Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands’ Post

Marty Dickinson is offering this candid conversation with our community around bonds and levies. I love this part of her challenge to our community: "I am a fierce advocate for public K-12 education. Having had three children attend public schools in our region, and after leading two successful levy and bond campaigns, I know that schools are critical for developing healthy kids, preparing them to reach their highest potential. As a business leader, I know that no community can thrive without supporting its schools." "I feel so strongly, that I’m leaning into this hard conversation with those of you who question the benefit of voting for bonds and levies in our region. If by voting “no” you require schools to lay off staff, close buildings, shutter sports programs and eliminate activities, how does that benefit our collective future? If you create barriers for students to access technology and learn in well-equipped spaces, what is the impact on those who will eventually take their place in board rooms, surgical centers, classrooms, newspapers, construction sites and creative spaces?" #educationgrowseconomies #education #schoolfunding #schools #spokane #greaterspokaneinc

I made this post last October & these are still my sentiments today!! EDUCATION FOR OUR CHILDREN IS STILL A PROBLEM IN THIS COUNTRY!! What’s happening in our public schools in Wisconsin is a #CRIME & I’m ready to hold EVERYONE involved accountable!!! ✊🏽 It’s NOT about public, charter, or choice … The facts are our children aren’t safe in our public schools & our children continue to #FAIL!! It’s NOT just a principal or teacher problem it’s a #SYSTEMIC problem!! Stop distracting us with this PUBLIC, CHARTER, CHOICE argument!! Our children are also failing because our #BLACK adults have allowed it!! We let anyone educate our children, indoctrinate them without input!! BLACK PEOPLE HAVE FAILED BLACK CHILDREN AS WELL!! You want our children back in public schools then provide safe environments, better lunches, renovate/ remodel or build new school buildings, make the class environments conducive for learning to take place, SMALLER class sizes, BETTER PAY FOR TEACHERS, make parental involvement mandatory, hold yourselves accountable … Invest in our inner city schools .. Our students shouldn’t have to attend “white” schools or conform to receive a GREAT public education.. .. If our public schools provided quality education there would be no need for alternative education .. .. I CHOOSE our CHILDREN/ Students!! For the record I’ve taught for public, charter, & choice schools .. I’ve also coached teachers who were also employed at public, charter, & choice schools .. I’m talking what I’ve experienced NOT heard .. The most travesty in education I’ve seen with my own eyes over the last 23 years came from our public schools! We MUST do better!! Wherever they are safe & are receiving a nonconforming, non biased, and effective education that’s where the money needs to go & that’s where our kids need to be!! .. I’ll save my opinion about hiring more district leaders & educators who live in the community for another time.. WE NEED MORE EDUCATORS IN OUR SCHOOLS WHO ARE INVESTED IN OUR COMMUNITY NOT JUST THOSE WHO ARE “helping po folks & their kids” .. I digress for now!! 🤣✌🏽✊🏽💚🙏🏽 #2023growup #drjohnson #educator @milwaukeemps @mteaunion @naacp @leonwrussell @derricknaacp @govevers @mayorofmilwaukee

For AFC board member Tamar Williamson taking action is deeply personal. It's a commitment to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive, to evolve, and to become the best version of themselves. This belief fuels her dedication to the vital work being done by Action for Children. Child care professionals hold a multitude of roles to support the children in their care. It's more than just education; they are social workers, caregivers, mentors, and sometimes even janitors or accountants. It's a labor of love, driven by a profound sense of responsibility to ensure that every child has everything they need to succeed. Join Tamar in taking action for Early Childhood Education professionals and making a difference—one child, one family, and one community at a time. TAKE ACTION: https://bit.ly/4belX6v

What Happened When Brooklyn Tried to Integrate Its Middle Schools A new report found that many schools enrolled more racially and socioeconomically diverse groups of students without sparking a major exodus of families from public schools. Seeking to solve a problem that has vexed public schools around the country for decades, one progressive section of New York undertook an ambitious plan to better integrate middle schools that were among the most homogenous in the city. Selective admissions were scrapped. Every child got a lottery number instead. Schools adopted targets to admit certain numbers of disadvantaged children. And unlike in many places where integration attempts faced fierce opposition, parents led the effort. Now, five years later, the plan appears to be working. Middle schools in a section of northwest Brooklyn that stretches from Sunset Park to Cobble Hill went from being the second most socioeconomically segregated to 19th out of the city’s 32 local districts. Teachers and students say friendships are emerging across income lines. And while opposition to integration efforts is often focused on concern that middle-class and white families will abandon public schools, the area — District 15 — has not seen a major exodus. The city’s public school enrollment has dropped as families leave New York or move to charters, but the district’s declines have been less extreme than elsewhere. Across American public schools, more than a third of all students attend a school where most of their peers share the same race or ethnicity. But the Supreme Court has also limited how schools can use race to sort students among schools, and efforts to address racial segregation have mostly stalled. Instead of using race, the district employed other categories to diversify student bodies and bring students with different life experiences and resources together. Specifically, schools prioritized students who are homeless, learning English or from low-income families — factors that are often correlated to race but that do not pose the same legal challenges. The question of how to integrate schools has prompted heated debates across New York. In northwest Brooklyn and across the city, some Asian American families in particular have fought efforts to overhaul admissions that they say could lead to their children losing access to prime educational opportunities that they have worked hard for. The plan in Brooklyn’s District 15 is a rare of example of progress on desegregation that has prompted less public conflict. https://lnkd.in/ej_jaR3h

While in Connecticut years ago, I used my educational background to serve as the assistant director of the AmeriCorps program to bring equity of educational opportunities for minority students in urban schools as compared to the more wealthy suburban schools. The Federal Grant for the AmeriCorps program came out of the Sheff v. O'Neill, 238 Conn. 1, 678 A.2d 1267 (1996), in which it held that students in the Hartford public schools were racially, ethnically and economically isolated and that, as a result, Hartford public school students had not been provided a substantially equal educational opportunity under the state constitution, article eighth, §1, and article first, §§1 and 20. 238 Conn. at 37-38, 47. https://lnkd.in/etkDSZ5i During my time with AmeriCorps, I had arranged for students in urban schools to attend more wealthy suburban schools in lower Fairfield county close to NYC. Sharing that, here is a good read from Erin Okuno, a thread entitled, “EQUITY REQUIRES ACTION – STOP USING THE WORD AS AN ATTENTION GRABBER” @ https://lnkd.in/ez8hyq95 Here’s a snippet… The problem with saying “it’s an equity problem” is we’re not talking about race. The word equity is being used as a placeholder and not tied to actionable steps. It is masking the real problem of needing to acknowledge race but being too timid to name race as a factor in the problem. I get it, we don’t like talking about race because race is tied to people and we don’t want to call out people, we’d rather talk about problems without humanizing them. How different would the statement be if the person said “It’s a diversity problem” or “People of Color are over-represented in low-performing schools.” These statements change the problem and more clearly articulate the root causes – diversity and low performance. These new statements also humanize and contextualize the problem needing to be solved.

United in Struggle: Bridging Generations for Equity in D.C. Charter Schools and Beyond How a lack of oversight allows D.C. public charters to operate discriminately, exploiting parents, teachers, students, and taxpayers. My narrative, marked by resistance and resilience, serves as a call to action for systemic change and understanding Read more below: #Education #DCCharterSchools #EquityInEducation #PublicCharters #EducationReform #TeacherAdvocacy #StudentRights #ParentalInvolvement #TaxpayerAccountability #EducationalEquity #CharterSchoolOversight

In 2019, I published, St. Louis School Desegregation: Patterns of Progress and Peril (Palgrave Macmillan). In the book, I use Missouri history to show why school desegregation still matters. At the time, I wrote about the death of Michael Brown as a worst-case scenario. Brown attended a segregated school and Officer Darren Wilson, who killed Brown, also attended a segregated school. I made the argument that if that if black teens and white police officers are meeting for the first time in the middle of a heated exchange, disaster will ensue. Now, we see more dangers of school segregation. A presidential candidate does not know that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. This false narrative was carefully crafted by Southern schools who refuse to follow the Brown ruling in 1954. What types of decisions will a politician make regarding race, inequality, and discrimination if she was educated in a segregated school? How many other elected officials, corporate leaders, or Supreme Court justices were also educated in segregated schools? It matters because their education is shaping contemporary policy. Let's ask the hard questions. If we are as great as we claim, then we are strong enough to handle the challenges of learning hard history. Our future depends on it. #desegregation #americanhistory #teachers #teachertraining #privateschools The Miseducation of Nikki Haley https://lnkd.in/gxBi9CWa

What began as a virtual book club for Black men in St. Louis at the start of the pandemic has since evolved into a vital organization dedicated to addressing the youth literacy crisis in the city. Black Men Read was founded by Keyon Watkins in 2020, with a group of about 15 friends meeting virtually to discuss books. However, after a family tragedy in 2022, Watkins was inspired to do more. The death of his brother, whose life was profoundly affected by his inability to read, motivated Watkins to expand Black Men Read. “My older brother was very intelligent,” Watkins shared. “However, he couldn’t read. When you can’t read, your options in life are limited. What could the trajectory of his life have been if he knew how to read?” As of 2021, only 11% of Black K-12 public school students in St. Louis were proficient in reading, compared to 55% of their white peers. St. Louis has struggled for years to improve reading proficiency among its students, but Black Men Read is working to change that. In 2022, the organization began volunteering with Head Start programs to read to preschoolers and later expanded to Barack Obama Elementary School for the second half of the 2023-24 school year. Black Men Read’s literacy efforts are supported by Coalition With STL Kids, an organization committed to “highlighting the racist educational status quo” and holding the local school board accountable for what it views as low expectations for Black students. The work done by Black Men Read and Coalition With STL Kids is crucial to closing the literacy gap among marginalized groups, and their dedication is deeply appreciated. Black Men Read: https://hubs.li/Q02KYrGS0 Source: The 74 Million https://lnkd.in/enYU8rMM #StLouis #ScienceofReading #Education #Missouri #TheLiteracyLab

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Did you know that a child’s ability to read by the third grade can shape their entire future? For Black boys, early literacy is more than just an academic milestone—it’s a powerful tool to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline and open doors to opportunities that can change lives. 📚✨ At Thomas Educational Consulting and Training, we believe that every child deserves a strong start. By focusing on early literacy, we can help ensure that Black boys are not left behind, but are empowered to excel in school and beyond. Together, let’s close the literacy gap and unlock the full potential of our young kings. 👑 #TECT #JRsBiggestFan #RaisingBrilliantBlackBoys #EarlyLiteracyMatters #CloseTheGap #FutureSuccess #BlackBoyJoy #DisruptThePipeline