Happy New Year and I hope all is well with you all!!
💡 💡 Since my last post, I have been hard at work creating, editing and building legislation that we are so excited to announce is done.
THE "SUPPORTING JUSTICE-ENGAGED STUDENTS IN EDUCATION ACT" will be entered in the Colorado 74th General Legislative Session.
A handful of quick pre-cursors on the bill:
The bill is designed largely to clear up the confusion taking place between the justice and education systems where students and families are confused about what is happening and getting lost in the soup on the way to educational attainment. It also supports school personnel in having needed guidance.
Therefore, there are very new provisions, just clarification and guidance.
The burden largely falls on CDE and DYS to work together ahead of Fall 2025 to provide guidance on several topics where there isn’t any currently to reduce liability for schools/districts state-wide in serving the 22,000 justice engaged students in CO.
So, rather than districts needing to call their attorney and pay to have them try to figure out situations, the guidance for serving justice-engaged youth such as how to interpret credits from facilities, have them safely participate in school activities, etc. will be much clearer.
Additionally, there will be a hotline available (similar to I Matter and Safe 2 Tell) that can provide guidance to school and district personnel, families and students related to what the best school options might be for them (most often not a traditional environment) and how to get needed wrap-around services. One person at each school or BOCES will also be trained in this new guidance to reduce liability.
Our hope is that this will significantly reduce the burden on rural districts/schools as many of them have a student here or there and then have to figure out what to do without much support. Of course, this will also be helpful for metro schools who have large numbers and don’t have clarity on how best to serve these students and families either, what schools they would be best served by, etc..
Many Thanks to my fellow Co-Author Wendy Loloff Cooper, Christopher Hooyman, the JESCO Team and all the stakeholders across the country.
https://lnkd.in/g64ejeff