwide rate was 34.8 suspensions per 1,000 students. 

“This tells us that we have a problem and it’s not children’s behavior — but adult action and adult decisions,” said lead researcher Melodie Baker. 

Charleston public schools served 50,312 students at the end of the last school year: 24,978 were white, 14,291 were Black and 7,916 were Hispanic, according to the district. 

Baker said removing a child from a classroom or isolating them from their teachers and peers robs them of an opportunity to learn self-regulation and is particularly damaging to the youngest learners.

“It makes kids feel like they don’t belong,” she said. “They feel ashamed. They feel confused. It affects their overall development.”

The practice is seen as harmful on many levels: Maryland, California and Connecticut are among the states that have banned or strictly limited such removals in the early grades.

Charleston County School District spokesman Andrew Pruitt last week pushed back against the study, which raises issues of racism and implicit bias, noting its data does not include the ages of the suspended students or the reasons why they were punished. 

“We take any report that raises concerns about unconscious bias negatively impacting our children seriously. However, we are incredibly concerned that a specific claim of that magnitude was made in the absence of an analysis of the appropriate and relevant data,” he said in a statement. 

The district didn’t start breaking down its disciplinary data by grade until recently, according to Pruitt. Though records were limited, he cited a total of 49 preschool suspensions in Charleston public schools in the 2022-23 school year. He did not separate that number by race.

Preschoolers across the U.S. are expelled at rates that are three times higher than K-12 students. South Carolina led the nation in preschool suspensions by a large margin in 2017-18 with 438 preschoolers suspended, according to the most recent available federal data. 

Those numbers have grown significantly worse in the Palmetto State and were a critical focus of a state legislative hearing last week. The Joint Citizens and Legislative Committee on Children presented data showing 928 South Carolina public preschoolers received in-school and out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24; 66% of those 3- and 4-year-olds were children of color and 77% were boys.

The committee’s data for Charleston County schools, the state’s second-largest district, cites that 25 preschoolers received out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24 and fewer than five received an in-school suspension. Eighteen Black Charleston County public preschoolers received an out–of-school suspension and fewer than five white students did. Twenty-one male preschoolers received an out-of-school suspension that year and fewer than five female preschoolers did. Six preschoolers classified as special education students were among those removed from school for disciplinary reasons.

The Charleston County School District has taken steps to address systemic inequalities in discipline, Pruitt said, including professional development training for all its early education teachers that focuses on how to appropriately respond to student behavior while taking into account young learners’ social-emotional well-being. He said the district continues to work with early childhood education organizations throughout the state to adopt best practices.

The report by ImpactSTATS and The BEE Collective notes a number of studies citing the role of educator bias in harsh discipline, including perceptions of Black children as being older than they are, less innocent, more aggressive and more deserving of punishment for the same behavior displayed by white students.

New York-based ImpactSTATS was founded by Baker in 2023 to bring more diversity to the research field and to provide technical support and research assistance to grass-roots groups working with underserved communities of color. 

The BEE — Beloved Early Education and Care — Collective is an advocacy group that partly funded the study and collaborated on the research. It seeks to improve maternal and child health in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, including in addressing racism and implicit bias in early child care. 

Black children across all grade levels and those with disabilities have long faced higher rates of exclusionary disciplines than other student groups. According to a recent U.S. Department of Education report analyzing data from the 2020-21 school year, Black boys were nearly two times more likely than white boys to receive an out-of-school suspension or an expulsion.

“It’s mostly boys who are being suspended — mostly for rough-and-tumble play,” Baker said, speaking anecdotally of the Charleston suspensions after interviewing those who worked with or observed district students. “But there’s a lot of research out there that talks about the positives of rough-and-tumble play. Males tend to perceive that very differently.”

Of Charleston County schools’ 3,673 teachers in the 2021-22 school year, roughly 2,402 were white females, 556 were white males, 404 were Black females and 103 were Black males, according to state Education Department data.

Cara Kelly, a researcher who observed classrooms within the Charleston district for seven years, ending in 2019, recalled several instances where kindergarten children were made to sit alone and in silence for 30 minutes or more for minor infractions such as talking to other students, calling out while a teacher was speaking or standing up when they were supposed to sit for long stretches of time. 

“It’s OK to give a child five minutes to calm down — but not to be completely excluded,” she said. 

Kelly, now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oklahoma’s Early Childhood Education Institute, told The 74 she believed the punishments were not developmentally appropriate and often targeted Black children. 

The report recommends the district recruit more male teachers in the early grades, increase pay for all early childhood educators, decrease student-to-staff ratios and raise awareness about discipline reform legislation that seeks to prohibit suspensions, expulsions and corporal punishment while promoting more effective means of managing student behavior. 

Researchers acknowledge that the report, funded partly by the American Heart Association Voices for Healthy Kids, should be interpreted cautiously because of the data’s limitations regarding race and age.

The BEE Collective has filed a public records request asking the Charleston district to release the suspension records for children 5 and under for the last five years broken down by age, race, gender and school. Noting that the response to that Freedom of Information request is due Aug. 31, Pruitt said it was “unfortunate” that the groups moved ahead with publishing the report without that information in hand. 

Tawanna R. Jennings, an infant and early childhood mental health consultant for South Carolina’s Partners for Early Attuned Relationships Network, called the study’s findings “pretty astounding,” adding she hopes the results will be shared widely and that Charleston teachers receive better training and greater support.

“There needs to be more resources so that [teachers] can understand these behaviors,” she said. “How do you teach these children and how do you be empathetic with what they may be experiencing?”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to ImpactSTATS and to The 74.

The state Board of Education unanimously approved a set of guidelines Wednesday for how local districts should handle personal technology in schools.

The recommendations suggest heavy restrictions on the use of cellphones at the elementary and middle school levels, with more flexibility for high school students.

“Technology, when used purposefully, can enhance learning and connection, but we must also protect our students from the potential negative impacts of excessive and unrestricted use,” said Erin Benham, acting chair of the state Board of Education. “This policy can help schools strike that balance, supporting students in a way that prepares them for success in learning and in life.”

Elementary schools should “focus on removing cell phones from the classroom to maximize academic, social and emotional development,” with the possibility of “specific procedures for collecting and isolating cell phones upon arrival at school,” according to the guidance.

Similarly, the guidance says the policy for middle schools should also focus on removing cellphones throughout the school day because the age group is “particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of excessive personal technology use and has a difficult time controlling their impulses,” but does not explicitly recommend the collection of cellphones.

“Possession of cell phones in this age group is likely to be viewed as a rite of passage into adulthood, so communication and application of policies that restrict use must be developed in consideration of the specific challenges of middle school students,” the guidance said.

At the high school level, the guidance also recommends restrictive cellphone use, but says students should be able to keep their technology and that it instead should just be turned off and kept out of sight.

“By removing the distraction caused by smartphone use during the school day and fostering a healthy balance with the positive use of technology, we create schools and classrooms that maximize peer-to-peer and student-to-educator interaction, develop social skills in interpersonal communication, and positively impact academic growth and success, all while supporting student mental health,” said state Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker.

The state recommendations come on the heels of months of debate around the country about how to tackle technology in the classroom, as studies show unrestricted phone usage can lead to mental health issues in youth and have a negative impact on brain development.

It’s a distraction issue in the classroom as well, as 33% of K-12 teachers surveyed in a Pew Research Center study in fall 2023 said cellphones were a major problem in the classroom.

“Teachers are increasingly competing with cellphones for attention from their students and are seeing more students experiencing mental health crises triggered by their interaction with social media,” said Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union. 

Some states like Florida and Indiana have implemented cellphone bans, as others like Washington, Utah, Kansas, Maine and even Connecticut have considered legislation to limit or ban the use of personal technology in classrooms.

Toward the end of his annual State of the State address in February, Gov. Ned Lamont suggested that kids lock away their smartphones during the school day. The sentiment later prompted the passage of Senate Bill 14, which required the state Department of Education to develop a model policy on the use of cellphones in schools.

“All too often, our young people find themselves too distracted by their smartphones and disconnected from the reality of what is happening around them, including while in their classrooms, and it’s having negative impacts on their learning and mental well-being. It is crucial that we adopt stronger policies to address this issue head-on,” Lamont said in a news release Wednesday morning. “The state’s guidance provides a clear framework, but it is up to each school district to shape their own policies that meet the needs of their students and communities.”

Districts across the state have already gotten a head start on their policies, with some adopting more conservative measures than others. 

In Torrington, all students are allowed to bring technology into their schools, but at the middle and high school levels it will be locked in district-issued cellphone pouches throughout the entire school day. Elementary school students can keep their phones, but it must “remain completely out of view.”

In Lisbon, meanwhile, cellphones will not be allowed on school grounds for pre-K through fourth grade students. For students in fifth through eighth grades, they’ll be able to store their cellphones and smartwatches in their lockers.

The Connecticut Association of Boards of Education has also expanded an ongoing sample policy and guidance document for districts to use and tweak as they develop technology policies that fit their needs.

State board members said at the meeting Wednesday that they expect some pushback from parents and students, but they’re hopeful that the guidance is a framework for ongoing conversations with all stakeholders.

This story was originally published on CT Mirror.