Wraparound student supports

There has been some good news recently for all supporters of community schools: the U.S. Department of Education has awarded 12 new grants to organizations developing full-service community schools. These 12 grantees will join the 30 others who have received grants from 2008 onwards. The awards total is close to $6 million, and will help districts and other groups develop and implement schools that can meet all of their students' needs.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's annual publication, The KIDS COUNT 2015 Data Book, collects data from all 50 states and uses it to evaluate how kids across the U.S. are faring in terms of their health, education, economic well-being, and family and community. The 2015 report shows that although some gains have been made, there are still many areas for concern—particularly for children of color.

Last year, parents, students, teachers, and community members in Los Angeles achieved a huge victory for the city’s public schools: they successfully pushed the LA school board to adopt the “Equity Is Justice Resolution," which will guide the distribution of new state funding to prioritize the highest-needs students and schools.

Media Mobilizing Project has created an amazing new project to share the personal stories of parents, students and educators in Philadelphia's public schools. Their website, "Voices from our Public Schools" collects these stories to create a larger narrative around why people love their public schools and how they feel Pennsylvania's budget cuts to education have hurt them.

In a column for the Education Opportunity Network, blogger Jeff Bryant paints a stark picture of how state budget fights are decimating public schools and stripping them of the resources they need to support students and teachers.

In this year's state budget deal, organizers in New York defeated a proposed tax credit that would have provided up to $1 million in taxpayer subsidies to wealthy residents for donating to private schools. They also held the line on charter expansion and prevented lawmakers from increasing the charter school cap.

The 4th edition of the Education Law Center's "Is School Funding Fair" report card is out this month, giving advocates and organizers across the country another round of valuable data on how well states are (or aren't) investing in their schools and students.

Last week parents, students, teachers and community members across Massachusetts took part in a statewide week of action against the overuse of high stakes, standardized testing. The events were organized by the newly formed Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance and their local partner, the Boston Education Justice Alliance.

Last year, we release an online toolkit called "Investing in the Future: Revenue Options to Give Every Child the Opportunity to Learn," which presented strategies that states can use to raise revenue to fund important investments in education, transportation and more. Now we are releasing a series of fact sheets that distill the critical takeaways from the toolkit and offer brief overviews of strategies like instituting a millionaire’s tax or closing tax loopholes for large, profitable, multi-state corporations.

Brittini Gray, a community organizer with Metropolitan Congregations United, published a powerful op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch decrying the continued lack of resources for schools in the St. Louis area. She lays out how lack of funding and poor policy decisions have continually damaged the Normandy School District, creating a climate in which students have minimal opportunities to succeed.